Chapter 212: Reverse Calamity Lock Treasure Box

In Da Xuan, Li Fan easily found Yin Xing's tomb by following the location from his memory and disabled its mechanisms. He then casually set up a formation around it to prevent accidental intrusions. After many years, Li Fan once again entered Yin Xing's tomb.

He passed through a long tomb passage, arriving deep within the crypt. Above him, luminous pearls shimmered like stars, while a sea of clouds spread below, dotted with numerous peaks. He immediately recognized traces of a formation.

"This formation," he wondered, "how could it sustain itself for thousands of years without spiritual energy?" Li Fan was quite surprised and began to examine it closely. Before long, he understood the reason.

"It uses luminous pearls as stars," he realized. "And soil excavated from famous mountains across Da Xuan as peaks. By replacing virtual elements with real ones, the formation's energy consumption is minimized. Moreover, this unknown formation completely forgoes offensive and defensive capabilities. Its only purpose is... an illusion."

Li Fan sensed that the golden silk thatch hut, where Yin Xing's spirit tablet was located, was in fact the source of spiritual energy powering the formation. He flew to the mountaintop, found the formation's nodal point, and stomped on it. "Break!"

The peaks vanished instantly like broken illusions. A black void appeared beneath the golden silk thatch hut. Li Fan followed this newly revealed passage, arriving beneath the illusion formation.

This was Yin Xing's true tomb. The tomb chamber was decorated like a common study. In front of a vermilion long table lay a skeleton. Beside it, a faint candlelight still flickered weakly. On the long table, around the skeleton, and even across the entire floor of the study, countless sheets of paper covered in mysterious symbols were scattered everywhere.

Li Fan picked up a sheet, read it for a moment, but couldn't understand what Yin Xing had written before his death. He casually collected all the papers and continued searching. To Li Fan's disappointment, he did not find the Dao Transformation Stone.

Apart from Yin Xing's skeleton and the room full of papers, there was nothing else. "Could it be that this isn't the real tomb either?" he wondered. "Although Yin Xing was merely an outer sect disciple, he was still responsible for the relocation of mortals. His status shouldn't have been too low. It shouldn't be so desolate."

Unwilling to give up, Li Fan meticulously searched the entire area inside and out again, but the result remained the same. After a moment of contemplation, he collected the long table, the candle on it, and Yin Xing's skeleton.

To ensure nothing was overlooked, Li Fan simply unleashed his "Cloud Aggregation Sword" technique, violently destroying the entire room. The immense power of the Cloud Aggregation Sword exposed the geological structure around the study. To Li Fan's disappointment, this was indeed the lowest level of the tomb. Below it, only rock and soil remained.

"It seems I've truly made this trip for nothing," Li Fan said, shaking his head helplessly. He had come full of hope, only to leave disappointed.

After returning to the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan cremated Yin Xing's remains, scattering them to the wind. He then returned to the Heavenly Profound Mirror.

"If there's anything else I missed, it must be among the three remaining items," he mused. After a moment of thought, using the pretense of selling assets, he submitted the long table, the candle, and one of the papers to the Heavenly Profound Mirror for appraisal.

The first two items were ordinary. The silver fir redwood table and the sea whale perennial candle were collectively worth no more than thirty contribution points. However, the papers covered in strange symbols were not ordinary at all.

"Sky Lock Treasure Box (Partial), one contribution point," the appraisal stated. Li Fan's eyes gleamed. "As expected, there's a hidden mystery." Instead of selling it, Li Fan searched for information about the Sky Lock Treasure Box.

As the name implied, a Sky Lock Treasure Box was a storage box sealed in a special way. It could only be opened by solving the decryption set by its owner. Even knowing there was a secret, Li Fan was at a loss when faced with tens of thousands of papers covered in undecipherable scribbles.

Fortunately, Li Fan was not alone. He might not know, but someone in the vast Myriad Immortal Alliance certainly would.

As usual, he searched for keywords in the Heavenly Profound Mirror. After meticulously sifting through countless irrelevant pieces of information, Li Fan finally found a clue in an article describing several leisure activities practiced by ancient cultivators.

"Reverse Calamity?" Li Fan's spirits lifted, and he began to read carefully.

The article stated that in ancient times, some cultivators believed the world generally developed from order to disorder. From the primordial beginning, to the two energies of Yin and Yang, then the Five Elements of heaven and earth, and finally all things in the world. Order was lost, and chaos accumulated. Until chaos completely overwhelmed order, unleashing a power that would destroy everything, returning heaven and earth to primordial chaos. This was the so-called "Calamity."

"Reverse Calamity," on the other hand, was a game of restoring order from chaos and sequence from disorder. This game demanded and trained a cultivator's divine sense and deduction abilities to a high degree. It was generally popular among grandmasters of formations and deduction.

While it sounded complex, it was actually quite simple to understand. Taking the tens of thousands of papers Li Fan found in Yin Xing's tomb as an example: these papers originally had a fixed sequence. All Li Fan needed to do was restore this pile of disordered papers to their original fixed sequence.

It should be simple, right? Thinking this, Li Fan took all the papers out of his storage ring, preparing to give it a try. But then, he realized something was wrong, and his face darkened. Simple, my foot!

"There are a total of..." After a brief sweep with his divine sense, Li Fan's face grew even uglier as he received the answer. "Forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine papers. If there are no other clues, and I just have to try them one by one..."

Just thinking about it made Li Fan dizzy. "Even if I did nothing else for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be able to decipher and restore this!"

Li Fan picked up a paper and examined its contents. "These seemingly meaningless symbols must be the clues," he mused. "Unfortunately, they're like a pre-arranged key, known only to those involved. Perhaps it was a common practice among the disciples of the Taiyan Sect back then?"

Unable to make sense of it, Li Fan felt a bit helpless. "I wonder if the Dao Transformation Stone Jiao Xiuyuan found back then was also encrypted like this?" He couldn't help but consider using his clone to investigate further.

But then, a flash of insight made him temporarily abandon the idea. "...It's just a password with more digits," he thought. "If I can't do it, *that* one definitely can."

Li Fan lightly coughed and, with a smile, asked the Heavenly Profound Mirror if it provided decryption services. The Heavenly Profound Mirror was silent for a moment before giving an affirmative reply. However, the fee would be charged based on the difficulty of decryption. After inquiring, he learned it would cost at most twenty to thirty thousand contribution points. Li Fan, being wealthy, confidently allowed the Heavenly Profound Mirror to proceed with the decryption.