Nearly two and a half years earlier, the most capable array masters had already finished building the Soul-Locking Arrays in the regions assigned to them.
Some decided to take a break. Others, eager to earn more points in the competition, went to help in areas where construction was still unfinished.
But a top-secret, critically important location like the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens was far beyond what these young array masters were normally qualified to enter.
Li Fan had only managed to get assigned here back then due to his ties with Chief Lu and the strange anomaly in the void of Tianling Province.
Who would have thought that two years later, the very place Li Fan had plotted and maneuvered so carefully to reach could now be entered just by submitting an application?
“So it really is Fellow Daoist Li Fan! What an honor—truly an honor!” a young array master, Xiang Liu, greeted him with great enthusiasm.
“Two years ago, when your ranking shot up and then stayed in the top three ever since, it caused a huge stir and endless debate.
“Everyone’s heard of what you’ve done. And as far as hard work goes, there are plenty of Fellow Daoists out there who are just as driven as you are.
“So people guessed that you must have been building arrays in an exceptionally important grotto-heaven.
“And it turns out they were right!”
Xiang Liu looked at Li Fan with genuine emotion, yet there wasn’t the slightest hint of jealousy in his eyes.
The other array master, Gu Youguang, couldn’t hide the envy in his gaze. “You must have some serious backing, Fellow Daoist, to get the chance to work in a place this important.
“The points earned inside the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven are more than three times what you can get in ordinary regions!”
Li Fan gave a soft cough, deliberately putting on an air of frailty. “Ahem, you misunderstand, Fellow Daoist. I only ended up here by coincidence—I was simply riding Senior Huangfu Song’s coattails.
“Besides, my limit is close; my time is running out. What do points and rankings matter to me now?
“Where I work makes no difference. As long as I’m contributing to the construction of the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Arrays, that’s enough.”
Hearing this, both Xiang Liu and Gu Youguang lost their casual smiles, their expressions turning serious.
“Your conduct is truly admirable, Fellow Daoist. That’s also why, even though there are all kinds of rumors outside about your second-place ranking, very few people actually resent you for it.”
Li Fan hadn’t known the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven offered such a high point multiplier.
Paired with his relentless effort over the past two-plus years, it had propelled him all the way to second place on the competition’s golden leaderboard.
“Then who’s in first?” Li Fan asked, unable to suppress his curiosity.
“Who else? That Guo bastard, obviously,” Gu Youguang said disdainfully, his voice thick with contempt.
“Brother Gu, watch your words...” Xiang Liu shot him a look, then explained with some helplessness, “The one firmly holding first place now is the former last-place holder, Fellow Daoist Guo Yezhong.”
Li Fan’s gaze flickered as he asked a question he already knew the answer to: “Guo Yezhong... how did he go from dead last to first? And from Brother Gu’s tone...”
Before Xiang Liu could respond, Gu Youguang interjected, “What else could it be? Pure luck. After the fighting in Tianling Province, he was the first to suggest constructing the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array. So every time an array gets completed, he takes a portion of the credit, and the points for each one aren’t small.
“And now that more and more arrays are being set up, of course nobody can overtake him.”
His resentment deepened as he went on. “That part isn’t even the real problem. He did contribute to its creation. What truly infuriates everyone is that he’s coasting now, using the lead he piled up to win without doing anything. He treats the toil of fellow cultivators like a joke, stomping on the meaning of the sacrifices we’re making—”
As Gu Youguang’s words grew sharper, Xiang Liu hurried to stop him. “Actually, Fellow Daoist Guo is exceptionally talented, one of those once-in-an-age geniuses. I’ve heard he didn’t only propose the Soul-Locking Array; he personally drafted the design and produced the first prototype.
“And that zero score previously wasn’t deliberate on his part. Supposedly, urgent business held him up...”
Gu Youguang let out a cold snort. “According to who? Who buys that? I’ve also heard it’s because he has an influential father!
“When people confronted him, he didn’t show the slightest bit of shame. He even had the audacity to say, all self-righteous, ‘So what? You got a problem with that?’
“Disgusting. Just the thought that I trained alongside someone like that makes me sick!”
Seeing how worked up he had gotten, Xiang Liu could only give a wry smile, shake his head, and give up trying to persuade him.
Guo Yezhong. Li Fan once again recalled the man he had met at the Cosmos Branch Academy. I really misjudged him...
After that, they stopped mentioning him. Instead, they reminisced about their years of cultivation together, and Li Fan asked about what they had experienced out in the wider world.
Once the small talk had gone on long enough and the timing felt right, the two of them joined Li Fan in building the array within the water grotto-heaven.
Xiang Liu and Gu Youguang were no less skilled in arrays than Li Fan. With their help, the work sped up dramatically.
Many cultivators from the Garrison Command also arrived to assist. Each carried a crystal-vial-like artifact that could release a dichromatic glazed radiance.
That mysterious light had a cleansing effect, restoring things to their original state, and it proved especially effective against the amalgamated monsters inside the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens.
With outside dangers held at bay, construction of the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array advanced faster day by day. In a little over four months, it was 99% complete.
At the same time, the convergence of the five elements was approaching its final phase. Countless branches from the enormous inverted tree overhead had plunged deep into the blue watery domain below.
Oddly, while minor contact between water and wood had produced warped monsters previously, now, when the genuine fusion of wood and water drew near, those creatures stopped appearing.
Still, as Li Fan watched the green branches get dyed by the cerulean water, broken human-shaped shadows flashed across his vision again.
“Fellow Daoist Li Fan, it’s time to pull back,” Xiang Liu said, noticing his distracted state.
Li Fan nodded slightly, activated his Sky-Soaring Shuttle, and flew toward the immense Dust-Crossing Boat that had reappeared in the sky.
The remaining tasks no longer required array masters like them. As streams of cultivators returned to the Dust-Crossing Boat, streaks of dark figures flew the other way, heading for the array nodes established earlier.
They would reinforce the Soul-Locking Array’s critical structures using Eternal Calamity Gold.
Once everything was in place, setting the Tianxuan Mirror surface would finalize the Soul-Locking Array covering the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens.
I just hope nothing else goes wrong. Li Fan thought as he stepped back onto the Dust-Crossing Boat.
“Master,” a child’s voice, bright with curiosity, spoke beside his ear. “After the five elements merge, what do you think this grotto-heaven will become?”