"That Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance really devours people without even spitting out the bones!"

Thinking of how the more than seventy thousand contribution points he had painstakingly accumulated had vanished into nothing, Kou Hong's eyes turned bloodshot as a piercing pain gripped his heart.

"How were we so blind back then that we chose to join the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance?"

Even Dao Xuanzi, who had always been the calmer of the two, could no longer steady his state of mind.

"We're defecting to the Five Elders Association. We must make the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance pay the price!"

Having reached an agreement, the two quietly departed from the Immortal Alliance Heavenly City and headed toward the territory of the Five Elders Association.

However, they had forgotten one fact.

Although the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance publicly claimed that it did not restrict the personal freedom of its members, and even did not forbid members from withdrawing and joining the Five Elders Association instead.

Everything they had obtained from the Immortal Alliance had to be returned.

Thus, the moment the two showed signs of defecting, a Nascent Soul cultivator from the Guardian Hall began pursuing them.

Sensing the powerful aura behind them, Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi's expressions changed slightly.

Even after increasing their speed, the vast gulf in cultivation between them could not be overcome. It was not long before the other party intercepted them.

"If you wish to join the Five Elders Association, I do not care. But the two Golden Core cultivation techniques you exchanged for must be returned."

"One is the Thousand Dragon Transformation. The other is the Mind Rebirth Sword Art."

The Nascent Soul Guardian spoke calmly.

Hearing this, Kou Hong nearly coughed up blood. His entire body trembled as he pointed at the man and cursed.

"What kind of absurd logic is this? Our contribution points disappeared for no reason, and nobody cared. Fine, we endured that. But now you're even taking back the cultivation techniques we exchanged with the contribution points we earned through hard work?"

The Nascent Soul Guardian sneered.

"All cultivation techniques of the Immortal Alliance belong to the Immortal Alliance. What you exchanged for was merely the right to use them. Since you clearly intend to defect to the Five Elders Association, should we simply allow you to strengthen the enemy? Sparing your miserable lives is already the Alliance showing mercy."

Upon hearing these words, Kou Hong let out a furious roar.

The resentment trapped within his chest could no longer be suppressed, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Flame Dragon's Wrath!"

A crimson flood dragon instantly appeared across the heavens.

Wrapped in blazing flames of terrifying heat, it coiled around the Nascent Soul Guardian.

The brothers fought as one. Kou Hong struck without hesitation, and Dao Xuanzi immediately followed.

With a single thought, more than thirty transparent sword shadows suddenly appeared in the sky.

Each seemed to have come from a different era, weathered and decayed by time itself.

The sword shadows howled through the air, carrying with them an aura of age and frost that seemed capable of freezing even space itself.

The Nascent Soul Guardian raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised that the two could unleash such power.

"What a pity," he thought to himself.

"The rules of the Immortal Alliance cannot be violated."

Facing the combined assault of Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi, the Guardian merely let out a cold laugh.

High above, the phantom of a Cave Heaven resembling a black sun suddenly emerged.

The blazing flames surrounding the crimson flood dragon were extinguished in an instant.

As for the more than thirty sword shadows, they could no longer even maintain their own balance.

Completely beyond their control, they all flew toward the black circular Cave Heaven in the sky.

The moment they entered the Cave Heaven, not the slightest ripple remained.

The gap between the Golden Core Realm and the Nascent Soul Realm was simply too great.

Although Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi had enjoyed a measure of fortune, they were ultimately still ordinary cultivators among the countless living beings beneath heaven. They possessed no heaven-defying opportunity capable of bridging such an overwhelming disparity.

"Since you refuse to come to your senses, then don't blame me, Chu, for showing no mercy."

The black circular Cave Heaven descended from above, preparing to suppress the two brothers completely.

Under the pressure of a Nascent Soul cultivator, their entire bodies were immobilized.

Unable to move, they could only watch helplessly as death approached.

At that moment, a trace of determination flashed through Dao Xuanzi's eyes.

"Daoxuan!"

A crisp, cold shout suddenly rang out.

A rust-covered ancient longsword appeared before Dao Xuanzi, its tip aimed directly at the Nascent Soul Guardian of the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance.

A trace of surprise flashed through the Guardian's eyes.

Countless points of light suddenly erupted from Dao Xuanzi's body.

Like stars filling the night sky, they flickered briefly before rushing together into the Daoxuan Sword.

The countless starlike lights restored the decayed sword.

At that moment, Dao Xuanzi and the Daoxuan Sword became one.

The peerless divine weapon from the ancient age finally revealed its true form.

"Run!"

Dao Xuanzi's voice echoed in Kou Hong's ears.

The next instant, Kou Hong saw a dazzling sword light that seemed capable of splitting heaven and earth apart.

Amid a deafening explosion, the black circular Cave Heaven emitted a soft white radiance before shattering inch by inch.

The Daoxuan Sword, however, continued forward without losing any momentum.

Using the final moments of its existence, it continued flying toward the direction of the Immortal Alliance Heavenly City.

"Dao Xuanzi!"

With the Nascent Soul Cave Heaven destroyed, Kou Hong regained the ability to move.

His eyes filled with tears as grief overwhelmed his heart.

He knew Dao Xuanzi had sacrificed his own life to save him.

After the death of the Nascent Soul Guardian, the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance would undoubtedly dispatch even stronger pursuers.

Knowing he could not remain, Kou Hong merely wiped away his tears before racing toward the territory of the Five Elders Association.

"Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance..."

He ground his teeth in hatred.

"Just you wait."

"I will become stronger."

"I will have my revenge."

The flames of vengeance burned fiercely within Kou Hong's eyes.

Just as he was about to cross the border.

A streak of light suddenly shot across the sky, piercing straight through his body.

"..."

Kou Hong opened his mouth as if to speak.

But no words ever came out.

His head flew from his shoulders as blood gushed like a fountain.

Only then did the streak of light reveal its true form.

It was a longsword that flowed like water.

One sword strike had severed his head.

A young cultivator dressed in the black robes of the Guardian Hall slowly revealed himself.

"Couldn't even deal with two mere Golden Core cultivators. What a bunch of trash. They deserved to die."

The young cultivator spat disdainfully before no longer sparing Kou Hong's corpse another glance.

"Strange. Where did that ancient sword disappear to? And those contribution points vanishing for no reason... It really may be a scheme by the Five Elders Association."

Muttering to himself, the young cultivator disappeared.

A long time later.

Kou Hong's head, which had rolled onto the ground with its eyes still wide open in death, gradually crumbled like grains of sand and scattered into the wind.

Only a dragon-shaped branch embedded between his brows remained behind.

Li Fan's figure quietly appeared.

With a casual wave of his hand, the dragon-shaped branch flew into his grasp.

Faintly, endless unwilling roars could still be heard coming from within the branch.

Li Fan frowned slightly as he quietly observed the reaction of the [Truth].

After waiting for a while, he sighed softly.

"It does not possess such a strong appetite for devouring."

"It seems my assumptions were still too simplistic."

"However, this fragment of lingering will is not entirely useless."

With that thought, Li Fan forcibly fed it to the [Truth].

The dragon-shaped branch in his hand slowly disappeared.

At the very same moment, countless blurry images suddenly flashed rapidly through Li Fan's mind.

"This is..."

Li Fan frowned.

There was no doubt that these fleeting scenes were produced after the [Truth] devoured Kou Hong's lingering will.

Although Kou Hong's lingering will had not yet reached the level necessary to form an Eternal Remnant Will, it was barely sufficient to become food for the [Truth].

Previously, whenever the [Truth] devoured an Eternal Remnant Will, a new ability would be born.

But this time, these rapidly flashing images appeared instead.

What exactly did they represent?

The fragmented scenes vanished like sudden inspiration.

Even for Li Fan, capturing them proved extremely difficult.

Standing motionless, he carefully contemplated them for a long time before finally reaching a tentative conclusion.

His expression became rather strange.

"They appear to be... events I experienced before this lifetime?"

"What does that mean?"

Li Fan could not understand.

Yet an instinctive sense of unease quietly arose within his heart.

No matter how much he pondered, however, he could not determine the source of that unease.

In the end, he could only commit it to memory for the time being.

While his emotions gradually settled, another incomparably sharp longsword appeared in Li Fan's hand.

It was the Daoxuan Sword, formed from Dao Xuanzi's final desperate strike.

A weapon with barely enough power to kill a Nascent Soul cultivator naturally did not interest Li Fan. What truly intrigued him was the sword's origin.

From it, he sensed a faintly familiar aura.

Long ago, Li Fan had absorbed the Heavenly Treasure known as the Rusted Daoxuan Sword. However, after countless years of being eroded and transformed by the world itself, that Daoxuan Sword had become vastly different from its original form. As a result, even after encountering matters related to it later, Li Fan had never recalled its true origin.

But in this life, perhaps because it had been nurtured for so many years, combined with Dao Xuanzi's exceptionally compatible innate Sword Dao constitution, despite possessing only Golden Core cultivation, he had actually restored the Daoxuan Sword to its original perfect state.

"So it is a relic of the Heavenly Sword Sect."

Li Fan sighed softly. With a casual point of his finger, the Sword Dao Laws of the Xuanhuang Realm transformed into countless glowing threads that poured into the Daoxuan Sword, whose unstable body was on the verge of shattering at any moment.

The sword gradually stabilized. Li Fan then reinforced it using the Art of Formation Refinement.

In the end, this ancient Daoxuan Sword was reborn. Not only had its power not diminished, it had become even stronger than before.

The Heavenly Sword Sect, once one of the Ten Great Immortal Sects, had long since torn through the world boundary and departed.

Only countless broken swords remained within the Sword Tomb ruins.

"The Heavenly Sword Sect..."

Li Fan had once attempted to use those broken swords together with the Reveal character seal script to trace whether the Heavenly Sword Sect had truly escaped successfully.

Unfortunately, under the illumination of the Reveal character, although every broken sword emitted a thread of light, they all pointed toward the Wooden Sword, Heavenly Wonder, at the center of the Sword Tomb.

Now, however, this restored Daoxuan Sword gave Li Fan an entirely new idea.

Silently, the [Reveal] Character appeared.

It enveloped the reborn Daoxuan Sword.

In an instant, three streams of light flew out from the sword.

The thickest stream soared into the heavens like a dragon emerging from the sea, then scattered in every direction before dissipating into heaven and earth.

Another stream flew toward Li Fan.

The final stream, the thinnest of all, drifted toward a certain location within the Xuanhuang Realm.

"Hmm?"

Li Fan's attention was immediately captured.

"Could there still be descendants of the Heavenly Sword Sect within the Xuanhuang Realm?"

His interest was instantly piqued. Floating into the air, he quickly followed the thread of light created by the Reveal Character seal script.

The Reveal Character seal script revealed the connections between all things. Only the caster, or someone with profound understanding of the True Immortal seal script character [Reveal], could perceive these connections.

Thus, there was no concern that anyone else would notice the anomaly.

Following the thread of light, Li Fan arrived somewhere he had never expected.

The Immortal Alliance Nether Prison.

Having once infiltrated it in disguise, the Nether Prison's restrictions were practically nonexistent to Li Fan.

Watching the thread rapidly descend toward the deepest level, Li Fan followed it inside.

His expression gradually became rather subtle.

Because he saw that the thread of connection landed directly on the cultivator imprisoned at the very bottom of the Nether Prison.

"Strange..."

Li Fan had long known that such an individual was imprisoned beneath the Immortal Alliance Nether Prison.

Moreover, the first time he had seen him, he had vaguely felt a sense of familiarity.

Now, connecting that feeling with the Daoxuan Sword's reaction under the Reveal Character seal script, Li Fan finally confirmed his earlier suspicion.

"A descendant of the Heavenly Sword Sect?"

The imprisoned cultivator's eyebrows and facial features bore a striking resemblance to Situ Yao, the former Senior Brother of the Heavenly Sword Sect.

However, the prisoner had already become little more than a living skeleton, making the resemblance only faintly discernible.

Furthermore, similar-looking people were hardly uncommon, so Li Fan had never been certain.

Now, however, his judgment had been confirmed.

"It seems I should trust my intuition more."

"Situ Yao's descendant? Interesting. If I remember correctly, before the Heavenly Sword Sect departed, this Senior Brother of the Heavenly Sword Sect never had any descendants."

"Could it be..."

Li Fan's heart trembled.

He immediately prepared to rescue the man and question him thoroughly.

However, upon closer inspection, Li Fan discovered that the methods used to imprison this descendant of the Heavenly Sword Sect had actually been personally carried out by the Heavenly Doctor.

Had he not secretly learned them from the illusion formation in this life, Li Fan would not even have recognized them.

"Without the proper method to remove the seal, forcing it open will certainly attract the Heavenly Doctor's attention."

"The Xuanhuang Realm's ascension has already reached its final critical stage..."

Under normal circumstances, Li Fan would have simply waited until the next life, when his strength had increased dramatically.

But because he had previously glimpsed the Heavenly Doctor's secrets within the illusion formation, he did not give up immediately.

Instead, he attempted to unravel the seal.

It proved even easier than he had expected.

Apparently, the Heavenly Doctor had never attached much importance to this man. The seal itself was not particularly complicated.

Its primary function was merely to drain all the spiritual energy from his body and suppress him.

After expending considerable effort, Li Fan finally removed the seal.

To avoid alarming the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance, he also left behind an illusion that continued to depict the prisoner as still being sealed.

Li Fan quietly brought the emaciated descendant of the Heavenly Sword Sect out of the Immortal Alliance Nether Prison.

They arrived at an empty and deserted place. Just as Li Fan was about to question him, a flash of golden light suddenly erupted from his hand.

The man instantly broke free from Li Fan's restraint.

Transforming into a streak of golden light, he fled toward the horizon.

In the blink of an eye, he had already disappeared from sight.

This greatly exceeded Li Fan's expectations. Instead of being alarmed, he was delighted.

Although the descendant of the Heavenly Sword Sect was astonishingly fast, how could he possibly outrun Li Fan?

The phantom of the Wooden Sword left its sheath.

The next moment, Li Fan had already caught up.

With a single slap, he trapped the man once more.

This time, no matter how the golden light darted and twisted, it could not escape.

Li Fan had already laid down an Immortal Formation around the area.

"Hmm?!"

Seeing that further attempts were futile, the golden light dispersed and revealed his true form.

Within this short span of time, he had already recovered somewhat from his skeletal appearance.

At least he now retained a human form, though he still appeared extremely frail.

"Many thanks, Senior, for saving my life."

The man carefully cupped his fists in salute.

"Why did you run?" Li Fan asked coldly.

"I was imprisoned for far too long. The moment I saw an opportunity to escape, I simply could not help myself." The man smiled bitterly as he explained.

Li Fan could not be bothered to question him further.

He immediately pressed his left hand onto the man's head, intending to directly use the Soul Search Technique.

The man's body shook violently as though struck by lightning. His already frail body trembled uncontrollably.

Countless memories poured into Li Fan's mind.

Yet Li Fan frowned deeply.

The Soul Search proceeded smoothly, but...

He found absolutely nothing in the man's memories related to the Heavenly Sword Sect.

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