Even though he already knew the cause and effect of the incident, Li Fan still felt a thrill as he once again faced the overwhelming power of the Immortal Ruins.
After the scene played out, Liu Ruchen's shadow revealed his will.
The adopted son, Liu Yihang, was appointed as the head of Medicine King Sect, with the hope that many other elders would willingly support him.
If they did not wish to, they could leave Medicine King Sect freely—no one would be forced.
Upon returning to the Xuanhuang Realm, there was no need to rush for revenge; hibernate in the Valley of Immortality and wait for the opportunity.
Nothing was different from what Li Fan had already known.
But now that he temporarily controlled the Medicine King True Cauldron, Li Fan did not hurry to leave. Instead, he lingered in the control room.
Even after Liu Ruchen's shadow fully dissipated, Li Fan stayed.
Time passed without incident. Li Fan paused, then had the terminal dissociation disk spin rapidly, generating a formation.
A cold gleam appeared in his eyes as he quickly established a formation in the control room.
Its primary function: to render all hidden souls invisible.
Li Fan suspected the unthinkable: Medicine King Zong Liu Ruchen was not completely dead.
This was not baseless speculation. Li Fan was well-informed. He had seen mechanisms, formations, restrictions, and countless hidden existences.
Yet the phantom promulgating its will before him did not belong to any known category.
For it to maintain its image and issue such detailed commands, some substantial power must support it.
Having eliminated all other possibilities, the only remaining explanation was Liu Ruchen's own soul power.
Once the formation stabilized, the crisscrossing light waves swept the space.
As Li Fan had expected, a gradually blurring figure was forced to appear again.
It could not communicate with him, teetering on the brink of collapse.
Feeling the despair radiating from the other party, Li Fan snorted coldly.
He reached out and seized Liu Ruchen with his hand. Without hesitation, he infused source power, laced with the influence of the Faceless Immortal, into Liu Ruchen's soul.
As Liu Ruchen's soul slowly became clearer, it fully entered Li Fan's sensing network.
"Sect Leader Liu did a remarkable job with the golden cicada's escape from the shell. You almost deceived me," Li Fan said calmly.
"Fellow Daoist, you must be joking," Liu Ruchen replied bitterly.
"Where are you from?" Li Fan asked casually.
"Xuantian Sect," he answered with an evil smile.
"Huh?!" Liu Ruchen's soul wavered, fragile at first. Upon hearing Li Fan's words, it nearly collapsed.
After regaining composure, he said, with lingering fear: "Better not joke carelessly…"
Before he could finish, the shadow of the blood moon appeared behind Li Fan.
A coercion far surpassing that of the ancient Dao Integration cultivators swept through, nearly shattering Liu Ruchen's weakened soul.
"Do you think I lie? Your Medicine King Zongyuan cannot escape for half a day—yet thousands of years have passed in the Xuanhuang Realm!" Li Fan sneered.
Liu Ruchen finally awoke from his trance. "What? Thousands of years?"
He counted with his fingers, confirming that Li Fan's words were true.
His hollow face paled further. "I knew time and space would be affected, but I didn't expect it to reach this extent."
Despite his shock, Liu Ruchen, as a sect leader, quickly regained composure.
"So, the Xuantian Sect has successfully restored its strength?" he asked cautiously.
"Haha," Li Fan smiled half-heartedly, then pointed, conveying the current form of the Xuanhuang Realm.
After understanding the transformations of the past millennium, Liu Ruchen was left speechless for a long time.
"Hmph. I happened to catch anecdotal news left behind by your Medicine King Sect in ancient times. Not long ago, I saw a bolide streak across the sky, and on a whim, deduced the sequence of events."
According to Xuantian Sect rules, "stupid and incompetent traitors like you should be executed." A glint of murderous intent flashed in Li Fan's eyes.
Yet his tone shifted: "Today is different. If you intend to overthrow the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance and restore the Xuantian Sect, you must gather all the forces."
"So I will give Medicine King Sect a chance."
Li Fan stared at Liu Ruchen with a fierce gaze.
What other choice did Liu Ruchen have? His own life—and the lives of the disciples within the Medicine King Cauldron—depended on compliance.
He had no choice but to agree.
"Hmph. Your opinion doesn't matter anyway. Since you worshiped the Mercy Immortal in the Red World, escape is impossible, even if you wished for it," Li Fan said with a smile.
Recalling the faceless stone statue that had appeared in his soul, Liu Ruchen's heart throbbed involuntarily.
After temporarily placing Liu Ruchen and the Medicine King Cauldron in a secluded cave, Li Fan returned to the Lingmu Realm and summoned the layman Qiao Gong.
Qiao Gong was studying Tianyang in a trance and looked slightly annoyed when interrupted.
"My friend lost his body in an accident. Can you craft a puppet for him to inhabit?" Li Fan asked directly.
With Liu Ruchen's weakened soul, even maintaining his form was difficult, let alone practicing. Replenishing his soul would be troublesome.
Better to let a skilled craftsman handle it.
Qiao Gong examined Liu Ruchen, nodded: "No problem. Just an ordinary Tianji puppet. He was a Daoist cultivator, right? The puppet body may not fully reflect his original strength."
"As long as it can move, that will suffice." Li Fan didn't care about anything else.
The purpose of rescuing Liu Ruchen was purely to better control Medicine King Sect.
Without him, forcing every disciple to surrender individually would be risky.
As long as Liu Ruchen remained present, control of Medicine King Sect was assured.
Qiao Gong requested materials from Li Fan, which were readily available in the Xuanhuang Realm, and Li Fan quickly prepared them.
"Could you also provide some essence of source power?" Qiao Gong suddenly asked, as if fearing misunderstanding.
"You've never used source power before, so you need to test it," he explained. "Otherwise, I wouldn't know how to apply it to little brother Tianyang."
After a brief pause, Li Fan agreed.
Qiao Gong's excitement surged—his original forging plan had been transformed by Li Fan's request.
Then the creation of the Tianji puppet began.
The process was novel—no physical flame was used. Instead, golden source power from the void was drawn to shape the shadow.
Each piece of heavenly material and earthly treasure became a puppet skeleton, and the golden source of power surged like a tide, forming "flesh and blood tissue" that attached to the skeleton.
The Tianji puppet slowly took shape.
As the golden source of power emerged, Li Fan faintly heard intermittent murmurings.
"What's this noise?" Master Qiao Gong looked at ease, so Li Fan asked directly, without fear of being disturbed.
"I don't know. But it is a phenomenon that inevitably occurs when using source power. Don't worry. We cultivators in the Tianji Realm call it [Whispers of the World]. You'll get used to it over time."
While answering Li Fan, he kept a careful watch on the Tianji puppet and controlled the source power precisely.
Limbs, torso, head, then skin, hair… all slowly manifested.
Liu Ruchen, leader of the Medicine King Sect, stared in shock at the unfolding scene.
The method of refining the puppet in this way was completely beyond his imagination.
The moment the Tianji puppet, which looked exactly like Liu Ruchen, was created, he felt an inexplicable desire to possess it.
"Fellow Daoist, please," layman Qiao Gong said lazily, glancing at Li Fan and nodding.
Liu Ruchen cautiously approached.
A burst of light erupted from the Tianji puppet, and moments later, it opened its eyes.
Liu Ruchen, now reborn in his new body, spread his hands in shock: "It's almost… it feels exactly like my original body! There's even the Dantian and sea of consciousness! How is this possible?"
Qiao Gong ignored Liu Ruchen: "Okay, I'll go if there's nothing else. Fellow Daoist Tianyang is still waiting for me!" he said impatiently.
Li Fan smiled and let him leave.
"Sect Leader Liu, what are the methods of our Federation of All Realms?" Li Fan asked, watching Liu Ruchen adjust to his new body.
"His skills are astonishing," Liu Ruchen said sincerely. Then, his expression shifted: "Unite the Ten Thousand Realms… Could it be that Taoist Brother Qiao Gong just now is not a local cultivator from the Xuanhuang Realm?"
Li Fan nodded: "Sect Leader Liu is indeed very knowledgeable. Taoist Brother Qiao Gong is originally from the [Tianji Realm]."
Liu Ruchen was speechless: "Tianji Realm? The legendary cultivation world built on a massive puppet, wandering through the starry sky?"
"I see, that makes sense."
After some questioning, Li Fan learned that the ancestor of the Medicine King Sect, Medicine King Sun Miaomiao, had traveled to various worlds and recorded his experiences.
Among them were records about the Tianji Realm.
"But the immortal road was cut off, and communication between immortal realms was nearly nonexistent. So, the records of each realm remained in the distant past," Liu Ruchen explained. "Back then, I decided to lead the entire sect to escape from Xuanhuang, heading to the nearest [Xiaoyao] world. The cultivators there respect the way of inaction, dislike conflict, and are friendly to outsiders. It was a good place—though, unfortunately…"
Liu Ruchen's expression darkened slightly.
While talking, he carefully transmitted Sun Miaomiao's travel notes to Li Fan.
A star map suddenly appeared in Li Fan's mind.
It marked eighteen cultivation realms surrounding the Xuanhuang Realm, seemingly arranged randomly with no discernible pattern.
In addition to these eighteen fixed realms, two immortal realms had no fixed position: the Tianji Realm and Xuan Shang.
According to the notes, Xuan Shang was less a world than a massive flying vessel, traveling between immortal realms to trade materials and seek profit.
"Ancestor Piaomiao… it's enviable to traverse all these realms," Li Fan murmured, scanning the notes repeatedly.
So much time had passed, and the star sea had changed drastically. Everything in the travel notes may have been erased—or perhaps swallowed by Xuanhuang.
"Xuan Shang… the behavior of cultivators there may be similar to Jiao Xiuyuan. If opportunity allows, we can investigate."
Liu Ruchen didn't know Li Fan's thoughts and continued: "It is said that the ancestor intended to travel further, but for some reason changed his mind. There seem to be special circumstances regarding the starry sky we inhabit, though the ancestor did not disclose specifics."
Li Fan's expression shifted slightly: "Special circumstances?"
In Sun Miaomiao's era, the path to immortality had not yet been cut off. [High Wall] did not exist. But the star sea where the Xuanhuang Realm resides was already different.
"There are no records of all ascended immortals in the Xuanhuang Realm. Either they became [Nameless True Immortals], or their power erased all traces of them."
"Interesting…"
Li Fan fell into deep thought.
Next, Li Fan led Liu Ruchen to admire the spectacular scenery of the Spiritual Wood Realm.
Whether it was mountains and rivers taken from Xuanhuang, imitated ruins of ancient sects, or the massive forest tree standing against the sky, Liu Ruchen was full of praise.
After paying solemn respect to the stone statue of the Faceless Immortal, Li Fan produced the Medicine King Cauldron.
"Now that disciples cannot practice together due to restrictions, awakening all the disciples in the cauldron would lead to internal fighting. Sect Leader Liu, how should we handle this?"
"The Federation of Ten Thousand Realms has a species called [Cang Sheng Ling Yuan Gong] that can avoid such restrictions…"
After listening, Liu Ruchen thought and responded: "Since we've decided to join the Federation, we must contribute. In terms of combat power, the Medicine King Sect may not excel, but for refining elixirs and cultivating spiritual plants, our sect is proficient."
He paused: "Thousands of years have passed. I don't know how far the Dan Dao has developed in the Xuanhuang Realm. But if we obtain some specific elixirs and some time, we should catch up."
Liu Ruchen understood clearly: to ensure the safety of everyone in the Medicine King Sect, he needed to demonstrate their value.
Having witnessed the tree people in the Lingmu Realm working tirelessly, and the flesh-and-blood puppets converted into cultivation machines, Liu Ruchen knew the Federation of Ten Thousand Realms was formidable.
And the "envoy" before him, representing the Mercy Immortal in the mortal world, was no ordinary figure.
"The Jingshi Immortality Sutra offers special benefits for alchemy. Elders in the sect should choose to retain their original cultivation."