Vacuum Home
With a formidable enemy at hand, Li Fan naturally wouldn't choose this moment to disrupt A Guang's ritual; instead, he seized him and interrogated him thoroughly.
He looked back at the water wall blocked to the south of the magic circle, then at the deep, dark channel exposed after the water supply was cut off to the north. He took a few steps north of the altar and roughly figured out the situation before him.
To replicate the layout of the Three Enclosures and imitate the network of the Tianhe, canals were also dug throughout Li Country capital region of Jingji, creating a water network system of eight rivers and five canals to supply water to the Imperial City. The Yong'an Channel was the main water supply canal for the western part of Changsi City. It was drawn from the Jiao Water, entered the city from the southwest of Da'an Fang, and ran through the entire city from south to north. It also flowed into the moat of the Imperial City and could exit north through Jingyao Gate, passing through the Forbidden Garden and out of the city.
Once the altar set up by the Luo Sect was activated, it almost completely sealed off the waterway below from the center. However, it was unclear what kind of magic was used, but the river water from the south did not seem to overflow the channel. The water in the channel above their heads was as if separated by a layer of glass or ice, with the surface of the water remaining calm and flowing quietly. This made the outsiders completely unaware of the changes below.
In reality, the riverbed was divided into layers, forming a huge hemispherical area that was sealed off by the Luo Sect's altar. It was as if there was a hemispherical airbag underwater, blocking the waterway to the south, while the riverbed to the north receded rapidly, soon leaving only waist-deep water overflowing from the edge of the altar. It was as if this had instantly cut off the river channel leading to the north.
Li Fan used the water-avoidance incantation to walk north out of the altar's area, riding his qi across the muddy water, and looked towards the end of the passageway.
A foul-smelling, warm, and humid wind blew in his face, sounding like the breathing of some giant beast, howling through the hollow. But upon closer listening, it didn't sound like the wind at all. Instead, when Li Fan used his Divine Sense to probe forward, he only felt a turbid mud wall slowly moving upstream, pushing southward.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Li Fan frowned and lowered his head. The water quickly rose again, no longer clear river water, but a filthy, muddy torrent. Moreover, even though he was using the water-avoiding incantation, his shoes and robe were being soaked by the black, countercurrent surging upwards from north to south. It was clear that this 'water' surging upwards from the north was not among the five elements that the water-avoiding incantation could ward off.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Beneath the central waterway of Changsi City lies something else, which is surging forward with the suddenly rising torrent, seemingly trying to rush out of the city through the Yong'an Channel against the current. And this altar and sacred site of the Black Lotus Saint Mother is directly blocking the way in the middle of the river!
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
It was no longer just a hint from the system; Li Fan could see what was in his hand: the Si Nan was pointing straight north, and the 'Rubik's Cube' was flashing incessantly like a disco ball in a nightclub!
"Come back quickly! It's coming! I have to completely open the barrier to seal it off!" A Guang shouted from behind.
Li Fan didn't turn around. "Did Yuan Tianxiao say what kind of demon this is?"
"Heaven knows what it is! It's just a lump of mud! This won't do! Mad Monkey said we absolutely cannot let this thing escape into Jiao Water! Otherwise, it will harm countless people! If you don't come back, I'm really going to seal the formation!" A Guang roared hoarsely.
Li Fan shrugged. "Just go ahead and seal it. I was born to eradicate this scourge! If I can't kill it with a single glare, it can fight its way out on its own. Don't worry about me."
"... You're all lunatics!" A Guang choked, then roared, "Wusheng Laomu! Vacuum Home! Wusheng Laomu! Vacuum Home! Wusheng Laomu! Vacuum Home!"
Li Fan wanted to hear what scriptures he was reciting or what incantations he was chanting, but all he got were those two sentences, eight words in total, being shouted over and over again. Was that even effective?
To everyone's surprise, the spell actually worked.
The statues within the magic circle trembled more and more violently. Suddenly, a deep purple bubble burst forth from between the eyebrows of the Wusheng Laomu, and in an instant, it expanded and filled the entire magic circle within the barrier, swelling into a huge spherical spatial field that kept all the filth and turbid water outside this so-called 'Vacuum Home'!
No, it wasn't blocking, it was absorbing! All the light and matter seemed to be absorbed the moment they came into contact with the purple spherical bubble, or perhaps transferred to somewhere else, disappearing from Li Fan's Divine Sense scan in an instant!
Even when Li Fan probed with his Divine Sense, the outer wall of the bubble was not a substantial entity, but pure nothingness. When he tried to touch it with his Divine Sense, it disappeared completely without a trace!
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Li Fan was also sweating profusely, and quickly took two steps back to avoid the purple bubble.
His mood had just dropped to over 100 points due to cultivating the Qiongqi Dao Body, and less than a week had passed, so it hadn't recovered much at all. Unexpectedly, he encountered Tai Su's Non-Thing again, and it was attacked from both sides. This was really deadly.
Judging by the rate at which the system's mood drops, this purple bubble created by the Luo Sect's A Guang is far more dangerous than the sewage at the bottom of the ditch. The moment the bubble appeared, the system started rapidly counting down the timer for Li Fan. The mini-boss at the bottom of the ditch hasn't even appeared yet, and he's already going to be killed by his teammate's wide-area magic?!
Li Fan immediately made a decision to bully the weak and fear the strong, turning around and rushing towards the northern canal, because the thing climbing over from the other side was slow to fall and slow to climb!
And it's too slow! At the speed of his Divine Sense probing, it would take at least another five minutes before it touched the bubble. Li Fan's mood would be completely ruined by then! If you won't come to me, I'll go to you!
Li Fan rode the waves against the current, rushing at full speed into the dark canal to the north. His water-avoidance technique was useless, and even his attempts to use the Qiankun Flying Dragon Sword Qi to attack the muddy water were ineffective. His flying sword was even worse; he felt bad about getting it dirty. So, he simply put everything away, using only one hand to hold the Rubik's Cube for illumination and the other to hold the Si Nan for guidance, while his other six arms splashed water as he propelled himself forward through the ever-rising muddy water.
Actually, nothing was needed to guide the way; there was only one channel, accompanied by an increasingly foul stench, as if it were a mixture of the excrement of millions of people in Changsi City. Li Fan saw that thing.
A Guang is right, it's just a lump of mud, a huge lump of rotten mud.
What looked like rolling waves were actually waves of mud, a viscous, turbid liquid, like a mixture of thick juice and excrement, freshly mixed into a sewage treatment plant and filtered out. Yet, on these yellow, green, and black mud clumps, countless eyeballs, mouths, tentacles, and colloidal biomimetic organs sprouted, somewhere between colloid, fluid, and liquid, completely describable only as 'Non-Thing'.
Under the flashing light of the Rubik's Cube, the thing that had been assembled through the deformed slurry opened countless eyes and stared at Li Fan in front of it.
Li Fan's mood dropped by 1 point.
Of course, if you were to ask Li Fan for his more direct feelings...
False Moon in the sky is just too much! These days, even a pile of poop can become a spirit...
'This isn't shit, it's a lamb's offspring.'
Are you really sure what came out wasn't poop but a baby?! And can we please stop calling these things sheep?!
'It's not a lamb, it's a lamb's offspring.'
That's still a sheep!
'No, a lamb is the offspring of a ewe and a human. The lamb's offspring are simply the offspring of a lamb and a human.'
... Damn, I can picture it! Let's not take this topic any further or I'll really throw up.
'The lambs that give birth haven't even developed their own Dao bodies yet, so the offspring they produce naturally can't even control their physical flesh and blood in this world; they're not even embryos.'
'It's a weakling, not worth studying. Let's get rid of it.'
Li Fan hesitated for a moment, then opened the eyeball on his forehead and returned the other person's glance.
In the passageway, a beam of red light pierced through, striking the pupils of countless eyes in the darkness. The evil light flickering within those eyes vanished instantly, leaving only pure death.
And then things unfolded exactly as Li Fan had predicted, in the worst possible way.
His eye between his eyebrows could directly intimidate the ferocious beast Qiongqi and stare a lamb to death. This dung monster naturally couldn't even withstand a glare from his red eyes, which was the worst possible situation.
Because this little guy was glared at to death, its consciousness instantly collapsed, and its remaining flesh, no longer restrained, burst open!
Almost instantly, Li Fan was submerged in the thick liquid that crashed against him like waves. In that instant, he was truly grateful that the Profound Heaven Sword Intent had taught him a spell to peel off his own skin beforehand...
Seriously, I've been drenched in shit; I'm beyond saving.
Li Fan's mood improved by 1 point.
Li Fan's mood improved by 1 point.
Don't you two deserve a beating?
'Although the lamb's offspring haven't yet formed a full-blown fetus, the meat slices have already materialized into Devil Embryo.'
'This stuff is very nourishing for your body; it can effectively relieve the hunger and thirst in your stomach.'
'Go back and check that bubble on the Void Star; this is a rare opportunity.'
'Oh, right, close your eyes, don't pop the bubbles.'
Sigh, life is so hard for working people...
Fortunately, just as the system predicted, although he was drenched in a disgusting, thick slurry, the system was flooded with messages saying 'Li Fan's mood increased by 1 point.' He also seemed to feel incredibly strong and energetic, proving that mutton is indeed nourishing... However, he decided to leave the rest of the mutton behind; it was too disgusting mixed in with the mud...
So Li Fan waved his hand and threw out the Jade Pure Bottle to collect the scattered evil energy, lest the rats and cockroaches in the sewers turn into zombies. Then he closed the eye between his eyebrows, turned his head and returned to the Luo Sect array at the entrance of the water channel.
Sure enough, the bubbles were still there. Almost the instant Li Fan saw the purple bubbles, his mood plummeted. But fortunately, he was covered in a thick, nourishing liquid, which helped him maintain a delicate balance.
Of course, he really felt that less of this kind of balance was better...
But is this the same Dao Ancestor Void Star he first encountered?
"Of course not, with the true form of the Void Star present in this world, would there be any living people left in this city?"
'It should be a technique that Ancestor Luo Void Star and perceived from the ecology of the Dao Ancestor, and comprehended.'
'The humans in this world are fucking awesome, we really should follow this evolutionary path too.'
Huh? What do you mean?
"You'll understand when you attain enlightenment. Now, don't be distracted; seize the time to visualize and learn this technique."
Don't forget to keep the other two fish.
The system fell silent again; those two had probably disconnected again and gone off to do something else.
Li Fan shrugged, withdrew his hands, and circled the bubble to the accompaniment of the system's up-and-down movement.
Although it was called visualization, his Divine Sense disappeared without a trace as soon as it made contact, and he couldn't detect the situation inside the purple sphere at all. It was like a pure, empty deep space, where there seemed to be something on the other side, yet it also seemed like there was nothing at all.
To the naked eye, it looks like a dark purple bubble. What else could a bubble be but a ball...?
"The Wusheng Laomu, the Vacuum Home?"
Li Fan tried reciting it once, and sure enough, it had no effect. When A Guang uttered these eight words, there was no system notification that his mood had dropped, indicating that this mantra was different from the <<Mount Tai Immovable Scripture>> or the <Key Scroll>, and was not an effective spell in itself.
After all, A Guang had already misread the scripture about Mount Tai's immovability, and judging from his appearance, Yuan Tianxiao had not passed on the true methods of the Luo Sect. Therefore, this sentence might be a secret signal to activate the magic array in the Old Mother's altar.
But trying to deduce a spell from such an inexplicable sphere is incredibly difficult. Ancestor Luo is truly amazing; how did he come up with a spell just by looking at the bubble? After all, he can't just reach out and poke it, can he? Look at these mud and slurry; they can't even touch the bubble, they just disappear. It feels like some kind of spatial effect; maybe it got thrown into the Void Abyss...
Huh? Spatial effects? Endless void? Void Abyss? Void Star?
Li Fan thought for a moment, then took out the "Huashu" and read it again.
The teachings of Real Person Liang seemed to be vividly present before my eyes.
"Emptiness means nothingness, and it signifies returning to the ultimate stillness and emptiness."
There is also a place called Guixu in the world, which is the bottomless abyss of the North Sea. All the waters of the eight directions and nine fields, and the flow of the Milky Way, flow into it, yet it neither increases nor decreases.
It's not about actually going to the Void to cultivate, but about visualizing a world like the Void Abyss, without emptiness or end, without beginning or end, without emptiness or stillness, when you are practicing this skill.
Only by comprehending the principles of 'end' and 'nothingness' can one arrive at the true meaning of 'existence' and 'birth,' and only then can the primordial spirit, returning to its original nature and transcending the abyss of Void Abyss, be nurtured.
So Li Fan sat cross-legged on the reverse wave and began cultivating the Gui Xu Nascent Soul once again. At the same time, he extended his Divine Sense and touched the bubble barrier in front of him, feeling as if his Divine Sense was a line thrown into an abyss.
They entrusted their spirit to the end of that thread, drifting in the void.
Without support or basis, without emptiness or end, without beginning or end, without void or stillness, seemingly existent yet not existent, seemingly nonexistent yet not nonexistent...
Then, with a pop, the bubble burst.
A Guang cautiously peeked out from behind his mother's shrine, wanting to see what was happening outside.
Then, with his mouth agape, he stared in disbelief at the mud figure that was sitting cross-legged outside the altar, its entire body covered in thick mud and filth, with only its eye sockets emitting a purple glow. Between the two beams of purple light, one pupil was as bright as a white star, and the other was as murky as a black hole.
Behind his head, a large, crescent-shaped sphere of light appeared, drawing in all the remaining malevolent energy from the surrounding passageways. It was as if he were carrying a purple sun burning with black flames on his back.
"By the Wusheng Laomu... that pile of shit actually became an immortal..."