It wasn't that Li Chenfeng had stopped flying.
Rather, between him and Li Fan, an impassable chasm seemed to have materialized.
They were so close, yet worlds apart. No matter how furious Li Chenfeng got, no matter how frantically the two pairs of wings on his back beat the air, he could not escape this invisible cage.
The Two Poles Subtle Dust Array!
Although Li Fan had deployed only a simplified version, it was more than sufficient to trap Li Chenfeng, whose cultivation was only at the Qi Refinement realm and whose power depended entirely on his formidable exotic beast fusion physique.
Insect Binding actually failed. Li Fan pondered, watching Li Chenfeng's snarling face with keen interest.
He took a single step forward, and his figure instantly appeared within the array, materializing behind Li Chenfeng.
Before his target could react, Li Fan activated the Great Five Elements Annihilation Sword in his hand. With a flash, he sheared off a large, armor-like section of keratin from one half of Li Chenfeng's body.
A howl of agony and rage erupted from Li Chenfeng. He whirled to counterattack, but Li Fan had already vanished from the Two Poles Subtle Dust Array, leaving the strike to cleave empty air.
Ignoring Li Chenfeng's roars of frustration, Li Fan held the excised keratin before his eyes, examining it closely.
It still felt warm to the touch, like living tissue, yet its texture was remarkably hard.
Li Fan focused his internal spiritual power, condensed it into a blade of water, and struck the sample.
Clink!
A clear, ringing sound echoed as the water blade was deflected outright.
The keratin bore only a faint, shallow scratch, which quickly vanished as the flesh at its edges writhed and healed.
An attack equivalent to the mid-stage Golden Core level can’t even breach its defense. Li Fan noted, surprised.
What incredible vitality. It seems to possess its own separate consciousness. Given sufficient nutrients and time, it might even grow into a complete body of its own.
Having never encountered anything like it before, Li Fan now saw Li Chenfeng and his companions in an entirely new light.
A minor world capable of commanding a hundred thousand Realm-Splitting Whales... I should have known it wouldn't be so simple.
Now, let’s see how far your Empire has developed.
Li Fan's divine sense abruptly enveloped Li Chenfeng and the other two.
Cloudwater Dream Illusion Art, activate!
The still-struggling Li Chenfeng instantly fell still. The keratinous layer covering his body slowly receded, restoring him to his original, harmless-looking, handsome young man's form. His eyes were closed, and his facial expressions shifted continuously.
In contrast, the Foundation Establishment Master and the man surnamed Xiao had already sunk deeply into blissful dream illusions, utterly lost to the waking world.
Time flowed slowly onward.
Three days later, Li Chenfeng finally lowered his mental defenses, a contented smile spreading across his face as well.
Li Fan slowly opened his eyes.
What is this?
A flicker of confusion passed through his mind.
Li Chenfeng's minor world was a peculiar place consisting only of an endless ocean. There were no islands in this ocean, only massive Heaven-Propping Turtles that swam through the open waters with humans residing upon their backs.
In the sky floated the colossal corpse of a three-headed divine bird that occupied nearly a third of the heavens.
No one knew how many years the three-headed divine bird had been dead, yet its corpse remained uncorrupted.
Originally, it had been covered in all manner of strange exotic beasts that fed upon its carcass.
Many years ago, a peerless genius emerged from a tribe dwelling upon a Heaven-Propping Turtle. He mastered the ability to control exotic beasts and selflessly taught this art to other human tribes.
Under his leadership, humanity successfully drove out the exotic beasts that had infested the corpse of the three-headed divine bird. Then, upon the divine bird's remains, they founded a human empire.
Thousands of years of development later, the Empire's control over exotic beasts had reached a state of near perfection.
Exotic beasts permeated every facet of life in the Empire.
Its people could conveniently travel the world aboard Broadbacked Peng, a newly bred type of hybrid exotic beast.
They could tame exotic beasts to hunt creatures of the sea, the sky, and even beings from the void beyond their minor world.
The Empire even developed technology to fuse the power of exotic beasts with humans, such as the very Divine Beast Armor worn by Li Chenfeng.
Yet, despite these monumental achievements, a shadow perpetually loomed over the Empire, leaving the people with a constant sense of unease.
For the entity they revered as a deity, the three-headed divine bird, had not died a natural death.
In life, it had not possessed only three heads. What they called the three-headed divine bird was, in truth, a nine-headed bird—a creature whose power the Empire could scarcely fathom. Yet its corpse was cast down to this place with six of its heads violently severed.
The Empire was not entirely ignorant of the perpetrator. They knew them as the beings called immortals.
Legends persisted among the tribes, tales of how these immortals had exiled the Empire’s predecessors to this place.
The people of the Empire felt a mixture of fear and yearning towards the immortals. For despite the Empire's advanced state, it had never solved the problem of human lifespan.
A centenarian was considered exceptionally long-lived within the Empire. Thus, they coveted the rumored immortal techniques, said to grant both formidable power and extended life.
After losing many lives in the attempt, the Empire's pioneers finally breached the Immortal-Severing Grand Array and reached the Xuanhuang World.
Unfortunately, the intelligence they gathered brought bitter disappointment.
To cultivate immortal techniques, one required spiritual qi. The world the Empire inhabited held no trace of this so-called spiritual qi. Furthermore, the Exclusivity of Immortal Techniques remained in effect.
For the Empire's people, to whom even obtaining a single immortal cultivation technique was a Herculean task, the dream of cultivation and eternal life seemed utterly beyond reach.
Yet the resilient people of the Empire did not abandon their quest. They dispatched agents time and again to infiltrate the Xuanhuang World and gather more information.
Simultaneously, they assembled think tanks to research possible methods to cultivate. Thus, through generations of effort, a plan bordering on fantasy was proposed.
The first issue was the lack of spiritual qi. Its solution came about entirely by accident. At the Empire's sacred site, the location of the divine bird's heads, the severed stumps of the six necks still bore the scar of the sword stroke that had slain the bird.
The power contained in that single strike was unimaginable. For thousands of years, its sword qi remained unbroken, suppressing the vengeful spirit of the nine-headed bird. All exotic beasts could sense it, instinctively avoiding the sword’s lingering qi.
On one occasion, an Empire citizen, in violation of the law, secretly brought the exotic beast he had personally raised while visiting the sword scar.
Unexpectedly, it triggered the sword qi. The citizen emerged unscathed, but the exotic beast was instantly annihilated by the sword qi.
When the Empire’s guard corps apprehended this citizen, they made a surprising discovery: the exotic beast, which should have been utterly vaporized by the sword qi, had dropped a single, luminous crystal core.
Had this occurred before contact with the Xuanhuang World, the Empire’s people might not have understood what this crystal core truly was.
However, the former practitioners of Dao Techniques were astonished to find that the energy within the core could be used as a substitute for spiritual qi, fueling their cultivation.
Subsequent research revealed that only a few types of exotic beasts possessed such cores within their bodies.
Fortunately, one species, known as the Flying Sphere Beast, reproduced rapidly and was easily domesticated. After the first large-scale breeding operation, the Empire harvested hundreds of thousands of these cores. Among them, they even discovered mutated, purified versions.
A Dao Technique thief in the early-stage Qi Refinement realm, utilizing these cores, successfully broke through to the final-stage Qi Refinement realm. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of immortal techniques, he could progress no further. Even so, this gave the Empire a glimpse of the dawn of immortal cultivation and the path to eternal life.
The next problems to solve were the various mediums required for cultivation via the Heavenly Venerable’s methodology, and the issue of the Exclusivity of Immortal Techniques.