"This Array Crown is yours now. It contains over a hundred different arrays layered within. In your spare time, you can dismantle and study them.
"If you can independently construct a thirty-layer Array Crown, you can truly call yourself an array master," Zhang Zhiliang instructed.
"The Intent Horse’s soul enhancement effect isn't limited to the immediate moment. For a long time afterward, it will continue to nourish your soul.
"During this period, you should focus on secluded cultivation and avoid conflicts with others to maximize its effects.
"Heh, perhaps you've already realized—all Intent Horses were previously cultivators in life. The one I gave you was a Golden Core cultivator.
"If you can fully absorb it, doubling your soul strength shouldn't be a problem."
Li Fan hadn't expected such additional benefits and hurried to express his gratitude again.
However, Zhang Zhiliang had already ended the communication and didn't reply further.
A Golden Core cultivator...
Once fallen, even they cannot escape becoming nourishment for others. Li Fan shook his head inwardly.
Li Fan suddenly recalled the smiling-faced fruit he had seen long ago on Tai'an Island.
Back then, the smiling-faced fruit phenomenon had only affected a mortal island. If cultivators were transformed into smiling-faced fruits instead... would the resulting fruits possess even greater effects?
Both cases involve humans turning into beneficial exotic objects.
The smiling-faced fruit, the Mind Ape, the Intent Horse... Could there be a connection among them?
Li Fan couldn’t shake the feeling that some hidden secret tied all these events together. The sensation it gave him was strange; out of place, yet oddly familiar.
As he contemplated this, the blue crystal within his mind flickered, and scenes from his past began resurfacing one after another.
At last, Li Fan understood where that sense of familiarity came from.
The Oddities of sect ruins?
He wasn’t completely certain.
The smiling-faced fruit, Mind Ape, and Intent Horse all went against the established rules of cultivation and logic, yet operated with their own coherent, systematic patterns. Precisely the sort of rules those ancient Oddities were based on.
They say Oddities only appear within sect ruins. If these phenomena are truly related... what would that imply?
His thoughts drifted to the time after Fuzi’s azure ox-drawn cart had manifested, when he was summoned to the Heavenly Mechanism Hall for investigation.
In front of the enormous map of the Congyun Sea, that sickly cultivator had murmured:
“Another case has appeared?”
A suspicion began to take shape in Li Fan’s heart.