Chapter 1020: Momentary Ascension and Sealing of the Void

Li Fan was just one step away from fully comprehending that divine ability, yet he remained stalled at this threshold for a full half-month. This was to ensure his mental resolve would not be influenced by the Heavenly Dao of the Xuanhuang Realm.

"A gentleman is not born different; he is adept at utilizing external resources," Li Fan murmured slowly, now enlightened. His figure flickered, and he instantly appeared outside the Spiritwood Realm. With the nascent divine ability now complete, Li Fan needed to find a suitable place to test its power.

"This technique, 'Feigned Heavenly Dao Deception,' bears a striking resemblance to my Formless Killing Intent," he thought. "Both operate by borrowing the mandate of Heaven for one's own use. Though they allow one to wield heavenly authority, there's also the risk of being discovered and incurring heavenly retribution. For the initial test, I need to find a place where the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao is relatively weak." As Li Fan thought this, his figure transformed into a blur in the air, heading straight for the Cloud Sea.

The Cloud Sea is a region where fragments of the Heavenly Law Realm have not yet fully merged with the Xuanhuang Realm. Like a splinter embedded deep in flesh, the Xuanhuang Realm can only fully assimilate it through a great cleansing, the "Crimson Flame Scouring of the Sea," which will occur several years later. In the Cloud Sea, the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao is considerably weaker than in the native prefectures.

Before long, Li Fan arrived at an uninhabited sea region. Standing atop the clouds, he held his breath and concentrated, then began to enact the newly comprehended "Feigned Heavenly Dao Deception." The world in Li Fan's eyes instantly transformed. It was as if he had returned to the root of heaven and earth, where countless horizontally and vertically interwoven threads constituted all things in creation. Everything within this vast net operated according to the rules of these threads – the existences known as the Laws of Heaven and Earth. Li Fan's physical body seemed to vanish into thin air, and his spiritual will slowly merged into this vast net. In that instant, pressure from countless interwoven threads nearly tore Li Fan's divine soul apart. In that fleeting glimpse, Li Fan caught sight of countless fundamental laws governing the operation of heaven and earth, and also seemed to perceive countless events unfolding within the Xuanhuang Realm. However, his fusion with the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth lasted only for that brief moment before Li Fan deliberately stopped it. If he had continued, his divine soul, unable to withstand the immense power, would have been torn into countless fragments and then assimilated into these myriad laws of heaven and earth. Perhaps a "Heavenly Dao Li" would be born in the future, but that would no longer be Li Fan himself.

After withdrawing from the state of fusion with heaven and earth, Li Fan, seizing the moment before the profound enlightenment in his heart faded, once again activated the Deception technique. This time, he did not aim for his divine soul to merge with heaven and earth. He merely attempted to connect the crisscrossing threads of laws between heaven and earth to himself. With each thread he touched, Li Fan felt as if a great mountain was pressing down on him. He pushed the Limitless Fullness and Emptiness alongside the Soul Burning Technique to their limits to alleviate the burden on his body. Li Fan continuously connected the threads of law into his body, like drawing threads from the vast net of heaven and earth to form a self-entangled ball of yarn. Only when Li Fan felt he had reached the limit of what his body could endure did he stop connecting further.

"Is this the weight of the Laws of Heaven and Earth...?" At this moment, Li Fan felt as if he were pinned beneath the Five Elements Mountain, unable to move. Only when experiencing the majestic power of heaven and earth firsthand could one truly grasp its terrifying might. "The Longevity Realm requires overturning these great mountains and reversing the principles of heaven and earth..." he thought. "I still have quite a way to go." Li Fan's eyes flickered as he temporarily suppressed this thought, then began to perceive his own state.

Although he was unable to move, Li Fan's vision at this moment was broader than ever before. He saw more and farther than when he had used the Azure Sea Pearl to observe the Cloud Sea transforming from a vast ocean into dry land. From his elevated, bird's-eye view, all five prefectures surrounding the Cloud Sea lay beneath his gaze. All living beings appeared as ants, laid bare before him. Furthermore, countless murmurs of unknown meaning sounded in his ears. These didn't emanate from some unspeakable monster, but rather from the self-operating mechanisms of heaven and earth. This was the so-called "Great Dao without sound." Heaven and Earth were like a continuously operating, highly precise machine. During the process of their evolution, heaven and earth constantly emitted their own resonant hums. However, ordinary people could not detect them at all. Only someone like Li Fan, who had become a part of the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth, could hear fragments within the diverse Cosmic Sounds.

Being in the Cloud Sea, Li Fan carefully distinguished that most of these murmurs concerned the natural evolution of the Cloud Sea itself. Among them, the most prominent was the "Crimson Flame Scouring of the Sea" that was currently brewing. Li Fan also heard the arrangements made by Heaven and Earth regarding the "Azure Wind Trapping Sword." But to Li Fan's surprise, the Cosmic Sound of the "Azure Wind Trapping Sword" only ranked third amidst this cacophony. And the second... Li Fan followed the directional source with his gaze. It was an extremely deep, shadowed place directly beneath Myriad Immortals Island, a place so dark that even his heavenly perspective was still obscured. The Soul of Heaven and Earth, named "Golden Seal," coiled like a chain, constantly suppressing the darkness below. "The Tunnel to the Netherworld?" A term instantly surfaced in Li Fan's mind.

In his 115th life, Myriad Immortals Island was entirely seized by the Five Elders Assembly, and the Tunnel to the Netherworld beneath it was consequently exposed. While serving as acting city lord and receiving the task of rebuilding the immortal city, he was also commanded by the First Grand Strategist to set up the Profound Heaven Nether-Locking Array to reseal the Tunnel to the Netherworld. "So," he mused, "as the Tunnel to the Netherworld continuously expanded, Myriad Immortals Island's suppression had already slowly lost its effectiveness. Perhaps this is also why anomalies frequently appear in the Cloud Sea. Heaven and Earth had already quietly begun to deal with it without any cultivators noticing." Li Fan suddenly understood.

The Profound Heaven Nether-Locking Array's style was extremely similar to that of the Profound Heaven Sect. According to the relevant information Li Fan found in the Heavenly Profound Mirror, all sources agreed that it indeed originated from the ancient Profound Heaven Sect's heritage. However, with Li Fan's current understanding of formation arts, he could tell at a glance that while this array was ingenious, it clearly had not reached the level of an immortal-grade formation. It was even far inferior to the Great Array of Reversing Life and Death. "Anomalies are born during the process of the Xuanhuang Realm merging with other immortal cultivation realms," he mused. "The Profound Heaven Sect already had this array. This indicates that at that time, the Xuanhuang Realm, using the Star-Crossing Grand Array to capture other worlds, had already begun to experience anomalous issues. However, the array's power level also suggests that the anomalies weren't severe back then; such a crude array was sufficient to deal with them. But as the number of merged worlds increased day by day, this Profound Heaven Nether-Locking Array has become somewhat inadequate."

Utilizing the spare computing power of the Dissolution Disc in his mind, Li Fan deduced a brand-new Nether-Locking Array with ten times the sealing capability in mere moments. Li Fan subtly shook his head. "After all these years, the Myriad Immortals Alliance still shows no ambition for improvement, treating millennium-old relics as treasures."