My Longevity Simulation Chapter 1102: All Essences Gathered in One Body

The investigation into the darkness power by the Heavenly Mechanism Realm's folks wasn't going as seamlessly as everyone had hoped.

That was logical enough, considering; after all, this force rivaled the essence of source power. No matter their brilliance, building knowledge from the ground up was bound to demand a massive stretch of time.

Luckily, Master Qiaogong and his team were total obsessives when it came to research; ever since they dove in, they'd been laser-focused and totally absorbed. Li Fan just had to bide his time patiently and collect the rewards later.

In the meantime, Li Fan had already started scheming quietly against those two Immortals.

Deep in the Spiritwood Realm, inside a hidden underground chamber. More than a hundred oddly shaped puppets stood frozen in place, utterly still.

With a grave look on his face, Li Fan himself etched formations directly onto them.

"Bait puppets: they come in pairs of two, making seventy-two pairs altogether. In every pair, one heads straight into the Immortal Ruins, while the other gets positioned across different spots in the Xuanhuang Realm's earth veins. As the seventy-two bait puppets move toward the Immortal Ruins, the major formation etched on them kicks in, pulling the Immortal Ruins Immortal's focus."

"This setup draws from the Final Dissociation Disc and edges right up to Immortal-grade formation power. It's called [Bewildering Haze, Disordered Blossoms Gradually Enchanting]. Catching a sudden danger signal while in seclusion would definitely spark an automatic response, leading back to the Xuanhuang Realm."

"For the bait puppets staying behind in the Xuanhuang Realm, I'll deploy the Faceless True Immortal's source power essence to weave a detection network around them. The moment the Immortal Ruins Immortal's energy sets it off, it'll snag the Faceless True Immortal's attention."

"Assuming no surprises crop up... When these two colossal powers smash together, the Xuanhuang Realm could turn to dust in a flash. So, my fake scheme targeting the Heavenly Dao to pull out the Xuanhuang's looming change needs to be set up ahead of time."

Inside his thoughts, the Dao Deviation Stone pulsed with bursts of blue radiance. The upgraded Dao Deviation Stone's ability to simulate outcomes had surged dramatically. This scheme of shooing away one beast only to lure in another tangled with endless layers. Despite the web of possibilities and shifting factors, the Dao Deviation Stone handled it without much strain.

Naturally, that was just because, in the simulations, the Faceless True Immortal and the Immortal Ruins Immortal only wielded the powers Li Fan had fed in beforehand.

Li Fan understood his own bounds clearly; at his current level, trying to simulate a True Immortal would be pure madness. All he could manage was to hunt for a narrow path to success drawing from the events he'd already lived through.

"The Immortal Ruins Immortal rattles the True Immortal's trap."

"I grab that opening to unleash [Truth] and shatter free in a single move."

"Sure, that's the perfect outcome. But as the old saying warns, prepare for the worst even in victory; I have to account for the plan going wrong, if the power chasm between the Immortal Ruins Immortal and the Faceless True Immortal proves too wide to budge the True Immortal's web bindings..."

"In that case, I'll rush back to the Dark Realm's core, fire up [Truth], and slip out of the danger."

"Right now, I've got a handful of tools that can nudge a True Immortal just a bit; buying a short delay is doable."

Li Fan checked the situation around his divine soul.

The silver shield from the Heavenly Doctor's gift, the golden core of source power, and the rainbow divine light encasing the gray patches of mold... All these forces held a fragile equilibrium.

Maybe only Li Fan could stay perfectly calm in this setup, even picking up a faint thread of reassurance.

"Clashing power with power, playing the alliances and divides. Deep down, it's all because my own might is still way too feeble. But the barrier to Immortality, how could anyone just stroll past it?"

"Legends like the Xuantian King, the Immortal Ancestor, and the Heavenly Doctor all stand blocked at the gate, stuck without a step forward."

"Me, even more so. Without [Truth] in my corner, I'd have ditched this wild dream ages ago," Li Fan remarked with a faint, mocking grin.

"But with the stroke of luck that brought me [Truth], nothing will halt my climb to the heavens..." A cold glint sparked in his gaze.

Li Fan realized full well that whether [Chaos], [Hunger], or [Nothingness], the versions he'd encountered weren't the true originals. They were just crude knockoffs crafted by those who came after.

Because of that, Li Fan never dropped his deep dive into these three True Immortal script characters. Even if it was a replica of a replica, the closer the mimicry, the fiercer the strength it held.

Immortals themselves could grasp the Dao from a single stroke. It was clear that any one of these three would demand a lifetime of Li Fan's dedication to master completely.

Li Fan's own insight had its limits. Yet he could draw from outside help.

Beyond the incredible aptitude of his clone Li Qing, the [Mountain River Pavilion] was stocked with Xuanhuang Realm's top talents, recently lured and flipped one after another, turning them into Li Fan's assets.

The Xuantian Sect method snagged from Senior Sister Zhao, The Heaven and Earth Converging Manual, let him match talent and insight with anyone he chose.

Once he'd nailed a basic grasp of it, clone Li Qing started picking out fitting candidates. On the surface, it was about dispatching them on covert tasks for the True Immortal of Salvation and Mortal Compassion, but actually, they'd been quietly dominated, their aptitudes siphoned away.

Of course, thanks to the merging and balancing, these geniuses also gained half of Li Qing's talent boost.

Li Qing's gifts were on par with theirs or better, so the Mountain River Pavilion talents, Shang Tianci included, spotted nothing off. They just gawked at how amazing the [Foundation Establishment Through Oneself] technique truly was.

Fueled by the talent surge from more than ten prodigies, clone Li Qing's understanding had hit an astonishing, record-breaking peak. He even felt the main body Li Fan peeling away chunks of his recollections.

Still, as just a clone, he shared no divide with the original; he pressed on relentlessly with decoding the True Immortal script characters.

The three True Immortal script characters drifted endlessly in his consciousness, pulsing like living things. Right before Li Qing's vision, a hazy silhouette appeared, showing the process of forging the Dao into symbols.

"Etching the Dao..."

"A force even more domineering than the Faceless True Immortal. That might just be my endgame."

...

As Li Fan worked in the shadows on this lifetime's ultimate scheme.

The Heavenly Sovereign of Reversing Life and Death, who had popped up from nowhere before, at last revealed his grip on the Xuanhuang Realm.

For folks noticed that, since this Heavenly Sovereign arrived, not a single new child had come into the world among Xuanhuang Realm cultivators.

Or to put it broader, the whole human population faced the same curse.

Initially, no one could pin it squarely on this Heavenly Sovereign. But when a long-dead cultivator resurfaced in a way beyond anyone's wildest thoughts, the pieces fell together for all.

The Lancang River, the mightiest waterway in the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance's southwestern edge.

One fine day, a cultivator by the name of Changji burst out bare-skinned from the river's depths. This weird spectacle, of course, pulled in crowds from nearby.

But Changji ignored them completely; he stared at his own form in wild joy and shock, whispering to himself: "Am I alive again?"

"Reversing life and death, reversing life and death; the Heavenly Sovereign didn't lie to me!"