Even in his near-maddened state, Li Fan's body went rigid the instant those cultivators, who had ignored him all this while, turned their eyes to him simultaneously.
He stopped his mindless wailing and shifted slightly, trying to slip free of the weight of all those stares. Every gaze tracked the movement.
The eeriness of it sent a chill through his deadened heart. Then the chill hardened into viciousness.
Malice rising from his very core, Li Fan snatched up a heavy stone and hurled it with all his strength at the nearest Great Dao Sect disciple.
The disciple was only at the Golden Core realm, but Li Fan's cultivation was completely sealed, leaving him no stronger than a mortal. By any measure, he should have been no match.
Yet the cultivator made no move to dodge or defend. He simply let the stone cave in his skull.
With a dull thud, the man fell. Blood seeped from the ruined mess of his head.
But the extinguishing of a life changed nothing. The entire Great Dao Sect continued its operations as before.
"Senior Sister! Show yourself!" Li Fan roared.
Only the convergence of countless gazes answered him.
So Li Fan went mad. He grabbed the stone again and turned to the next disciple. He smashed and bludgeoned until he had slaughtered over a hundred of them. Finally, gasping and utterly spent, he collapsed to the ground.
It was then, lying there, that he made a horrifying discovery. The cultivators he had just pulverized into bloody chunks were alive again, their faces placid, as if his violent rampage had been nothing but a shared delusion.
Li Fan stared at his own hands, then at the stone, now darkened with too much blood. Confusion washed over him.
"Monsters... you're all monsters..." he whispered hoarsely.
"Now, now, how could we be monsters?"
The voice was achingly familiar—clear, pleasant, and crisp. Li Fan's head snapped up, searching for its source.
What he saw made his scalp crawl and his stomach heave with nausea. The voice, identical to Senior Sister Zhao's, was coming from the mouth of a portly, middle-aged male cultivator.
Terrified, Li Fan scrambled backward.
"Junior Brother, don't you think I look beautiful like this?"
The voice came again, this time from behind him.
Li Fan whirled around. A young, stunningly beautiful female cultivator with a perfect figure was gazing at him with tender affection.
"You've seen my old face every day for centuries. You must be tired of it. Isn't it nice to have a change?" she said softly.
Then a mature, voluptuous female cultivator pressed her curvaceous body against him. Her voice, husky and seductive, murmured close to his ear.
Li Fan glanced at her and shuddered violently.
Her face was unmistakably that of Madame Qingxi, the former Sect Leader's Dao Companion.
"Haven't you been longing for a taste of the Sect Leader's wife, Junior Brother? Didn't you once ask me to take her form for you? Now it's her true self offering to accompany you. Doesn't that stir your heart?"
She licked his earlobe, her breath hot against his skin.
Li Fan trembled and let her hands roam for a moment. Then, abruptly, he shoved her away and fled.
But soon he was surrounded again. A multitude of enchanting, graceful female cultivators pressed in from all sides, their eyes brimming with a unified, fervent desire to ascend to paradise with him.
And from all their mouths came the same seductive, teasing words that only Senior Sister Zhao could utter.
"Hehe, I understand. You think this isn't exciting enough, Junior Brother.
"That's fine. I can have all the female cultivators of the Great Dao Sect join you.
"Among them, there are many sisters, sisters-in-law, even mothers and daughters, masters and disciples..."
Just as Li Fan was about to be submerged beneath a sea of female bodies, he stopped struggling.
He slumped to the ground, pounded the earth with his fist, and wept.
"I don't want Lady Qingxi. I don't want any sisters.
"I just want my senior sister.
"Give my senior sister back to me..."
Like a child who had lost everything, Li Fan was utterly heartbroken.
As he wept, the surroundings gradually fell quiet.
The figures of the female cultivators vanished one by one.
Finally, after an indeterminate stretch of time, only a solitary, elegant figure in white remained.
She approached Li Fan and slowly knelt, gathering his sobbing, trembling body into her embrace.
"Junior Brother, you will always be like a child who never grows up."
Li Fan went rigid. He jerked his head up and looked clearly at the face before him.
"Se... Senior Sister?"
"Good boy..."
Li Fan wrapped his arms around Senior Sister Zhao and clung to her desperately.
Senior Sister Zhao did not scorn him for his long confinement, his disheveled state, or his unpleasant odor.
Like fish and water, they merged. Their spirits intertwined in ecstasy.
The Heaven and Earth Conjoining Ode.
"Back then, within the ruins of the Xuantian Sect, we found four techniques.
"Besides the Heaven and Earth Conjoining Ode that we cultivated together, I practiced the Soul-Severing Divine Reflection Technique, and you practiced the Heaven's Lament, Earth's Anguish Scripture. That makes only three.
"As for the fourth technique, I simply cannot remember it.
"In fact, over all these years, I have subconsciously ignored its very existence.
"Senior Sister, you became like this because of that technique, didn't you?"
After their passionate union, the desire in Li Fan's eyes vanished. His tone turned cold and detached as he asked the question outright.
Senior Sister Zhao showed no surprise. She stretched lazily and said, "So you finally noticed, Junior Brother? That really shouldn't be."
After a pause, she spoke the name of the technique: "Only I Remain Through the Ages."
Only I Remain Through the Ages...
Li Fan repeated the name silently, his gaze unreadable as he watched the members of the Great Dao Sect reappear one by one across the mountains and plains.
"Senior Sister, was it worth it?"
Senior Sister Zhao scoffed. "Worth it? What's wrong with how I am now?
"One is me, and I am all. A myriad bodies, yet a single mind!
"I have never felt better in my entire life!"
She rose abruptly, the robes of the Great Dao Sect leader materializing upon her.
She looked down with disdain and declared, "I alone am the Great Dao Sect!"
As if in echo, every cultivator within the Great Dao Sect spoke as one.
"I... am... the Great Dao Sect!"
Li Fan felt the words resonate deep within his core, though his expression remained unchanged.
"When did it begin? Ji Changxi?" he asked.
"It was him," Senior Sister Zhao replied with a slight nod.
"Do you remember? When we reported the news about the Immortal Plague, we submitted samples of our blood.
"That was when he detected the traces of the Xuantian Sect technique we cultivated."