Chapter 703: Forging Heavenly Marrow With Bare Hands

Destruction and creation had never been equivalent.

Cultivators with immense power could move mountains and boil seas with ease. But shaping mountains and rivers with one's own hands? That was immeasurably harder.

Many cultivators seemed capable of this feat on the surface. In truth, they were simply moving water and soil from one place to another.

What Xu Bai had just done within the Beastkin World was different.

He had conjured flowers from an open hand, creating matter from nothing.

Or, to put it another way, he had reshaped heaven and earth.

As Dao Unity powerhouses, Liu San and Fang Zaiji saw it with perfect clarity.

The mountains, rivers, and trees that had suddenly appeared within the Beastkin World were never meant to be part of that minor world's natural evolution under its Heavenly Dao.

Xu Bai had forcibly rewritten the laws, compelling the world to change against its own nature.

This wasn't just a physical alteration. He had changed the underlying laws themselves.

The rumbling of the Beastkin World slowly died down. Xu Bai emerged from his epiphanic state to find Liu San and Fang Zaiji watching him with complicated expressions.

He caught their gazes and paused, momentarily caught off guard.

Then he sensed the transformed landscape of the Beastkin World, and understanding came to him.

Even while in the process of comprehension, the body could naturally enact it. The will aligned with heaven, seamless as if born of heaven itself.

Remarkable!

Of course, Li Fan's heartfelt praise wasn't for himself. It was for this avatar.

Or rather, for that trace of Mister Bai's spiritual essence that had forged all the extraordinary qualities of this avatar.

With a thought, every scene from the Beastkin World during his epiphany flooded his mind.

Xu Bai pondered it. Using the hand as a brush to reshape heaven and earth. This divine ability can be named Transforming Heaven.

The initial inspiration for Transforming Heaven had come from the Reverse Five Elements Life-Death Sword.

Back then, Li Fan had comprehended this divine ability from the Heaven-Earth Root's weaving of the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens, from the great annihilation after the five elements converged, and from other spectacular phenomena of heaven and earth. With it, he could achieve basic "creation," re-forging scattered spiritual qi in the air into spirit stones.

But when the objects he wanted to create from nothing grew more complex, Li Fan found himself powerless.

The reason he could reshape the world exactly as he wished this time was because of the seventeen-petaled Tianling Flower.

The mountains and rivers of Tianling Province were revealed upon the Tianling Flower's petals. When his avatar Xu Bai examined them closely, it felt as though his very being had stepped into the petals, flying swiftly over the Tianling Province of ages past.

The scenery before his eyes transformed at dizzying speed. The entire process of the world's mountains and rivers coming into being unfolded before him, one scene after another.

In plainer terms, heaven and earth themselves had acted as his teacher, demonstrating on the Tianling Flower the whole process of creating mountains and rivers for Xu Bai's sake alone.

So Xu Bai learned from heaven and earth, mimicking what he saw. Following and imitating his teacher, he had unconsciously completed a "copy" within the Beastkin World, step for step.

Xu Bai can wield the Transforming Heaven divine ability without any obstruction. But if my true self wishes to master it completely, it will require repeated attempts.

Strictly speaking, deploying Transforming Heaven outside the Beastkin World would serve more as an aesthetic function than a practical one, at least for now.

Li Fan was only at the Nascent Soul realm, so his ability to influence heaven and earth remained severely limited.

Still, this divine ability held boundless potential.

The greatest use Li Fan could imagine right now was creating marrows of heaven and earth by himself.

The marrow of heaven and earth was the essential requirement for advancing to Spirit Transformation, the catalyzing force that brought change to the world.

Thousand Rivers of Tianling's Pre-Manifestation. Thousand Mountains of Taihua's Pre-Manifestation.

A Nascent Soul cultivator who wanted to break through to Spirit Transformation first had to observe an upcoming change in a given province.

Only then could they extract and absorb this catalyzing force to complete their advancement.

The Congyun Sea held hundreds of Nascent Soul cultivators, yet only two Spirit Transformation cultivators: Zi Yun and Hong Xi.

That chasm-like disparity spoke to the difficulty involved.

For an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator, simply observing a shift in heaven and earth in advance was already a herculean task. Concealing it from other covetous cultivators and completing the absorption alone was harder still, more difficult than ascending to heaven itself.

But for Li Fan, who had mastered Transforming Heaven, it was entirely possible to travel to some remote, uninhabited place, trigger a change in heaven and earth, then steal that power to complete his advancement with ease.

If he grew bolder, he might even mass-produce Spirit Transformation cultivators.

Cultivators at the Dao Unity realm almost always ruled a province. Spirit Transformation cultivators were the backbone of the Myriad Immortals Alliance.

If an organization with tens, even hundreds, of Spirit Transformation cultivators suddenly appeared, both the Myriad Immortals Alliance and the Five Elders Council would likely have to take it seriously.

All of this depended on one thing: powerful beings must not detect that Transforming Heaven drew on the power of Xuanhuang's pre-manifestations.

Done covertly, he might conceal it once or twice. But large-scale anomalies would eventually be exposed.

At that point, drawing the attention of Dao Unity cultivators, or even an Eternal Heavenly Venerable, was the expected outcome.

For now, Li Fan would have to test, step by step, how to wield Transforming Heaven within the Xuanhuang World while keeping himself safe.

"Congratulations, Young Master, on another advancement along your path!"

Seeing Li Fan awaken, Liu San flew forward to offer his congratulations, a faint, pleased expression on his face.

Even as he spoke, he casually sealed the surrounding space to keep anyone from discovering that Xu Bai was Li Fan's avatar.

Meanwhile, the Sight-Sharing Eye that Fang Zaiji controlled drew closer. "Using the mountains and rivers as a canvas, the laws as ink, and your divine ability as the brush.

"Sect Leader, you truly are extraordinary!"

"I recall the Divine Brush Sect once had a similar technique. But it's said that shortly after Chu Youhong created it, the sect was brutally wiped out.

"This technique—"

Liu San's face twitched. Before Fang Zaiji could finish, he swept his sleeve wide and stowed the golden eye away.

Fang Zaiji's voice cut off abruptly, and silence fell over the area.

Liu San then relayed Jiao Xiuyuan's conditions to Xu Bai.

"Fellow Daoist Jiao still refuses to cast his hawk until he sees the rabbit, eh," Xu Bai said. It was exactly as Li Fan had anticipated.

He extended his left palm, and the seventeen-petaled Tianling Flower flew into it.

Xu Bai held it, smiling.

The sealed Tianling Flower hadn't lost a single petal, yet a transparent petal appeared in Xu Bai's right hand, etched with the image of a morning sun rising slant across a mountain range.

"I traced this from the original Tianling Flower," he said. "It doesn't carry even a tenth of the original's essence. But it will be enough.

"Old Liu, give this to Jiao Xiuyuan. He'll understand the preciousness of the Tianling Flower well enough on his own."

Xu Bai said it calmly.

Liu San cupped the transparent petal reverently in his palm, nodded, and flew off in a flash.

I need to pick up the pace. This has to be finished before the Myriad Immortals Alliance officially announces the Great Exploration Era.

Otherwise everyone will be off exploring the White Mist. Who'll be left to buy my Tianling Flower?

Xu Bai grumbled inwardly, then began painting streak after streak in the air with his hand. Slowly, one Tianling Flower petal after another appeared.

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