Chapter 610: The Darkest Void Sea

It’s very likely. And makes complete sense. Li Fan considered it for a long while before slowly nodding.

The conclusion also answered a long-standing question in Li Fan's mind.

When the Immortal Ruins first appeared, why hadn't it immediately devoured the Xuanhuang World? Why had the cultivators within been given enough time to seize numerous surrounding grotto-heavens and minor worlds to hold it at bay?

Given the terrifying gravitational pull the Immortal Ruins now exerted, the original Xuanhuang World alone could never have withstood it.

And seizing minor worlds was not something accomplished overnight—the countless attached worlds were almost certainly the accumulated efforts of the Xuantian Sect and the Ten Immortal Dao Sects across thousands upon thousands of years.

All of this pointed to the same answer: the pull of the Immortal Ruins was increasing, growing stronger with each passing day.

As for why it was growing stronger... it was very likely because the Xuanhuang World was drawing closer and closer to the Immortal Ruins.

An image took shape in Li Fan's mind.

On the endless Void Sea, countless cultivation worlds drifted like ships.

Then one day, without warning, a black hole called the Immortal Ruins appeared above the surface of those waters.

It began devouring everything around it with a powerful gravitational pull, forming a great vortex.

Caught in its influence, the cultivation worlds on the Void Sea were pulled inexorably inward, closer and closer with every passing moment.

At first, the change was so subtle that no one noticed. Only when the rate of descent quickened did anyone realize something was wrong.

And so, driven by the instinct of drowning men grasping at whatever lay within reach, the cultivators of the Xuanhuang World began casting "ropes" to tether themselves to the distant, relatively fixed "reefs" in the Void Sea—the grotto-heavens and minor worlds—in a desperate attempt to slow their inevitable fall.

There were, of course, cultivators who wanted to abandon ship entirely and seek new "vessels" for themselves.

But if everyone did so, the Xuanhuang World would sink all the faster.

And so its helmsmen—whether the Xuantian Sect, the Ten Immortal Dao Sects, or the later Myriad Immortals Alliance and Five Elders Council—all chose, as if by silent agreement, to keep the truth of the Xuanhuang World's situation a closely guarded secret and prevent that outcome.

They had originally believed that with enough ropes pulling hard enough, they could wrench the Xuanhuang World free from the vortex.

But they had been wrong.

The “weight” of a cultivator is probably related to these “ropes.” Originally, the world was directly connected to the grotto-heavens and minor worlds, but after cultivators began plundering heaven and earth, they themselves became part of the connection.

If they die suddenly, it's as if several strands within a rope suddenly vanish.

Although a cultivator's Dao returns to heaven upon death, and the grotto-heaven returns to the world, the world needs time to repair the rope.

If the rate of cultivator deaths is normal, it's still manageable. But once it exceeds a certain threshold...

Li Fan recalled a past life. In Tianling Province, Ji Hongdao had confronted Senior Sister Zhao and deployed the Tianxuan Soul-Locking Array, killing every cultivator in the province in an instant, using mutual annihilation as a deterrent.

The moment so many cultivators perished simultaneously, the entire Xuanhuang World had shuddered.

Those subsidiary grotto-heavens and minor worlds are matters of life and death for the Xuanhuang World. The so-called “ropes” are probably not so easily severed.

Otherwise, cultivators would surely have fled through the Immortal-Severing Passageway to the minor worlds and then cut their connection to the Xuanhuang World.

It's not that they don't want to, but that they cannot.

And the Empire, using the hundred thousand Realm-Splitting Whales to carve paths through the void, are not so much cutting the ropes as they are extending them.

When the extended length—the distance between them and the Xuanhuang World—grows great enough by the time the Xuanhuang World finally plummets into the Immortal Ruins and turns to dust, their world tethered at the far end of the rope will find itself suddenly free. Perhaps then, true escape would be possible.

Unfortunately, this process requires far too much time. The Xuanhuang World may not last that long.

A new thought struck Li Fan. If the Xuanhuang World could seize grotto-heavens and minor worlds with these ropes, why hadn't it tried to tether to another cultivation world of similar scale somewhere far away? Logically, a complete world would be far more useful than a tiny grotto-heaven.

Perhaps an attempt was made, and it failed. Or perhaps they simply could not locate the target.

As fellow ships upon the Void Sea, other cultivation worlds would have no desire to be dragged down by those already caught within the Immortal Ruins' pull. Any world that understood the true situation of the Void Sea would most likely take the initiative to conceal itself and refuse to serve as anyone else's lifeline.

Grotto-heavens and minor worlds might lack the capacity for such concealment, but a sufficiently advanced cultivation world almost certainly would. Or rather, any world that could not conceal itself had probably already been dragged down by the cascading pull of the falling worlds long ago.

Beyond that, the Void Sea as a whole had been warped by the presence of the Immortal Ruins. The relative positions of all cultivation worlds had shifted. Every Waymark once used to determine a location had become useless. Finding other hidden cultivation worlds now would be a task of immense, perhaps impossible, difficulty.

That might be why the Xuanhuang World had lost all contact with other cultivation worlds so abruptly.

The once-brilliant Void Sea turned dark in an instant. Every world, besides worrying about being devoured by the Immortal Ruins, had to also hide itself to prevent detection by other cultivation worlds.

What a truly despair-inducing scene to contemplate.

Yet Li Fan, for all that he recognized this, felt little fear.

A faint, almost imperceptible, smile crossed his face.

With Return to Truth at his disposal, finding a path to survival among hundreds of millions of possibilities was not a difficult task. And besides, since a True Immortal's corpse had remained intact within the Immortal Ruins, falling into the Ruins was not necessarily a death sentence. If one could not survive it, the reason was simply insufficient power.

After a long silence, Li Fan looked up. His gaze passed through the transparent walls of the Medicine King Cauldron and reached straight for the heavens.

Whether my conjecture is correct or not is actually quite easy to verify.

I just need to fly out of the Xuanhuang World and face the Immortal Ruins myself.

Thousands of years ago, Liu Ruchen piloted the Medicine King Cauldron through the void for a time before feeling the pull of the Immortal Ruins.

So much time has passed since then. I fear that once I leave the Xuanhuang World and lose its protection, I would immediately plummet toward the Immortal Ruins. There would be almost no time to react.

Perhaps, as we draw closer and closer to the Ruins, there might even come a day when we can see the debris of the Immortal Ruins and the corpse of the True Immortal with perfect clarity in the sky above.

Li Fan extended his left hand and summoned the control core of the Medicine King Cauldron.

Before I Return to Truth, I should be able to put this world to some use. To see for myself.

Thoughts churned through him. Only after a long while did he put the rhomboid crystal away.

Now that I hold all permissions to the true Medicine King Cauldron, the lives of everyone slumbering within the Medicine King Sect rest entirely in my hands. Those who still survive include six at the Dao Unity realm, twenty-three at the Spirit Transformation realm, and a number of cultivators at the Nascent Soul realm and below.

Beyond them, the greatest gain from this venture was learning of that hidden secret realm.

Longevity Valley. I wonder if it still exists after all these years.

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