Great Xuan.
Following the location from his memories, Li Fan found Yi Xing’s tomb and effortlessly deactivated its mechanisms.
After casually setting up an array around the area to prevent anyone from accidentally intruding, Li Fan entered Yi Xing’s tomb once more after many years.
Passing through the long passage, he reached the tomb’s depths.
Above, luminous pearls shone like stars; below, a sea of clouds drifted between forested peaks.
The traces of an array were immediately apparent.
This array has persisted for thousands of years despite the absence of spiritual qi?
Li Fan couldn’t help but marvel, and began to examine it closely.
Before long, he understood.
He substituted reality for illusion, using pearls as stars and soil excavated from famous mountains across Great Xuan to form peaks, thereby minimizing the array’s energy consumption to the greatest possible extent.
This unknown array completely lacks offensive and defensive functions. Its sole purpose is... misdirection.
In Li Fan’s perception, the golden-thatched cottage housing Yi Xing’s spirit tablet was clearly the source of spiritual qi powering the array.
Li Fan soared to the mountaintop, located the array node, and stomped down.
Break!
The peak vanished instantly like a burst bubble, and a black void appeared beneath the golden-thatched cottage.
Li Fan descended through the newly revealed passage, arriving beneath the illusion array.
Here lay Yi Xing’s true burial chamber.
The tomb was decorated like an ordinary study. Before a vermilion desk lay a skeleton,
beside which a faint candle flame still flickered weakly.
Countless papers densely covered in mysterious symbols lay scattered across the desk, around the skeleton, and throughout the entire floor of the study.
Li Fan picked up one sheet and studied it briefly, but couldn’t decipher what Yi Xing had written before his death.
He casually collected all the papers and searched a while longer. To his disappointment, he found no Dao Transformation Stone.
Apart from Yi Xing’s skeleton and the papers, there was nothing else.
Is this still not the true tomb? Though Yi Xing was just an outer disciple, he was responsible for relocating mortals. His status shouldn’t have been too low. This resting place of his shouldn’t be so pitifully barren.
Unwilling to give up, Li Fan meticulously searched every inch of the place again. But the result remained unchanged.
After pondering a moment, he collected the desk, the candle upon it, and Yi Xing’s skeleton.
To ensure nothing was overlooked, Li Fan unleashed One Congyun Sword Strike, violently destroying the entire room with brute force.
The Congyun Sword’s immense power exposed the surrounding geological structure. Yet to Li Fan’s disappointment, this was indeed the tomb’s lowest level. Only rock and soil lay beneath it.
It seems I made a wasted trip. Li Fan shook his head helplessly.
He had come with high hopes, only to leave disappointed.
After returning to the Xuanhuang World, Li Fan cremated Yi Xing’s remains, scattering them to the wind. Then, he went back to the Tianxuan Mirror.
If there’s anything I missed, it must be among the remaining three items.
After some thought, Li Fan submitted the desk, the candle, and one sheet of paper to the Tianxuan Mirror for appraisal under the pretense of liquidating assets.
The first two were ordinary items. The Silver Fir Redwood desk and the Seawhale Eternal Flame Candle together were worth only thirty contribution points.
But those papers covered in strange symbols weren’t ordinary paper.
"Divine Lock Treasure Box, one contribution point."
Li Fan's eyes gleamed. So there's more to this after all.
Choosing not to sell it, Li Fan searched for information about the Divine Lock Treasure Box.
As the name implied, a Divine Lock Treasure Box was a storage container sealed through some special method.
Only by solving the decryption puzzle set by the box's owner could it be opened.
Yet even knowing there was a secret hidden within, Li Fan found himself utterly stumped when faced with these tens of thousands of papers covered in what looked like ghostly scribbles.
Fortunately, Li Fan wasn't entirely on his own.
He might not know the answer, but surely someone within the vast Myriad Immortals Alliance did.
Following his usual method, he began searching through the Tianxuan Mirror using keywords.
After sifting through countless unrelated pieces of information, Li Fan finally found a clue in an article introducing several leisure activities ancient cultivators engaged in during their free time.
Reverse Kalpa?
Li Fan's spirits lifted as he read carefully.
The article explained that in ancient times, some cultivators believed the world generally developed from order to chaos.
From the initial Primordial Origin, to the dual energies of Yin and Yang, then to the Five Elements of heaven and earth, and finally to the Myriad Things, order was being lost, while chaos was accumulating.
Once chaos completely overwhelmed order, a force capable of annihilating everything would erupt, returning heaven and earth to primordial chaos.