Seeing Jiao Xiuyuan agree so readily, Li Fan nodded. "Then I'll be troubling you with this matter, Fellow Daoist Jiao. I shall await your good news!"
With that, he tossed a communication spirit talisman to Jiao Xiuyuan. Without mentioning anything about a receipt or proof of transaction, he simply turned and left.
"This fellow seems to trust me quite a bit," Jiao Xiuyuan muttered under his breath, tossing the Delusion-Dispelling Stone Eye into the air.
In the next moment, the stone eye vanished, its destination unknown.
The puppet body on Myriad Immortals Island then slumped back into its previous languid posture.
What Jiao Xiuyuan could never have guessed was that Li Fan's attitude wasn't born of deep trust.
The Delusion-Dispelling Stone Eye was purely a pretext Li Fan used to establish a connection with him. Whether Jiao Xiuyuan sold it, failed to sell it, or even embezzled it mattered little to Li Fan. What Li Fan truly cared about was the "big business" to come later.
Returning to the Tianxuan Mirror, Li Fan's thoughts turned to the other object he had discovered in the Heavenly Mechanisms Sect ruins: the floor of the pagoda he had sliced off and brought back.
His initial premonition had been correct.
After appraisal by the Tianxuan Mirror, it turned out that the entire floor of the stone pagoda was, in fact, an artifact called the Qiankun Heavenly Mechanisms Die.[1]
When mortals cast dice, they landed on numbers like five or six.
When cultivators cast this die, they landed on the numbers of heavenly mechanisms.
Using sufficient information as a foundation and the resonance of energy mechanisms as the driving force, the ancient cultivators of the Heavenly Mechanisms Sect had relied on this Qiankun Heavenly Mechanisms Die to divine countless future possibilities.
The reason Li Fan had seen only an empty void was that the Qiankun Heavenly Mechanisms Die had arrived at this conclusion when that ancient divination was made.
Absolute nothingness.
Who knows what those Heavenly Mechanisms Sect cultivators were trying to divine back then? To arrive at such a result...
Li Fan extended his hand. A crystalline, icosahedral die materialized in his palm.
Upon closer inspection, each of its twenty faces seemed to flicker with different, indistinct images.
Li Fan had attempted to use this Qiankun Heavenly Mechanisms Die to divine the future several times before, to see if it aligned with the experiences he had already lived through. But perhaps due to incorrect usage, the results were always fragmented, incomprehensible glimpses, which were of little practical use.
Even so, Li Fan had not sold it. A persistent intuition told him that keeping it might prove greatly useful in the future.
After toying with it for a moment, he stored the Heavenly Mechanisms Die away and shifted his focus to his avatar, "Zhou Qing'ang."
His avatar had remained on Tai’an Island all this time, only occasionally using communication spirit talismans to contact necessary individuals.
He wasn't idling. Rather, he was researching a method to overcome the side effects of the Heaven-Swallowing, Earth-Devouring Grand Art.
This secret technique was likely created in imitation of the ancient exotic beast, the Origin-Returning Toad. While it truly possessed the power to devour heaven and earth, the practitioner's mind was extremely vulnerable to corruption. The ultimate outcomes were either bursting from overconsumption or being discovered and beaten to death.
But Li Fan had a way to maintain his absolute rationality. That was Blue Flame’s power derived from visualizing the phantom spirit.
He didn't need to remain perfectly calm throughout the entire devouring process. He only needed to regain control and stop at the critical moment.
With the dual enhancement of the Dao Comprehension Pill and epiphanic state boost, Li Fan finally succeeded in mastering this level of control after considerable effort.
However, to actually advance his cultivation through the Heaven-Swallowing, Earth-Devouring Grand Art, he still needed to solve the problem of being unable to absorb solidified earth vein energy.
Li Fan had long prepared a plan for this as well.
Concealing his form, he teleported to Spiritwood Island in the western region of the Congyun Sea, then continued flying westward.
After roughly five hundred li, he quietly slipped beneath the sea's surface. He dove deep, searching the seabed, and after a short while, he indeed found the ruins of a sunken island.
In his past life, this island resurfaced not long from this timepoint due to inexplicable shifts in the earth veins. The reactivated island protection array would also attract the attention of the array masters from the Congyun Sea Branch's Strategy Array Hall.
But before any of that happened, this place looked no different from any other ruins scattered across the sea floor.
Li Fan entered the ruins and waited patiently.
Seven days later, the seabed suddenly trembled faintly.
It's here!
Li Fan stomped down hard with both feet, his body instantly sinking into the sediment.
Simultaneously, he activated the Heaven-Swallowing, Earth-Devouring Grand Art and focused his senses.
From an unknown, unimaginably distant source, a surging force was transmitted through the earth veins. Slowly, it began to awaken this long-dormant earth vein node.
Without external interference, this revitalized node would push the sunken island back to the surface. But with Li Fan present now, such a thing would not come to pass.
Beneath his feet, it was as if a massive vortex had formed. Before the burgeoning earth vein power could even take shape, it was wholly sucked into Li Fan's body and converted into pure spiritual qi.
At the same time, the cultivation technique practiced by his avatar began to operate rapidly of its own accord. It was not the technique originally cultivated by the spy, Zhou Qing'ang, but another Nascent Soul technique Li Fan had obtained from the Heavenly Mechanisms Sect: the Heaven's Will Profound Pivot Art.
This ancient technique originally took an extremely long time to cultivate. But now, under the acceleration effect of the Heaven-Swallowing, Earth-Devouring Grand Art, progress skyrocketed at a terrifying pace.
The earth vein power came in an endless torrent, and Li Fan's avatar feasted without restraint.
What should have been a transformation that would have shaken the Congyun Sea was thus quietly erased from existence, unknown to anyone.
In moments, the avatar's cultivation had reached the bottleneck of the early-stage Golden Core realm. Due to the existence of the Heavenly Tribulation, no matter how fast the Heaven's Will Profound Pivot Art operated, his cultivation could advance no further.
Li Fan frowned slightly but did not stop the absorption process. Even if the earth vein power he consumed now was completely wasted, he felt not the slightest pang of regret. The spiritual power converted by the Heaven-Swallowing, Earth-Devouring Grand Art accumulated within the avatar's body, filling every part of its being.
Just as this avatar was filled to the brim and about to burst, Li Fan struck his own chest, and a pulling force erupted from his hand. He began to once more devour and convert the excess spiritual power from his own body.
In the ancient era, when Heavenly Tribulations did not exist, a situation like Li Fan's would not have occurred—the acquisition of spiritual power would simply fail to keep up with the speed of cultivation progress.
But the existence of a cultivation bottleneck now plunged Li Fan into a bizarre state.
All the power converted through devouring was used to accelerate the cultivation of his technique. Yet he still could not advance a single inch. The technique was already operating at a terrifying speed, like a raging tide assaulting an immensely sturdy dam, wave after wave.
Li Fan carefully experienced and recorded everything happening within his body.
Compared to the vast power of the earth veins, the strength of a mere Golden Core cultivator was utterly insignificant.
Yet this very power, which should have been enough to propel a Golden Core cultivator into the Nascent Soul realm at least, was being continuously eroded and consumed in the assault against the Heavenly Tribulation.
However, Li Fan's efforts were not in vain. After countless relentless impacts, the bottleneck finally, ever so slightly, began to loosen.
1. Decided to leave Qiankun(乾坤) transliterated. This is one of the most fundamental and poetic terms in Chinese cosmology, representing the duality that encompasses all existence. ☜