Chapter 651: Pre-Manifestations Of Heaven And Earth

With the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens as his foundation, even if the Heavenly Marrow Hongxi extracted upon achieving Spirit Transformation had been utterly unremarkable, his accomplishments would still have far surpassed what he'd achieved today.

Was it that he didn't want more?

He simply couldn't get it.

Through sheer effort, one might strive for superior Curios of heaven and earth, or stronger laws of heaven and earth.

But once a cultivator reached the Nascent Soul or Spirit Transformation realm, hoping to obtain a powerful, rare grotto-heaven world or Heavenly Marrow through diligence alone was useless. Without family backing and resources, without sufficient personal fortune, how could one possibly compete with other cultivators?

For an ordinary cultivator, simply finding an opportunity and advancing successfully was already a blessing. How could they afford to be picky?

Take Diyi Jinglun, for example. Faced with the temptation of a Soul Arbiter of heaven and earth, he resolutely gave up his chance at Dao Unity. True, he was a heaven-sent prodigy who could afford to look down on that weak Soul Arbiter. But wasn't that also because he held a high position in the Myriad Immortals Alliance, commanding resources and information far beyond what common cultivators could ever access?

The strong could afford to select and deliberate carefully over their future path, and so the strong grew stronger.

The weak could only seize whatever hard-won chance to advance came their way and scrape by however they could, and so the weak remained perpetually weak.

For this reason, from the Nascent Soul realm onward, the disparity in strength among cultivators grew increasingly pronounced.

Even between two cultivators of the same realm, instant defeat was no longer out of the question.

Now, having broken through with the Five Elements Grotto-Heavens, Li Fan could be counted among those at the very ceiling of power at the Nascent Soul realm.

But when it came to finding a Heavenly Marrow that matched his grotto-heaven in quality, he was still completely at a loss.

What exactly was a Heavenly Marrow?

Long Jiuyuan had achieved Spirit Transformation with the Thousand Rivers of Tianling's Pre-Manifestation.

Hongxi had broken through with the Thousand Mountains of Taihua's Pre-Manifestation.

From what the world's announcements had revealed after their deaths, one could perhaps glean a few clues.

Human marrow created blood; Heavenly Marrow created laws.

Whenever laws were formed within the Xuanhuang World, they catalyzed pre-manifestations.

In the province of Tianling, after several thousand years, a thousand rivers shall be born.

In the province of Taihua, after several thousand years, a thousand mountains shall rise.

These were predetermined changes, transformations fated to occur in a specific province of the Xuanhuang world at some fixed point in the future.

To extract a Heavenly Marrow was to extract and peel away the laws driving these pre-manifestations.

By grafting heaven and earth's grand, majestic power onto one's own body, a cultivator could achieve a monumental leap in cultivation and combat strength.

At the same time, the initial fusion of heaven and earth's laws with one's own body laid the preliminary groundwork for the cultivator to sacrifice the soul of heaven and earth during the Dao Unity advancement process.

Pre-manifestations unfold on the scale of millennia. Cultivators have once been unable to detect them at all. But with the Heavenly Venerable's new methodology, one can now perceive even their most subtle fluctuations, then tear open a crack and steadily extract and absorb the power that heaven and earth originally planned to release slowly over thousands of years.

Although this act consumes a great deal of the world's potential, for the cultivator, it means a tremendous leap in power.

Li Fan's thoughts churned as he synthesized everything he knew.

The Five Elements Grotto-Heavens operate in self-contained cycles, integrating into a single whole. This is a rare and sought-after opportunity. The Heavenly Marrow most suited to me should be related to it.

But if the five elements were to manifest in the world, they would disperse. I fear a single Heavenly Marrow would only correspond to a single attribute.

And unlike core formation, combining multiple laws during Spirit Transformation is no easy matter.

Li Fan's eyes narrowed slightly.

Beyond creating laws, Heavenly Marrows possessed a mechanism akin to immunity or resistance.

Once a cultivator already carried one type of Heavenly Marrow, any attempt to extract another would be detected, resulting in a degree of rejection.

The more one extracted, the greater the repulsive force. With each additional type, the difficulty multiplied. For the vast majority of cultivators in this world, extracting even a single Heavenly Marrow was already the limit.

Even a prodigy like Long Jiuyuan, someone who could stand alone against a Soul Arbiter of heaven and earth and advance to Dao Unity with his own abilities, was no exception. That alone spoke to the difficulty involved.

I suspect I can carry at most two types of Heavenly Marrow at once... Li Fan thought, without any blind confidence in himself.

For a perfect advancement, the only way is...

A sharp light flashed in Li Fan's eyes. Extract five different Heavenly Marrows of five different attributes at once, then use the principle of mutual generation and restraint to achieve equilibrium.

It was undoubtedly a fanciful notion.

Setting aside the question of where one could even find an opportunity to extract five Heavenly Marrows at once, even if such an opportunity existed, the odds of success were vanishingly small.

Any cultivator with a shred of rationality would never attempt it.

Yet for Li Fan, it wasn't necessarily impossible.

Within his mind, the crystallized Dao Transformation Stone emitted a blue glow, constantly integrating and processing everything he had seen, slowly deducing a method that might make his vision a reality.

More than ten days later, Li Fan sensed Liu San beginning to awaken. His figure flickered, and he appeared before him.

Having apparently spent quite a long time in the Fallen Immortal Realm, Liu San still seemed somewhat unaccustomed to the real world.

A trace of bewilderment flickered in his eyes.

But the confusion receded the moment he saw Li Fan.

"Young Master!" Liu San stood up, his expression as calm as ever.

"So, how was it? Did you encounter any cultivators from the Medicine King Sect of that era?" Li Fan asked, his expression amiable.

Liu San shook his head.

"Strangely enough, the scene I experienced this time upon entering the Fallen Immortal Realm wasn't the ancient cultivation world you described, Young Master. It was a time and place I'd never heard of.

"There, the inheritance of immortal techniques had been severed entirely. No cultivators existed in that world. People could only master supernatural power by resonating with various artifacts left behind from antiquity. They were called Divine Arm Wielders...

"As for the person I possessed, he was just a child, no more than seven or eight years old."

Liu San recounted his experiences to Li Fan.

"In the end, it took untold hardship and countless bloody massacres before I finally succeeded in resonating with the so-called strongest divine arm, the Immortal-Slaying Sword..."

As he spoke, Liu San produced a long sword. It shimmered with a rainbow of colors, yet seemed to carry within it an endless aura of slaughter.

Li Fan's gaze sharpened, but after looking more closely, he only sighed with a wry smile.

Liu San continued, "It had quite the reputation. But in reality, it was nothing more than a Nascent Soul cultivator's lifebound flying sword.

"It only stood out among that pile of so-called divine arms because a fragment of a fallen cultivator's soul was attached to it."

Liu San's gaze swept across the flying sword before him, and he delivered a dismissive verdict: "Crude forging technique and utterly common materials. Truly garbage."

With that, he applied the slightest pressure.

The so-called strongest divine arm, the Immortal-Slaying Sword, crumbled to dust in an instant.

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