Chapter 650: Calmly Planning The Next Steps

"One glance reflects a myriad years. After the fall, a world is born?! How can this be possible?"

Liu San was shaken by the unbelievable events Li Fan had just described.

"How can a True Immortal exist within the Xuanhuang World? Why has none of us ever heard of it?"

Even as a Dao Unity cultivator, upon hearing of the Fallen Immortal Realm’s existence, Liu San’s reaction was no better than Li Fan’s.

Li Fan smiled slightly. "Elder Liu, there's no need for doubt. This matter is absolutely true. I have experienced it myself.

"The eyes beheld it then, and so it still remains. Truly the handiwork of a True Immortal." He shook his head, filled with emotion.

Li Fan's words left Liu San entirely convinced, and his heart grew even more unsettled.

Suddenly, as though something had occurred to him, excitement flickered in his eyes. "Young Master, you said just now that the Fallen Immortal Realm is a true projection of the ancient Xuanhuang World. Does that mean the Medicine King Sect of that era might still exist within it?

"The old Sect Leader, you and I, and the rest of the Medicine King Sect's cultivators...

"If we explore it, is there a chance that we might meet them?" Liu San's voice trembled slightly as he asked.

Li Fan pondered for a moment, then nodded, giving him a definite answer.

In the history of the Xuanhuang World, there had indeed been cases where ancient cultivators slumbered into the present, only to encounter another version of themselves upon entering the Fallen Immortal Realm.

Yet no strange phenomenon, such as the two being unable to meet, or the two sensing each other's presence, had ever occurred. In the end, by the time an ancient cultivator arrived in the present, everything of the past was already gone.

What existed within the Fallen Immortal Realm were simply projections of their past selves at a certain moment. Aside from a lingering melancholy and a surge of emotion, meeting one's own projection was no different from meeting any other being.

Likewise, the "natives" of the Fallen Immortal Realm would never mistake a cultivator entering from outside for the projection of their own past self. Even if the newcomer's appearance and aura matched a past self exactly, this confusion never occurred. They would simply assume some divine ability had been used to alter one's appearance.

Still, Li Fan had once come across a discussion on the Seeking Immortals board of the Tianxuan Mirror, which claimed that a cultivator who had survived from ancient times to the present, and who had cultivated to some unimaginably profound realm, might achieve what was called Reflection Across the Ages, Eternal Freedom.

So-called Eternal Freedom meant that once a cultivator transcended the river of time, they could exist simultaneously in the past, present, and future. The "them" at any given point in time would be the same "them" as after transcendence. In that case, a projection within the Fallen Immortal Realm might truly be considered the same person as one's true self.

It was only a fantasy, but it represented the ultimate pursuit of the cultivation path, and so people loved to debate it.

Another cultivator had countered that if such a figure truly existed, they would have long since inverted cause and effect and turned time into a closed loop. How, then, could a mere glance from a True Immortal capture and pull them into the Fallen Immortal Realm? By this logic, the notion that a projection within the Fallen Immortal Realm might be one's true self in the real world was ultimately self-contradictory.

Li Fan roughly explained all this to Liu San. Liu San nodded as though he understood, but he was still eager to enter the Fallen Immortal Realm himself and test it firsthand.

Seeing this, Li Fan didn't discourage him. He simply shook his head with a light smile, then carefully walked him through the steps of the ritual.

"Blessed be Heavenly Venerable Xuanhuang!"

Without warning, Liu San began the ritual right in front of Li Fan, and his consciousness plunged into the Fallen Immortal Realm.

Li Fan's eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze to the sky.

Perhaps because of his breakthrough in the Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Sutra, his senses were sharper than ever.

In the instant Liu San's strand of divine sense vanished, Li Fan clearly detected a shadow pass across the canopy of the real world.

Not an illusion. The Fallen Immortal Realm, is it...

The shadow lingered only a moment before slipping from his perception, but Li Fan's gaze remained fixed on the heavens for a long while afterward.

He had spent countless hours browsing the Seeking Immortals forum, and he knew that countless cultivators had tried to find traces of the Fallen Immortal Realm within the real world. Every one of them, without exception, had failed.

They knew only that it existed, and knew how to enter it. But none had ever managed to observe it directly.

Yet Li Fan, a mere Nascent Soul cultivator, had just broken that rule.

My previous experiences in the Fallen Immortal Realm were unusual, caught in some repeating cycle of scenarios. I never understood why. But now, it seems to have something to do with the Xuanhuang Sutra.𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

A True Immortal's inheritance. A True Immortal's lingering obsession. Perhaps the two really are connected.

It's been a long time since I last entered the Fallen Immortal Realm. I hope that with the blessing of the Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Sutra, it holds some surprises for me this time.

Li Fan weighed these thoughts in silence.

But he didn't act at once. Instead, he waited for Liu San to awaken, and in the meantime made a full circuit of Longevity Valley.

The valley was divided into separate sections by arrays, each devoted to growing different spirit plants and medicinal herbs, exactly what one would expect of a secret realm sealed away for a thousand years. Even through the array boundaries, Li Fan could feel the vibrant vitality radiating from the spirit crops in the fields.

Disciples of the Medicine King Sect moved among them from time to time, employing secret techniques to select and harvest the materials needed for pill refinement.

In the distance, on an open plot of land, the outlines of several nearly-finished buildings rose into view.

These were the new sect halls of the Medicine King Sect, built under Fang Zaiji's command.

Quite an imposing sight. Li Fan nodded in approval.

The matter of Congyun Sea was settled. Now it was time to consider his next course of action.

Two objectives stood before him.

First, he needed to find a way to acquire the Nascent Soul-level portion of the Mountain-Sitting Art.

In this lifetime, the Myriad Immortals Alliance had not yet set the Heavenly Venerables' Game of Bluff into motion to flush out hidden spies. Without that scheme, the Five Elders Council had never risked sending Dao Unity cultivators to test the waters, so the great battle had never happened. Immortal Venerable Jicheng had never been ambushed, and his lifespan had never dwindled.

To obtain the Audience Jade Token needed to view the Derivation Jade, then, he would need a different approach.

Still, Li Fan had already prepared for this. It was a manageable problem.

Second, he needed to accumulate experience and insight in preparation for his breakthrough to the Spirit Transformation realm.

Cultivation at the Nascent Soul realm was the process of nurturing and perfecting one's own Grotto-Heaven domain. The Nascent Soul and Spirit Transformation realms marked the crucial threshold that truly separated cultivators when it came to actual combat power.

Take Immortal Eminence Hong Xi, who had just perished in the Congyun Calamity, for instance.

He had forged his Dao Foundation with the Five Elements Mountain, and formed his Golden Core through the Laws of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth.

He was by no means untalented, and his start had been anything but unlucky.

Yet during the stages of "seizing the essence of heaven and earth to form the Nascent Soul" and "extracting the marrow of heaven and earth to obtain its spirit," his fortunes had reversed dramatically. What had once been a favorable path had plunged into steep decline.

Consider the Hundred Ridges Grotto-Heaven or the Thousand Mountains of Taihua's Pre-Manifestation... Even their names sounded noticeably weak.

This was why Immortal Eminence Hong Xi's actual combat prowess had remained so unremarkable, and why he had spent his entire life shackled to the Congyun Sea at the border, with little hope of advancing further.

But consider the reverse. If Immortal Eminence Hong Xi had, like Li Fan, forged his Nascent Soul upon the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens, how might his fate have changed?