"If no outsider breaks this cycle, it will likely continue until the yellow river's power to gestate souls completely dissipates before this phenomenon ceases entirely."
"However, the aura here remains extremely dense. Without the Seven-Colored Divine Light protecting me, I probably couldn't stay inside for long either."
"Power of this magnitude..."
"It certainly wouldn't last only twenty or thirty years, would it?"
A sliver of doubt arose in Li Fan's mind.
"What broke the peace of the Hunyin Realm and unleashed the trillions of souls in the Yellow Springs?"
"Unless... it was a cultivator who stumbled into this place by accident, just like me."
"Or..."
In Li Fan's mind, the skull he had suppressed not long ago instantly surfaced.
*Could that person still be alive?*
The thought sprang up unbidden.
This was no baseless delusion born from fright at this eerie scene. Rather, the Hunyin Realm was remote in the extreme. At his current speed, it took over a month of continuous flight to reach. Aside from having a definite objective, the chances of accidentally stumbling upon this place were slim to none.
As for the skull, though only the cranium remained, the black-and-gold pattern upon it had still managed to endure under the erosion of the gray mold.
"The black-and-gold pattern remains immortal on the outside, while the gray mold festers from within the skull."
"Perhaps it means their powers are evenly matched, neither able to overcome the other."
Recalling the appearance of that mysterious skull, Li Fan felt increasingly that his speculation held a real possibility of being true.
"If it had been completely eroded, it should have turned entirely to ash, like so many other things in the Hunyin Realm."
"Since the skull is still intact, it means he isn't truly dead."
Secret arts were countless in the cultivation world; even cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm could achieve immortality so long as their grotto-heavens remained intact. If this mysterious skull could revive through the black-and-gold pattern, that would not be so hard to accept either.
"It is indeed perilous. But it is also an opportunity."
"An opportunity to learn what really happened to other cultivation worlds."
Li Fan's eyes flickered, and in an instant, dozens of ways to exploit it formed in his mind.
Yet he did not forget his primary purpose here.
"Junior Brother, these Realm-Rifting Whales can carve out space from nothingness. Since they love these spirit entities so much, they must be of great benefit to them. Do you want to try one too?"
Tianyang shook his head repeatedly.
"They aren't the living souls of mortals, they just look like them."
"These spirit entities are condensed from the power of this Yellow Springs." Seeing Tianyang's distaste, Li Fan explained.
Only then did Tianyang feel better.
Reaching out, he pulled over an ancient, weathered soul that had soaked in the Yellow Springs for who knew how long, its original features long since obscured.
Tianyang circulated his spiritual energy and absorbed it.
Moments later, his eyes lit up.
"Senior Brother, I know why those giant whales love eating them!" Tianyang said with some excitement.
"This pocket world originally evolved from the Yellow Springs here, just like fruit bearing on a tree."
"Within the waters of the Yellow Springs, countless laws and powers are contained. The most abundant among them is the authority to create and open space."
"Though it's only at the pocket world level, it is indeed useful to me."
Tianyang spoke at length in a single breath. Even as he transmitted his words, he drew over another spirit crystal to absorb.
This time, however, he frowned slightly.
"A pity. It seems affected by the gray mold and has become somewhat disordered."
"One is enough; taking more brings no benefit," Tianyang concluded.
Li Fan nodded slightly.
Sweeping his divine sense across the area, he located an aged spirit crystal.
Upon absorbing it, a series of images flashed into Li Fan's mind.
The waters of the Yellow Springs flowed in a great loop.
At fixed junctions along its course, remnants of power were deposited.
Over countless years, these powers accumulated more and more.
Then, blossoming and bearing fruit, they formed a ring of nine "worlds."
After an unknown span of time, life was born within these worlds.
Civilization began to emerge.
When living beings in these worlds died, they returned to the Yellow Springs. Swept along by the flowing river, they would journey to other worlds to experience new lives.
These peaceful days continued, until one day...
A golden chain ripped across the heavens, plunging in from the distant void far beyond.
The chain extended, instantly winding tightly around the entire Yellow Springs realm, locking it in place.
Then...
Under an immense pulling force, the Yellow Springs realm thundered unceasingly.
Mountains and rivers collapsed in scenes of absolute apocalypse.
Yet the chain showed no sign of slackening.
Moreover, sacred golden energy continuously surged from it, cleanly shearing the connections between the Yellow Springs realm and space itself, as if dragging it toward somewhere far away.
This was a magnificent, titanic force far exceeding anything in the Yellow Springs realm.
With no room for resistance, it was dragged relentlessly through the void. It was hauled forward for an unknown distance before finally shuddering to a halt.
The final result was that, under this extreme strain, the Yellow Springs realm shattered. Of the nine worlds, only one remained; together with the Yellow Springs, it had been brought to this strange, unfamiliar starry sky.
...
The images in his mind slowly faded.
In Li Fan's eyes, a strange brilliance flared.
He had known for a long time that in ancient times, the Xuanhuang Realm possessed an uncanny, miraculous formation.
It could capture grotto-heavens and worlds from across the distant void,
even open spatial pathways to wage direct realm-wide wars.
The countless grotto-heavens and pocket worlds now attached to the Xuanhuang Realm had mostly been acquired this way.
Yet since the fall of the Profound Heaven Sect and the rise of the Ten Great Immortal Sects to power, this formation seemed to have fallen into ruin.
Its fame faded, seemingly lost to the long river of history.
Now, through the residual memories of the Hunyin Realm's Heavenly Dao, he had the fortune to witness the might of that ancient formation in action.
Li Fan was shaken to the core.
"Bridging the void, binding enemies with golden chains..."
"Just how formidable was that?"
Li Fan could already be called a grandmaster of formations today.
With the Terminal Dissociation Disc in his possession, one might not be able to find anyone in the entire Xuanhuang Realm whose mastery of formations surpassed his own.
Yet even so, he found it difficult to imagine how such a grand formation could ever have been constructed.
"Plucking stars and seizing moons—this is surely the method of a True Immortal, isn't it?"
Li Fan could not help but think.
Moreover, from that fleeting glimpse within the lingering memories of the Yellow Springs, the golden chain Li Fan saw bore several similarities to the one he had seen in the Immortal Ruins binding the remains of the True Immortal.
"I wonder if there is some connection between them?"
"That True Immortal was trapped right at the boundary pathway between immortals and mortals in the Xuanhuang Realm. That shouldn't be a mere coincidence."
"Back before the immortal path was severed, there was still contact between the cultivation world and the Immortal Realm."
"Since there could be immortal artifacts bestowed as aid, assistance in constructing formations must have existed as well."
Thoughts surged within Li Fan.
Seeing his Senior Brother standing motionless for so long, Tianyang assumed something had gone wrong.
He transmitted a question, which startled Li Fan back to reality.
"Junior Brother, did you see an image of a golden chain piercing through the void?" Li Fan could not help but ask.
Chapter 873