Chapter 587: Where Lies The Path Forward For The Mountain-Sitting Art

Of course, it was only identical in appearance.

The restrictions engraved upon the spirit stone's surface by the Myriad Immortals Alliance and the Five Elders Council were another matter entirely. Those Li Fan could not yet replicate.

For now, I'm limited to simple objects like spirit stones, which are composed purely of spiritual qi. Anything with even a slightly more complex structure is beyond me.

Even so, Li Fan's heart swelled with joy. It was a promising beginning.

In the future, as his realm advanced and his cultivation deepened, creation from the void was not an impossibility.

Breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm had brought a qualitative leap in power. But now, one matter sat squarely before him, becoming an urgent priority.

He had no technique left to cultivate.

The Mountain-Sitting Art he had secretly learned from He Zhenghao was only a Golden Core technique. Upon stepping into the Nascent Soul realm, the trickle of cultivation feedback that had once flowed like a gentle stream had dwindled to almost nothing. Clearly, it offered him little assistance now.

Although the cultivation stored within his Tribulation Bodies had thoroughly stabilized his realm after the breakthrough and there was no immediate pressure to push further, this was not something he could let sit for long. The sooner it was resolved, the better.

He had already devised strategies to address it.

Plan B was to obtain an opportunity to use the Derivation Jade through Immortal Venerable Jicheng's bounty, thereby acquiring the subsequent phases of the Mountain-Sitting Art.

In his previous life, however, Immortal Venerable Jicheng had been ambushed by a Dao Unity cultivator from the Five Elders Council during the Myriad Immortals Alliance's high-stakes game of bluff to root out spies. The injuries he had suffered had brought him to the edge of his lifespan.

In this life, Li Fan could not guarantee the same would happen. So he had prepared Plan C as well.

The Audience Jade Token was extremely precious, awarded only to cultivators who had rendered great merit to the Myriad Immortals Alliance. But it was not a singular, irreplaceable treasure. With Li Fan's current wealth, if he was truly willing to spend an astronomical number of contribution points, purchasing one was not impossible.

However, it would be ostentatious, and it could easily expose his identity and draw the attention of those with ill intentions. He would likely have to flee via Return to Truth the moment the technique was in hand. Plan C, then, was a last resort.

Those were Plan B and Plan C.

Plan A was for Li Fan to comprehend the technique's subsequent phases on his own. That depended entirely on fate and opportunity.

Having cultivated the Mountain-Sitting Art across several lifetimes, if anyone in this world could claim the deepest understanding of it, it was Li Fan. If he took second place, no one would dare claim first.

Throughout his cultivation, sparks of insight had surfaced in his mind with each fleeting moment of feedback, accumulating little by little until they formed something substantial.

On the principle of sitting on a mountain and reaping its rewards, Li Fan had already developed his own unique body of understanding. Given enough time, personally comprehending the technique's subsequent phases was not out of the question.

When all was said and done, the Derivation Jade's ability to tailor techniques to individuals rested entirely on deductions drawn from infinite possibilities.

It could analyze techniques with extraordinary thoroughness and insight, but it could not know everything about Li Fan. Nor would he ever lay his secrets bare before a Curio that was still subtly controlled by the Heavenly Venerable Dao Teacher, compelled to perform derivations ceaselessly day after day, barely able to ensure its own survival.

How I proceed depends entirely on how things unfold from here. And in the process, I might be able to give things another push. The Myriad Immortals Alliance is looking for a traitor, right? This is the perfect opportunity to use that...

Li Fan narrowed his eyes, calculations running through his mind.

After a long while, he finally rose.

His preliminary inspection of the physical changes from his breakthrough was complete.

As for the fact that both his Biological Age limit and his Psychological Age limit on Return to Truth's panel had doubled, that was hardly worth dwelling on. As long as his cultivation continued to advance, they would naturally increase alongside it. He probably wouldn't give them any real attention until he faced the chasm between the Dao Unity and Eternal Heavenly Venerable realms.

What actually interested him more than the age limit figures was the label displayed beside them: Heaven's Loathed.

According to Return to Truth's explanation, although the theoretical biological age limit stood at 999 years, the actual time a cultivator could survive was far shorter—a consequence of being loathed by the will of the world itself. This matched what Li Fan already knew of Xuanhuang World's cultivators.

He wasn't troubled by it. Given his storm-stirring approach to life, he was unlikely to reach the average cultivator's lifespan in any given lifetime anyway. His true lifespan was his Psychological Age. Making the most efficient use of each life was the only approach that made sense.

Heaven's Loathed...

Li Fan gave a cold inward snort, then let it go. He parted his lips slightly, transferred everything from his storage ring into his personal grotto-heaven, and left only ordinary items in the ring to avoid suspicion. Then he quietly slipped out of the underground chamber.

He was in no hurry to return to Congyun. Instead, he remained in Tianling Province and began asking around about a certain Zhang Debiao he had heard mentioned earlier.

Li Fan had set his sights on the cultivator corpses from the Tianling Province battlefield. Not out of any peculiar fetish, but to unlock new anchor points in Return to Truth.

He had previously used Golden Core fragments to charge the last anchor point, but after that, no matter what he tried, Return to Truth seemed to disdain their quality, remaining completely unmoved by fragments purchased through the Tianxuan Mirror. His guess was that subsequent anchor points might require complete Golden Cores to unlock.

But what Golden Core cultivator would ever willingly part with their own core? Such a thing was nowhere to be found—not on the Tianxuan Mirror, not on the open market. The opportunity to unlock a new anchor point had simply never come.

Now, though, might be different.

Countless cultivators had fallen in the Battle of Tianling Province. Even if they weren't the main force, the number of deceased Golden Core cultivators was certainly not small.

Nascent Soul cultivators could regenerate their bodies with the support of their grotto-heaven domains, but Golden Core cultivators could die from injuries to vital areas like the head or heart if they failed to react in time—if they couldn't sustain their vitality with spiritual qi and seek treatment quickly enough.

So the possibility of those corpses containing intact Golden Cores was quite high.

This Zhang Debiao who profited from the dead sounded like a greed-blinded man from the description alone. Buying some Golden Cores from him shouldn't be difficult.

Li Fan's mental abacus clicked away, only to hit a snag at the very first step.

He searched all of Tianling Province and found no trace of Zhang Debiao.

Word was the man had been in Tianling City just a few days prior. But in the days since, he had vanished without a trace. Whispers in the alleys said Zhang Debiao had been boasting to his trusted men about landing a massive deal not long ago. Perhaps he had gone off to handle that very business.

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