The minor worlds and the Xuanhuang World were not situated within the same spacetime?
While the woman in green studied Li Fan with a faint, inscrutable smile, his thoughts were already racing.
Was this true or false?
A test, or a carefully crafted lie meant to serve as a bargaining chip?
In the span of a single breath, Li Fan ran through countless possibilities.
If she had already seen through his identity as a fraud, she would not waste time explaining such matters. The rational choice would be a direct withdrawal or setting of a trap to capture and interrogate him.
Which meant that, most likely, she still harbored doubts about his identity.
After all, in the long history of the Xuanhuang World, there had indeed been precedents of minor worlds banding together to attack the cultivation world. And whether the minor worlds shared the same spacetime as the Xuanhuang World was something a true envoy of the Myriad Worlds Coalition would know.
Given that this concerned the Empire’s very survival, this Holy Master would not risk fabricating a lie so easily exposed.
Therefore, what she said was most likely true.
At the very least, she believed it to be true.
But that only gave rise to a deeper question.
If the minor worlds and the Xuanhuang World did not exist within the same spacetime, then when confronted with the Immortal Ruins, why hadn’t the cultivators of the Xuanhuang World fled through the Immortal-Severing Passageways into the minor worlds—and then severed the connection behind them?
Certainly, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, and Dao Unity cultivators might be restricted by the scarcity of spiritual qi in the minor worlds. But for an Eternal Heavenly Venerable, such limitations should be negligible.
So why hadn’t the Eternal Heavenly Venerables escaped?
The answer narrowed to three possibilities: they were unafraid, unwilling, or unable.
Unafraid?
In his previous life, Heavenly Venerable One Mind had chosen retreat when faced with the threat of mutual destruction using the Spirit-Locking Array. That alone proved that even an Eternal Life powerhouse could not guarantee their safety when facing the Immortal Ruins.
This possibility could be dismissed.
Unwilling?
Bound by lofty ideals, they refused to abandon their homeland even at the cost of annihilation, choosing to sink alongside the Xuanhuang World into the Immortal Ruins?
Judging by the current path to Dao attainment for the cultivators of this world, this was absolutely not a choice the present Eternal Heavenly Venerables would make.
That left only one conclusion.
The Eternal Heavenly Venerables... were unable to leave the Xuanhuang World.
The moment the thought formed, Li Fan almost laughed at its absurdity.
Beings at the Eternal Life realm, existences standing at the very apex of the cultivation world, unable to leave?
How could that possibly be—
He suddenly froze.
What if... it were true?
A long-standing question resurfaced in his mind.
Why did defying the principles of heaven and earth lead to eternal life?
All living beings possessed finite lifespans. Even the so-called eternalkind merely lived somewhat longer than others.
If anything in the Xuanhuang World deserved to be called eternal, it was heaven and earth.
So why did defying heaven and earth allow cultivators to undergo such a metamorphosis, allowing their bodies to share the same lifespan as heaven and earth?
The principles of heaven and earth.
Defying the principles of heaven and earth.
At that moment, a memory surfaced.
In his previous life, when confronted by Senior Sister Zhao’s overwhelming pressure, Ji Hongdao had once said:
.....
“After a Heavenly Venerable establishes their Axiom, they should no longer involve themselves in mundane disputes.”
.....
Axiom.
The word struck like a bolt of lightning, cleaving through the fog that had long clouded Li Fan’s thoughts.
It forced him to confront something he had overlooked for far too long.
All living beings in this world must forget their sorrows and find joy.
All living beings must revere and cultivate the Dao of the Heavenly Venerable Dao Teacher.
These absurd, almost tyrannical rules, once unimaginable, now truly existed as part of heaven and earth itself.
Which meant... after overturning the original principles of heaven and earth, the Heavenly Venerables had replaced them with their own.
Their Axioms had become the new laws of the world.
And that was why the Heavenly Venerables gained lifespans as vast as heaven and earth.
But for the same reason, they could no longer leave the Xuanhuang World.
Before reaching the Eternal Life realm, cultivators were like bandits breaking into a house, plundering whatever they pleased. The furniture and treasures inside were seized and carried away.
But some among them grew greedier still.
They did not just want the treasures—they wanted the house itself.
They sought to seize the magpie’s nest and claim ownership.
And they succeeded.
Yet the moment they did, the house activated its final countermeasure.
The great doors slammed shut.
They became the masters of the house, and at the same time, were forever sealed within it.
Is this heaven and earth’s way of fighting back?
Understanding dawned on Li Fan.
He had already realized that heaven and earth were not entirely helpless before the cultivators who plundered them.
There were spontaneous laws, such as the Exclusivity of Immortal Techniques.
There were enforcement mechanisms, like the descent of Soul Arbiters who executed the will of heaven.
But when faced with Eternal Heavenly Venerables, existences powerful enough to threaten the very foundation of the world, heaven and earth had chosen a far more extreme measure.
If you cannot defeat them, make them join you.
One had to admit, it was devastatingly effective.
Because upon reaching the Eternal Life realm, their identity subtly shifted.
They were no longer cultivators standing against heaven and earth; they had become part of heaven and earth itself.
If unchecked plunder by cultivators would ultimately exhaust and ruin the world, then the Eternal Heavenly Venerables, whose existence was now bound to the world’s lifespan, would be compelled to intervene for their own survival.
Thus arose the necessity of regulating the number of cultivators.
This was the reason why there could not be too many cultivators.
Li Fan recalled when the Ten Immortal Dao Sects had offered a bounty for the Xuantian Treasure Mirror.
They declared that anyone could exchange this mirror for a Fruit of Eternal Life.
It seems that in ancient times, the Eternal Life realm was also likely achieved by usurping the original principles of eternal life from heaven and earth through some method. Li Fan mused.
Working through this line of reasoning left Li Fan feeling slightly disappointed.
The Eternal Heavenly Venerables of the Xuanhuang World seemed to fall somewhat short of his ideal of "eternal life."
They had simply borrowed the power of heaven and earth to obtain a lifespan that did not truly belong to them.
A false eternal life... but strictly speaking, it's not an entirely unacceptable situation.
After all, this world's Eternal Life realm is just an attempt by cultivators to prolong their lives after the immortal path in the Xuanhuang World was severed.
And it's not necessarily impossible to advance further.
Li Fan thought of the Heavenly Venerable Dao Teacher who had vanished in his previous life.
This pioneer of the new methodology might have taken the lead once more, breaking free from the world's constraints.
No wonder, in my previous life, the Heavenly Venerable Dao Teacher did not appear for thousands of years. And despite the intermittent wars between the two sides, the Heavenly Venerables of the Five Elders Council never intervened.
Because in the view of the Five Elders Council's Heavenly Venerables, since those at the Eternal Life realm cannot leave the Xuanhuang World, the Dao Teacher must also still be somewhere within it.
An agreement on a sheet of paper was enough to restrain them.
That was, until later, when they finally realized something was wrong. Only then did they grow impatient and personally take action to probe the Alliance...
The effects of the Dao Comprehension Pill had not yet fully faded.
In a sudden flash of insight, sparked by the truth inadvertently revealed by the woman in green, Li Fan deduced a possible, logically consistent truth about the Xuanhuang World.