My Simulated Road to Immortality Chapter 2360 - 1759: The One-and-Only Faan, Part 2
Previously on My Simulated Road to Immortality...
In that instant, he abruptly sensed other presences lurking in the dark clouds, much like thunder roaring under the sun.
Ideas frozen in ice cracked apart, layer by layer.
Li Fan's awareness rapidly returned.
"Will I consume the God? Or will the God consume me?"
"So near."
After scanning his whole form, Li Fan instantly grasped his situation.
"It's just like the instant before the True God arrives."
"However, the True God's arrival means all things revert to God, involving death and renewal."
"But this time, it's seizing a corpse to bring a soul back to life!"
Ignoring the mounting pressure building in the dark clouds, Li Fan pondered calmly.
"How could swallowing a God be simple? Any strand in these clouds can mimic the real, forging genuine past events."
"If I try to gulp it down crudely and directly, even if I manage to take it all in, there's only one outcome."
"The fallen True God will use my form to come back."
"One step from becoming God, and everything resets to the moment before it started."
"The separation from Mountain Sea, the vanishing of all existence, isn't fake—it's real, they simply cease to be."
Deep inside, Li Fan began to comprehend.
The realm where Mountain Sea splits the Spirit isn't ordinary time or space.
Instead, it revolves around the [True God]'s condition as the core of change.
The True God's collapse at its peak completeness signals the start of Mountain Sea's Spirit division.
The end comes when Mountain Sea's Spirit division concludes, with the divine form scattering entirely.
As Li Fan devours more of the divine form with each step, drawing closer to the True God's full state.
He thus reaches this starting point.
Reflecting on Mountain Sea, Li Fan resolved a lingering question in his mind.
Why would Mountain Sea settle for "division" when devouring a God tempts so greatly?
Humans naturally crave possession alone.
Even for ordinary cultivation items, there's an urge to hoard them. Let alone a True God's power?
"It's not unwillingness, but true impossibility."
"Should Mountain or Sea attempt full consumption of the God, the result would mirror my current state."
"It would end up as the True God's revival material."
"Only through their mutual agreement, with Mountain and Sea relying on one another, can they together withstand the divine power."
Li Fan realized this inwardly.
Mountain Sea at least shares the burden with each other, while Li Fan treads this path in solitude.
Fortunately, his initial aim wasn't to consume the God.
Rather, it was to witness the enigma of the God's downfall!
"Though I still can't view the full divine form now, it's sufficient for the moment."
The pressure from the vast dark cloud built like water swelling in a blocked reservoir.
It slowly turned from persuasion to force.
Li Fan knew time was running short, so he steadied his thoughts and watched closely.
"I hope this mostly whole corpse holds some remnants."
In every divine form Li Fan had consumed, no hint emerged about the God's fall.
No recollections lingered there.
Only pure Taoist Principles and Laws.
The basis of creation, the root of being.
Regaining focus, Li Fan even marveled at his own feat of ingesting such a massive 'rock.'
This effort wasn't in vain.
The dark cloud of the divine form stretched infinitely.
Yet Li Fan now traversed it mentally with ease.
Merely a slim barrier from turning into God. Li Fan's gaze felt detached, like viewing his own remains from outside.
Searching for signs of his own end.
Following the initial scan.
"Every Tao, every Law stands impeccable, without any flaw or oddity."
Li Fan mused, then probed once more with Divine Sense.
The result remained unchanged.
"Whatever felled a God must have been cataclysmic. I'd expect a massive wound. Why does it all appear so ordinary?"
Li Fan struggled to make sense of it.
"Perhaps only as a God can I uncover why the God fell?"
Yet plainly, taking that step would doom him beyond even Hai Zhen's rescue.
"The True and False Dao can flip repeatedly as long as the [God] hasn't fully emerged."
"But returning to God..."
"The True and False Dao, once fused with God, can't be undone."
Li Fan understood this well, so he quashed the fresh urge toward divinity.
He'd rather endure eternal cycles of ruinous Reincarnation, holding onto his separate will.
Than become the so-called God and erase himself.
Refusing to yield, Li Fan kept examining the divine form repeatedly.
But the God's innate revival grew tougher to hold back.
The immense dark cloud started slipping from control.
Li Fan sensed that with prolonged inaction, the divine form was turning against him.
Or put better, the reservoir formed by that revival impulse was on the verge of bursting through the barriers of stone. Awakening on its own.
And before this overwhelming surge, Li Fan would shatter under the divine force.
"I must truly withdraw before the True God's revival, or it'll be beyond fixing..."
Li Fan made his choice at last.
Though he hadn't unveiled the True God's downfall secret this round, by consuming the form, he absorbed every law and essence of the world.
Once he thoroughly processes these gains, Li Fan's grasp of the True and False Dao could exceed his past limits. Attaining a realm beyond imagination.
At that point, barring the inability to remake God itself.
All birth and demise across Mountain Sea would bend to Li Fan's will.
"This gain suffices."
"I'll process it briefly, then return to examine further!"
With this resolve, Li Fan prepared for true departure.
Yet right then, seeing the True God's dark cloud stir more wildly, a spark ignited in his heart.
"Only the True God can behold the secret of the God's fall."
"Then, let the God's revival proceed without block."
"I control the True and False Changes; the God isn't truly God yet. A brief window exists..."
Li Fan's gaze sharpened, settling on his bold choice.
His mind raced upward, ceasing all resistance. The revival urge flooded the dark cloud like a torrent.
Moments passed...
Li Fan sensed the boundless dark cloud fade from view.
Stunned briefly, he recovered and glanced skyward.
Amid the infinite blackness and emptiness, a single star ignited.
As if the divine's lone eye gazed down upon creation.
Starlight radiated outward, outpacing the rush of all things merging with God at Mountain Sea's close.
All that Li Fan perceived and sensed submerged in the starlight.
And truly, he felt the pull of reversion from on high.
The True and False Dao, born from God, now compelled to rejoin God.
Having faced like visions before, Li Fan stayed composed.
He braced himself fiercely with his determination.
His sight locked firm, unveiling at last the God's authentic form.
Simultaneously, he contrasted it with the fallen divine form he'd glimpsed earlier.
Time halted in this frozen beat.
Disregarding peril, Li Fan chased the truth.
The starlight blazed brighter, more intense.
Engulfing all.
And precisely then, the starlight abruptly withdrew entirely.
The realm sank back into pitch-black, silent demise.
Li Fan nearly dismissed it as a peak-induced mirage from the starlight.
But quickly, he detected the anomaly.
Within the gloom, a colossal, unseen entity loomed silently before him.
Had Li Fan been in his initial Divine Split state, he couldn't have discerned the God's reality.
But after eons of God-devouring, he could now behold the spectacle unfolding.
True God, seated upon the earth.
Ideal form, marred by an absence betwixt the brows.
...
The True God, beyond shape or substance, bears no brows or seated pose by nature.
Li Fan merely imposed his own lens upon the divine.
Striving to grasp and interpret the fallen God's fate.
Hence, he perceived a God, meant to soar exalted and rule over all, somehow grounded in defeat.
Hence, he perceived a God, meant for unblemished divinity, now hollowed at the brow's center.
Grounded from grievous wounds.
And the cause of near-fatal injury, that brink of oblivion, stemmed from the brow's void.
"Is this the secret of the God's fall that I pursued so relentlessly?"
Li Fan stared at that void, entranced.
For an unknown reason, a sense of recognition stirred from it.
Rumbles echoed forth.
True God on the ground appeared to rise once more.
As wind swept past, True and False Changes wavered.
Poised to soar unbound toward the divine heights.
"Return... Truly!"
Li Fan cast one last glance, striving to imprint that baffling void into his Spirit Consciousness depths.