As Li Fan’s body temperature rose, the form of Crimson Flame grew distinct once more within his sea of consciousness.
But even when Li Fan pushed the Xuanhuang Heart Refinement Sutra to its absolute limit, ignoring the faint charred scent that began to emanate from his own body, he was still inexplicably forced out of his meditative state at the very moment the Crimson Flame phantom spirit was about to take form.
Is the heat too intense, exceeding my body’s tolerance? Li Fan pondered, then searched the Tianxuan Mirror for medicines that could resist extreme heat.
He spent 10 contribution points to purchase a single Iceheart Pill.
After consuming it, Li Fan began his attempts anew.
This time, the moment the searing sensation from visualizing Crimson Flame appeared, a cold aura simultaneously welled up from his dantian.
This aura circulated throughout his body, suppressing the heat.
Freed from the distraction of physical discomfort, Li Fan focused his mind on coalescing the Crimson Flame phantom spirit.
But, it was still useless!
The phantom spirit still shattered at the final moment before formation.
It was as if some unseen force deliberately obstructed it, preventing the phantom spirit from fully manifesting.
After more than a dozen attempts, the effects of the Iceheart Pill began to fade.
Li Fan stopped.
The Soul Arbiters of heaven and earth are truly extraordinary. Even creating a phantom spirit modeled after one is impossible...
There must be some rule or restriction at play here that I’m unaware of.
Li Fan thought for a moment, then searched the Tianxuan Mirror for information related to the Soul Arbiters of heaven and earth.
As he expected, the Tianxuan Mirror notified him that his permission level was insufficient to access such knowledge.
For a time, Li Fan’s plan to coalesce the Crimson Flame phantom spirit reached an impasse.
Yet, he had no intention of giving up.
Greater restrictions implied greater rewards upon success.
The might of the Soul Arbiters of heaven and earth was vividly clear in his memory; even obtaining a mere ten-thousandth of their power would be immensely significant.
However, the specific method to achieve this required deeper contemplation.
And so, Li Fan kept the Assisted Cultivation Mode active, meditating deeply on the problem.
One day, two days, three days...
As time passed, his contribution points burned away bit by bit.
Finally, after seven days, Li Fan opened his eyes.
The Soul Arbiters of heaven and earth were the manifestations of specific laws of the world.
If the “Flame” of Crimson Flame represented a law related to fire, then what special meaning did “Crimson” hold?
Besides Crimson Flame, were there other “Flames”?
Li Fan immediately began to experiment.
He still visualized the Soul Arbiter of heaven and earth, its form and aura identical to his memory of Crimson Flame.
Only this time, he changed its color from crimson to green.
This time, the phantom spirit formed successfully. But it was exceedingly weak, like an empty shell, completely lacking any power to harm an enemy.
Li Fan dispersed the nascent phantom spirit in his sea of consciousness, then tried again.
This time, he changed the color from green to black.
Like Crimson Flame, the Black Flame phantom spirit failed to form. The difference was that visualizing Black Flame did not produce the intense scorching sensation associated with Crimson Flame.
After trying every color he could conceive, he discovered that there were essentially four outcomes.
The first was that they were unable to form, and accompanied by a sensation of searing heat during visualization, like Crimson Flame.
The second was that they were able to form, but were hollow and powerless, like Green Flame.
The third was that they were unable to form, with no special phenomena occurring during the process, like Black Flame.
And the fourth was the most unique outcome.
Within Li Fan’s sea of consciousness, a phantom nearly identical to Crimson Flame slowly coalesced.
Except its color was blue.
As the Blue Flame phantom spirit gradually manifested, the temperature around Li Fan’s body began to drop sharply.
Layers of frost spread outward from the ground where he sat.
His hair and eyebrows were dusted with white rime, and his body grew stiff as ice.
Even the ceaselessly operating Xuanhuang Heart Refinement Sutra slowed under its influence, as if on the verge of stalling completely.
Li Fan’s heartbeat grew slower and slower, and his vitality faded rapidly.
Yet his consciousness sank into a peculiar state.
It was as if his soul had left his body, observing the changes in his physical form from an outsider’s perspective, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
Li Fan had a feeling that in this state, even if his body were destroyed and he faced immediate death and the dissolution of his Dao, he would feel no fear.
This was a state of absolute calm and rationality.
It was in this state that Li Fan silently watched as his body was completely encased in ice.
It seemed to be plunged into absolute zero, falling into utter stillness and silence.
Simultaneously, within Li Fan’s sea of consciousness, the Blue Flame phantom spirit fully took form.
The temperature did not rise, yet vitality swiftly returned to Li Fan’s body, as though the extreme cold could no longer affect him.
With a thought from Li Fan, the Blue Flame in his sea of consciousness flickered slightly, and the intense cold vanished in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, Li Fan returned to normal, emerging from that state of absolute rationality.
The extreme cold felt like an illusion, leaving no trace behind.
Is this the power of Blue Flame?
In his sea of consciousness, the nascent Blue Flame phantom spirit fell into slumber. But Li Fan knew he could awaken it at any time to reenter that state.
The four scenarios encountered while visualizing flames of different colors likely correspond to the four states of the Soul Arbiters of heaven and earth.
After some contemplation, Li Fan formed his hypothesis.
Soul Arbiters were the manifestations of the Heavenly Dao’s laws. At the same time, cultivators in this world could refine these Soul Arbiters to attain the Dao Unity realm.
Thus, during the earlier visualization process, those phantoms that could take form but possessed no power likely represented the absence of such Soul Arbiters in existence.
Those that could not take form, like Crimson Flame, likely still belonged within the system of the Heavenly Dao’s laws. Though he could invoke their power, he could not claim ownership.
Those like Black Flame had likely already been refined by Dao Unity cultivators and no longer existed within this world’s system of laws.
So what did Blue Flame represent?
A law on the verge of being born?
Does this mean that soon, somewhere in the cultivation world, the true Soul Arbiter, Blue Flame, will descend? Li Fan fell into deep thought.
After a long while, Li Fan let out a slow breath, pushing his various conjectures about the Soul Arbiters to the back of his mind.
Though he had not succeeded in coalescing the Crimson Flame phantom spirit, he had serendipitously visualized the Blue Flame phantom spirit instead.
Though their attributes were polar opposites, Blue Flame’s power seemed no less formidable than Crimson Flame’s.
His heart surging with delight, Li Fan struck while the iron was hot, resuming his cultivation of the Nether Spirit Illusion Art.
He sought to nurture and strengthen the Blue Flame phantom spirit, to forge it into a weapon capable of striking others with divine sense.
Time flowed onward, measured only by the rhythm of his cultivation.
It wasn’t long before Li Fan was abruptly ejected from the Assisted Cultivation Mode.
The prolonged session had drained his resources; his contribution points had dwindled once more, leaving him with barely over a hundred.