Heaven Never Seals Off Every Road

Heaven Never Seals Off Every Road

Looking at Kou Hong's testimony on the table, Li Fan felt his heart sink.

Kou Hong had not lied to him. He truly did not know of any way for mortals to leave this Immortal Forsaken Land.

"Immortal Forsaken Land..." Five lifetimes of reincarnation, three hundred years of anticipation—all of it had now turned into a bubble he could see but never reach.

His dream of cultivation and immortality had shattered. Li Fan seemed to have aged completely overnight.

Not only in body, but in mind as well.

"Immortal Forsaken Land..." He silently repeated the name in his heart, and endless unwillingness surged within him.

"Why did I have to transmigrate and be born in a place like this? If I had transmigrated into the Cultivation World outside, then with Return to Truth's ability to simulate reincarnation endlessly, immortality would surely have been within my grasp. Damn it, why did it have to be this Immortal Forsaken Land!"

The information in Kou Hong's testimony once again flashed through Li Fan's mind.

The so-called Immortal Forsaken Land was, as its name implied, a place forsaken by immortals. Several thousand years ago, the Ancient Cultivation World suffered a great upheaval.

At first, it was merely a plague sweeping through the entire mortal world, and no cultivator paid it any mind.

But later, when a cultivator accidentally contracted this mysterious plague, things spiraled completely out of control.

After infecting that cultivator, the plague seemed to have undergone some inexplicable strengthening, becoming capable of spreading among cultivators.

Its means of transmission was none other than the spiritual energy cultivators depended upon for survival.

The plague swiftly spread throughout the entire Cultivation World through Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy. Cultivators infected by it suffered anything from receding cultivation and falling realms to losing all their cultivation overnight and becoming no different from mortals. Within days, they would perish and Return Dao to Heaven.

As cultivators died in droves, a wave of despair began to spread through their ranks.

In their desperation, some cultivators vented their fury upon the source of it all: mortals.

And so, large-scale slaughter began.

Before those lofty Immortal Masters, mortals possessed virtually no power to resist. They could only be butchered at will.

Yet before long, the slaughter was forcibly brought to an end.

It was not because their consciences had awakened, but because the cultivators discovered in horror that as they slaughtered and great numbers of mortals died, the plague within those mortals not only failed to vanish with their deaths, but seemed to break free of its restraints, spreading along the spiritual energy that filled heaven and earth.

For a time, the concentration of the plague within the Cultivation World surged.

This instead caused even more cultivators to fall.

Left with no choice, the cultivators finally abandoned their slaughter of mortals.

Yet sitting still and waiting for death was clearly not the cultivators' way. On one hand, groups of cultivators began researching methods to cure and resist the plague. On the other, they proposed the infamous Great Migration Plan.

Although this plan met with the opposition of a considerable number of cultivators from the moment it was proposed, for their own survival, the majority still voted in favor.

The so-called Great Migration Plan was based on the following considerations:

Mortals could not be killed, while a complete solution to the plague remained a distant prospect. If mortals were allowed to reproduce freely, then as the plague grew ever more widespread, life would inevitably become increasingly difficult for cultivators.

And since this strange plague could only spread through spiritual energy, an obvious solution was proposed.

Exile every mortal in the Cultivation World to nearby Small Worlds without spiritual energy, places such as Shattered Paradises, then use formations to isolate them forever and prevent those mortals from returning.

They would solve the mortal problem once and for all first, then slowly turn back to researching ways to counter the plague.

After all, undeveloped Small Worlds were practically infinite in number. There was no need to worry about having nowhere to put all those mortals.

Thus, under the arrangements of the unified will of the entire Cultivation World, all mortals in the Cultivation World began a migration that lasted several centuries.

As for how many mortals would die along the way during those centuries, that was beyond the cultivators' consideration. Before the power of cultivators, mortals had no room to resist at all.

And so, after several centuries of mass migration, all mortals in the Cultivation World were relocated and scattered among the surrounding Small Worlds. Nearly another thousand years passed before the plague concentration in the Cultivation World finally fell to a relatively low level.

Over those thousand years, through constant research, the cultivators finally found a way to purify the plague.

It then took several thousand more years before they completely eradicated its threat.

Yet what embarrassed the cultivators was that this plague lingered like an unquiet ghost, hidden within mortal bloodlines.

The entire world had originally been left without mortals, but not every descendant born from cultivators possessed the aptitude to cultivate.

Thus, over time, great numbers of mortals were born into the world once more. Every one of them carried traces of the plague within their bodies.

And because this plague was especially lethal to cultivators, the descendants of mortals had to purge it from their bodies if they wished to cultivate.

Over time, the plague became synonymous with the divide between immortals and mortals, so people named it Immortal-Mortal Miasma.

The devastation caused by the Immortal-Mortal Miasma had left every cultivator with a tremendous psychological scar. To prevent it from returning, cultivators tacitly agreed to avoid the places where mortals had once been exiled.

Over time, those places became the so-called Immortal Forsaken Lands.

No one knew how many Immortal Forsaken Lands, large and small, existed. Cultivators willing to risk entering such places were exceedingly rare.

For Li Fan to encounter two of them was already an extraordinary stroke of luck.

Now that neither of those two cultivators had a way for mortals to leave, how could Li Fan possibly expect another cultivator of even higher cultivation to stumble in? What was more, as a mortal, his lifespan was limited. Even if he could continually simulate reincarnation, he could only repeat it within the bounds of his own lifespan.

This year, he was already seventy. The upper limit of his natural lifespan was eighty-six.

The possibility of encountering another cultivator within those sixteen years was practically zero.

How could Li Fan not despair?

He had clearly glimpsed the hope of cultivating and seeking immortality, only to discover that it was nothing but empty joy in the end.

Could it be that he could only repeat the life of a mortal, lifetime after lifetime? Li Fan truly could not accept that.

The road to immortality lay before his eyes, within reach, yet also beyond the horizon, distant and hopeless.

How could Li Fan resign himself to that? Thinking of all he had experienced through several lifetimes of reincarnation, of nearly three hundred years of bitter waiting, Li Fan was unwilling to abandon the path to immortality no matter what.

Was there truly no way left?

Suddenly, as though a bolt of lightning had torn through the fog, Li Fan thought of something he had previously overlooked.

How had the vast numbers of mortals migrated here several thousand years ago?

Though the Small Worlds neighbored the Cultivation World, they were still not the same world.

Those mortals could not possibly have walked here, could they? There had to have been some kind of tool to carry them across.

Did those tools still exist?

If he found them, could he travel to the Cultivation World?

Even that tiny, insignificant possibility let Li Fan see hope for cultivation.

Excitement surged through him, and he immediately headed for the prison where Kou Hong was being held.

He had to ask Kou Hong to verify whether his idea was feasible.