The fall of a Qi Refinement cultivator was far less spectacular than that of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
There were no dazzling pyrotechnics of a Curio of heaven and earth, only two crimson clouds that abruptly manifested across the sky.
"Qi Refinement cultivator Sikong Yi practiced the Dao for thirty-five years. In the Congyun Sea, he was slain by Qi Refinement cultivator Li Fan...”
"Qi Refinement cultivator Baili Chen practiced the Dao for three years. In the Congyun Sea, he was slain by Qi Refinement cultivator Li Fan..."
"Now, his body perishes and his Dao disperses, returning to heaven!"
Beneath the flame-scorched clouds, Li Fan stood silently, fingers tracing the Heaven-Swapping Token in his hand.
It took a long while for him to suppress the surge of greed rising within him.
A fine treasure, but unfortunately... It is not my path.
The Heaven-Swapping Token was a supreme treasure of the Heaven-Swapping Sect.
The Heaven-Swapping Sect was a hidden sect that had existed since ancient times.
Unlike other sects that established territories and widely accepted disciples, the Heaven-Swapping Sect had no fixed headquarters, and each generation often had only a single successor.
Thus, when the Great Reformation arrived, ushering in an apocalyptic scene of bloody storms for all other sects, it had little effect on this sect.
The reason the Heaven-Swapping Sect could persist for nearly ten thousand years with only a single member, never having its lineage severed, was largely due to its unique technique.
The name Heaven-Swapping was a combination of two parts: Heaven-Stealing and Sun-Swapping.[1]
Heaven-Stealing: Practitioners of the technique could use essence blood and some special materials to create a special avatar.
Unlike external incarnations created through typical techniques, this avatar not only possessed its own unique appearance, aura, spirit, realm, and cultivation, but even had its own independent providence. It could be completely regarded as another person.
Sun-Swapping: When creating the avatar, if one added the remains of a deceased cultivator, or mixed in the essence blood of a still-living cultivator, one could strip away a portion of the target's innate talent, providence, and other attributes, grafting them onto the avatar.
Of course, if these were all, it still wouldn't demonstrate the true power of the Heaven-Swapping Sect.
The Heaven-Swapping Art, combined with the token in Li Fan's hand, formed the complete system.
This Heaven-Swapping Token was forged thousands of years ago by Sikong Yue, the 38th generation successor of the Heaven-Swapping Sect.
She had witnessed the Great Reformation descend with her own eyes, and watched countless cultivators slaughter each other. In that period, lives were as cheap as ants.
Deeply terrified, she urgently sought a perfect method to preserve her life.
Thus, after a century of painstaking research, studying countless artifact forging methods, she finally created this Heaven-Swapping Token.
The token had numerous uses:
First, it held an extremely spacious storage dimension within.
Second, after being refined, the token could be freely transferred between the owner’s true self and avatar, ignoring spatial distance limitations.
Third and most importantly, through the Heaven-Swapping Art, one could transfer the life essence, both of the avatar and the true self, into this token.
So long as the token remained undestroyed, even if the true self and avatar were killed, the user could consume the essence blood accumulated consistently within the token to reconstruct a new body, thereby achieving "resurrection."
Simply put, after the technique was fully cultivated, both the true self and the avatar presented to outsiders were simply empty shells.
That Heaven-Swapping Token was the true, essential body.
After Sikong Yue's unorthodox modifications, this technique grew rather uncanny. Yet, it was highly effective.
For thousands of years, relying on this bizarre technique, disciples of the Heaven-Swapping Sect could escape unscathed from any perilous situation.
Thus, the Heaven-Swapping Sect endured and thrived for millennia.
That was, until Sikong Yi encountered an anomaly like Li Fan, who could go back in time itself.
The Heaven-Swapping Art was not without its flaws; it possessed several critical weaknesses.
For instance, the true self and the avatar had to remain within a certain proximity. The farther apart they were, the more the avatar's power waned. If the distance exceeded the limit, the avatar would only retain early-stage Qi Refinement realm cultivation.
Furthermore, since their life essence was tethered to the token, when a disciple of the Heaven-Swapping Sect died, a fragment of their soul would remain trapped within the token, unable to find release.
These soul fragments often retained crucial shards of their memories. In moments of crisis, the token's new owner could even release them to confront enemies.
Li Fan extended his divine sense into the Heaven-Swapping Token.
The vast storage space within was mostly empty, save for Sikong Yi and another blurred, indistinct soul fragment that drifted about aimlessly.
His divine sense coalesced into a giant hand, seizing these two remnants and sifting through their lingering memories.
After a long while, Li Fan finally understood why this millennia-old legacy of the Heaven-Swapping Sect had fallen into such dire straits.
The origin of it all traced back to Sikong Yi's so-called master, Sikong Bo.
Over the centuries, the Heaven-Swapping Sect had navigated countless dangers unscathed, which led to growing arrogance and increasingly reckless behavior.
By Sikong Bo's generation, this hubris had reached its peak.
On a distant continent, having advanced to the Foundation Establishment realm, Sikong Bo grew dissatisfied with the avatar he had previously created.
He decided to gather materials and craft a new one.
It was then, in a remote mountain village, that he encountered a child of five or six.
This child possessed an Innate Immortal Physique. Not only was he preternaturally strong, but his cultivation speed was terrifyingly fast.
At such a tender age, he had already reached the final-stage Qi Refinement realm and was preparing to establish his Dao Foundation.
Sikong Bo was utterly captivated.
After observing in secret for a time, Sikong Bo discovered that the child's providence was even more extraordinary: every time the boy ventured alone into the deep mountains to hunt, he would return with various natural treasures and rare materials.
If he could strip this child of his providence, the resulting avatar would be truly formidable!
Thus, blinded by greed, Sikong Bo chose a night when the child was deep in sleep to attempt to steal his essence blood.
Unbeknownst to him, this child had already been earmarked by a Nascent Soul powerhouse.
This powerhouse, nearing the end of his lifespan and seeing no hope for further breakthrough, had been searching far and wide for a suitable vessel to possess.
Coincidentally, he had discovered this exceptionally gifted child.
Ordinary possession methods would more or less damage the foundation of the host, something the Nascent Soul cultivator, who still hoped to advance further, could not allow.
So he employed an extreme method: transforming himself into a Curio of heaven and earth, and waiting for the child to establish his Dao Foundation so he could merge with him perfectly.
Indeed, according to Sikong Bo's memory fragment, humans could indeed be refined into Curios of heaven and earth.
Or rather, a significant portion of the Foundation Establishment Curios that appeared in the world were transformed from fallen cultivators.
The phrase "Dao disperses, returning to heaven" after a cultivator's death was far from empty words.
A cultivator's "Dao," transformed by the world over countless years, gradually coalesced into various unique Curios based on their temperament in life and the nature of the techniques they practiced, eventually re-emerging into the world.
In life, techniques could not be shared; in death, one was still put to full use.
Such was this world's attitude toward cultivators.
1. The name of the sect is 偷天换日 (tōu tiān huàn rì), an idiom which directly translates to “to steal the sky and put up a fake sun.” It means a devious, grand-scale scheme to deceive people by secretly altering the very foundation of reality itself, and manipulate everyone's perception of the truth without them ever knowing ☜