The days passed, one by one.
Following the illumination of the Ancestor's Spirit Tablets, a spark ignited within every Li family descendant who had managed to escape that day, save for Li Kuangren, still imprisoned in the Eternal Sun Prefecture, effectively a 'caged bird'. In the eyes of all the others, a keen, resolute light now shone!
While simultaneously safeguarding Li Xinghuo – the sole young survivor he knew of within Azure Cloud region's immediate vicinity – Li Wei also began monitoring the condition of his other descendants through the tablet network. The circumstances for most of them were far from favorable.
[System Update (Li Dalong): Your descendant Li Dalong was carried to safety by Apostle Lei Dong and two Wu Clan Elders. However, his Heaven-Piercing Coffin has been confiscated by Soul Duke and Luo Xing. Mission: To assimilate Li Dalong fully into the Wu Clan, they have assigned him nine wives, in an attempt to utterly shatter his existing loyalties and beliefs.]
[System Update (Xu Cuihua): Your descendant's wife, Xu Cuihua, was met and escorted to safety by Daoist Wen, an envoy dispatched by the Spirit Beast Clan. She has now entered the territory of the Fox Clan and is receiving personal instruction from their Saint, 'Ice Spirit'. Upon learning that her husband, Li Dalong, has been compelled to take nine Wu Clan women as wives, she was filled with bitter indignation. However, after later intelligence from Spirit Beast Clan sources described these Wu women as having 'ample posteriors and sturdy waists', she reportedly found a small measure of grim consolation.]
[System Update (Li Tianniu & Li Yaoqing): During the height of the calamity, your descendant Li Tianniu, for the first time ever in public, unleashed his hidden power. Leading all of his wives, he formed a shield before Li Yaoqing. Ultimately, by self-detonating, he secured a desperate chance for Li Yaoqing's survival. Your descendant Li Yaoqing, hunted relentlessly by both Tian Xing's avatars and Wu Clan masters, endured one perilous encounter after another. Losing her way in the ensuing chaos, she eventually found herself upon the grasslands of the 'Auric Empire'.]
[System Update (Li Yaowen): During the clan's catastrophic ordeal, your descendant Li Yaowen finally achieved her breakthrough, transcending her Literary Dao Heavenly Tribulation. With the might of a Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation, she obliterated over a hundred of Tian Xing's avatars. This act, however, drew Venerable Tian Xing's direct and intense scrutiny. To escape his divinations of her fate and to protect her kin by preventing Tian Xing from deducing their whereabouts, she was forced to invoke the 'All Under Heaven Scripture'. Through it, she fused her essence with the vast expanse of the heavens, and now no longer retains a physical, human form.]
[System Update (Li Kuanghua): Your descendant Li Kuanghua immediately heeded Li Yaowen's order and fled the clan stronghold. Her Master, Ye Xiu, arrived to assist, unleashing a level of power that exceeded even the top contenders on the Nascent Divinity List. Aided by the self-destruction of the Azure Green Flood Dragon and a rescue intervention by the Raging Sky Flood Dragon, Li Kuanghua successfully escaped into the ocean territories. Now, burning with the ambition to face her own Nine-Nine Heavenly Tribulation, she is aggressively seizing resources and is locked in ceaseless conflict with the Sea Serpent Crab Clan.]
[System Update (Tian Xing Abode): Your thirteen descendants, currently trapped within the Tian Xing Abode, having learned of the clan's dire situation outside, are nonetheless powerless to intervene. For them, life proceeds as it did before; they continue, as always, to vie with the other trapped Eternal Sun Prefecture factions for resources and survival...]
And even for those scattered to the farthest corners of the earth, the relentless pursuit of Venerable Tian Xing continues unabated.
....
High in the heavens, Li Wei now drifted beside Li Yaowen. This 'child' of his, Li Yaowen – following her breakthrough past the Nascent Soul realm and her subsequent fusion with the heavens – had now taken on the ethereal form of the young maiden she had been centuries ago. Dressed in flowing white, she was as transcendent and immaculate as the sea of clouds billowing beneath them. The primary Ancestral Spirit Tablet hovered directly above her, and arranged in a protective circle around her floated numerous other memorial tablets, each bearing a carved name: Li Dalong... Li Yaozu... Li Yaoqing...
From time to time, tendrils of black mist, perhaps the lingering influence of Tian Xing or the world's despair, would attempt to encroach upon the circle of tablets, only to be invariably driven back by a subtle, almost ethereal white aura radiating from Li Yaowen's form.
[Li Yaowen]
[Realm: Early-stage Nascent Soul]
[Status: Ethereal/Incorporeal]
[Description: For many years, she 'borrowed life' through her techniques and 'borrowed Qi Luck' in her dealings with the Wu Clan. Ultimately, she harnessed the power of her Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation to obliterate her own physical form, dispersing all her corporeal power, with only her Nascent Soul enduring.]
"Yaowen..."
Seeing this stark summary of Li Yaowen's condition, a sharp pang of anguish pierced Li Wei's heart.
In her present condition, Li Wei realized, she was akin to a mere remnant soul, or perhaps even more accurately, she had become like an artifact spirit bound to no vessel. No wonder! That explained it! While the Li survivors were scattered far and wide, and though Venerable Tian Xing's hunt for them had been relentless, he had consistently failed to pinpoint their true locations. So this was the reason – Li Yaowen had deployed this extraordinary Method!
As for those tablets arrayed around her...
[Life Tablets]
[Effect: Each is imbued with a drop of essence blood from every member of the Li Clan. Wherever these Life Tablets are gathered, any and all divinatory attempts to ascertain the location of any Li clansman will invariably be redirected to the site of the Life Tablets themselves.]
Venerable Tian Xing's initial assault on the Li family had been so potent that even the combined divinatory might of the Primal Blood Tree and Li Yaowen had failed to foresee it – a testament to his overwhelming power. Thus, Li Yaowen's method of 'shielding her kin's locations' was, in reality, this: to consolidate all their divinatory signatures onto herself by carrying these Life Tablets, and then to become a phantom, drifting aimlessly across the vast heavens, a constantly moving target diverting all pursuit!
So that was why, all these years, that was why the clansmen had not been tracked down by Venerable Tian Xing! And in this disembodied, Nascent Soul-only state... if she were actually to encounter an enemy, she would possess no means whatsoever to defend herself, facing utter and irrecoverable destruction.
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