Seeing that Jiao Xiuyuan agreed so readily, Li Fan nodded, “Then, I’ll leave this matter to you, Daoist Jiao. I look forward to your good news!”
After saying that, he threw a communication talisman to Jiao Xiuyuan and left without mentioning anything about leaving a receipt.
“This person really trusts me,” Jiao Xiuyuan muttered to himself as he tossed the Illusion-breaking Stone Eye in his hand.
In the next moment, the Stone Eye vanished into thin air, its destination unknown.
The puppet on ten thousand immortal Island returned to its previous lazy state.
Jiao Xiuyuan never imagined that it wasn’t trust Li Fan had in him, but rather that the Illusion-Breaking Stone Eye was merely a pretext for Li Fan to establish a connection with him. Even if Jiao Xiuyuan couldn’t sell it or decided to keep it for himself, it wouldn’t matter to Li Fan. What Li Fan truly cared about was the “big business” that was coming next.
Back in the Tianxuan Mirror, Li Fan recalled the other object he had discovered in the Heavenly Mechanism Sect ruins.
It was an entire layer of a pagoda that he had cut out and brought back.
His intuition at the time had been correct.
When mortals roll dice, they get numbers like five or six.
But when cultivators roll the dice, they get the number of the celestial mystery.
The ancient cultivators of the Heveanly Mechanism Sect used these Heaven and Earth Divination Dice, relying on sufficient information and using qi sensing as a driving force, to deduce countless possibilities of the future.
The reason why Li Fan saw only an empty void was that the Heaven and Earth Divination Dice were frozen in the scene where the deduction was completed.
“A void.”
“I wonder what the Heavenly Mechanism Sect cultivators were deducing back then to arrive at such a result.”
Li Fan stretched out his hand, and a crystal-clear icosahedral dice appeared in his palm.
If you looked closely, it seemed that each side flickered with a different image.
Although Li Fan had tried several times before to use these Heaven and Earth Divination Dice to deduce the future, to see if it aligned with his previous experiences, he only obtained fragmented and meaningless images, probably due to improper usage. These images were of no practical use.
Even so, Li Fan didn’t sell it. He had a gut feeling that keeping it might be of great use in the future.
After playing with it for a while, Li Fan put away the Dice and shifted his focus to his clone, “Zhou Qingang.”
These days, he had been staying on Taian Island, only occasionally using a communication talisman to contact necessary people.
He wasn’t just idly daydreaming but was researching how to overcome the side effects of the [Heaven-Devouring Earth-Eating Technique].
This secret technique was likely inspired by the ancient mythical beast, the Guiyuan Toad. Although it truly had the ability to devour the world, the mind was easily lost, and the end result was either death from overconsumption or being discovered and beaten to death.
However, Li Fan possessed the power to maintain absolute rationality, the Blue Flame from the visualization of the Illusory Spirit.
He didn’t seek to stay calm during the entire devouring process, only to stop at critical moments.
With the dual boost from the Enlightenment Pill and the Spiritual Awakening State, Li Fan finally managed to achieve this after much effort.
However, to increase his cultivation using the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Eating Technique, he still needed to solve the problem of the earth’s veins solidifying and becoming unabsorbable.
Li Fan had already planned for this.
Concealing his presence, he teleported to the western part of Lingmu Island in the Congyun Sea and continued flying westward.
After about five hundred miles, Li Fan quietly dove into the sea.
He searched the seabed for a while and indeed found the remnants of a sunken island.
In his previous life, not long from now, this island would re-emerge from the sea due to a mysterious change in the earth’s veins.
The reactivation of the island’s protective formation would also attract the attention of the formation masters in the Congyun Sea’s Formation Hall.
However, before all that happened, this place looked no different from the other ruins scattered across the seabed.
Li Fan entered the ruins and patiently waited.
Seven days later, the seabed began to tremble slightly.
“It’s here!”
Li Fan thought to himself, and with a swift kick, he sunk into the ground.
At the same time, he activated the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Eating Technique and began to sense his surroundings.
From an unknown, far-off place, a continuous surge of power slowly activated the dried-up earth vein node here.
If left unchecked, this reactivated node would push the sunken island back to the surface.
But with Li Fan here, that wouldn’t happen.
Under his feet, it was as if a giant vortex had formed.
The surging power of the earth’s veins, before taking shape, was entirely absorbed into Li Fan’s body, transforming into pure spiritual energy.
Simultaneously, the technique practiced by his clone started to operate rapidly.
It wasn’t the technique originally practiced by the spy Zhou Qingang.
Instead, it was the [Heavenly Fate Xuanji Technique], a Nascent Soul technique from the Hevenly Mechanism Sect.
This ancient technique was known for being extremely slow to cultivate. But now, with the unrestricted acceleration provided by the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Eating Technique, it was progressing at a frightening speed.
The power of the earth’s veins flowed endlessly, and Li Fan’s clone absorbed it without restraint.
What should have been a phenomenon that shook the entire surrounding sea was quietly neutralized.
In just an instant, the clone’s cultivation reached the peak of the early Golden Core stage.
Due to the existence of Heavenly Calamity, no matter how fast the Heavenly Fate Xuanji Technique operated, his cultivation could not advance any further.
Li Fan frowned slightly but did not stop devouring.
Even though the power of the earth’s veins he was devouring was being wasted, he didn’t mind at all.
The spiritual energy transformed by the Heaven-Devouring Earth-Eating Technique continued to accumulate in the clone’s body, completely filling every part of it.
As the clone’s body was about to burst, Li Fan patted his chest, and his hand emitted a powerful suction force.
He began to absorb and transform the excess spiritual energy within his body.
In the ancient times before the “Heavenly Calamity”, such a situation wouldn’t have occurred, as the speed of obtaining spiritual energy would never outpace the growth of cultivation.
But the existence of cultivation bottlenecks trapped Li Fan in this strange predicament.
The energy from devouring was all used to accelerate the cultivation technique.
Yet, no progress could be made.
The technique operated at a terrifying speed, like a turbulent tide crashing against an indestructible dam again and again.
Li Fan carefully observed and recorded everything happening within his body.
Compared to the immense power of the earth’s veins, the strength of a small Golden Core cultivator was insignificant.
But this force, which should have at least advanced a Golden Core cultivator to the Nascent Soul stage, was being continually consumed in the process of overcoming the Heavenly Calamity.
However, it turned out that Li Fan’s efforts were not in vain.
After countless impacts, the bottleneck finally showed a sign slight loosening.