Chapter 1204: Purple Qi Enters the Starry Sky

“This clone was originally intended for the most critical moment,” Li Fan’s clone mused. “But now, it seems I have no choice but to act.”

Having been latent beside Wu Ninglu, Li Fan had a complete grasp of her actions and habits. His clone, controlling her body, found an excuse to leave the Sun family without arousing suspicion. After shaking off the pursuit of the Chen family, he went to a remote, deserted underground location in the wilderness. There, he gathered materials on the spot and began constructing stone puppets.

He intended to send these stone puppets to the border of the Xuanhuang Realm before the sixteen Dao Harmonization cultivators departed, so he could observe their escape method up close. With Li Fan's current mastery of formation arrays, he wasn't worried about being detected by the Myriad Immortals Alliance.

“They say one can’t be in two places at once, and though I’ve already dispersed myself quite a bit, it still feels insufficient.” Li Fan’s clone sighed with a hint of helplessness.

Counting carefully, his main body was hidden within the Deriving Law Jade space of the Protector Hall. His Saint Embryo had traveled to the far reaches of the Star Sea, probing the mysteries of the echoing stellar energy. His divine sense, associated with the Immeasurable Mirror, was too weak and lacked the necessary power. As for his Saint Emperor clone, it was inconveniently pulled into the Underworld by Venerable Yin. Therefore, his secretly hidden clone had to take action personally.

The situation in the Abyssal Sea would not be mentioned for now.

The day the Myriad Immortals Alliance completed their Dharma Transmission mission arrived sooner than Li Fan had expected. On the thirty-third day after Ethereal Flowing Crystals were listed as prohibited items, a brilliant rainbow suddenly appeared between the heavens and earth of the Xuanhuang Realm. It seemed to blend all the colors of the world, twisted and mesmerizing. Like a meteor flying in reverse, it pierced the firmament and swept away majestically.

Under the watchful eyes of all, the rainbow light tore open the Xuanhuang Realm's sky. The myriad afterglow it left behind lingered for a long time, pervading the sky for days. For the next half month, the Xuanhuang Realm's sky remained a colorful, mottled, bizarre, and dreamlike spectacle.

Some curious cultivators tried to capture these scattered rainbow lights. These lights surprisingly possessed a tangible form and could be collected and refined. Furthermore, they had the property of making objects emit similar colorful light. When they connected this to the Ethereal Flowing Crystals, which the Myriad Immortals Alliance had repeatedly and strictly forbidden discussion about, how could the cultivators not understand? This was Ethereal Flowing Crystal, used to forge realm-departing artifacts.

The revelation of the mystery did not cause any chaos. For most cultivators, they were unaware of the Immortal Ruins' existence, or even that the Xuanhuang Realm was fundamentally inescapable. They only knew that communication between the Xuanhuang Realm and the outside world had been severed for a long time, and speculated that the Myriad Immortals Alliance's action was to re-establish connections.

But these people were simply not important. The important cultivators, after realizing the truth, began to harbor different thoughts. Within the Myriad Immortals Alliance, undercurrents began to stir.

Let's rewind to when the vibrant rainbow light left the Xuanhuang Realm. Through the eyes of approximately a hundred stone puppets, Li Fan was able to see more clearly the entire process of how the rainbow light departed the Xuanhuang Realm. The moment it left the Xuanhuang Realm, its trajectory, as expected, suddenly deviated from a straight line and took a turn, veering in the direction of the Immortal Ruins.

However, it wasn't the entire rainbow. It was as if a lump of dough was being gradually stretched. Only a portion of the vibrant rainbow light had its trajectory forcibly altered by the Immortal Ruins' gravitational pull. The remainder continued to fly rapidly and unswervingly towards the depths of the Star Sea.

As the vibrant rainbow light continued its journey, more and more colors were attracted and fell towards the Immortal Ruins: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo... The disappearance of these colors also caused the rainbow light to gradually become monochromatic. Ultimately, only a stream of purple energy remained, flying solitarily into the unknown Star Sea. From the perspective of the Xuanhuang Realm below, it looked like a beam of light shot into the Star Sea, dispersing into various different colors. It was merely a slightly curious phenomenon, not even enough to provoke significant discussion.

But in Li Fan's eyes, this scene was almost nothing short of a miracle.

“It actually resisted the Immortal Ruins’ gravitational pull?!” Li Fan exclaimed mentally. “No, rather than resisting, it was more like delaying and neutralizing! By releasing a portion of the gravitational pull it experienced, it partially offset the force. Then, as layers were peeled away and it rapidly moved farther from the Immortal Ruins, the pull it felt became progressively weaker.”

“Countless precise calculations must have gone into achieving this feat! It wasn't a victory of sheer power, but of cleverness.”

In Li Fan's mind, the dynamic curve of the color separation played on a loop. It seemed to contain infinite mysteries. The Dao Transformation Stone crystal rapidly operated, attempting to deduce and reproduce it in his Sea of Consciousness. However, after only the yellow light separated, it became somewhat dizzy and couldn't sustain the effort. Feeling a hint of regret, he could only stop.

“So this is the method Dharma Transmission figured out?” he mused. “Elegant.” Li Fan could only offer these two words of appraisal.

“Ethereal Flowing Crystals should only be used for the separation of different colors. As for the primary force that allowed them to fly out of the Xuanhuang Realm, it should still be those sixteen Dao Harmonization cultivators. Under circumstances where the Longevity realm is bound to the Xuanhuang Realm’s heavens and earth, one shouldn’t be able to leave easily unless reaching a realm like Dharma Transmission. Dao Harmonization is already the highest combat power Xuanhuang can deploy. Although they were forcefully elevated by the Myriad Immortals Alliance, I can feel that the aura of those sixteen Dao Harmonization cultivators is not weak.”

Li Fan's thoughts churned. The scene of the vibrant rainbow light departing Xuanhuang still deeply stimulated him. Only when someone effortlessly achieves a goal that you have struggled with for a long time can one truly feel the existence of a gap.

“Dharma Transmission Heavenly Venerate is indeed beyond the reach of ordinary people,” he acknowledged. “But no matter, as long as I master this method, once I return to my true self, I will once again be ahead of him.”

***

During the Saint Dynasty's Grand Inauguration, Sun Erlang looked at Yi Shu somewhat strangely. This senior recently, from time to time, would be speaking perfectly fine, then suddenly become absent-minded. If he hadn't personally witnessed the terrifying aspect of the Dao Transformation Stone Mother and knew that this was likely the Stone Mother calling upon its processing power, Sun Erlang might have thought he was suffering from some form of dementia.

But what exactly was the Stone Mother doing that it affected all these split bodies of the Taiyan Sect? Having spent some time with Yi Shu, he had gained some understanding of the Taiyan Sect collective's temperament. Rather than guessing blindly, he directly asked.

It took Yi Shu a while to come back to his senses. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking about a way to escape in certain extreme situations without abandoning the Stone Mother’s main body.”

“Before achieving complete information immortality, losing the Dao Transformation Stone’s main body would still significantly impact us,” Yi Shu explained to Sun Erlang.

“Extreme situations?” Having personally witnessed the Stone Mother’s power and even experienced reincarnation in the simulation world, Sun Erlang found it hard to imagine what kind of catastrophe could force the Stone Mother to flee in such a disheveled manner.