The various policies made it clear that the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals attached immense importance to Jiushan Province.
At the very least, reading between the lines of the provisions, every cultivator in the Alliance could sense that resolve.
More crucially, the person promulgating the decrees and presiding over the development of Jiushan Province was none other than the Dharma Transmitter who had successfully led the Alliance to its crushing victory over the Five Elders Association—Jiang!
As the only Dharma Transmitter known to the public, and with that monumental triumph to his name, Dharma Transmitter Jiang enjoyed immense prestige in the hearts of the Alliance cultivators, second almost only to the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable himself.
"If the Jiushan Free Trade Province is successfully established and delivers remarkable results, this Dharma Transmitter Jiang's renown will likely soar to even greater heights."
"How intriguing. Is he an envoy put forward collectively by the Dharma Transmitters, or..."
"The actual leadership of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals is split between two factions: the Dharma Transmitters and the Heavenly Profound Mirror. Lately, the Dharma Transmitters have been making frequent bold moves, even attempting to create the Xuantian Spirit Sealing to seize total control over the Heavenly Profound Mirror."
"Is the Heavenly Profound Mirror's side just sitting by and waiting for death?"
As the saying went, a mighty gale begins at the tip of duckweed. Within the Alliance, very few could see past the lively facade of Jiushan Province to discern the internal strife within the Alliance's upper echelons.
Li Fan was one of those few.
Yet no matter how it played out, he didn't particularly care.
Under the cover of the fervor surrounding Jiushan Province, the rapid expansion of the 'God Descends upon the Body' faction was what truly concerned him.
Still, within its own borders, the Alliance had always maintained tight control.
As more and more cultivators began wielding fiendgod projections possessing Nascent Soul and even Soul Formation strength, this anomalous phenomenon eventually caught the attention of Alliance officials.
However, because none of them had broken Alliance laws, the authorities held back from cracking down on the cultivators for the time being.
They merely dispatched several Protector Hall cultivators to cultivate 'God Descends upon the Body' as well, attempting to uncover the secret behind it.
When one such cultivator summoned a fiendgod and Li Fan's thought avatar sought to slip into the man's sea of consciousness, Li Fan discovered that the cultivator was actually trying to trace the source of the avatar to spy on him.
"Courting death..."
Li Fan sneered. Instead of blocking the intrusion, he made elaborate preparations and guided the man's probe inside.
And so, once the initial thrill faded, what this Protector Hall cultivator, named Wei Ziguan, beheld was a series of terrifyingly vivid scenes.
A black sun hung in the sky above the Xuanhuang Realm, devouring everything.
Countless living beings wailed, given no time even to react before vanishing one after another into that bottomless darkness.
The Xuanhuang Realm shattered; misery and ruin engulfed all life.
This horrifying apocalyptic spectacle surged into Wei Ziguan's mind all at once, catching him completely off guard.
It was no illusion.
The expressions on the faces of every cultivator facing doom were excruciatingly real.
It was as if the end of the world were unfolding right before his eyes.
"Aaaaargh!"
Wei Ziguan went mad.
He had only reached the Golden Core realm and had cultivated for less than a century, his journey smooth sailing throughout. When had he ever witnessed such an infernal scene?
Severing the probe and returning to reality, Wei Ziguan screamed uncontrollably.
Raving like a madman, he babbled incessantly about the imminent arrival of the apocalypse.
His peers swiftly subdued him.
After the incident was reported, the cultivator who arrived to investigate sank into a grim, dark scowl once he grasped what Wei Ziguan had experienced.
Realizing the gravity of the matter, the investigator ordered Wei Ziguan placed under strict guard, then hurried back to make a report.
...
Similar incidents occurred in more places than one across the Alliance.
Once reports from various regions gathered at the top, they sent shockwaves through the Alliance's upper echelon.
Yet the affair was exceedingly bizarre, making it difficult to tell whether it was a covert plot orchestrated by the Five Elders Association.
Consequently, before a final decision could be reached, the Alliance paused its investigation into 'God Descends upon the Body.'
They merely ordered local authorities to place all practitioners of the technique under covert surveillance.
Yet with Li Fan, the instigator, continuously sowing seeds, the Alliance's measures were nothing more than trying to put out a blazing fire with a cup of water.
Just as before, the 'God Descends upon the Body' faction continued to burgeon.
"Hm?"
Just after successfully bewitching another cultivator, Li Fan suddenly felt an unprovoked sense of being watched.
It felt as though someone had pinpointed his location directly through the world itself.
Fortunately, whenever Li Fan went out, he altered his appearance, so his true identity had not been exposed.
With a cold snort, Li Fan tapped lightly toward the sky.
A sharp stroke of sword intent severed the source of the covert surveillance.
Yet in that brief moment, his location seemed to have been locked onto.
A thin thread abruptly descended from the heavens, followed an instant later by the distant, booming howl of displaced air!
"Sky-Patrolling Arrow!"
The Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals clearly placed immense importance on this figure sowing discord in the shadows.
It was not just one, but three Sky-Patrolling Arrows in succession, each locking onto Li Fan!
Under such circumstances, even a Dao Integration cultivator would have to pay a grievous price!
Yet Li Fan remained completely unfazed.
A sharp gleam flashed in his eyes as he swung his wide sleeve toward the incoming arrows flying straight at him!
In the blink of an eye, the three Sky-Patrolling Arrows, which had cleaved through the void as though ready to tear everything to shreds, vanished into thin air!
Li Fan wore a disdainful smile, then took to the air, departing the area in a flash.
When a squad of fully armed Alliance cultivators finally arrived late to the scene and figured out what had transpired, an unmaskable dread took over their faces.
...
Within the spatial passageway leading to the pocket world of the Empire.
Li Fan frowned slightly as he watched the Sky-Patrolling Arrows rampaging inside his Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
That budget version of 'Universe in the Sleeve' he had just pulled off was undeniably stylish.
Yet these weapons were lethal enough to heavily wound Dao Integration experts.
Forcefully drawing them into his own grotto-heaven naturally came at a considerable cost.
The grotto-heavens boomed and trembled faintly.
Under the assault of the Sky-Patrolling Arrows, faint fissures had even appeared across the sky within the Water, Fire, and Earth Grotto-Heavens.
Fortunately, with support from the Metal and Wood Grotto-Heavens, coupled with Li Fan stepping in personally to suppress the arrows with his Seven-Colored Divine Light, the three Sky-Patrolling Arrows were finally brought to complete submission.
As the five elements circulated, the damage caused by the arrows vanished in an instant.
Holding one of the Sky-Patrolling Arrows in his hand, Li Fan quietly set to examining it.
He had no idea what material it was forged from, but it was exceptionally hard.
Even when struck by his Extinction Sword, the arrow shaft remained undamaged.
Intricate patterns were carved across the shaft. When Li Fan parsed them using the Terminal Dissociation Disc, he uncovered one hundred thousand overlaid composite formations.
More than half of them were formations Li Fan had never encountered, not even existing in the Dissociation Disc's deduction database.
Vastly distinct from the Xuanhuang Realm's own formation systems, they seemed to originate from an entirely different cultivation world.
"This is a tremendous tonic for the Dissociation Disc!"
Delight surged in Li Fan's heart.
"As expected, the fastest way to progress is by deconstructing existing, unknown creations!"
Chapter 949