After pondering for a moment, Li Fan placed another layer of seal made of Seven-Colored Divine Light over the storage ring.
Under this triple restriction, the faint sense of crisis that had lingered in his heart finally receded slowly.
"..."
"It seems Xuanhuang might not be the only realm that suffered catastrophe."
"With the immortal path severed, the great calamity fell upon all."
Casually storing this hazardous sealed object within his grotto-heaven for suppression, Li Fan turned to Tianyang and asked, "How is it? What do you feel now?"
Tianyang flew over to Li Fan's side, sensed for a moment, and nodded. "That ant-crawling sensation has indeed lessened. But it doesn't seem to have disappeared completely."
Li Fan bent down and touched the gray soil beneath his feet once more.
The burning, stinging sensation returned, and within moments, his palm turned charred black.
Before the black spots could spread, Li Fan practicedly severed his palm.
Falling to the ground, it turned to ash.
Even though the culprit had been suppressed by Li Fan, the anomalous condition of the Hunyin Realm remained unchanged.
"Is this..."
"...the fundamental cornerstone of the world's laws being completely altered?"
After pondering for a moment, Li Fan was struck with dread.
"If the immortal-mortal miasma is aimed entirely at cultivators, then this gray mold is specifically engineered to infect worlds."
"The current state of this Hunyin Realm is the corpse of a world."
"Just what kind of person could be demented enough to specially develop something like this?"
A flicker of interest crossed Li Fan's eyes.
"In the 115th lifetime, from this point in time until the Alliance expedition team arrived, barely twenty-odd years passed. Just what happened for phantom-like souls to be born in this deadland?"
"No, that's not right."
Li Fan suddenly froze.
The expedition team had previously concluded that it was the nourishment from the countless souls of the Hunyin Realm that gave rise to the colossal pod of Realm-Rifting Whales outside the realm.
Yet right now, no souls were present. In that case, where did the massive number of Realm-Rifting Whales seen earlier come from?
Getting to the bottom of this question was not difficult.
Li Fan and Tianyang stayed in the Hunyin Realm for another three months.
They kept their auras concealed, waiting in secret, all to determine whether the pod of Realm-Rifting Whales had the habit of coming to the Hunyin Realm to "forage."
Hard work paid off.
On this day, just as Li Fan was growing somewhat impatient from waiting, several distant calls rang out.
A dozen or so Realm-Rifting Whales tore through the void and arrived in the sky above the Hunyin Realm.
Compared to ordinary Realm-Rifting Whales, their bodies were generally a notch bulkier.
Seeming to sense the danger here as well, the Realm-Rifting Whales were not as unrestrained as they were in the void outside the realm. They swam carefully through the air according to a certain pattern, making their way toward a specific location in the Hunyin Realm.
Li Fan and Tianyang quietly followed behind.
At the edge of the Hunyin Realm, at a spot the two had already investigated without detecting anything amiss, the Realm-Rifting Whales came to a halt.
Led by a Realm-Rifting Whale that seemed experienced, they aimed at a spot in the gray soil on the ground and crashed head-on into it.
The lead Realm-Rifting Whale vanished abruptly, and the others followed suit in imitation.
However, the traversable area did not seem particularly wide. Out of the ten or so, fully three failed to hit the precise location and collided directly with the gray soil.
There was no violent crashing sound.
Only black spots rapidly devoured them, turning them into flakes of gray earth that scattered across the ground.
Li Fan arrived at the spot where the Realm-Rifting Whales had vanished, hesitating slightly.
"Senior Brother, let me go first," Tianyang volunteered.
Li Fan nodded, and without the slightest hesitation, Tianyang flew in.
Li Fan did not act rashly, waiting patiently outside the entrance.
Before long, Tianyang returned.
A rare look of shock appeared on his usually impassive face.
Through the images transmitted by Tianyang, Li Fan finally discovered what was hidden inside.
It was a surging yellow river, winding and flowing in a closed circular loop.
Countless souls floated upon the yellow river water, both young and old.
They wore various kinds of clothing, but their eyes were all tightly shut, as if lost in deep slumber.
Uncertain how long they had soaked in this yellow river, the souls themselves had undergone bizarre mutations.
Their lower bodies were unlike ordinary humans; devoid of legs, they had sprouted countless root-like tendrils instead, which plunged deeply into the yellow river.
It was as though doing so allowed them to escape the fate of being washed away and scoured clean by the river's flow.
Meanwhile, the Realm-Rifting Whales that had slipped in here acted as though they had stumbled into an earthly paradise of wine and meat.
Thrilled beyond measure, they feasted voraciously.
With a single long inhalation, they swallowed tens of thousands of souls whole.
After devouring the souls that had been steeped in the yellow river, the change in the Realm-Rifting Whales' bodies was also striking.
They swelled visibly almost instantly, and something seemed to be gestating inside their bellies.
Densely packed within the yellow river water floated hundreds of millions—perhaps billions—of souls.
Even when all seven Realm-Rifting Whales had stuffed themselves full, the souls they devoured were nothing more than a negligible fraction of the total.
Once they departed contentedly, Li Fan shielded himself with Seven-Colored Divine Light and entered the yellow river.
Even though he had previously witnessed countless frozen corpses floating in the Grand Formation of Inverting Life and Death, facing the billions of humanoid yet non-human souls in this river still sent a chill down Li Fan's spine.
Especially since the "roots" of these souls' lower bodies were layered and tangled together in places, causing large clusters of closed-eyed human faces to be squashed together at crooked angles, resembling grotesque, hideous spheres formed of countless faces.
"Senior Brother, here..."
Even Tianyang's telepathic voice sounded unnerved.
Li Fan swam through the yellow river, brushing past countless souls. Protected by the Seven-Colored Divine Light, aside from feeling a bit nauseated, he experienced no real discomfort.
This yellow river was vastly larger than the entire Hunyin Realm.
After searching through it once, Li Fan faintly understood the cause behind the emergence of this phenomenon.
"Corroded by the gray mold, the Heavenly Dao of the Hunyin Realm underwent a mutation."
"Fire is like cold ice; life is like dead ashes."
"Yet here, a spark of vitality suddenly emerges. Only because this place was originally the realm's domain of [Death]."
Li Fan observed that as the yellow river surged through a full cycle, mysterious elements in the water were slowly washed together, gradually forming vague humanoid shapes.
As the torrent rushed endlessly on, the souls grew clearer and clearer, eventually taking on the complete appearance of humans.
"If the world's Great Dao were operating normally, these newly born souls might be cast into the mortal world."
"However, the Hunyin Realm itself has already died, and the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation no longer exists."
"For countless years, these newly born souls have been continuously produced and accumulated here."
Having once witnessed the full scope of the Grand Formation of Inverting Life and Death with his own eyes and possessing some insight into the Principle of Life and Death, Li Fan discerned the reason behind this anomaly.
Chapter 872