Boom!
Boom!
Explosions echoed continuously across the plaza.
Su Xiaomei and Xiao Heng battled using only the palm techniques they had recently comprehended. Their exchange was so evenly matched that neither could gain the upper hand.
Through Heaven Watches and Earth Listens, Li Fan carefully analyzed their palm techniques. Combining his observations with previous insights into the Dao resonance, he suddenly felt as if a blockage had cleared.
So that's how it should be understood!
Though Li Fan possessed only average talent and couldn't directly comprehend a divine ability from the Dao resonance itself, he could still understand the palm techniques being executed by Su Xiaomei and Xiao Heng, who were both at the early Foundation Establishment realm like him.
If you can't solve the problem yourself, can't you at least copy the solution?
He would first borrow their insights to learn a divine ability from the palm technique, then gradually incorporate his own insights until he developed a palm technique that could be called his own.
During his observation, Li Fan noticed differences between their techniques.
Though both originated from observing the same strand of Dao resonance, Xiao Heng's palm technique carried an ethereal, otherworldly quality—elusive as the Great Dao itself. Su Xiaomei's palm technique, however, contained a hint of overwhelming dominance. Each strike seemed to demand submission from all creation.
Neither approach could be called superior.
The original sea-overturning palm strike was too profound, containing multiple aspects within a single technique.
Their palm techniques represented a combination of both their personal comprehension and the concepts inherently present in the sea-overturning palm strike itself.
The battle between Xiao Heng and Su Xiaomei lasted an entire day. Only when Li Fan called for a halt did it finally end.
"Good. You've gained considerable insights. But remember, don't become complacent. You're still far from fully comprehending this strand of Dao resonance. From now on, cultivate while contemplating, and spar with each other regularly."
After Li Fan's instructions, Xiao Heng and Su Xiaomei nodded in acknowledgment.
With the assistance of these two prodigies, Li Fan's comprehension of the sea-overturning palm strike grew daily.
As time passed, both Xiao Heng and Su Xiaomei's palm techniques approached a large degree of mastery. Yet Li Fan always felt something was missing in his own practice. The palm strike he executed remained a move, far from rising to the level of a divine ability.
Still, Li Fan felt no urgency. He patiently continued refining and improving the palm technique.
Two months later, in the underground meditation chamber.
As silver threads of light raced across the surface of the small black box, the array seal was finally shattered.
The items inside were revealed to Li Fan's avatar.
One of them looked familiar: an encrypted jade slip with four golden corners. However, its certainly didn’t contain He Zhenghao's legacy work, the Mountain River Hundred Veins Array Diagram.
Li Fan sent his divine sense into the jade slip to read its contents. Before long, dizziness overwhelmed him, and he withdrew from the jade slip.
Rubbing his temples to soothe the throbbing sensation, Li Fan's eyes nonetheless shone with excitement.
The jade slip contained the lifetime learnings of the Congyun Sea's number one array master, Zhang Zhiliang—the Unlimited Art.
The array insights of both He Zhenghao and Zhang Zhiliang had now fallen into Li Fan's hands.
It seemed his avatar wouldn't be idle for a long time to come. As long as he dedicated time to the study of arrays, Li Fan's future on the path of array cultivation was undoubtedly a bright one.
Li Fan greatly looked forward to He Zhenghao's reaction when they discussed the Dao in his next lifetime.
Calming his emotions, Li Fan examined the remaining items.
The second item was a small white pouch filled with silver incense, the very mental fatigue-relieving incense Li Fan had frequently used during his arduous studies under Zhang Zhiliang.
The third item was a black sphere, the Knowledge Appraisal Sphere used to test one's array proficiency.
The fourth item was a sheet of golden foil, and the last was an ordinary jade slip.
Li Fan first read the jade slip.
Naturally, it contained Zhang Zhiliang's final words.
Zhang Zhiliang made no mention of the group of Spirit Transformation cultivators from Myriad Immortals Island conspiring to hunt Crimson Flame. He only explained the Unlimited Art to Li Fan and described the purpose of that golden foil.
Zhang Zhiliang's Unlimited Art represented his life's work.
The scene of hundreds of thousands of Array Crowns activating simultaneously, allowing a Nascent Soul cultivator to influence a struggle between Spirit Transformation and Dao Unity powerhouses, remained vividly etched in Li Fan's memory.
Yet, according to Zhang Zhiliang's final words, he was far from achieving a large degree of mastery in the Unlimited Art.
During his teachings, Zhang Zhiliang had once said that arrays were essentially standardized manifestations of laws.
While standardization made employing these laws simpler and faster, it inevitably introduced a fatal flaw: every array under heaven could be dismantled.
Once an array was established, its standardized patterns became fixed. Those proficient in arrays could discern its weaknesses and, given time, dismantle it.
Arrays like the Seven-Colored Immortal-Felling Array or the Mountain River Constellation Array might appear to possess limitless power. But for a true array master, dismantling them was merely a matter of time.
What Zhang Zhiliang sought was an array that could not be dismantled.
He believed arrays could be dismantled because they became static once deployed. Without changing, no matter how complex or vast, any array would eventually be deciphered.
But if an array could evolve continuously by itself, perpetually growing and changing, and if its rate of growth and transformation could surpass the speed at which the world's greatest array masters could break it, then such an array would be truly unbreakable.
This was Zhang Zhiliang's lifelong goal for the Unlimited Art.
Unfortunately, despite Zhang Zhiliang's transcendent skill in arrays, he remained far from creating the true Unlimited Art.
The most critical missing component was a core, a central processing core capable of providing the computational power required for the array's unlimited evolution.
Zhang Zhiliang had experimented with various objects to serve as this core. Curios of heaven and earth, cultivator consciousnesses, ancient artifacts... All failed without exception.
The Unlimited Art's demand for computational power was terrifyingly immense, exceeding even the upper limits of Zhang Zhiliang's understanding.
Beyond computational requirements, this core also needed to possess its own sentience.
Truly "unlimited" evolution meant its transformation could proceed along infinite potential paths. Relying solely on brute-force computation would drastically slow the evolution speed.
If the core possessed its own sentience, it could continuously coordinate computational resources, constantly adjust for optimal evolutionary directions, and even perform corresponding optimizations based on how array masters attempted to dismantle it.
Only then could the Unlimited Art truly be considered the true “Unlimited Art.”
Of course, Zhang Zhiliang did not hold the slightest expectation that Li Fan could actually bring the true Unlimited Art to fruition. All he hoped for was that Li Fan would inherit his current legacy and pass it down through the generations, and that one day a true genius of the array path would emerge to fulfill the grand ambition of the Unlimited Art.
As for that golden foil, it was meant to incentivize Li Fan's studies in the array path. It was called a Posthumous Bequest. In essence, it was an inheritance comprising a vast amount of contribution points, accessible only after the cultivator's death and upon meeting specific conditions.
The Posthumous Bequest left by Zhang Zhiliang contained a staggering total of four hundred thousand contribution points—an amount accumulated over his entire lifetime.
It could be claimed in ten separate installments, each requiring the claimant to pass a test of array knowledge administered by the Knowledge Appraisal Sphere.
If one truly inherited Zhang Zhiliang's Unlimited Art, they could claim the entire four hundred thousand contribution points if they passed all ten tests. However, if they couldn't even pass the first test, they would be left staring at a mountain of treasure, unable to take a single piece.