Chapter 609: The Origins Of The Xuantian Sect

It was as if he had come face to face with a being of a higher order of existence. The oppressive aura struck him before his mind could even process what he was seeing.

The moment the figure appeared, Li Fan's heart lurched into a violent rhythm. The fine hairs across his body stood on end, and cold sweat traced down his forehead.

Even the image recorded by the true Medicine King Cauldron seemed affected, warping and blurring before his eyes.

Before he could react, he had already stepped back, the color drained from his face.

Even a recorded image carries such might. Was that... a True Immortal?

Before his death, Liu Ruchen had imparted many things. Among them, knowledge of the terrifying entity looming over the Xuanhuang World, seemingly poised to consume everything within its reach.

In ancient times, once a cultivator broke through to the Dao Unity realm and survived the Heavenly Tribulation, they would be guided in ascending to the upper realm.

But from a certain point onward, that changed.

A cultivator who had successfully passed the Heavenly Tribulation and ascended to the Immortal Realm actually returned not long after, his expression grim.

And so the world learned that the path to the Immortal Realm had been severed. Where the passage once stood, there was now only ruin and wasteland.

At the time, the vast majority of cultivators knew only that the Immortal Ruins existed. What it actually looked like, what state it was in—that remained unknown.

With the Immortal Path severed, more and more Dao Unity cultivators found themselves stranded in the mortal world. Yet even the Dao Unity realm granted only a few thousand years of life. That was the limit.

Those who reached such heights were exceptional talents, each one favored by heaven. How could they simply sit and wait for death?

And so the Eternal Life realm emerged.

Heaven and earth hold miraculous objects. Obtain one, and you may live forever.

Such marvels had always existed in the world. That was their special authority, bestowed upon them by heaven and earth. When a cultivator's lifespan neared its end, they could seize this authority, defy fate, and rewrite their destiny.

That was the Fruit of Eternal Life.

The earliest Eternal Life cultivators came about this way.

But the Fruits of Eternal Life were finite, and there were far too many Dao Unity cultivators in the world. Conflict was inevitable.

Amidst the great wars that followed, a force called the Xuantian Sect rose rapidly to prominence.

Its leader was none other than that cultivator who had ascended and then returned. He was also the only being in the Xuanhuang World at the time to have been infused with Immortal spiritual qi, half a step from becoming a True Immortal.

A True Immortal represented a qualitative transformation beyond anything a mortal cultivator could achieve. And so his strength far surpassed that of other Dao Unity and Eternal Life cultivators.

Under his leadership, the Xuantian Sect swept across the Xuanhuang World of that era with crushing momentum.

But raw power was only part of it. This man was also a master of scheming. Using the Fruit of Eternal Life as bait, he drew over a dozen of the cultivation world's foremost Dao Unity cultivators to his banner. With them in his ranks, the Xuantian Sect became truly unstoppable.

From then on, the Xuantian Sect held the world under its oppressive might, and few dared to defy it.

That quasi-Immortal called himself the Xuantian Heavenly King. The twelve strongest combatants within the sect were known as the Xuantian Dharma Kings.

The Xuantian Sect came close to unifying the entire cultivation world.

Emboldened by having stolen the authority of eternal life, and hungry to strengthen their rule, they began to reach for the other authorities of heaven and earth.

Cultivators of the ancient era held heaven and earth in reverence. Though they could move mountains, fill seas, split rivers, and sever currents, they believed their immense power was ultimately derived from heaven and earth.

The Xuantian Sect broke that convention. They sought to seize heaven and supplant it entirely. Through the edicts of the sect's Heavenly King, even a mortal could wield power enough to rival a cultivator.

It wasn't that no cultivator had thought of resisting them. But the Xuantian Heavenly King had obtained an esoteric treasure called the Xuantian Treasure Mirror, through which all things in the world could be observed.

Several secret gatherings were rooted out completely before their causes could gain any momentum. Countless cultivators were implicated, and the slaughter that followed ran the seas red.

The sects of the world were already outmatched, and after this, they lost the will to resist entirely.

Yet no reign lasts forever.

In its later years, the Xuantian Sect grew increasingly arrogant and tyrannical. Its members openly bullied and humiliated cultivators without consequence.

Finally, the world could bear it no longer.

At the rallying cry of the Ten Great Sects, cultivators united and brought down the Xuantian Sect's rule.

"Heh. Looking at it now, the Ten Immortal Dao Sects and the Xuantian Sect are birds of a feather, cut from the same cloth.

"The Immortal Ruins forcibly drain all matter and energy from the external world.

"The Ten Immortal Dao Sects call themselves leaders of the world's sects. Yet on a matter of life and death for the world itself, they never breathed a single word of it to us."

In his final testament, Liu Ruchen had spoken those words with undisguised resentment.

He speculated that something unimaginable must have occurred in the Immortal Realm long ago, something that led to the complete severing of the Immortal Path. And that corpse resting on the Immortal Ruins was likely an Immortal who had fled from that catastrophe.

Even a True Immortal could not escape the terrifying pull of the Immortal Ruins. One could only imagine what would become of the Xuanhuang World if it were ever dragged in. No living being in the world would likely survive such an end.

When the Ten Immortal Dao Sects led the masses to overthrow the Xuantian Sect and inherited its legacy, they could not possibly have been ignorant of this.

Yet they kept it secret. They hadn't even issued a warning when the Medicine King Sect sought to break through the world's boundaries. They had simply watched, without a word, as the entire sect marched to its doom.

Utterly despicable.

The recording continued. Amidst violent tremors, the Medicine King Cauldron ultimately escaped disaster, skirting the terrifying maw of the Immortal Ruins and returning to the Xuanhuang World.

The recording faded, giving way once more to the scene at the bottom of the Cangwu Abyss.

Li Fan remained lost in thought for a long time.

In truth, Liu Ruchen's decision to pilot the Medicine King Cauldron and flee the Xuanhuang World had not been some unrealistic fantasy. It involved the lives of every cultivator in his entire sect, and Liu Ruchen was no rash fool. The elders of the Medicine King Sect had ultimately agreed to his plan, and there were sound reasons for it.

A former master of the Medicine King Sect, seeking a method of ascension after the Immortal Path was first severed, had followed information left by the sect's founding ancestor, Sun Piaomiao, and traveled to other nearby cultivation worlds.

But what he found horrified him. Those worlds, like the Xuanhuang World, had lost all connection to the Immortal Realm as well.

Venturing deeper into the void lay beyond his capabilities, and so he had returned, defeated.

A Waymark the Medicine King Sect possessed pointed to a cultivation world near the Xuanhuang World called Xiaoyao. In Liu Ruchen's view, since the ancestors of old had traversed the void without encountering any danger, as long as he emulated them and proceeded with extra caution, there shouldn't be any major issue.

Who could have imagined that catastrophe would strike before they had even left the Xuanhuang World?

In the beginning, the ancestors of the Medicine King Sect could still ignore the pull of the Immortal Ruins, freely traveling to and from the Xuanhuang World.

But now, escaping has become a thousand times more difficult.

The Xuantian Sect and the Ten Immortal Dao Sects captured surrounding grotto-heavens and minor worlds time and again, striving to counteract the pull of the Immortal Ruins.

In the present day, even the “weight” of a cultivator is crucial for the survival of the Xuanhuang World.

A flicker of alarm stirred within Li Fan's chest. Synthesizing all this information, he could not help but arrive at one conclusion.

The pull of the Immortal Ruins is growing stronger over time.

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