Chapter 573: Today I Learn The Path To The Dao
The statue was a bizarre thing.
Five faces, ten arms, all sharing a single torso.
Each face wore a completely different expression.
One had downcast eyes, its features carved with sorrow and compassion for the world.
Another was stern and severe, glaring straight ahead with barely contained fury.
And one of them... its brow was faintly furrowed, its look delicate and pitiable. Yet the longer one looked, the more clearly one could make out a coquettish, alluring charm beneath that feigned reluctance.
It was Senior Sister Zhao.
A sudden warmth surged in Li Fan's chest, and a tangle of intimate, distracting thoughts sprouted unbidden.
For a fleeting moment, he could even hear her soft whisper at his ear.
Something's wrong!
The alarm jolted him free of the illusion, and cold sweat broke out across his skin.
When he looked again, the vivid expressions were gone. The features of all five faces had gone indistinct, their details blurred past recognition.
"What is this?" Li Fan asked, feigning calm as he retrieved the ten-armed statue.
The black-robed cultivator's face lit up with fervor at the sight of the multicolored statue in Li Fan's hand. "This is a Heavenly Venerable World Manifestation Statue," he explained, "and of the highest grade at that. It is a manifestation of the will of the five Heavenly Venerables. You cannot directly petition the Venerables through it, but you can use it to establish contact with the Five Pivot Court.
"The Heavenly Venerables do not generally intervene in mundane affairs. Those are managed by the Five Pivot Court on their behalf.
"When you require the coordination of our Five Elders Council, you can transmit information directly to the Five Pivot Court through this statue.
"It can only be used once. Afterward, the statue will vanish on its own..."
Li Fan listened and nodded slowly. He scrutinized the ten-armed statue one final time before storing it away within the Void Matrix Stone.
With the transaction complete, he turned to leave.
"Fellow Daoist, please wait!" The black-robed cultivator called after him.
"What now?" Li Fan narrowed his eyes, his expression cooling.
The cultivator waved his hands quickly. "Haha, please don't misunderstand, Fellow Daoist. There is one more small favor we'd like to ask. The remuneration will be absolutely substantial, of course."
"What is it?" Li Fan's expression eased a fraction, though his voice remained cool.
The black-robed cultivator produced a slip of paper. Li Fan took it and read several lines of small script.
The gist of it: roughly a year ago, the Myriad Immortals Alliance had excavated a slumbering cultivator from the ruins of the ancient Purple Firmament Sect. The Five Elders Council wished to request the Heaven-Toppling Society's assistance in investigating this cultivator's true identity and current whereabouts.
Purple Firmament Sect.
The familiar name caught Li Fan's attention, stirring something in him.
He gave no outward reaction. "You call this a 'small favor'?" He snorted, and a flame sparked at his fingertip, reducing the paper slip to ashes.
The black-robed cultivator offered an awkward smile.
"We'll do our best," Li Fan said. "We can't make any guarantees. The difficulty of this matter is no less than that of the array diagram."
He turned and walked out, his words still hanging in the air of the secret chamber.
The black-robed cultivator stared after him, his expression thoughtful.
***
Li Fan was exceptionally vigilant on the return journey. He was carrying a treasure of considerable value now, and had to be on guard.
Fortunately, security within the Myriad Immortals Alliance's territory held, and he made it back without incident.
"Zhou Qing'ang" arrived smoothly in Congyun Immortal City.
Only once he was completely safe did the sensation finally reach him.
The transaction was complete. The clause in the contract forbidding either party from harming the other had become void at that same moment.
In its wake came a feeling of loss, as if something inside him had simply vanished.
Li Fan spent a long time trying to grasp what form the contract's power had taken, but could not, and finally shook his head and let it go.
Rather than rushing to assess the gains from the transaction, he first considered the Five Elders Council's recent request.
The moment he had heard the words "Purple Firmament Sect" and "slumbering cultivator," the name Zhang Qianmo had flashed through his mind.
He was already aware of the Myriad Immortals Alliance's widespread excavation of ancient sect ruins in their search for slumbering cultivators.
Back in Anchor Year 11, when he had commissioned Jiao Xiuyuan to locate the Mini Medicine King Cauldrons and received no reply for an extended time, he had gone to inquire in person. Jiao Xiuyuan had described the scene he had witnessed and shared his own speculation. Li Fan had asked him then to investigate the identity of the ancient cultivator.
Two years had passed since, with nothing to show for it.
That alone said a great deal about how unusual the matter was. Jiao Xiuyuan was likely at the Dao Unity realm. He had avatars distributed throughout the Myriad Immortals Alliance and an extensive information network, yet even he had come up empty.
It isn't necessarily Senior Brother Zhang. Senior Brother Zhang cultivates the Purple Core Nirvana Method, constantly reincarnating. By now, he should have been reborn as that Martial Madman. A supreme method like that shouldn't have such a glaring flaw.
If his original body still existed in the world while he was reincarnating, it would be no different from leaving his vital point exposed.
After working through it, Li Fan set aside his initial speculation.
Then, aside from Senior Brother Zhang, who else from the Purple Firmament Sect could have survived until now?
He considered it at length and reached no answer.
In ancient times, the Purple Firmament Sect had been a second-rate sect. It had only a handful of Dao Unity cultivators and no Eternal Life realm powerhouse to anchor it.
Based on the memories of Li Chen, whose identity he had once assumed, the sect's elders back then simply hadn't seemed like figures capable of enduring the vast eons and surviving to the present.
My true self has currently abandoned the identity of a Heavenly Mechanisms Sect cultivator and carries no items, so I can't contact Jiao Xiuyuan for now. Better to wait until after the great battle is over.
He shelved the matter.
Taking a piece of Man's Dao Stardust from the stone matrix, he set it before him and swallowed a Dao Comprehension Pill before he began to examine it.
The seemingly ordinary black stone emitted a silvery stellar radiance. When his divine sense made contact, countless images flooded his mind at once.
It was the story of a female cultivator who, with immense perseverance, had cultivated for five hundred years to achieve a single goal: making her beloved change his mind. A common tale of worldly, unrequited love.
Unlike most such stories, however, this female cultivator ultimately paid the price by ascending to become a star. And the male cultivator who had never once cared for her was, at last, moved. For the rest of his life, he looked up at the night sky and wept, unable to stop himself, consumed by regret.
Li Fan's expression did not change. He set the piece aside and reached for another.
The story held within this second piece of Man's Dao Stardust was rather more ordinary.
It was the story of a cultivator whose closest kin lacked the aptitude to cleanse the Miasma from their bodies, and so were barred from cultivation entirely. He watched them age and die within decades. From that grief, he made a sweeping vow: that one day, all people under heaven would be free to walk the path of cultivation.
The vision was too vast to realize. So he scaled back his ambition, narrowing the scope from all people under heaven to the people of his own clan.
This cultivator ascended into the firmament, and from that moment on, his clan produced geniuses in every generation. In less than a century, they had become the preeminent power in their region.
Reversing innate aptitude.
A sharp light crossed Li Fan's eyes. Spiritual power gathered in his palm, and he closed his fist with sudden force.
The black stone shattered to dust, and the silver starlight was wholly absorbed into him.
In that instant, a multitude of profound insights flooded his mind. The principles of heaven and earth, complex and interwoven, formed a vast net—the very order upon which the world operated. One particular thread of that order shone with exceptional clarity in Li Fan's perception. It seemed almost within reach, its intricate patterns nearly visible.
In a flash, that slender thread expanded until it filled his entire vision, swelling to the size of a pillar holding up the sky. An exquisite aura radiated from it, intoxicating him. Things that had long resisted comprehension broke open in an instant of clarity.
He also discovered that thousands of faint filaments connected his own body to that colossal pillar.
Staring at those elusive, barely perceptible lines, an understanding struck him. In his current state, he was little more than a puppet manipulated by the pillar through these threads. But if one day his own power grew sufficiently strong, he might use those same threads as a conduit to twist the pillar itself.
So this is what it means to defy the principles of heaven and earth.
Boundless joy surged in him. Even his true body, secluded deep within the Congyun Sea Trench, trembled with excitement.
The path to eternal life he had yearned after through more than a hundred simulation cycles was now right before him.
He knew the gulf between understanding and true accomplishment was as vast as the distance between heaven and earth.
He knew that even the Heavenly Venerables of this world, by defying these principles, had attained only a semblance of eternal life.
And yet the harvest of this single moment filled Li Fan with immense satisfaction.
His spirit remained immersed in the experience, unaware of the passage of time. Only when the Man's Dao Stardust was fully spent and he surfaced from his epiphany did he feel that it had ended too soon.
He remained in a daze for a long while, savoring the experience, before he finally came back to himself.
When he checked the time out of habit, he was startled: what had felt like a brief interlude had been nearly a full year.
No wonder cultivators of the Eternal Life realm can't be bothered with worldly affairs. Only now do I understand what "time loses all meaning in cultivation" means. And this was just a glimpse, an incomplete perspective granted by the Man's Dao Stardust. If one could truly behold all the principles of heaven and earth and lose oneself in them entirely, a single session of secluded cultivation might consume decades.
After dwelling on it for a long time, Li Fan turned his attention to what had transpired in the world outside during his year of seclusion.
The communication spirit talisman for "Zhou Qing'ang" was practically bursting with messages from He Zhenghao and the others.
Li Fan didn't rush to reply. He sorted through them, searching for the most critical information.
The war in Tianling Province had not yet ended, but the fighting had eased considerably, and cultivators were now receiving some reports from the front lines.
The effect of the Xuantian Spirit-Sealing Array Diagram Li Fan had submitted had been immediate. Just ten days after the transaction between the two sides was completed, during a medium-scale skirmish, the Myriad Immortals Alliance had attempted their old trick: deploying the Xuantian Spirit-Sealing Array to crush and slaughter the Five Elders Council's forces.
Their opponents were already prepared. A layer of crimson protective light manifested around every single one of the Five Elders Council's cultivators. When green and red light clashed, nothing happened at all.
As the Myriad Immortals Alliance forces stood frozen in shock, a brutal close-quarters melee erupted.