Preparing for Gold Refinement
Chen Fan deliberately severed the last trace of his Divine Soul connection with the Divine Fire.
There was no struggle, no reluctance.
The Undying Divine Fire that symbolized his unparalleled cultivation, surpassing Prodigies geniuses, dimmed rapidly in silence, eventually extinguishing completely like the embers after a grand fireworks display, turning into nothingness.
This is real death.
Without the protection of the Divine Fire, Chen Fan's indestructible Golden Body began to crumble under the erosion of absolute death energy.
He could clearly see that every cell that made up his body was rapidly dying, his tough bones were silently weathering into dust, and his vast vitality was irreversibly flowing away like the receding tide.
He did not resist, nor did he show the slightest emotional fluctuation.
With utmost tranquility, I observed and remembered every detail of this body's journey to its end.
Just as his physical body was about to perish and the last trace of his life was about to dissipate, Chen Fan's Divine Soul was suddenly pulled by an invisible force and plunged into a bizarre and illusory world.
There are no laws here, no matter, only endless scenes of death playing out one after another.
He transformed into a mortal soldier, and on the battlefield where flesh and blood flew, he was beheaded by a cold blade. His consciousness, within his rolling head, watched his headless body crash to the ground.
He transformed into an old man nearing the end of his life, and amidst the weeping of his children and grandchildren, he breathed his last on his sickbed, passing away peacefully in his old age.
He transformed into a Star that burned for billions of years, and at the end of his evolution, he irrevocably collapsed into a black hole that devoured everything.
He even transformed into a blade of grass by the roadside, withering and dying in the biting cold wind, returning to dust.
Thousands of different deaths, in the most real and cruel way, cycled through his consciousness again and again.
At first, he was still observing everything from Chen Fan's perspective.
No... I'm still watching.
As soon as this thought crossed his mind, he realized that this was still the mindset of a spectator.
Therefore, he completely let go of his Divine Soul self, no longer just observing, but truly becoming every dying being.
He became that soldier, feeling the excruciating pain of his neck being severed and the chilling sensation of life slipping away in an instant.
He became that old man, experiencing the gradual fading of consciousness, and finally the peaceful return to eternal darkness.
He became that blade of grass, withering away and returning everything he had to the earth.
He is no longer Chen Fan.
He is death itself.
After countless reincarnations and witnessing the decay and end of all things in the universe, Chen Fan finally understood.
Death is not the opposite of life, nor is it the end.
It is a return, a silence, an indispensable part of the cosmic cycle, two sides of the same coin as life itself. It is not destruction, but another form of existence.
As his consciousness was about to completely dissipate and return to eternal silence during his final death experience.
In this extreme death, he caught a glimmer of life.
That is the most Origin Source tranquility accumulated after all things have withered, in preparation for the next revival.
The deathly silence was, in fact, a prelude to the birth of new life!
This sudden realization, like a Fire Seed piercing the Eternal Night, instantly ignited his entire understanding of Life and Death and death.
In his Dantian universe, which was already empty and devoid of anything, a phantom image of Life-and-Death Furnace, neither gold nor black, began to slowly condense and take shape, with this sliver of enlightenment as its core.
The Furnace is complete!
Boom!
With the appearance of the Furnace, the endless, deathly energy deep in the mine seemed to have found its final destination and outlet, transforming into visible gray torrents that surged wildly into the location of Chen Fan's already dissipated body.
They are no longer deadly poisons that erode everything, but rather the foundation for new life!
Beside that towering crystal mountain painstakingly built by an army of Deathly Stillness Creatures, light and shadow intertwine in the Void.
A brand new, perfectly formed body, shimmering with a faint, precious light, was quietly being reshaped within an atmosphere of deathly, impenetrable energy.
Every inch of skin, every bone, bears the profound truths of Life and Death.
A moment later.
The childlike body was reconstructed and floated silently in mid-air.
He slowly opened his eyes.
What kind of eyes were those?
In the left eye lies the vibrant life of all things reviving; in the right eye lies the eternal silence of the end.
The Life-and-Death Cycle is contained within it.
The moment Chen Fan opened his eyes...
Rumble!
The entire Annihilation Seven Star, a dead planet that had been dormant for countless billions of years, began to tremble violently without warning.
On the planet's surface, on that desolate land that had remained unchanged for billions of years, enormous cracks began to spread out.
Then, under the bewildered gaze of the Deathly Stillness Creatures, in an inconspicuous corner of the Star River Martial Academy's logistics department Star Map.
A tender green shoot pushed through the cracked, scorched soil, facing the cold, empty universe, stubbornly and slowly unfurling its first leaf.
One thought arises, and a myriad of thoughts follow.
Chen Fan hovered in mid-air above the mine. The moment he reconstructed his physical body and opened his eyes, his senses transcended the barriers of space and established a mysterious connection with the new green shoots on the surface of this desolate planet.
He could clearly see that the stubbornly sprouting bud was stretching its leaves, greedily absorbing the cold cosmic rays in the Void. The life pulse flowing within it originated from him, yet it was completely different.
It was a completely new, independent life form born from absolute stillness.
"My path... is correct."
Chen Fan whispered, the last trace of doubt in his heart completely dissipating.
He looked inward at himself.
Within the Dantian universe, the once vast and boundless golden ocean of Divine Fire has vanished, replaced by an ancient, heavy, and neither-gold-nor-black illusory Furnace, quietly suspended in the center of the universe.
It seems to be both the origin and the end of the universe.
The furnace body has no intricate patterns, only the purest concepts of Life and Death constantly intertwining and rotating, forming a mysterious dynamic balance.
This was his Life-and-Death Furnace.
It is no longer a cultivation technique, no longer a tool, but the ultimate embodiment of Chen Fan's cultivation, insights, and the Great Dao.
Alchemy...
Chen Fan recalled his master Lin Xuanqing's teachings.
Alchemy, in essence, is the process of using unparalleled perseverance and Divine Soul to continuously compress, Bone Refinement, and purify one's own boundless Undying Divine Fire until quantitative change leads to qualitative change, ultimately transforming it into a drop of golden blood that truly contains immortal properties.
But now, his Divine Fire has been extinguished.
"The ordinary path is not my path." Chen Fan's lips curled into a smile. "My alchemy will be different."
As soon as he finished speaking, he slowly sat down cross-legged, suspended in front of the majestic crystal mountain range.