Observing Heaven

Zhi Jingzi fled far away, and Li Fan did not pursue him.

It seemed like everyone was evenly matched, with neither able to gain the upper hand. But Li Fan knew very well that Zhi Jingzi was just seeing this new Daoist method and system that Li Fan had created for the first time, and was just playing around with him out of curiosity.

How could a sword immortal of this caliber be so merciful? If they were to truly fight, they might not be able to destroy Li Fan's Tai Sha Star Core immediately, but they could certainly reduce him to just the Star Core and suppress him.

The only reason they didn't do that is because Li Fan, the Tai Su Daoist, was a key figure in the spread of the Tai Su Dao by the Thousand-Faced Immortal, and he had a lot of influence. Whether from the perspective of Zhi Jingzi, Seventh Friend, or Huangfu Jing, allowing Li Fan to continue spreading the Tai Su Heavenly Scripture, expanding the influence of the Tai Su Dao, and cultivating more demon children and more demon gods would be more in their interest.

Li Fan, on the other hand, was truly helpless against her. He simply couldn't bring himself to do what she was told.

Even when Li Fan was killing Golden Core cultivator during his Qi Refining Stage, he didn't feel this powerless now.

The difference is so great that we don't even realize it.

When an ant crawls across the earth, can it possibly realize that the planet beneath its feet is an ancient entity that has existed in the universe since time immemorial, enduring billions of years of wind, frost, and fire without decay? Even if it evolves from an ant into a ferocious beast, what confidence does it have in fundamentally shaking the stellar remains born from antiquity?

Similarly, although Li Fan has now reached the Tribulation Stage, and can easily crush opponents at the Transformation Stage, it is precisely because he has reached the Tribulation Stage and fought seriously that he can now see the vast difference in strength between the two Dao Lords at the Enlightenment Stage.

Zhi Jingzi's Profound Heaven Sword Intent was truly just one step away from breaking through Li Fan's star core.

Throughout the entire exchange of gestures and discussions, Li Fan was almost completely unable to sense Zhi Jingzi's presence!

Yes, let alone locking onto it with Divine Sense. If Zhi Jingzi hadn't actively released the overwhelming power of the Beichen Sword, allowing him to 'see' it, he wouldn't have been able to even touch it.

Throughout the entire Profound Heaven Sword Method comparison with Zhi Jingzi, Li Fan was like Blind Person, fighting with his eyes closed. He relied on sensing the sword trajectories of two incongruous Bei Chen Qi swords that suddenly appeared in his own domain to fight.

Fortunately, his opponent used the Profound Heaven Sword Method Technique throughout the fight, which allowed Li Fan to rely on rote memorization to make the battle seem evenly matched and back and forth.

But in reality, although he won every single move, he didn't even touch a hair on Zhi Jingzi's body.

Such ease and control indicate that the opponent's speed far surpasses Li Fan's; even the pure advantage in technique and skill cannot compensate for this gap.

Moreover, it's likely that once a real fight breaks out, there won't be any chance for close-quarters sword combat. Since his Divine Sense can't detect his opponent, if the opponent truly finds a way to destroy the Tai Sha Star Core and harbors murderous intent, Li Fan might suffer the same fate as in his previous life—a fatal blow from his flying sword...

It's laughable how narrow-minded I was back then, even chatting and laughing with Xianhua, Zhang Dali, and the Three Elders and Four Ancestors. Looking back now, it really was a bit reckless...

A cultivator who has attained enlightenment is truly terrifying!

Clearly, killing monsters far stronger than oneself is the true nature of us transmigrators, but at this moment, Li Fan could only watch helplessly as this high-level monster escaped, and could only sigh, feeling ashamed for bringing shame upon his fellow villagers.

Having witnessed once again that there are always higher levels to reach, Li Fan lost his desire to show off after breaking through his cultivation level. After calming down, he began to carefully examine the condition of his Dao body.

Well, the Divine Court is now a black hole; nothing is left. There are no eyeballs, no Zhu Long, no Kun, no messy primordial spirits—nothing remains. It's unclear whether they perished during their calamity or were directly swallowed by the black hole and fused into the star's core.

As for this realm, it is roughly the range that Li Fan, with his Gu Guan Method, can perceive with his Divine Sense. If viewed from another perspective, it is a sphere, but from the outside, it might appear as a black hole or something similar.

If it weren't for Zhi Jingzi's effortless movements and slapping him in the face, Li Fan would have declared, "In this field, I am a god!"

However, while it cannot effectively restrain those who have attained enlightenment, dealing with those below the Enlightenment Stage should not be a problem. If a Divine Lord level being falls into his domain, he can probably kill them instantly.

Li Fan tried it out himself. First of all, no form of energy exists in this domain, and he cannot borrow the energy of heaven and earth outside the domain. He can only rely on the reserves of his own Dharma body. Moreover, the energy that is dissipated will be devoured by Li Fan's star core.

The same applies to physics. It's possible that Dao bodies below the Divine Transformation, except for refined ones like Martial God or Nascent Soul Stage, will be dismembered, destroyed, or fused by the powerful gravity of the star core. However, Li Fan can control the gravity and direction within his domain, so he won't wipe out both sides as soon as he activates it.

Incidentally, he can consume his primordial spirit to teleport freely within the domain, as if stepping through a 'door'.

However, the center position and radius of the field seem to be fixed and will not shift even if Li Fan moves out of it, which seems to be an active skill.

Li Fan felt as if the stage scenery had been torn open, creating a dimensional rift at a point in this plane. Perhaps it was related to what the system had mentioned before—doors, membranes, extra dimensions, and so on?

After studying it for half a day... well... for ten days to half a month, although Li Fan still hadn't fully grasped the Dao within this domain, he had finally managed to put the 'domain' away...

After retracting the black hole domain, Li Fan looked around and was startled.

Good heavens! Daoist Dao Breath permeated all directions, and killing intent soared to the sky! There were actually four large armies stationed around, and the divine light of the cultivators was dazzling like halos and clouds, dyeing the sky with color. In total, there were tens of thousands of troops, looking like they were about to engage in a field battle.

Li Fan observed and discerned the surroundings: to the west were the followers of the Divine Cult, to the north were the True Cultivator of Hengshan, to the east was the army of Nangong, and to the south were the forces of Ink Bamboo Mountain and Li Country.

These people must have come for Li Fan's domain. Upon seeing the domain suddenly disappear, they all became restless, breaking camp and setting up formations. Some Nascent Soul Realm cultivators even took to the air and flew over on their Sword Light to investigate.

Then all that could be seen was a black stone figure, seemingly standing at the heart of a sandstorm vortex, turning everything around it into dust and ash, piecing together a human-shaped body like eggshells.

"Die, you demon!!"

A flash of Sword Light appeared from the north, and he charged forward to vanquish the demon.

However, the Sword Light flew halfway before it screamed and turned back. A Xuanmen cultivator rolled to the ground, his flesh and blood mangled. It turned out that he had gotten too close; one of his arms and most of his face had been torn apart and turned into dust along with the surrounding rocks and vegetation, adhering to Li Fan's skin.

"Dao Yan! You bastard! Set up the sword formation!"

Then, a rain of swords, like meteors, circled around Li Fan, followed by a series of screams as they fell to the ground like moths drawn to a flame. Some even failed to get close to Li Fan before their bodies disintegrated, resulting in their complete annihilation. Having contributed a large amount of flesh and magical treasures, and realizing the vast difference in strength between them, these Xuanmen experts turned back and fled without looking back.

The other cultivators who were a step behind and only flew over now were shocked to see that the experts from Hengshan had suffered heavy casualties and fled in defeat after just one round. This demon was terrifying! They immediately scattered like startled birds, and the surrounding army also became agitated, breaking camps and retreating, raising clouds of dust.

Li Fan, "..."

Wait, what are you guys doing... Ah, but if you think about it this way, I'm afraid even Nascent Soul Stage level trash can't give him any more mood points...

The system hadn't responded yet, so Li Fan sighed and did some quick calculations. He figured it was probably due to some strange change in the world around his domain that had attracted surrounding armies to compete for the 'Heavenly Treasure'.

However, having just broken through, his Chaotic Dao Body is still very unstable, and the Heavenly Dao is still in the transformation stage, with Taiji and Tai Su not yet fully formed. Therefore, the Chaotic Dao Body is still unable, or rather, unsuitable to exist in this world.

Therefore, as long as the Chaos Dao Body appears in the world, it will spontaneously absorb and integrate the surrounding matter to repair itself. However, Li Fan, who is now at the Tribulation Transcending Realm, has far surpassed ordinary demon gods. To some extent, he is like those non- Material Dao Ancestors. His very existence in the world will completely transform the natural landscape, destroy and reorganize the world until it becomes similar to his original body.

At this moment, all the surrounding vegetation was crushed into powder, and any living beings with flesh and blood that got too close would naturally turn to ash and be absorbed as dust.

It's fortunate that Daoist Li Fan was the one who ultimately survived the calamity of death. If it had been Lu Ya or Lu Hansheng, those ruthless individuals wouldn't have needed to use any magic; they could have simply flown out and circled around, wiping out the army of tens of thousands of flesh and blood.

So, to avoid harming innocent people if he stayed any longer, Li Fan flew directly into the sky, sat cross-legged on the cloud, and regulated his Dao Breath. The wind and clouds gathered between heaven and earth, the clouds rolled and unrolled in the sky, and the sand and dust on the ground swirled, directly forming an astonishingly large hurricane tornado, a terrifying scene of destruction.

Upon seeing this from afar, the surrounding army immediately assumed that a demon god was about to unleash a powerful attack, and they fled in panic. Some of the less disciplined armies collapsed on their own, abandoning their armor and trampling each other in the chaos, leaving behind a scene of utter defeat.

Li Fan could only smile wryly, knowing that every move he made could cause such great harm to mortals. But he wasn't playing around; he was seizing all the sand, stones, grass, and trees around Shatang Village, breaking them down into Qiankun Sha Qi, and using the Emei Dharma to create a Wuji Weidu Dao Body shell outside the Chaos Dao Body, sealing the Thousand-Faced Immortal's Chaos Dao Body.

In this way, the progress of his Tai Su Dao Body in destroying and collapsing the Taiji Realm can be slowed down to the greatest extent.

Although somewhat reluctant, Li Fan still directly molded the face of the outer body into 'Qingyue'.

What's past cannot be undone, but the future can still be shaped.

Whether he was Li Fan of Emei, Li Yi of Li Country, Lu Ya, Lu Hansheng, or anyone else.

After this calamity, none of them will exist.

Now, all that remains is Qingyue of Ink Bamboo Mountain, who will forge her own path in this new world.

"The system-registered username is Li Fan, and changing permissions is such a hassle. Could you please make do?"

... Sigh, alright then, let's Li Fan. By the way, what's the situation now? How many points have you earned this time?

"Your upgrade this time was too drastic, and your cultivation path has deviated significantly from the emotional system we built based on the Taiji Realm Path. Therefore, we need to scan your Dao body to collect detailed data and perform a major server update before we can provide you with intelligent assistance."

Oh, so it's like those scenes in novels and comics where, in the later stages, even the weakest characters have combat power levels reaching several million, causing data overflow and system collapse, so even the cheat codes need to be updated, right? I understand, but giving Zhi Jingzi's data boost just to embarrass me is a bit too outrageous. It seems like the novel is bound to crash when it reaches a few hundred chapters.

"... No, we checked your logs and made observations. Zhi Jingzi's existence in this plane hasn't changed. You think Zhi Jingzi strong because you just simulated a closed string using a single, stable gravitational force through a black hole simulation, creating a stable pathway to the eleventh dimension, or rather, a membrane. This allowed your blindness to explore along the membrane and simultaneously access the eleventh dimension, gaining access to higher-dimensional observation points..."

Li Fan was embarrassed.

"Well, simply put, in basic superstring theory, the essence of everything is just vibrational energy. Different vibrations and movements of strings produce various elementary particles, and energy and matter can also be transformed. So you can think of 'Zhi Jingzi' as a collection of countless atoms, or you can think of it as a collection of countless strings."

The reason you are so shocked by the power of 'Zhi Jingzi' is because, as a low-dimensional being, you have fully observed the set of strings that make up 'Zhi Jingzi'. However, your brain does not have the ability to receive and process superstring and multidimensional information, so you can only protect yourself by 'not seeing'. This is the reason why the Mohists call this kind of Divine Sense probing technique 'blind observation'.

It's this information gap, the residual image in your brain, that causes your confusion and misjudgments. An ordinary person would probably go insane under such an information overload and mental distortion, but you have a system with intelligent assistance to collect and process this information, so there's nothing to worry about. This problem can be solved simply by updating your system with the latest commercially available supercomputing quantum processor.

Li Fan was dazed. "So... my current system is a retired civilian version of junk?"

Ahem! Don't worry about those details!

Similarly, on the membrane surface of that closed string, you neither 'cannot observe Zhi Jingzi's nor 'observe Zhi Jingzi '. To be precise, you simultaneously observe 'the overlap and projection of the strings that make up Zhi Jingzi's from eleven dimensions,' and 'cause ripples in the membrane, interfering with the strings.'

Although you observed that 'Zhi Jingzi' evaded your interference, this in itself indicates that the interference was established. Perhaps 'Zhi Jingzi' could forcibly evade your attack from three dimensions, or even multiple dimensions, but according to our research on 'Taiji Enlightened Immortals,' they are at most projections of five-dimensional or six-dimensional consciousnesses in four dimensions.

Therefore, it's absolutely impossible for an 'Enlightened Immortal' to simultaneously evade your interference from all eleven dimensions. Moreover, given his excessive proximity to the star's core beforehand, his own internal energy strings would inevitably be affected by gravity, resulting in irreversible changes and damage.

... What?

"Sigh, there's no way he'd understand what you're saying! Let me do it!"

Li Fan, is this how you see it? You used to be severely nearsighted and would get knocked down with one punch when you fought. But if you were just wearing glasses, you might have been able to hold on a little longer, or even have a chance to throw a punch back at him.

But this time, while regaining your sight, you also awakened superpowers, allowing you to see opponents in infinite time and space, and with infinite possibilities! So, although your punch didn't injure 'the present Zhi Jingzi,' it has crippled 'the future' and even 'the past Zhi Jingzi '!

But right now it looks like you were the one who got knocked down with a single punch.

What--??

"Sigh... Anyway, we observed that Zhi Jingzi fled all the way to the Three Enclosures. Since he has attained enlightenment, he should have sensed to some extent that his situation was not good. In any case, all eleven dimensions have been affected, what was bound to happen has already happened, and what is bound to happen in the future will definitely happen again, so don't worry. If you really can't figure it out, just understand it as cause and effect, or retribution."

So, when in doubt, you resort to retribution... But enlightened immortals are merely five- or six-dimensional beings. Your system's commercial chips can easily process eleven-dimensional information, so you must be humans from some higher-dimensional universe?

'They are not higher-dimensional humans, but higher-dimensional civilizations. Top-ranked companies have the technology to observe and even interfere with the complete 27-dimensional string, but extra-dimensional travel that breaks through the membrane is still the most cutting-edge technology.'

Of course, even the most well-known pharmaceutical companies can only cultivate six-dimensional life forms. And you know what? The ecosystem in this Taiji Realm is quite good; there are quite a few rare, higher-dimensional wild animals...

By the way, Li Fan, if you can continue your cultivation and master the complete biological evolutionary map of ascending from a three-dimensional wild animal to an eleven-dimensional consciousness, I think even top-tier companies would be willing to pay for it.

'Alright, stop aiming too high. You can't earn all the money in the world. Let's update the system first. Eleven-dimensional information processing means regular military-grade parts won't cut it. We need to get a proper, company-grade product to install it... Remember, deduct the cost from the government budget!'

Ah, that pot... oh well, I'll just get it back... anyway... it's kind of an upgrade, I guess...

'Oh, right, I retrieved the Kun, and sent you the SOS coordinates.'

Oh, by the way! Is Kun alright?

Kun is in trouble!

When Li Fan used teleportation to find Kun on a small hilltop based on the system signal, he discovered that it had a bump on its forehead.

Li Fan tried to investigate, and well, to be precise, it wasn't just a case of internal heat; a red eyeball had grown inside his skull...

Kun, 'Ouch, it hurts! Ugh!'

With a puff of its mouth, the Kun spat out a pile of trash, including things like Si Nan, a jade flute, a rice bowl, a folding fan, and Golden Dragon White Star...

Well, Kun is indeed shrewd and thrifty. When it escaped, it even managed a whirlwind inhalation, taking Li Fan's belongings with it. So, the eyeball was swallowed by Kun as well, but unexpectedly, it parasitized Kun's head!

It's over, even Kun has been possessed...

Li Fan could vaguely sense that his Tai Sha core also seemed to have a kind of 'dislike' and 'resistance' towards this red eyeball. It was as if they were mutually reinforcing and mutually restraining.

It seems this must be some kind of special Non-Thing, and quite powerful at that, since ordinary demons would be killed with a single glance. And even my mighty Kun has been parasitized, huh, how terrifying!

Li Fan reached out and pried it open, embedding the eyeball firmly into the Kun's head, causing it to squeal in pain.

Seeing that he couldn't pull it off no matter how hard he tried, Li Fan was at a loss. What if he accidentally killed the Kun...?

"Looks like it's got its eye on you. Well, just bear with it for now. I've had it before, it's nothing serious. Once you reach the Tribulation Stage like me, you'll be able to get rid of it."

In short, the Kun has evolved! The Three-Eyed Kun!

Kun fainted from anger.