Chapter 1634: Nephew and Aunt's Confrontation

In the Grand Xuan Kingdom, within the capital city of Xuanjing, stood the Grand Tutor's Estate.

Li Fan held his wine cup, observing the hall filled with civil and military officials who had come to celebrate his birthday. Although he was now in his seventies, he couldn't help but feel a secret sense of pride.

It was a known fact that today, eight or nine out of ten high-ranking officials from the imperial court had gathered at the Grand Tutor's Estate! What an impressive display of influence!

He, Li Fan, recalled how he was merely an impoverished scholar when he first transmigrated to this world.

Over the past fifty years, he had risen from nothing to become the Grand Tutor, wielding immense power across the land. The journey itself was enough to fill a multi-million-word novel.

With such a life, what more could one ask for!

Li Fan stroked his beard and drained the wine cup.

"To the Grand Tutor!" the assembled officials cheered in unison.

Li Fan felt even more triumphant.

Just then, a series of discordant shouts suddenly erupted from outside.

"Look! What's that?!"

"Fire falling from the sky, it's an auspicious sign, an auspicious sign! Quickly inform the Grand Tutor!"

"It looks like it's flying directly towards our Grand Tutor's Estate!"

Hearing the commotion outside, Li Fan furrowed his brow.

The bustling hall, which had been lively moments before, suddenly fell silent.

Li Fan stood up and was the first to walk outside.

However, before he could reprimand his servants or express his displeasure, he was captivated by the sight in the sky.

In the distant sky, two streaks of silver light, one following the other, sped towards them like meteors.

"This is..." Li Fan was stunned.

In the blink of an eye, the two meteors arrived above Xuanjing City, but then suddenly stopped.

At the same time, a voice, like thunder, descended from the sky, exploding in everyone's ears.

"Dao Xuanzi! You go too far!"

Everyone present was utterly terrified and bewildered. Several even cried out "Immortal Master!" and prostrated themselves on the ground.

Meanwhile, a term that had been suppressed deep in his memory, almost forgotten, suddenly sprang into Li Fan's mind.

"Cultiv... cultivator!" Li Fan froze, muttering to himself, "How is this possible..."

The two cultivators in the sky clearly paid no heed to the thoughts of the mortals below.

Another voice then rang out: "Kou Hong! Do you truly believe I would let you go, simply because you fled to this land devoid of immortals? Hand over the cultivation method you obtained that day, or I will pursue you relentlessly until death!"

"A joke! It was precisely because I lacked a Core Formation method that I was trapped in the Foundation Establishment stage for nearly a century, with my lifespan nearing its end and my body about to turn to dust. Now that I have obtained this Core Formation technique, how could I possibly hand it over to another?" Kou Hong scoffed, his tone filled with disdain.

"Indeed!" Dao Xuanzi sighed deeply. "The path to Golden Core cultivation demands absolute singularity; there is no room for others. While there are many Core Formation methods in this world, there are even more cultivators trapped in the Foundation Establishment stage!"

Dao Xuanzi's tone suddenly turned ferocious: "Since that's the case, with a path to immortality now before me, how could I possibly let you go? How could I *not* go too far?!"

Kou Hong burst into laughter: "It's nothing more than a fight to the death! How laughable that you and I, brothers for a century, now draw swords against each other for a sliver of hope!"

Dao Xuanzi sneered but did not reply.

Kou Hong, however, suddenly said: "I know I am no match for you, and I will likely not escape today. But with so many mortals here, I wonder if you can withstand such a concentrated Immortal-Mortal Miasma!"

Dao Xuanzi's expression instantly changed: "Kou Hong! What are you trying to do?!"

Kou Hong laughed maniacally: "I'm merely seeking a chance to survive!"

Listening to the conversation between the two cultivators above, Li Fan felt an immediate sense of dread. Yet, before he could react, he saw a fiery red blast erupt above Xuanjing City.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Deafening roars continuously erupted around Li Fan, and his vision instantly turned blood-red. In a matter of moments, he fainted.

Li Fan regained consciousness an unknown time later.

At first, he was disoriented. It took him a while to recall what had happened.

Li Fan coughed, spitting out several mouthfuls of blood, then shakily got to his feet and looked around.

It was still night. The once luxurious Grand Tutor's Estate had been reduced to ruins.

The air was thick with the foul smell of charred corpses.

The numerous civil and military officials who had been present moments ago were now all obliterated, their souls departed to the heavens.

Li Fan's wives, concubines, and five sons had also not been spared.

Li Fan's aged face was devoid of any expression. His gaze was vacant.

After standing rooted to the spot for a long time, he dragged his weakened body out of the Grand Tutor's Estate.

Xuanjing City, which had been bustling and prosperous moments before, had now unmistakably become a hell of blood and fire. As far as the eye could see, there were only shattered bodies and collapsed buildings.

It was likely that fewer than one in a hundred commoners had survived this catastrophe.

All of this was due to the sudden appearance of the two 'Immortal Masters'—the two cultivators.

Li Fan, devoid of strength, slumped against a broken wall.

His hearing had already been destroyed by the violent explosion. But at this point, it hardly mattered.

At this very moment, he only wanted to laugh.

How could there be cultivators in this world?

From the moment he began his official career, he had used his power to search for any traces of the immortal path.

Once he became the Imperial Tutor, positioned above ten thousand people, he had scoured the entire realm!

From the northern icy seas to the southern oceans, from the eastern Void Abyss to the western Endless Mountains—there was not a single trace of immortals throughout the Grand Xuan Kingdom!

Yet today, many years after he had grown old and given up all hope, two cultivators descended from the sky, appeared before him, and without a word, utterly obliterated everything he possessed.

Was this what being an immortal meant?

And where did these immortals come from?

His heart full of rage and unwillingness, ultimately transformed into boundless bewilderment.

Fate played a cruel trick!

At the same time, Li Fan felt immensely fortunate.

Fortunate that before his death, he had finally confirmed the existence of immortals!

Otherwise, after starting his next life, wouldn't he have wasted another fifty years in vain?

That's right! How could he, Li Fan, a mere mortal, rise from a humble scholar to the Imperial Tutor of the land without some extraordinary reliance?

This was also why he had narrowly escaped death at the hands of an immortal.

"Truth Reversion!"

Li Fan silently chanted to himself. Immediately, the surrounding scenery dimmed, becoming blurry and indistinct, as if viewed through a thick curtain of water.

"When the real becomes unreal, the unreal also becomes real."

Seven large characters lit up in the darkness, then suddenly scattered, forming a screen of light.

"Charging complete."

"Virtualize current scene and return to original anchor point?"

Two lines of small text appeared consecutively.

Concurrently, a series of images flashed across the entire screen of light. These were the fifty years of Li Fan's life in this world.

Li Fan stared at his own image in the various scenes for a long time.

This was the name Li Fan had given to the mystical artifact he carried with him.

It possessed only one function: to turn truth into falsehood, and reality into illusion!

To turn reality into illusion meant to transform everything Li Fan had truly experienced into simulated, illusory experiences, allowing him to return to his initially set anchor point—the moment he first transmigrated to this world.

In fact, this current life was already Li Fan's second.

In his first life, although Li Fan harbored grand ambitions, he was merely an ordinary person. After repeatedly failing imperial examinations, he finally gave up the idea of studying to become an official at the age of thirty. He started a small business, became a moderately wealthy man, married, had children, and lived an ordinary life. It was only when he was old and on the verge of death from illness that he finally awakened Truth Reversion.

This was how Li Fan's second life had taken off with unstoppable momentum.

Unfortunately, it seemed he had used it in the wrong way this time.

After a moment of contemplation, Li Fan chose not to immediately end this life. He still had a few things to do before that.

Closing the screen, Li Fan returned to reality and forced himself to gather his spirits to handle the aftermath of Xuanjing's severe damage from the cultivators.

After searching for and finding some survivors, Li Fan managed to somewhat stabilize the public's morale, leveraging his years of prestige.

Even though Li Fan couldn't hear, he could still find paper and a brush. While communication was somewhat difficult, it didn't prevent his orders from being conveyed one by one.

First, Li Fan ordered his loyal garrison camp, stationed outside the city, to rush to Xuanjing City to maintain post-disaster order. Then, he dispatched orders to surrounding cities to send grain, fodder, and officials to Xuanjing.

Most of Xuanjing's buildings had been destroyed. After the garrison camp took control of Xuanjing, Li Fan simply stayed in the military camp to oversee the relief efforts.

Following Li Fan's directives, a continuous flow of resources and personnel from surrounding cities was sent to Xuanjing City.

A month later, Xuanjing City, still mostly ruins, finally began to show faint signs of life.

Only after the Grand Xuan Kingdom had finally recovered from the cultivators' attack did Li Fan begin ordering various regions to gather intelligence about the two immortals who had appeared that night.

This included where the two had originally come from, where they went afterward, whether they had any other conversations along the way, and so on.

Unfortunately, after several months of investigation, apart from learning that the two cultivators seemed to have come from the direction of the eastern Void Abyss, no other information was obtained.

The scenario Li Fan had hoped for—the two immortals destroying each other—did not materialize.

"I shouldn't have expected such a thing in the first place," Li Fan sighed to himself. "Since that's the case, there's nothing left for me to be nostalgic about in this life."

Standing in the newly reconstructed Grand Tutor's Estate, Li Fan activated Truth Reversion once more.

"Virtualize current scene and return to original anchor point?"

Li Fan no longer hesitated and selected 'yes'.

On the screen, countless vivid images simultaneously froze. Then, the political maneuvering, wealth, and glory of this life shattered and burst like a dream bubble, transforming into streaks of meteors that flew into Li Fan's mind.

Scene after scene flashed rapidly before Li Fan's eyes like a kaleidoscope, eventually freezing on the image of the two cultivators confronting each other high above the Grand Tutor's Estate.

"Dao Xuanzi, Kou Hong." Li Fan softly spoke their names. "Fifty years from now, I will be waiting for you in this very Xuanjing City."

"Wealth and glory are but fleeting clouds to me." Li Fan's consciousness gradually blurred, but his will and goal became firmer than ever before.

"In my next life, I will hunt immortals!"

The light in his mind gradually faded, and Li Fan slowly drifted into slumber.