It was now Anchored Year 6.
Li Fan did not head to the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Instead, he first quietly arrived at the entrance to the Li Realm.
Passing through the spatial passageway, Li Fan flew straight toward the vicinity of the volcano situated in the center of the Li Realm.
The scorching air was thick with the heavy stench of sulfur.
Traces of raging lava that had yet to completely solidify could faintly be seen nearby.
It seemed the volcano had only recently undergone a violent eruption.
Suspended midair, Li Fan closely observed the volcano.
The strange sensation in his heart grew increasingly intense.
“There truly is something odd here.”
After a long moment, a peculiar look flashed across Li Fan's eyes.
Perhaps because he had once ascended to the Nascent Soul realm and housed a grotto-heaven within his body,
or perhaps because he had once merged with the Heavenly Dao of a pocket world using Xu Bai's body,
Li Fan's sensitivity toward "grotto-heavens and pocket worlds" had sharpened considerably.
Through this observation, he immediately realized where the peculiar feeling had come from every time he had looked upon this Li Realm volcano before.
“This volcano doesn't belong to the Li Realm at all. It comes from another pocket world!”
“No wonder there has always been this discordant sense of being out of place!”
In fact, the surrounding terrain was already quite telling.
A violent volcano rising abruptly from an endless plain was clearly abnormal.
Mortals simply attributed it to the sublime power of heaven and earth's creation.
But a cultivator like Li Fan could indeed uncover the underlying reason behind it.
Li Fan's interest was instantly piqued.
“What is going on here? Why would a volcano from another pocket world abruptly appear in the Li Realm?”
Casually casting a protective ward around himself, Li Fan flew down into the volcanic crater.
The scalding, churning magma could not harm him in the slightest.
Li Fan ventured deep into the volcano, seeking to find the source of the anomaly from within.
Only when he reached the very bottom, where the volcano converged with the earth vein, did he finally make a discovery.
“This is...”
Li Fan reached out and drew a wisp of earth fire into his palm.
Even with defenses at the mid-Golden Core stage, he still felt it burn uncomfortably hot against his hand.
“It isn't spiritual energy. Yet it's still a form of supernatural power.
“The Li Realm is a purely mortal world; it lacks the conditions to give rise to this kind of earth fire.”
Li Fan released the earth fire and closely examined the surrounding space once more.
Compared to the crater above, the magma flow here was relatively gentle and placid, with only occasional bubbles rising to the surface.
At the edge of the magma sea, however, was a very faint boundary line.
Concealed within the orange-red magma, it was utterly inconspicuous.
Unless one deliberately searched for it, its presence would easily be overlooked.
From this boundary, a power of the same origin as the earth fire faintly emanated.
“Another spatial passageway?”
Li Fan pondered.
After a moment's contemplation, he laid down a protective array around himself and leaped into it.
*Boom!*
His vision blurred, and the moment he crossed over, a fireball hurtled toward him.
Its power was not very great, however, and it was deflected automatically by his protective array.
Li Fan had initially thought someone was ambushing him, tensing his guard.
Looking closely, however, he relaxed, his attention instantly captivated by the scenery of this realm.
This was a realm completely devoid of life, belonging purely to "fire."
A purgatorial sea composed of blazing molten lava churned endlessly.
Enormous detonations sounded intermittently, accompanied by magma erupting toward the sky and bursting apart in midair, tracing countless scarlet lines of fire before crashing down in all directions.
Falling back into the molten sea, they triggered new rounds of chain reactions.
Fire was the eternal theme of this realm.
Not only were there countless flower-like individual flame seeds within the boundless magma sea below, but in the sky above, one could also faintly see immense flames of various kinds floating with the wind, like painted canvases.
Their colors and forms varied.
The aura of the strongest fire among them even gave Li Fan the feeling that it would be slightly troublesome to deal with.
But that was all.
Having spent some time fully exploring this realm, Li Fan could not help feeling a bit disappointed: “The power ceiling reaches late-Golden Core at best.
“If I came here at the Nascent Soul stage, even if all the flames of this world incinerated me at once, they couldn't cause me the slightest harm.
“It has value, but not much.”
Li Fan shook his head slightly. By his estimate, even a cultivator interested in fire-attribute power would not pay more than two thousand contribution points for this realm.
Naturally, Li Fan did not care for such a paltry sum of contribution points.
“Disappointing.”
Li Fan instantly lost interest.
Just as he prepared to return to the Li Realm via the spatial passageway he had entered through, he suddenly recalled something and halted.
After pondering for a moment, he changed direction and flew high into the sky.
He sped all the way to the edge of the realm, close to the endless void.
Looking down, he finally caught a faint glimpse of the entire realm's layout.
It was plainly evident that near the spatial passageway leading to the Li Realm, the molten sea's terrain differed from everywhere else.
As if struck by a violent impact, a very conspicuous outline encircled it.
And gazing farther out into the void, he could actually catch faint glimpses of the Li Realm.
Li Fan suddenly realized: “These are two pocket worlds in the void that collided for some unknown reason.
“Part of the fire world has deeply wedged itself into the Li Realm.
“Two sides of one coin. Over time, the two will become indistinguishable, gradually merging together.”
Li Fan soon returned to the molten sea below.
“The energy level of this fire world clearly exceeds that of the mortal Li Realm by a wide margin.
“The other is strong while this one is weak; if this continues over the long term, the Li Realm's only fate will be to be swallowed and assimilated.”
Li Fan was deep in thought.
*Hmm?*
He suddenly recalled the extraordinary talent exhibited by Su Xiaomei, Su Heng, Ye Feipeng, and the others from the Li Realm.
In the 115th lifetime, he had first trapped them on Shenhua Island, and later confined them in Medicine King Valley, which lasted for many years.
In the end, when they truly began cultivating again, they found that everyone from the Li Realm had completely lost their spiritual vigor.
At that time, Li Fan had even expelled them from Medicine King Valley, wanting to see whether returning like dragons to the sea would allow them to display their talents once more.
Unfortunately, right up until the end of the world, he never heard any news of them again.
Truly fading into ordinary mediocrity.
“The talents of the people from the Li Realm do not come from themselves.
“Rather...”
Li Fan remembered the circumstances of Su Xiaomei's birth.
“Having a mother but no father, conceived by sensing Heaven's mandate.”
Li Fan's eyes lit up.
Having pinpointed the crux of the matter, he crossed back through the spatial passageway beneath the volcano and returned to the Li Realm.
Before long, he found his quarry in the Grand Academician's estate in the imperial capital.
It was none other than Su Xiaomei's mother, Su Yuqing.
At this time, she was not yet pregnant.
Only in her early teens, her budding youth shone with innocent naivety.
In her family's rear garden, she was teasing a butterfly resting on a blossom, utterly absorbed.
The instant he saw her, a familiar sensation welled up in Li Fan's heart.
“Mr. Bai?”
Chapter 803