The fall of a Qi Refining cultivator is far less dramatic than that of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. There are no dazzling fireworks of heavenly treasures, only two streaks of red clouds suddenly appearing on the horizon.
"Qi Refining cultivator Sikong Yi, who cultivated for thirty-five years. In the Congyun Sea Region, was killed by Qi Refining cultivator Li Fan..."
"Qi Refining cultivator Bai Li Chen, who cultivated for three years. In the Congyun Sea Region, was killed by Qi Refining cultivator Li Fan..."
"Now that they are dead, their paths have returned to the heavens!"
Under the fiery clouds, Li Fan stood quietly, stroking the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Token in his hand. After a long time, he finally suppressed the greed rising in his heart.
"What a treasure, but unfortunately..."
"It is not my path."
The Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Token is the supreme treasure of the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Sect. This sect, a secretive sect from ancient times, differs from other sects that establish schools and widely recruit disciples. The Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Sect has no fixed location and often only one successor per generation. Thus, when the great calamity arrives, while other sects face apocalyptic chaos, the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Sect remains unaffected.
The sect's ability to endure for nearly ten thousand years with only one disciple per generation owes much to its unique cultivation method.
Heaven-Stealing: Using essence blood and special materials, one can create a unique avatar. Unlike typical avatar techniques, this avatar has its own appearance, aura, soul, realm, cultivation, and even its own fortune. It can be regarded as an entirely different person.
Sun-Swapping: When creating an avatar, by adding the bones of deceased cultivators or mixing in the essence blood of living cultivators, one can seize a portion of the other's talents and fortune, grafting them onto the avatar.
However, this alone does not fully demonstrate the prowess of the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Sect. The Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Technique, when paired with the token in Li Fan's hand, is the complete form.
This Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Token was forged by Sikong Yue, the thirty-eighth successor of the sect, thousands of years ago. Witnessing the great calamity and the slaughter of countless cultivators, she felt immense fear and urgently sought a perfect method for self-preservation. After a century of painstaking research, she finally created this token.
The token has countless wondrous uses. Besides having an extremely spacious storage space, once refined, it can freely transfer between the original body and the avatar, ignoring spatial distance. Most importantly, through the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Technique, she transferred the life essence of both the avatar and the original body onto the token. As long as the token is not destroyed, even if the original body and avatar are killed, a new body can be reconstructed by consuming the essence blood accumulated in the token over time, thereby achieving "resurrection."
In simple terms, once the cultivation method is completed, both the original body and the avatar presented to outsiders are merely empty shells. The Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Token is the true essence.
Though Sikong Yue's modifications made the technique somewhat sinister, it proved highly effective. Over thousands of years, with this bizarre method, the sect's disciples have always managed to escape peril unscathed, allowing the sect to endure for millennia.
Until Sikong Yi encountered Li Fan, an anomaly capable of reversing time. The Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Technique is not flawless and has some fatal weaknesses. For instance, the original body and the avatar must maintain a certain distance. The further apart they are, the weaker the avatar becomes. If the limit is exceeded, the avatar retains only the minimum cultivation of the early Qi Refining stage.
Moreover, since the life essence is tied to the token, when a sect member dies, part of their residual soul is trapped within the token, unable to be freed. These residual souls often retain fragments of important memories from their lifetime and can be released by the token's owner during critical moments.
Li Fan's divine sense entered the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Token, revealing a vast yet empty storage space. Only Sikong Yi and another indistinct residual soul drifted aimlessly within. His divine sense transformed into a giant hand, capturing the two residual souls to read their remaining memories.
After a long time, Li Fan finally understood why the Heaven-Stealing Sun-Swapping Sect, with its millennia-old heritage, had fallen to such a state. The root of the problem lay with Sikong Yi's opportunistic master, Sikong Bo.
For a thousand years, the sect had navigated various dangers unscathed, growing increasingly arrogant and reckless. Sikong Bo took this to the extreme. Upon reaching the Foundation Establishment stage on a distant continent, he became dissatisfied with his previously refined avatar and sought to collect materials to create a new one.
Coincidentally, he encountered a five or six-year-old child in a remote mountain village. The child was born with an immortal physique, possessing immense strength and an astonishing cultivation speed. At such a young age, the child had already reached the peak of Qi Refining and was preparing for Foundation Establishment.
This greatly tempted Sikong Bo. After observing secretly, he discovered the child had remarkable fortune, always returning from solitary hunts in the deep mountains with various heavenly materials and earthly treasures. Sikong Bo believed that by seizing the child's fortune, he could create an extraordinary avatar.
Blinded by greed, Sikong Bo attempted to steal the child's essence blood one night while the child slept. However, he did not anticipate that the child had already been marked by a Nascent Soul expert. This expert, nearing the end of his lifespan and feeling hopeless about breaking through, sought a suitable vessel for possession and found this exceptionally gifted child.
Typical possession methods would damage the foundation of the possessed, but the Nascent Soul cultivator, hoping to advance further, could not allow this. He adopted an extreme method: transforming himself into a heavenly treasure, waiting to perfectly merge with the child upon Foundation Establishment.
Indeed, according to Sikong Bo's remaining memories, humans can be refined into heavenly treasures. Or rather, many of the heavenly treasures that appear in the world are transformed from fallen cultivators. After a cultivator's fall, the so-called "returning the path to the heavens" is not merely an empty phrase. The "path" of a cultivator, after years of transformation by the heavens, based on their personality and cultivation method characteristics, gradually forms various unique treasures, reappearing in the world.
In life, they cannot cultivate together; in death, they still serve their purpose. This is the attitude of the heavens towards cultivators.
(End of Chapter)