Before proving the Half Immortal realm, Li Fan had already used the Faceless Stone Statue several times to invoke this Dark Power. It could be said that he was extremely familiar with it.

Now that he had ascended to the Half Immortal realm, capturing the energy that had accumulated within this Dark Sea for countless years was naturally effortless.

Li Fan was not the master of the Dark Power. Thus, during the process of being captured, it displayed considerable resistance. But Li Fan was no longer the same as before. With overwhelming strength that could suppress all resistance, the struggles of the Dark Power were completely futile.

All of it obediently gathered into Li Fan's palm.

Because it was a ‘near immortal power’ born from the corpse of a True Immortal, it surprisingly possessed certain properties resembling the ‘infinite’ nature of immortal power. As it gathered in Li Fan's palm, it seemed to compress endlessly without any limit.

When the entire Dark Sea had been absorbed by Li Fan and was no longer dark and gloomy, there was nothing more in his palm than a small black orb with a faint glimmer.

And when the darkness that had accumulated for so long finally dispersed, Li Fan could clearly see the True Immortal remains here.

Or rather, what remained of those remains.

The True Immortal's corpse had already been completely drained by the Spirit Gathering Ascension Formation and used up as nourishment. Only a few traces remained, thinner than shadows.

If Li Fan had not been observing from above with the might of a True Immortal and examining everything with meticulous attention, he probably would not even have been able to see the final trace left behind by this fallen True Immortal.

"Immortal, return unto the heavens..."

Li Fan gazed quietly at the residual shadow of the remains for a long while. The traces were far too fragile, leaving behind no useful information whatsoever.

He gently blew a breath, causing them to completely dissipate.

It was not that Li Fan had suddenly developed compassion and wanted to help this deceased True Immortal attain peace.

Rather, he wanted to use the removal of this final trace as an opportunity to observe whether there were any other remnants of the True Immortal within this Dark Sea.

The result was unsurprising.

Aside from several faint, almost inaudible roars that came from the True Immortal's Will to Survive below, there were no more corresponding fluctuations anywhere within the vast Dark Sea, or even throughout the countless starry skies of the Xuanhuang Realm and the experimental field.

"It seems this True Immortal is probably truly dead."

The original purpose for constructing the Spirit Gathering Ascension Formation within the Dark Sea was to serve as the power source for the Xuanhuang Realm's escape from the Immortal Ruins.

But now, Li Fan could single handedly drag the Xuanhuang Realm out of the Immortal Ruins' gravitational pull.

The strength he could display, even if it partially relied upon the Hill Guardian's phantom, was ultimately far beyond that of the entire Dark Sea.

The process of suppressing it had encountered no twists or turns, and the cleanup was proceeding smoothly as well.

Li Fan turned his gaze toward the final remnant here.

The True Immortal's Will to Survive.

It was like the shadow of a withered branch, yet also resembled a hunched human figure. After sensing Li Fan's presence, it displayed both fear and longing.

It was like a wild beast in the forest secretly observing a hunter who had entered the mountains. It wavered uncertainly between fleeing and greed.

Like feeding a pet, Li Fan separated a trace of his own energy and offered it to the True Immortal's Will to Survive.

After circling around it several times, the True Immortal's Will to Survive seemed afraid that the food would escape. It immediately wrapped itself around it, chewed it, and swallowed it.

Seeing this, a faint smile appeared at the corner of Li Fan's mouth.

"Indeed, it is nothing more than a foolish thing with only the instinctive desire to survive remaining."

"The Ink Death Celestial Spirit, and moreover, the version that has fused with the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth. How could you possibly digest it so easily?"

The True Immortal's Will to Survive tried to consume its food, but no matter what it did, it could not diminish its opponent in the slightest.

Moreover, the food in its belly was actually turning around and attempting to devour it from within!

The True Immortal's Will to Survive let out a terrifying roar, like an ancient ferocious beast.

Yet no matter how violently it struggled, it could not resist the power of the Ink Death Celestial Spirit.

Helplessly, it rolled and thrashed about in the deepest part of the Dark Sea.

When everything finally settled, the True Immortal's Will to Survive had already transformed into one of the countless manifestations of the Ink Death Celestial Spirit.

Li Fan had originally hoped that he might find some memories of the past within this remnant consciousness of the True Immortal.

But after carefully searching through it, he discovered that what remained were nothing but instinctive thoughts of devouring, rebirth, and the like.

"What a pity."

"I never managed to determine the true identity of the True Immortal whose body was buried beneath the Dark Sea."

"But at most, he was merely an ordinary True Immortal. It is no longer important."

Li Fan now had the qualifications to say such a thing, having become capable of suppressing the Nameless realm with a wave of his hand.

He surveyed the now empty Dark Sea, pondering how such an enormous vacant space could be utilized in the future.

But suddenly, he sensed a trace of inexplicable energy being generated here.

"Hm?"

Clearly, he had already collected all the sources of energy here. Where had this newly generated energy come from?

Li Fan was somewhat surprised, but he did not panic.

After searching with his divine sense, he discovered that these tiny energies, resembling countless faint points of light, were actually coming from all over the Xuanhuang Realm.

These points of light were even more minute than the remnants of the True Immortal's corpse.

If they had not suddenly appeared within the completely drained Dark Sea, Li Fan would have subconsciously overlooked them as well.

Li Fan drew one of the points of light toward himself. The instant he touched it, it exploded and disappeared like a bubble.

It also seemed not to have entered Li Fan's body at all. No one knew where it had gone.

After pondering for a while, Li Fan gathered all the points of light into his palm, condensing them into a sphere of light. He carefully observed it.

Only after the quantity reached a certain level did Li Fan sense something strangely familiar within it.

"This is..."

"Spirituality?"

"No. It does not yet reach the level of [Truth]. It is much lower than that."

"But it is still, to a certain extent, a gathering of cultivation talent."

After storing the sphere of light together with the black sphere formed from the Dark Sea, Li Fan seemed to understand what had happened.

"The countless beings of the Xuanhuang Realm were merely pieces on a chessboard according to their original design. From the moment they were created, various attributes had already been designed for them. Height, appearance, talent, temperament."

"These spheres of light are the power through which the natural operation of the Xuanhuang Realm bestows talent upon all living beings. Now, however, they were absorbed by the Dark Sea because the True Immortal's Will to Survive sensed the existence of this power and instinctively wanted to seize it..."

Li Fan's brows furrowed.

"Although the countless beings of the Xuanhuang Realm are chess pieces, they are chess pieces of the upper echelons of the Immortal Realm. A mere Will to Survive..."

He raised his head and looked toward the beings within the Xuanhuang Realm.

He wanted to imitate it and plunder the talents of all living beings.

But clearly, it was impossible.

"The True Immortal's Will to Survive has already been destroyed by me, yet the extraction of this talent still continues to exist."

Li Fan suddenly recalled a topic he had previously discussed with Hundred Flowers, Qiao Gong, and the others.

During the great catastrophe of destruction, quite a few cultivators had once witnessed from afar the strange and dreamlike sight of their homeland falling into the Immortal Ruins. All things collapsed and disintegrated, forming a bizarre and distorted halo of light.

At the same time that the cultivation world completely disappeared into the Immortal Ruins, it seemed that a massive amount of matter also surged outward in the opposite direction. This substance could be detected by neither the naked eye nor divine sense, yet it truly existed.

The former Immortal Puppet Ancestor of the Heavenly Mechanism Realm had ultimately withered away precisely because he was too close to the Immortal Ruins, causing something within him to continuously drain away. At the time, Qiao Gong had even found an excuse for his own "becoming stupid."

"The Hunger Immortal has already been suppressed. The Immortal Ruins are already gone..."

Li Fan flashed into the starry sky outside the Xuanhuang Realm.

He took out half of the points of light.

Here, they did not show any tendency to flow. They merely floated quietly in the void. It seemed they could not remain for long, and soon began to dim.

Before they completely dissipated, Li Fan collected them once again.

Although it looked like only a small cluster of light, if all of it were bestowed upon a single person, the cultivator it created should possess talent no weaker than Zhang Haobo, Xiao Fan, and the others.

"It seems that the Xuanhuang Realm has remained beside the Immortal Ruins for too long, causing the world itself to develop this characteristic."

"The innate talent and spiritual nature of all living beings are being extracted in the direction opposite to the attraction of the Immortal Ruins. Even though the Immortal Ruins no longer exist, this tendency cannot be completely reversed in such a short time."

After conducting comparative experiments at several locations throughout the Darkest Star Sea, Li Fan reached a preliminary conclusion.

"As long as there is no other monstrous existence causing trouble, that is enough."

He first breathed a sigh of relief.

Naturally, however, Li Fan became curious about why this phenomenon occurred.

His comprehension of the Hunger character art can be said to be the highest among everyone within the [Yuanchu] possibilities, second only to the Hunger Immortal.

He naturally knew that when comprehending the Hunger character art, an attraction capable of devouring all things would arise around him.

Yet he had never noticed that there was something that was not drawn in by this attraction, but instead actively repelled itself and departed.

Verifying this was not difficult.

In the center of the Darkest Star Sea, Li Fan cast a Hunger character art toward the nearby void.

Although it was nowhere near the Immortal Ruins in power, it was still like a gigantic vortex that suddenly emerged.

The Star Sea once again became turbulent.

Li Fan remained motionless amid the waves, taking the group of You Clan members who had previously fallen into his sight after crying out in despair over the disappearance of the Dark Sea and throwing them one by one into the vortex.

Although the You Clan possessed formidable physiques and could fight cultivators on equal terms, how could they possibly withstand the power of the Hunger character art?

They could not even struggle in the slightest before all of them were reduced to dust within the enormous vortex.

Without the slightest change in expression, Li Fan threw them in one after another and observed carefully.

He had never paid particular attention to it before, so it was perfectly normal that he had overlooked this spiritual substance. But under Li Fan's meticulous observation this time, he truly discovered the existence of this invisible substance.

Moreover, because the You Clan all possessed the bloodline of the first generation Great Celestial Venerable of the Xuanhuang Realm, the amount of spiritual substance extracted from the vortex was quite considerable.

Li Fan was like a prospector, collecting all of the spiritual essence.

"Interesting. Why does comprehending the Dao through the Hunger character art produce such an anomaly?"

"Perhaps it is related to the Hunger Dao itself."

Li Fan recalled the scene from not long ago when he suppressed the Hunger Immortal.

Before the phantom of Lord Hill Guardian, the Hunger Immortal, despite being unable to prevail, had not simply resigned herself to defeat. Instead, she had fought desperately one last time.

The Hunger Immortal's struggle had ultimately been futile. What truly caught Li Fan's attention, however, was that ghostly and profound voice repeating, "Hungry, I am so hungry."

Rather than sounding as though it had come from the Hunger Immortal herself, it seemed more like the voice of some mysterious existence beyond the unseen Great Dao.

It seemed to desire to swallow mountains and drink seas, turning everything in the world into nourishment for itself.

Li Fan suddenly looked toward the Hunger Immortal's Celestial Pillar once again.

"There seems to be something wrong with this Hunger Dao."

"Could it not be a Dao that originally existed within the possibility of the [Yuanchu], but rather something that devoured another Dao and usurped its place?"

Li Fan did not dare to be completely certain.

But judging from all the signs before him, it was already highly likely.

"Spiritual substance is intimately connected to the creation of living beings. It faintly involves the foundation upon which possibilities evolve. Although this outsider called the Hunger Dao appears to occupy the Dao path on the surface, fundamentally, it has not yet truly merged with it."

"Thus, when it devours all things, this kind of phenomenon in which spiritual essence is extracted occurs."

The evidence needed to prove Li Fan's conjecture was already contained within the Hunger Immortal's memories.

The Hunger Immortal had already transformed into a Celestial Pillar, and Li Fan could freely browse through her past life. It would not be long before the final mystery was revealed.

"Since the alien beast race was able to flee here from another possibility, then it is hardly strange that there were other outsiders as well."

"However, when viewed from the perspective of those who came later, one could not help but find the situation rather laughable."

"These outsiders were just like those so-called Transcendent True Immortals who had fled from the possibility of the Yuanchu. After enduring countless hardships, they thought they had finally found a safe haven, yet they never expected that they would ultimately still meet their deaths."

"Or perhaps..."

Li Fan narrowed his eyes. Images flickered through his sea of consciousness as scenes from countless possibilities surged forth.

With his current deduction ability, even without knowing the exact identities of those involved, he could still infer certain aspects of what had happened back then from the final outcome.

"Perhaps these outsiders who fled here never regarded this place as their final refuge at all. They merely treated it as a temporary foothold."

"Since they could escape once, they could escape a second time, a third time..."

"At the very least, this must have been what they believed. Once the Dao Annihilation Calamity descended again, they could simply flee once more."

"To resist a calamity, aside from favorable circumstances, the most important thing is the unity of all people. But if there are natural fugitives hidden among them..."

Li Fan had once served as Grand Preceptor for several decades, so he naturally understood the dangers posed by such black sheep.

If they merely fled in despair on their own, that would be one thing. What was truly frightening was that they could imperceptibly infect, alter, and shake the thoughts of those around them.

It would spread like a plague. The consequences would be utterly unimaginable.

"This is not merely my speculation."

"Back then, there truly were such people in the Immortal Realm."

A figure suddenly appeared before Li Fan's eyes.

"Sun Piaomiao."

"And that group of people who created the Go pieces of the Immortal Domains."

"Then there were Qing Yin and the True Immortal surnamed Ling, who had presided over this Immortal Realm experimental site before decisively leaving."

"This is only the tip of the iceberg. One can imagine how many similar figures existed among the many Immortals of the Immortal Realm back then."

"Working alongside such people, even with Emperor Tianluo's countless ambitions, he was destined to fail. If it were me, I would first use the fishing method to gather all these fugitives together in one place. Then I would exterminate them all!"

"That would not only prove the hearts of the people, but also provide a batch of expendable materials for resisting the Dao Annihilation Calamity..."

As Li Fan thought this, a fierce glint flashed through his eyes.

It was not that Li Fan truly wished to become some savior Heavenly Emperor. It was merely a flight of fancy born from placing himself in their position while deducing the events of the past.

Everything from the past had become nothing but a fleeting illusion.

Now, the possibility of the Yuanchu was left with nothing but shattered ruins struggling to endure.

All Li Fan could do was, like those fugitives, change worlds and make a new home elsewhere.

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