Chapter 445: Xuanggong Devouring Earth Veins

Seeing Jiao Xiuyuan agree so readily, Li Fan nodded. "Then I'll trouble Fellow Daoist Jiao with this. I'll await your good news!"

With that, he tossed a communication talisman to Jiao Xiuyuan and left immediately, without mentioning a receipt or anything similar.

"This person really trusts me," Jiao Xiuyuan mumbled, tossing the Stone Eye of Delusion in his hand.

The next moment, the stone eye vanished into thin air, its whereabouts unknown.

Meanwhile, the puppet on Myriad Immortals Island reverted to its former lazy demeanor.

Jiao Xiuyuan could not have known that Li Fan's trust in him was not the reason.

Instead, the Stone Eye of Delusion was merely a pretext for Li Fan to establish a connection with him. Even if Jiao Xiuyuan failed to sell it or even embezzled it, Li Fan wouldn't care. What truly interested Li Fan was the "big business" that lay ahead.

Back within the Sky-Mystic Mirror, Li Fan recalled another item discovered in the ruins of the Heavenly Secret Sect.

It was an entire layer of a pagoda that he had meticulously cut off and brought back.

His initial premonition had been correct.

According to the Sky-Mystic Mirror's assessment, the entire stone pagoda was, in fact, a magical artifact known as the Heaven-Earth Heavenly Secret Die.

While mortals roll dice to get a five or a six, cultivators roll the Heaven-Earth Heavenly Secret Die to divine the secrets of the heavens.

Ancient cultivators of the Heavenly Secret Sect used this very Heaven-Earth Heavenly Secret Die, leveraging sufficient information and guided by energy perception, to deduce countless future possibilities.

The reason Li Fan had only seen an empty space was because the Heaven-Earth Heavenly Secret Die was fixed on the scene that appeared after its final deduction back then.

"A void."

"I wonder what the Heavenly Secret Sect cultivators were trying to deduce back then, to have arrived at such a result."

Li Fan extended his hand, and a crystalline icosahedral die instantly appeared in his palm.

Upon closer inspection, different images seemed to flicker on each of its faces.

Although Li Fan had attempted to use the Heaven-Earth Heavenly Secret Die several times before to deduce the future, trying to see if it aligned with his past experiences, he only ever obtained fragmented, meaningless images, rendering them of no practical use, perhaps because he lacked the proper method.

Nevertheless, Li Fan hadn't sold it. He harbored a persistent premonition that keeping it might prove greatly useful in the future.

After toying with it for a moment, Li Fan put away the Heavenly Secret Die and shifted his focus to his clone, Zhou Qing'ang.

The clone had been staying on Tai'an Island for some time, only occasionally contacting necessary individuals via communication talismans.

He wasn't merely idling; rather, he was researching methods to overcome the side effects of the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing Grand Method.

This secret art was possibly modeled after the ancient exotic beast, the Primordial Toad. While it truly possessed the power to devour heaven and earth, it made one's mind extremely vulnerable. The ultimate outcome was either bursting from over-absorption or being discovered and beaten to death.

However, Li Fan wielded a power capable of maintaining his absolute rationality.

This was the power of blue flames derived from visualizing the Illusory Spirit.

He didn't aim to remain calm throughout the entire Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing process, only to be able to halt at crucial moments.

With the combined blessings of the Enlightenment Pill and the Spirit Awakening state, Li Fan expended considerable effort but finally managed to achieve this.

However, to increase his cultivation using the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing Grand Method, he still needed to address the issue of solidified earth veins, which were impossible to absorb.

Li Fan had long prepared a contingency plan for this.

Concealing his presence, he teleported to Spiritwood Island in the western Congyun Sea, then continued flying west.

Approximately five hundred li further, Li Fan quietly submerged into the ocean.

Delving deep beneath the waves, he searched for a moment and, as expected, located the ruins of a sunken island.

In his previous life, this island would re-emerge from the sea not long after, due to inexplicable changes in its earth veins.

The reactivated island protection array would also draw the attention of the formation masters from the Congyun Sea's Array Hall.

However, before any of that occurred, the area looked no different from other ruins scattered across the seabed.

Li Fan entered the ruins and waited patiently.

Seven days later, the seabed suddenly began to tremor faintly.

"It's coming!"

Li Fan thought to himself, stomping his feet forcefully, his body instantly sank.

Simultaneously, he activated the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing Grand Method, sensing his surroundings.

From an unknown, distant location, a surging, continuous force was transmitted through the earth veins.

This force slowly reactivated the earth vein node at this location, which had previously been depleted.

Without any external interference, this re-energized earth vein node would have pushed the sunken island back to the surface.

However, with Li Fan present, such an event would not transpire.

Beneath his feet, a massive vortex seemed to form.

The surging earth vein power, before it could even fully coalesce, was entirely absorbed by Li Fan, transforming into pure spiritual energy within him.

Simultaneously, the cultivation technique practiced by the clone rapidly began to operate autonomously.

This was not the cultivation method originally used by the spy, Zhou Qing'ang.

Instead, it was the "Heavenly Will Xuanji Art," another Nascent Soul cultivation technique Li Fan had acquired from the Heavenly Secret Sect.

This ancient technique was originally extremely slow to cultivate. Yet, under the unrestricted acceleration provided by the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing Grand Method, its progress was now horrifyingly rapid.

The earth vein power was inexhaustible, and Li Fan's clone absorbed its fill without restraint.

What should have been a monumental change in the landscape, significant enough to startle the four seas, was instead invisibly and unknowingly neutralized.

In mere moments, the clone's cultivation had already reached the bottleneck of the early Golden Core stage.

Due to the existence of the Heavenly Calamity, even if the "Heavenly Will Xuanji Art" circulated at its fastest, the cultivation could not advance further.

Li Fan frowned slightly but did not cease his absorption.

Even if the earth vein power he was currently devouring was entirely wasted, he felt no remorse.

The spiritual energy converted by the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Swallowing Grand Method steadily accumulated within the clone, completely saturating every part of its form.

Just as the clone was about to burst, Li Fan slapped his own chest, and a powerful suction erupted from his palm.

He once again began to absorb and convert the excess spiritual energy within his own body.

In ancient times, without the Heavenly Calamity, a situation like Li Fan's current one would be inconceivable; the acquisition of spiritual energy would simply be unable to match the speed of cultivation advancement.

However, the presence of cultivation bottlenecks plunged Li Fan, currently devouring earth veins, into an unusual predicament.

All the power converted through absorption was channeled into accelerating the cultivation technique.

Yet, it remained unable to progress even an inch.

The cultivation technique was now operating at a terrifying speed, like surging tides relentlessly crashing wave after wave against an incredibly solid dam.

Li Fan meticulously observed and recorded everything transpiring within his body.

Compared to the vast power of the earth veins, the strength of a mere Golden Core cultivator was utterly negligible.

Yet, this very power, which should have been sufficient to elevate a Golden Core cultivator to at least the Nascent Soul stage, was continuously being depleted in the process of assaulting the Heavenly Calamity.

Nevertheless, it proved that Li Fan's efforts were not in vain.

After countless assaults, the bottleneck finally showed a slight loosening.