Everything Has a Cause

Li Fan had encountered quite a few wonders of heaven and earth. Setting aside the Vast Sea Pearl condensed from the will of the Congyun Sea, there were also Kou Hong's Horned Dragon Branch and Dao Xuanzi's Rusty Sword Dao Xuan. Looking back now, nine times out of ten, they had likely been formed from cultivators who had fallen in the past. The Horned Dragon Branch leveraged the small against the great to devour its targets, while the Rusty Sword Dao Xuan held an unyielding will and possessed the power to slow and rust. One could distinctly glimpse the faint shadows of cultivators within them. Learning this secret behind wonders of heaven and earth so abruptly startled Li Fan slightly. However, having personally witnessed such grand spectacles as the Red Flame burning the sea, he quickly calmed down. To Li Fan's eyes, the contradiction between this world and its cultivators had clearly sharpened to the absolute extreme. With tensions so inflamed, no matter what bizarre or uncanny event transpired, it was entirely within the realm of possibility. Li Fan continued inspecting Sikong Bo's memories. That Nascent Soul powerhouse had long since transformed himself into a Foundation Establishment wonder and attached his being to the little child. Under normal circumstances, he merely sank into a deep slumber. He awakened only when guiding the child's cultivation or when the child's life was in grave danger. Consequently, he had never noticed Sikong Bo watching in secret with ill intent. It was not until that fateful night, when Sikong Bo sought to harvest the child's essence blood, that the Nascent Soul expert was finally jolted awake. The Nascent Soul powerhouse flew into a violent rage. This child was his crucial hope of achieving Soul Formation and even Dao Integration—how could he allow anyone else to covet him? He immediately revealed his form—a verdant willow tree—intending to strike Sikong Bo dead on the spot. One was a wonder of heaven and earth transformed from a Nascent Soul cultivator, his strength greatly diminished. The other was only at the Foundation Establishment stage, yet he possessed the millennium-old heritage of a secretive sect and an endless array of methods. For a time, the two actually fought to a standstill. Both sides exhausted their arsenals, working themselves into a fury, neither willing to back down. Only after a protracted struggle that left both grievously wounded did each faintly consider retreating. Right at that moment, the little child suddenly appeared. Cold and aloof, he gazed indifferently at the two combatants, an utter contrast to the innocent five- or six-year-old boy from before. His cultivation had already reached the pinnacle of Qi Condensation; as long as he possessed a wonder of heaven and earth, he could step into the Foundation Establishment stage at any moment. The green willow faintly sensed that something was amiss. He wished to flee, but it was already too late. Over the recent days, while he had been asleep, the child had long since placed various restrictions upon him. Now triggered in an instant, the restrictions allowed the child to swallow the green willow into his body. Within moments, the wonder was completely refined. Witnessing this scene chilled Sikong Bo to the bone, and he turned on his heels and bolted. The child, of course, refused to let him escape. Though the child had only just entered the Foundation Establishment stage, his every gesture faintly carried the air of a grandmaster. Every move unerringly targeted Sikong Bo's vital points. Moreover, he seemed to possess an intimate understanding of Sikong Bo's background. Every time Sikong Bo attempted to split up and flee alongside his avatar, the avatar was destroyed in the very first instant. The two pursued and fled across great distances. Sikong Bo's avatar was completely destroyed, and he himself was grievously wounded, driven to his wit's end. Left with no choice, he had released all the remnant souls of his sect's past seniors stored within the Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Token, hoping to buy even a brief respite. Those remnant souls did indeed cause some disruption for the child, allowing Sikong Bo to gain some distance. Yet when he looked back from afar and saw a bolt of purple thunder crash down from the heavens, blasting every single remnant soul into ash and smoke, Sikong Bo was scared out of his wits. Disregarding everything else, he simply fled like a madman. He fled all the way to this remote Congyun Sea before finally coming to a halt. However, his injuries were far too severe. Before he had stayed in the Congyun Sea for long, his lifespan drew near its end. Before his death, Sikong Bo found Sikong Yi and accepted him as his disciple. After hurriedly bestowing the *Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Art* and the token upon him, he perished. As for Sikong Yi's memories, compared to the harrowing trials of his master, they were far simpler. Although he had received the legacy of the Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Sect, his opportunistic master had left him virtually nothing before dying. How difficult it was to be a rogue cultivator. He could not even gather the materials needed to craft an avatar. Thus, after fumbling his way forward in cultivation until he reached the Qi Condensation stage, he decisively chose to join the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals. After breaking through to the middle Qi Condensation stage, he began gathering materials to forge his avatar. By a stroke of fortune, during one of his explorations of the seabed, he stumbled upon a skeleton. Sikong Yi faintly sensed that this skeleton was extraordinary and might have belonged to a powerful cultivator in life. He therefore used this skeleton as the material to forge his avatar. This avatar was Baili Chen. The moment the avatar was successfully forged, vague fragments of memory surfaced in his mind. As it turned out, this skeleton had belonged to a disciple of the ancient Cloud Water Heavenly Palace. When the great catastrophe arrived, he had been gravely wounded and fled from the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace. Regrettably, he had not lasted long before his soul departed for the western paradise, meeting his end in the sea. Not until several thousand years later was he refined into an avatar by Sikong Yi. Through this avatar, Sikong Yi not only obtained a cultivation technique named *Sea-Calming Divine Sword*, but also learned of certain ancient secrets within the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace. Unfortunately, they were only blurred fragments, impossible to fully comprehend. Furthermore, the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace had long since been concealed by a grand formation, absent from the mortal realm. Even if Sikong Yi wished to explore it, he had no means of doing so. Later, when he discovered that the bounty target worth a staggering hundred thousand contribution points—the *Cloud Water Chart and Talismans*—lay within the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, he was ecstatic. Knowing his opportunity had come, he kept a close watch on any abnormalities in the central sea, quietly waiting for the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace to open. In Anchor Year 11, the moment the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace reappeared in the world, he entered without delay. He had originally intended to obtain the *Cloud Water Chart and Talismans*, claim the hundred thousand contribution points, and enjoy a smooth journey along the path of cultivation from then on. He had never expected to run into Li Fan. Even in death, Sikong Yi never learned who had slain him. Nor did he understand how the other had noticed him in the first place. He had clearly learned from his master's mistakes and conducted himself with the utmost caution! ... Sensing the thick resentment lingering within Sikong Yi's remnant soul, Li Fan's expression remained placid. He summoned the Blue Flame phantom spirit and completely obliterated both remnant souls. *If not for me, Sikong Yi likely would have succeeded in obtaining the Cloud Water Chart and Talismans, exchanged them for a hundred thousand contribution points, and then departed the Congyun Sea via the ultra-long-distance teleportation array before anyone could react.* *No, that's not right.* Recalling what had occurred in his previous life, Li Fan inwardly shook his head. *In my previous life, many people witnessed Sikong Yi departing alone through the teleportation array. No one paid any attention to Baili Chen at all...* *Perhaps that was a trick of the cicada shedding its golden shell used by Sikong Yi. In the end, he probably never left the Congyun Sea at all.* *His true body departed the Congyun Sea in full view of everyone, creating the illusion that he had left. In reality, through the Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Art, he secretly returned somewhere within the Congyun Sea.* *He didn't need to deceive the Heavenly Profound Mirror; he only needed to vanish from the sight of those who coveted the hundred thousand contribution points...* *A fine method. Perhaps I can do the same in this life. After all, the temptation of a hundred thousand contribution points is simply too vast.* Li Fan stowed the Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Token into his storage ring and flew toward an island not far away. His gains from this trip to the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace were so immense that he felt almost stuffed to bursting. He needed to spend some time properly digesting it all.