Chapter 207: Content of the Heroic Journey Rankings

Chapter 207: Chapter 207: Content of the Heroic Journey Rankings

On the sixth day of Chu Fan and Yun Xi’s stay at the auction house branch in Qingyun State, Han Chuanguang finally delivered the various lists and official reports.

Chu Fan first looked at the various lists.

After reading them, he gained a clear understanding of the entire Cultivation Realm for the first time.

For example, the Celestial List recorded ten Earth Immortals. The Eastern Domain surprisingly held three spots, the Southern, Western, and Central Domains each had two, and the Northern Domain had one.

Earth Immortals... To put it dramatically, a battle between two Earth Immortals could destroy half the world.

’I never imagined that the Eastern Domain, which the Hua Xu People call a Barbarian Land, actually has three Earth Immortals.’

As for the Earth List’s thirty-six Saints, the Eastern Domain didn’t have a single one. The Central Domain held twelve spots, the Northern Domain had eight, the Western Domain had eight, the Southern Domain had six, and East Sea Pengluo Island had two.

East Sea Pengluo Island. This was the first time Chu Fan had seen that name.

The Human List recorded a total of one hundred and thirty-five Half-Saints, ranked by Combat Power. To his surprise, the one in first place was a woman. Her age wasn’t listed, only her name and Sect.

Leng Yingxue, Palace Master of Piaoxue Palace. Twenty years ago, she became famous in a single battle by defeating Master Yunchen, the Palace Master of the Celestial Dao Palace, with one Sword strike. Sixteen years ago, she defeated Fei Heng, who was ranked first on the Human List at the time, in three moves.

Master Yunchen, the Palace Master of the Celestial Dao Palace, was only ranked fifth on the Human List.

First was Leng Yingxue, second was Fei Heng, third was Dai Shao, the Pavilion Master of Heartless Pavilion, and fourth was Zen Master Kongfa, the Abbot of Bodhi Hall.

The Hundred Flowers Wanderer, Lao Yisheng, was also on this Human List, though he was ranked sixty-seventh.

Actually, Chu Fan was most interested in the Talent List. From the Talent List, he could gauge the strength of the Central Domain’s younger generation.

The Talent List was updated once a year, and anyone over the age of sixty was removed from it.

Among the one hundred people, Chu Fan was surprised to find Yao Zhi on the list, even if he was ranked ninety-seventh. At thirty-two years old, his Cultivation had reached Soul Emergence Realm Tier Three. He was truly a prodigy.

Chu Fan was stunned for a moment. ’In the Secret Realm, wasn’t he only at the Nascent Soul Realm Early Stage? He crossed an entire Great Realm in just over two years? Could it be that Yao Zhi had some great opportunity after leaving the Secret Realm?’

As for the others on the Talent List, Chu Fan didn’t recognize any of them. The entire list had eight people in the Integration Realm and a full thirty-two in the Divine Separation Realm. However, seventeen of those in the Divine Separation Realm were under forty years old.

Seventeen people in the Divine Separation Realm under the age of forty. This truly astonished Chu Fan.

’I just have to compare it to the Eastern Domain. In the entire Eastern Domain, if not for me, there isn’t a single person under sixty in the Divine Separation Realm, let alone under forty.’

This was the most direct comparison of the disparity.

Chu Fan didn’t care much for the Hundred Flowers List, but he glanced at it anyway. He was surprised to see that Leng Yingxue also ranked first on the Hundred Flowers List.

’This woman can rank first on the Human List, so she must be a Half-Saint. She has to be at least a hundred and eighty or ninety years old, right?’

’Shouldn’t a woman who’s almost two hundred years old have a full head of white hair and a face full of wrinkles?’

Besides these lists, there were also a Prodigy List and a Yingluo List, both of which recorded various young prodigies. Chu Fan only gave them a cursory glance.

Putting down the lists, Chu Fan was lost in thought.

’Of all the names on these lists, not a single one is connected to the Hua Xu Empire’s Court.’

As far as Chu Fan knew, several Grand Generals of the Hua Xu Empire had very high Cultivation and Combat Power. Even the Emperor, Long Aofeng, had the Cultivation of a Half-Saint at the very least.

Therefore, his initial guess was correct: the Heroic Journey organization must have the Court’s backing.

Next, Chu Fan began to read the official reports. There was a thick stack of them, covering three years. In total, there were forty-two issues. Going by the dates, there should have been thirty-six—one per month—but there were also six special editions for certain occasions.

The anecdotes were truly just anecdotes. Even things like Cultivation Families fighting to the death, who wiped out whom, and how the Court later passed judgment were all published in the reports.

There were also stories about which Sect’s Saint Heir was caught womanizing and got into a conflict, or which family’s Legitimate Daughter was two-timing.

Nevertheless, Chu Fan read through all the reports at a rapid pace.

In this world, there were always plenty of people who enjoyed watching a spectacle and weren’t afraid to stir up trouble. All sorts of messy, trivial affairs weren’t unique to any one place; the entire world was like this.

Just as there are good people everywhere, there are also bad people. Light and darkness are fundamentally opposed; where there is light, there must also be darkness.

This was just like the Dao of Cause and Effect: where there is a cause, there will inevitably be an effect.

Light and darkness are endlessly entangled. Isn’t Cause and Effect the same?

At that very moment, Chu Fan froze.

His consciousness once again sank into that chaotic void. But this time, as soon as he entered, he saw dense points of light, as numerous as the stars in the night sky, and they were all connected by lines.

Any two points of light, no matter how far apart, were connected by a line of light.

At this moment, a new understanding dawned in Chu Fan’s mind. It was said that a certain cause would lead to a certain effect, but Chu Fan now felt that while Cause and Effect seemed deterministic, it actually contained countless uncertainties. A single cause could lead to different effects due to these myriad uncertainties that followed.

Take Red Blood Mansion for example. If you isolate the cause and the effect, their scheme to ambush and kill his Master and Senior Brother at the Cloud Horse Jade Mine was the cause.

Chu Fan ultimately annihilating Red Blood Mansion was the effect.

It seemed inevitable, but between the deaths of his Master and Senior Brother and Chu Fan’s destruction of Red Blood Mansion, how many entanglements of Cause and Effect existed?

’For example, in that Mysterious Cave of the twelve zodiacs on Zao Ying Mountain, if I hadn’t met Yan Ying, I would most likely have grown old and died inside. How could I even speak of destroying Red Blood Mansion?’

’Another example: when I caused a ruckus at the Celestial Derivation Sect and was pursued to Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain, if I hadn’t had the Scroll, wouldn’t I have died there?’

And how could the variables be limited to just these two instances?

But one thing was certain: given the cause at the Cloud Horse Jade Mine, as long as Chu Fan didn’t die, no matter how the variables changed, the only possible outcome for Red Blood Mansion was destruction. It was just a matter of time.

Chu Fan understood. He understood why there were such complex networks of light points in this chaotic void. The points of light were both causes and effects, and between any two points was a connecting line of light—the inevitable constant that determined the relationship between cause and effect.

But within this web of relationships, if you singled out any two points of light, aside from the unobstructed line of the inevitable constant connecting them, there were also countless other ways to get from one point to the other. These countless other paths contained innumerable other points of light—these were the variables.

The world was full of infinite possibilities precisely because infinite possibilities existed between a cause and its effect. Many things seemed inevitable, following certain laws—these laws could be called the Dao. But were not the crisscrossing variables between cause and effect also a part of the Dao?

Cause and Effect were a part of the Celestial Dao, the logic and law governing the development of all things.

Therefore, the Dao of Cause and Effect must be one of the few supreme Celestial Daos.

BOOM!

This explosion was like a giant Copper Bell being struck deep within Chu Fan’s soul. In that instant, his entire consciousness lost all Spiritual Sense.

But the very next moment, after his consciousness became clear again, it began to rapidly retreat through the points of light. No, it was more like the countless points of light were surging toward him.

Countless pieces of information flooded his sea of consciousness. He felt a pain so intense it was as if his head was about to explode...