Xiao Heng opened his mouth, lips moving slightly, on the verge of saying something. But he caught Li Fan's stern expression and stayed silent.
Zhao Wen, straightforward as ever, didn't trouble himself with such thoughts. His initial shock faded quickly, replaced by open, uncomplicated admiration.
And so the cultivation paths of the young group were tentatively settled. The sole exception was Su Xiaomei, still in swaddling clothes.
Her talent was extraordinary, but she was simply too young. She could barely babble; expecting her to cultivate was out of the question. Still, between the spiritual treasures Li Fan had purchased for her protection and the watchful care of Xiao Heng and Su Changyu, her health was well secured. If anything, she would likely grow even faster than in her previous lifetimes.
Seven days passed. The children were just beginning to find their footing in a proper cultivation routine when Li Fan gathered them again.
"Do you know where you are?" he asked.
The days of adjustment had worn off the worst of their timidity, and they clamored over one another to answer.
"The cultivation world!"
"Correct." Li Fan nodded. "But do you know that your ancestors were originally from this very place?"
The children gaped. "Immortal Master, were our ancestors... immortals too?"
Li Fan told them the story: how, in ancient times, their forebears had been driven from their homeland because they carried the Immortal-Mortal Miasma.
"They were nothing more than humans who happened to be a little stronger. And on the strength of that alone, they acted without restraint, treating their own kin with cruelty.
"Why should they monopolize this vast, beautiful world teeming with spiritual qi, while you are condemned to live out generation after generation in cramped minor worlds—places not only starved of spiritual qi but threatened by apocalyptic dangers?
"Because you are not strong enough."
Li Fan's gaze swept across them. Subtly, he drew on the power of his Seven-Apertures Exquisite Heart, lending his words an extra edge of persuasion.
"Only when you are strong enough will this world respect you and heed your voice.
"All humans from the minor worlds must unite.
"Everything that was taken must be reclaimed with your own hands!"
With each rallying cry, the children's indignation swelled. Their hatred hardened and united, and more than one of them looked ready to march against the cultivation world that very moment.
"Of course, we must also be clear-eyed about the gap between us and the cultivation world. Our overall strength is far too weak, and our cultivators far too few.
"Therefore, we must endure. We must lie low.
"We must seek out fresh blood to strengthen our organization."
At some point during his address, Li Fan had quietly shifted from "you" to "we."
"It has been some days since you left home. I know some of you miss your parents.
"That is perfectly understandable. I am not an unreasonable man."
He gestured to Tian Yang, standing quietly to one side. "Once your cultivation bears fruit, and you are capable of defeating him in a fight, I will permit you to return to your homelands. What is more, I will grant you the authority to recruit members from those homelands into our Myriad Worlds Coalition."
The children lit up at once. Who wouldn't want to master immortal arts and return home in glorious triumph? And besides, this peculiar adult seemed a little simple-minded; he didn't look particularly hard to manage.
With that new hope in hand, the children threw themselves into their cultivation with increasing diligence.
Li Fan observed these future cornerstones of the Myriad Worlds Coalition in private and nodded inwardly in satisfaction.
He had no genuine intention of attacking the cultivation world or toppling the Myriad Immortals Alliance's rule. But his highly profitable transaction with the Empire had given him an idea.
He could use the name of the Myriad Worlds Coalition to continue reaching out to minor worlds with unique power systems, and reap enormous returns in the process.
The same level of power held very different value in a minor world versus the Xuanhuang World.
Those one thousand Beast Soul Pearls were a perfect illustration. Five hundred Foundation Establishment, four hundred and ninety Golden Core, and nine Nascent Soul cultivators. To field a force of that combat strength within the Xuanhuang World would cost far more than ten million contribution points.
It was precisely because the Empire was desperate to break away from the Xuanhuang World and urgently needed a massive influx of contribution points that Li Fan had walked away with such an easy, substantial gain.
What held true for the Empire would hold true for other minor worlds as well.
The problem was that these grotto-heavens and minor worlds all kept themselves hidden. Establishing contact with them demanded a great deal of manpower. Nurturing these children was therefore not just useful; it was necessary.
And as the practitioner of the Mountain-Sitting Art, the stronger they grew, the greater the benefits that would flow back to him.
Li Fan quietly instructed Tian Yang not to be too hard on them, to let the youngsters win once their combat strength reached a level equivalent to the Golden Core realm. Then he activated Formless Killing Mechanism for surveillance and made his way back to Myriad Immortals Island.
In his absence, the Myriad Immortals Alliance had maintained a composed surface, but undercurrents had long been churning beneath it.
Beyond drafting large numbers of cultivators, they had also issued a recruitment decree: any cultivator with achievements in the array path could answer the call, no standard entrance examination required.
They would receive all benefits equivalent to an array master of the Strategy Array Hall, and exceptional performers stood to earn rewards as extraordinary as Dao Unity-level techniques.
The array path prodigies of the world rolled up their sleeves.
With nearly every array master converging on the Myriad Immortals Alliance's headquarters, such a spectacle was impossible to conceal from the Five Elders Council. Along the borderlands, the Council launched provocations and probes in rapid succession. Reports of exposed Five Elders Council spies being executed surfaced intermittently.
Both sides remained cautious about open war for now, but beneath the stillness, a massive storm was slowly gathering force.
Li Fan sensed something was off. If the sole objective were to complete the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array ahead of schedule, this many array masters would not be needed. Nascent Soul array masters could not even meaningfully contribute to deducing the Soul-Locking Array's structural diagram.
Chief Lu, what are you scheming?
Li Fan's eyes sharpened as he combed rapidly through recent events in the Tianxuan Mirror, searching for some clues.
After a long while, his gaze stopped on what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary piece of information.
Foundation Establishment cultivator Guo Yezhong had perished, killed violently during a failed breakthrough attempt to the Golden Core realm.
Guo Yezhong? Why did this man die early?
Li Fan remembered him with sharp clarity. In his past life, Guo Yezhong had claimed first place in the Soul-Locking Array construction competition through the simple trick of skimming a percentage of points from each completed array. For him to die so obscurely in this life was undeniably strange.
Li Fan began tracing the events leading up to Guo Yezhong's death, hunting for anything out of place.
After several days of effort and an enormous expenditure of contribution points, he finally heard a possible explanation for the accident from one of Guo Yezhong's close friends.