The white-haired elder looked somewhat familiar, yet Lin Fan could not recall where he had seen him before.
With benevolent brows and kind eyes, approachable as an elderly neighbor, he naturally elicited goodwill.
Of course, Lin Fan could not possibly believe the other was merely an ordinary mortal. Without question, the elder's cultivation was simply too profound, far beyond anything Lin Fan could sense at present.
Thus, Lin Fan grew increasingly cautious.
He offered a bow. "Greetings, Senior."
The white-haired elder chuckled warmly in response. "No need to be so stiff. I'm just an old man who ought to have died long ago."
Pausing, he asked kindly, "Are you the one handing over the Cloud Water Chart and Talismans?"
Li Fan nodded, then handed over the iridescent model.
Taking the miniature Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, the white-haired elder examined it closely, an expression of boundless reminiscence surfacing in his eyes.
"Indeed, this is it."
"Hanhai, Taiyi, Fuyun..."
"Long time no see."
Seemingly lost in memory, the elder's gaze turned somewhat clouded.
Hearing the elder's words, Lin Fan's heart gave a jolt. He stood quietly to the side, not daring to make a careless move.
Judging from his words, was this elder actually of the same generation as that tortoise-snake Taiyi?
The destruction of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace had taken place countless years ago. Could this man truly have lived from that era all the way to the present?
One had to realize that after the Great Calamity, cultivators were universally targeted by the malice of heaven and earth. They could no longer enjoy the longevity of ancient cultivators; reaching a lifespan of a thousand years was already extraordinarily difficult.
Just what level of cultivation could allow someone to live for so long?
Soul Formation? Dao Integration?
Lin Fan did not dare jump to conclusions, yet his vigilance only sharpened.
In this world where immortal arts could not be cultivated concurrently, someone who could live through the Great Calamity all the way to the present... If one truly believed a figure of such caliber was as "kindly" in reality as he appeared, it would be far too naive.
Noticing Lin Fan's slight tension, the white-haired elder gave an amused smile. "What is the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace like these days?" he asked.
Lin Fan therefore described everything in detail: Qin Tang, who had turned into a stone statue; Daoist Chong, who used his own body to concoct pills; and Taiyi, whose body was bristling with broken swords.
"Were it not for special circumstances preventing me from entering the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, I would never have stood by and watched them suffer like this."
After a long silence, the elder sighed with endless melancholy. Looking Lin Fan up and down, he praised, "To come out of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace alive, you do possess some wit."
"It was merely luck," Lin Fan replied modestly.
"I have another request. I wonder if you would be willing?" the white-haired elder suddenly asked.
"Please speak freely, Senior."
"When you have time, make another trip to the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace for me and simply place this object there." The white-haired elder produced a small white jade statuette and handed it to Lin Fan.
The white jade statuette carried no special aura; it appeared to be carved from ordinary jade. Its appearance was an exact likeness of the white-haired elder before him.
"Since I cannot enter the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace myself, let this statuette accompany them in my stead."
"As for your reward..."
The white-haired elder pondered a moment, then pointed a finger toward Lin Fan's glabella.
In an instant, an immense flood of information surfaced in Lin Fan's mind. Even with Lin Fan's divine sense strength at the middle Qi Condensation stage, his head swelled and spun with dizziness.
By the time he recovered his senses, the white-haired elder had long since vanished from the Heavenly Profound Mirror, and the one hundred thousand contribution points had been successfully credited to his account.
Slowly sorting through the massive influx of information in his mind, only after a long time did Li Fan figure out what the elder's reward was.
The *Heavenly Doctor Immortal Scripture*.
It was not a cultivation method, but a medical scripture. Not only did it cover human physiology, pathology, diagnostics, treatments, and pharmacology, its scope of study extended to the flora and fauna across heaven and earth. It was all-encompassing, omitting nothing.
The sheer volume of information was so colossal that Lin Fan estimated reading through it just once would take at least a decade or two.
Such a vast and precious treasury of knowledge had casually been passed down to Lin Fan with a mere gesture from this white-haired elder.
"A fine thing, certainly. Sadly, studying it demands far too much energy. I can only set it aside for now."
Lin Fan did not dare take the elder's commission lightly. After all, such an esteemed powerhouse had even given the reward in advance.
And so Lin Fan made another journey to the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
He had assumed that upon entering again, his avatar would undergo Senior Brother Qin Tang's illusory dream trial once more. Yet after the statuette within his storage ring emitted a flash of white light, Li Fan found himself appearing directly before the gates of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
The elder's statuette broke away from Lin Fan's storage ring on its own and flew into the sky. Then, like melting snow and ice, it gradually dissolved and vanished.
"And that completes the task? Isn't this a bit too simple and smooth?" Lin Fan muttered inwardly.
He waited a while longer, but nothing unusual occurred within the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
"I wonder what purpose that statuette served."
Unable to discern any hidden profundity, Lin Fan had no choice but to leave.
Returning safely inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror, Lin Fan gazed at his balance of one hundred thousand contribution points and fell into deep contemplation.
Originally, Li Fan had planned that once his avatar secured the one hundred thousand contribution points, he would directly redeem the required cultivation techniques and treasures before passing them to his true body—just like in his previous life when Xiao Heng redeemed the *Lesser Water Derivation Technique* and sent it to Li Fan.
Yet after meeting the white-haired elder, Li Fan dismissed the idea.
As things stood, it was best that no connection whatsoever existed between the avatar and his true self. The white-haired elder had given Li Fan an overwhelmingly dangerous sensation. The avatar had already entered his field of vision. If the true body and avatar rashly made contact and the connection between them was discovered, given the miraculous nature of the *Stealing Heaven Changing Sun Art*, even with cultivation as transcendent as the elder's, there was no guarantee he would not be tempted.
After all, in this perilous cultivation world, even human beings could be refined into wonders of heaven and earth. No amount of caution could ever be excessive.
As for whether these one hundred thousand contribution points would rot in the avatar's hands, unable to be spent, there was entirely no need to worry. After all, in this world, the most precious things were knowledge of all kinds, cultivation techniques included! When the avatar browsed through knowledge, it was equivalent to the true body reading it simultaneously. Therefore, having the avatar spend these one hundred thousand contribution points yielded the exact same result as having the true body spend them.
Settling his mind, Lin Fan first searched for information concerning the "ancient war."
Back in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, he had taken great note of the frontline war repeatedly mentioned by Qin Tang and Daoist Chong. That war seemed to have been exceptionally tragic and brutal, so much so that even after degenerating into anomalies, they remained obsessed with it.
Before long, Lin Fan found scattered fragments of information. Unfortunately, perhaps because the era was too distant, all relevant records spoke of it in vague and ambiguous terms. The only certainty was that such a great war truly did take place.
This war appeared to have dragged on for an eternity, having begun even before the Immortal Venerable preached the Dao, and it had persisted right until the descent of the Great Calamity before coming to an end.
Next, Lin Fan searched for information regarding wonders of heaven and earth.
Chapter 93