Inside the secret chamber in the Spirit Wood Realm, simply reading through everything once took Li Fan and his avatar more than a month.
Among the collection, several cultivation techniques—including the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody and the Eternal Sole Self Incantation—matched what Li Fan had learned in the illusion almost completely.
If anything, the versions depicted in the illusion had been somewhat cruder.
Take the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody, for example. In the illusion, it had merely been a dual cultivation technique. When the great catastrophe arrived and dharmas could not be cultivated concurrently, its effect of rapidly boosting cultivation had been nullified along with it.
In reality, however, the technique possessed another far more important and marvelous function beyond dual cultivation.
It could lock onto a target and forcibly split destiny, cultivation speed, and even personal attributes such as comprehension equally with them.
The so-called Heaven and Earth Share Longevity.
To a truly peerless prodigy, such a technique was utterly useless, but to someone like Li Fan, it was an undeniable, profound art.
And that was only the divine ability granted by the initial layers of the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody.
Cultivated to the heights, just as the technique's name suggested, the locked target could extend from fellow mortals to Heaven and Earth itself.
"To balance the authority of Heaven and Earth with a mortal body..."
"Truly worthy of being an authentic immortal heritage."
The upper limit of the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody was exceptionally high, and the text even hinted that it could still be used after ascending to the Immortal Realm.
Its sole fatal drawback was...
The locked target would become aware of the technique's cultivator.
Hence the term "mutual conquest."
From that single point alone, the technique's value plummeted drastically in Li Fan's eyes.
For someone who planned thoroughly before acting and preferred scheming from the shadows, constantly exposing himself to another person was hardly a wise move.
The only great use he could currently imagine was capturing a peerless prodigy and keeping them in captivity, then forcibly equalizing with them to enhance his own comprehension, aptitude, and destiny.
Having reviewed the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody, Li Fan briefly skimmed the Eternal Sole Self Incantation.
"To think Senior Sister Zhao would feel safe entrusting this Dao-attainment technique to me..."
Pondering for a moment, Li Fan suddenly understood.
It could be said that among all these techniques, the Eternal Sole Self Incantation was the least valuable.
The principle of All Minds as One was already occupied by Zhao Ruoxi.
There was no road ahead. What was more, during the process of cultivating it, Senior Sister Zhao might very well sense everything he did with utter clarity.
Li Fan decisively sealed it and set it aside.
After glancing through several others, Li Fan turned his attention to two techniques he was seeing for the very first time.
The Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting and the Record of the Three Perils, Ghosts, Gods, and the Netherworld.
"The earlier techniques came from the giant man named Sikong Lin among the Twelve Dharma Kings."
"As for these..."
The distinctive faces of the twelve cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect flashed through Li Fan's mind one by one.
Soon, based on the style of the techniques, Li Fan pinpointed the likely source.
"Sun Xingwang."
The aura exuded by these two techniques was far too singular.
Take the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting. It bore some resemblance to the former abilities of the King of Profound Heaven, both possessing divine power akin to having one's words become reality.
The difference lay in the fact that the King of Profound Heaven, Xuanyuan Hong, directed his "words" upon himself, such as Titanic Strength or Walking the Heavenly Dao.
The Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting, by contrast, acted upon all other things in the outside world.
Cultivated to the depths, one could even reshape the entire world according to one's thoughts through the scripture's delirious murmurings.
The technique provided an example: the hallmark of minor achievement in the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting was murmuring in a trance to fabricate a person out of nothing. As the details and setting for this figure became increasingly comprehensive, the person would truly be born into existence and act according to established rules, all without possessing the slightest awareness of the creator behind the scenes.
The sheer wonder of the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting drew repeated gasps of amazement from Li Fan.
However, like the Heaven and Earth Mutual Conquest Rhapsody, it came with a tremendous side effect.
Every hundred years, the cultivator would completely lose all memories except for the contents of the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting itself. Moreover, they would actively ignore any written notes or subtle hints they had previously left behind.
In other words, even if one cultivated the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting to the pinnacle and the entire world became their creation, the cultivator themselves would remain completely oblivious, starting a brand-new life every hundred years.
...
"Whoever invented this Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting was an earth-shattering genius."
Li Fan sighed softly, then turned his gaze toward the final technique.
The Record of the Three Perils, Ghosts, Gods, and the Netherworld.
This technique was the most peculiar of all.
It was a summoning art.
Yet what it summoned was no otherworldly entity, but the "ghosts" and "gods" dwelling within the human body itself.
According to the technique's instructions, every person was born with an endless stream of thoughts. These thoughts were like sea spray, largely fleeting and vanishing in an instant.
Yet it was precisely these ephemeral crests of foam that composed the vast ocean known as "Man."
If every thought that ever arose were preserved and nurtured day and night, hundreds of millions of distilled thoughts would be born within one's sea of consciousness, taking form as "ghosts" and "gods" according to each thought's nature and substance.
The so-called Three Perils referred precisely to these three: Man, Ghost, and God.
Because these ghosts and gods originated from oneself, all three were intimately linked. And as the strength of "Man" continued to grow, the might of "Ghost" and "God" would swell thousands of times over.
Unleashed with a single thought, it would be as though the Netherworld had descended upon the mortal realm. Darkness would cloak everything, and divine souls would run rampant.
With deliberate indulgence, destroying an entire world in a single thought and transforming every other living being into one's own ghosts and gods would be no difficult task.
This Record of the Three Perils, Ghosts, Gods, and the Netherworld did not possess any particularly severe side effects.
If one had to name a flaw, the ceaseless, conflicting whispers of billions of ghosts and gods echoing inside one's body at every passing moment was perhaps the only downside.
Without an unyielding mind, one could genuinely drive oneself insane. And no matter how resolute one's will, facing the nonstop babble of billions of ghosts and gods day and night, a day would inevitably come when one could endure it no longer.
When that time came, the cultivator would run amok, unleashing billions of ghosts and gods to lay waste to the world.
Yet paired with the Secret Scripture of Sitting and Forgetting, the Record of the Three Perils, Ghosts, Gods, and the Netherworld yielded an unexpected synergy.
A memory wipe every hundred years would sweep away all the negative emotions accumulated from the billions of ghosts and gods.
Yet the billions of ghosts and gods themselves would not vanish.
Even if one forgot the text of the Record of the Three Perils, Ghosts, Gods, and the Netherworld, cultivating thoughts of ghosts and gods would have already become second nature, an innate bodily instinct.
Thus, with the passage of time, one's strength would steadily increase.
"Still, I recall Sun Xingwang mentioning that cultivating these two techniques together brings other unforeseen points of conflict."
"It isn't quite as wonderful as it sounds."
Chapter 929