I wonder how the battle is unfolding over at the five elements grotto-heavens.
From what Li Fan understood, the Myriad Immortals Alliance and the Five Elders Council had not entered into a full-scale war for nearly three hundred years. Any friction between them had usually been limited to a single province at most.
A situation like this, where the entire territory was mobilizing for war, was exceedingly rare.
He continued asking around, probing one acquaintance after another in hopes of confirming his suspicions about the cause of the conflict.
Unfortunately, information regarding the war was tightly sealed. Every reply he received amounted to little more than vague uncertainty.
As the dark clouds of war gathered overhead, the once calm and leisurely atmosphere of Myriad Immortals Island turned heavy and austere. Unease and anxiety were faintly etched onto every face.
As an array maintenance technician of the Strategy Array Hall, Li Fan was soon assigned duties of his own.
He was to form a patrol squad together with members of the Martial Hall, tasked with guarding the borders of the Congyun Sea.
In addition, they were responsible for setting up arrays and maintaining constant vigilance against infiltration by spies from the Five Elders Council.
The squad leader was Shan Wu, a mid-stage Golden Core cultivator. The rest of the team included several Foundation Establishment cultivators, among them Huan Sui, who had previously worked with Li Fan during the mission to exterminate the red-haired exotic beasts.
Li Fan’s squad was only one among many.
The Myriad Immortals Alliance had mobilized nearly all of its grassroots forces on Myriad Immortals Island, a clear indication of how seriously the Alliance’s higher-ups regarded this war.
As for Jiang Zhengji and Du Xingchang, they had reportedly been conscripted by headquarters and sent directly to the front lines.
When those two join forces and unleash their ultimate technique, Glazed World, their combined strength rivals that of an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator.
Even the array master Zhang Zhiliang has been transferred to the battlefield.
Nascent Soul cultivators serving as the main force in the war...
Li Fan fell into silent contemplation.
The scale of this conflict was clearly far greater than he had initially anticipated.
Most matters were still within his control, but one variable troubled him deeply.
That “regressor,” Ye Feipeng.
If Ye Feipeng realizes that reality no longer matches the events in his memories...
Given that boy’s suspicious and overly cautious nature, he might very well abandon his plan to assassinate Crimson Flame.
If that happened, all of Li Fan’s schemes for this life would be rendered meaningless.
With a thought, the image of the chubby Ye Feipeng surfaced in his mind.
What brought Li Fan a measure of relief was the sheer vastness of the Congyun Sea. Moreover, Ye Feipeng had always deliberately avoided the Myriad Immortals Alliance. As a result, he remained completely ignorant of the great war now sweeping through the cultivation world.
I can only hope the war ends quickly... and doesn’t spread here.
As the saying went, no divine power could defy the Mandate of Heaven. Faced with such an uncontrollable variable, even Li Fan, who had lived through countless lives, could do nothing but wait.
It had to be said, the Myriad Immortals Alliance’s grip over the grassroots was astonishingly firm.
Information about the war was kept under near-perfect lockdown.
On the surface, the Congyun Sea just felt more tense than usual; there were no visible signs of large-scale conflict. If not for his merit level rising at an abnormal pace, constant proof that they were in a wartime state, Li Fan would never have guessed that a world-shaking battle was raging somewhere far beyond his sight.
Time drifted by under this uneasy calm.
Several months passed, and Anchor Year 16 was drawing to a close.
Throughout this period, aside from occasionally driving off a few small groups from the Five Elders Council that slipped past the border defenses, the Congyun Sea remained largely untouched by the flames of war, exactly as Li Fan had hoped.
As he steadily completed wartime merit tasks, his permission level rose to Yan 18.
Then, one day, a long-awaited notification arrived from the Tianxuan Mirror.
The war was over.
The state of combat readiness, which had lasted more than eight months, was officially lifted.
As for the outcome, the Myriad Immortals Alliance had emerged victorious.
The information embargo was lifted, and amidst the fervent discussions and post-mortem analyses of numerous cultivators, Li Fan finally gained a rough understanding of the causes and consequences of this conflict.
Nine months earlier, a team from the Myriad Immortals Alliance tasked with developing the wood-attribute grotto-heaven made an unexpected discovery while researching cultivation and production methods.
They found that the wood-attribute spiritual qi within this grotto-heaven behaved nothing like that of ordinary grotto-heavens. Normally, once depleted, such spiritual qi would require a long period to slowly recover. Here, however, the spiritual qi seemed to originate from an unknown source, flowing without cease and regenerating endlessly.
Even after vast quantities of spiritual qi were consumed by large-scale cultivation of spirit plants, the depletion was almost instantly restored, as if the supply could never run dry.
The discovery sent waves of excitement through the team. This spiritual qi clearly was not produced by the wood-attribute grotto-heaven itself, nor did it come from the surrounding Xuanhuang World.
After careful analysis, they reached a startling conclusion: this wood-attribute grotto-heaven was an exceedingly rare composite grotto-heaven.
Its rapidly replenishing spiritual qi was being siphoned from elsewhere.
After an arduous search, the Alliance team finally confirmed both the existence and location of the five elements grotto-heavens.
It was a monumental breakthrough.
Yet even amid their elation, unease quickly followed.
The five elements grotto-heavens were located in Tianling Province, right along the border with the Five Elders Council.
To discover a treasure of such value sitting on the very front lines was deeply unsettling. The team immediately reported the situation to the Alliance headquarters, explaining their findings and requesting reinforcements to relocate the five elements grotto-heavens back to the heartland, near Tianyu Province.
No one expected that before support could arrive, the Five Elders Council would strike first.
Somehow, the news had leaked.
The assault came without warning. The entire exploration team within the wood-attribute grotto-heaven was annihilated.
According to the final messages they managed to transmit, the Five Elders Council had dispatched three Dao Unity-level powerhouses.
Working in concert, the three began forcibly dragging the five elements grotto-heavens toward Five Elders Council territory.
For the Myriad Immortals Alliance, this was intolerable.
Secret infiltration was one thing, but to openly massacre Alliance cultivators in broad daylight and seize priceless grotto-heaven resources?
It was an unforgivable humiliation.
The Myriad Immortals Alliance headquarters immediately decided to enter level two combat readiness. They first mobilized eight Dao Unity cultivators and several Spirit Transformation cultivators to pursue the Five Elders Council scoundrels.
Their mission: recover the five elements grotto-heavens at all costs.
Subsequently, they ordered all provinces to strengthen their defenses, preventing the Five Elders Council from using this as a feint for other schemes.
Relocating a grotto-heaven was no easy task, even for Dao Unity powerhouses.
Just as the eight Dao Unity cultivators and their forces caught up with the Five Elders Council scum and prepared to attack, they suddenly discovered the enemy had indeed planned this meticulously.
Besides the three Dao Unity cultivators who launched the overt surprise attack, there were five additional Dao Unity powerhouses lying in ambush.
It was eight versus eight.
A great battle erupted instantly.
The details and outcome of that battle remained unknown to all.
Only this much was clear: after the conflict, the five elements grotto-heavens remained in place.
Then, with tacit understanding, both the Myriad Immortals Alliance and the Five Elders Council recalled their surviving Dao Unity cultivators.
What followed was a war centered around the five elements grotto-heavens, fought mainly by Spirit Transformation cultivators and those of lower cultivation.
The struggle lasted nearly eight months.
Countless cultivators fell.
Death phenomena lit up the skies from dawn till dusk, never ceasing even once.
Finally, when both sides had suffered grievous damage, the war abruptly and mysteriously came to an end.
The Myriad Immortals Alliance declared to its people that they had emerged victorious. For indeed, the five elements grotto-heavens were later relocated deep into their heartland, Tianyu Province.