My Longevity Simulation - Chapter 1269: The Immortal Folding Formation

After undergoing a trial in the ashen small world, Sun Luyao, who had narrowly survived under the [Return] Character Seal Script, had indeed improved greatly compared to before.

A dim light quietly bloomed, penetrating the surface land of the Xuanhuang Realm and reaching deep into its inner core.

After a round of searching, he indeed discovered remnants suspected to be part of a world protection formation.

However, compared to the ashen small world, the formation lines within the Xuanhuang Realm were far more ancient and profound.

While Li Fan urged the Boundless Mirror to continue probing, he also fed the discovered formation data into the formation model previously deduced by the Final Dissociation Disc.

“Most of it matches. But at certain critical nodes…” Li Fan’s gaze flickered as he grasped the Boundless Mirror and turned into a streak of light, traversing the Nine Lands and arriving at an extremely deep underground region beneath the Xuanhuang earth veins.

The surroundings were filled with chaos. Under unimaginable pressure, matter no longer existed. Only dark red currents flowed, carrying eerie whispers.

In such an extreme environment, even Li Fan’s divine sense projection had to hide within the Boundless Mirror, relying on the immortal artifact itself to survive.

The Boundless Mirror was not at ease either. It actively released dim light to protect itself, while Sun Luyao carefully observed the surroundings.

“Senior, the formation ruins I scanned above were clearly here. But now that I am close, I cannot see them…”

“And here, I can also sense the aura of those Immortal Characters Script. Many of them…”

“Much stronger than before,” Sun Luyao emphasized.

“After coming into contact with the Immortal Script, have you recovered any memories?” Li Fan asked while observing the surroundings.

After the Boundless Mirror shattered, all information related to the Immortal Realm had vanished with it. Even though Li Fan helped reconstruct it, the lost records did not return.

However, after “Returning” to the Anti-Immortal Realm, there might be unforeseen variables—that was why he asked the question

Though it seemed like a casual question, Li Fan was actually watching Sun Luyao closely.

“No,” Sun Luyao replied honestly, without any fluctuation in emotion. “After being obliterated by the power of the Immortal Script, my consciousness entered a blank state. As for the missing parts, I can no longer sense their existence at all.”

“However…”

“However…”

Sun Luyao suddenly stopped, as if caught in thought and doubt.

“Yes?”

“I do not know how to explain it. It was a very strange experience. Although it truly no longer exists, it felt as if it instantly flew to another extremely distant world. It was too mysterious. I cannot tell whether it was a real perception or an illusion between life and death,” Sun Luyao said slowly, his tone somewhat dreamlike.

After hearing this, Li Fan’s thoughts paused slightly.

“If the Immortal Realm still exists, then the [Return] Character is equivalent to forcibly opening a passage to the Immortal Realm, though only for specific targets.”

“But now that the Immortal Realm has been destroyed…”

“The passage still exists, but the destination is gone. However, according to the Boundless Mirror’s experience, it is also possible that the true Immortal Ruins have not disappeared. It might have only been temporarily reached before being forcefully expelled. In other words, the old laws cannot tolerate it.”

A sudden impulse rose in Li Fan’s heart.

He considered using his remaining source power essence to disguise himself as an immortal artifact and use the [Return] Character Seal Script to explore the true Immortal Ruins.

Once the thought arose, it surged like a flood and became difficult to suppress. Only the spontaneous activation of the Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Mantra managed to restrain it.

Li Fan immediately understood, “This is the yearning of the mortal toward the immortal, the pursuit of higher existence. It is engraved deep within the soul, innate and impossible to erase.”

“For me, sending a divine sense projection to test it while preparing the main body to use [Truth] at any moment does not carry high risk. Moreover, there is still a long time before the final act unfolds in this era. I can plan it carefully…”

While thinking, Li Fan also discovered a way to reveal the hidden original world protecting formation of the Xuanhuang Realm.

To his surprise, it was exactly the same as the method used by the Immortal Ancestor to conceal the sealed Book of Du’e.

That is, the overlapping of space in multiple directions. Simply put, a line is hidden across different spatial dimensions. From a single perspective, nothing can be seen. Only by constantly changing viewpoints and rotating all distributed parts into unity can the hidden formation finally appear.

Under Li Fan’s guidance, traces of formation lines gradually appeared on the ancient mirror surface of the Boundless Mirror.

They were far clearer than those seen on the surface. Like marks left by a terrifying beast crushing through everything, even space itself carried a sense of ancient weariness.

The Boundless Mirror did not feel much, but Li Fan’s divine sense projection visibly began to age rapidly.

And this was merely caused by the act of seeing.

This was the first time Li Fan had witnessed a truly existing immortal level formation, rather than a theoretical one. Though it consisted of only a few simple lines, it brought immense insight to Li Fan, who already considered himself at the peak of mortal formation mastery.

“So this is how it works.”

“This unexpected turn at this formation node is surprising, yet feels natural. My previous understanding was too shallow.”

“Wonderful, truly wonderful.”

Li Fan exclaimed repeatedly, immersed in the remnants of the immortal formation, seemingly ignoring his own aging and impending dissipation.

Meanwhile, Sun Luyao of the Boundless Mirror appeared too shocked to react. He simply stared blankly as Li Fan’s projection rapidly weakened, without offering any warning.

Just as Li Fan’s projection was about to completely dissipate from aging, a mysterious vitality suddenly emerged from his core.

The aura of death vanished, like a withered tree blooming again. Even the lingering aura of the world protecting formation could no longer shake his previously fragile existence.

This sudden change left Sun Luyao utterly stunned.

“Senior… Senior!”

Li Fan could now move freely within the formation’s aura. He glanced at Sun Luyao and smiled faintly.

“What, do you want to learn?”

“This is called the Profound Art of Life and Death. Reverse life into death, no life, no death.”

Sun Luyao trembled and did not dare to speak.

After a long pause, he finally said, “Senior’s divine power truly surpasses my imagination…”

Li Fan temporarily did not bother to settle accounts with him. He gathered all his attention and began studying the Xuanhuang Primordial World-Protection Grand Formation.

From the portion of the formation he had currently probed, the scale of the primordial formation was unexpectedly vast.

If these discovered details were enlarged proportionally within the model deduced by the Final Dissociation Disc, then in theory, the range of the primordial world-protecting formation was actually dozens of times larger than the original Xuanhuang Realm itself.

This completely defied common sense.

“Where did the problem arise?”

Li Fan was slightly stunned. After a brief moment of thought, he continued to activate the Boundless Mirror to illuminate the remaining formation ruins.

As the actual data of the primordial world-protection formation was gradually completed, and as certain key formation nodes appeared, Li Fan revised the deduced formation model.

He came to understand the reason why theory did not match reality.

In the previous deduction, the world-protection formation was merely a single formation covering the Xuanhuang Realm. In reality, however, this primordial formation existed in the same location in several slightly different forms, folded multiple times.

Layer upon layer folded inward, compressed and transformed, it then formed the true Xuanhuang world-protection formation.

“Just by simple stacking, the potential of the formation has been increased several times. Moreover, if the folded formation is unfolded, it can instantly unleash power that exceeds the normal limit of the formation.”

“More importantly, if the Xuanhuang Realm itself expands its territory, the world-protecting formation can also continuously unfold in this manner, perfectly extending the formation to new regions. Even if contact with the Immortal Realm is temporarily severed, as long as one holds control over the primordial world-protection formation, one can maintain the formation in a perfect state through this method.”

Within his main body, the Final Dissociation Disc was operating at full capacity, assisting the divine sense in the depths of the Xuanhuang Realm to comprehend the primordial world-protection formation.

In addition, the dim light of the Boundless Mirror inherently carried a certain analytical ability, allowing Li Fan to steadily convert the formation ruins into his own knowledge.

During the research process, Li Fan discovered that the primordial formation made extremely frequent use of the technique of formation folding.

Any seemingly simple formation structure might conceal thousands or even tens of thousands of extremely complex formation units.

To ensure that no omission would lead to failure in analyzing the formation, Li Fan had no choice but to slow down the pace of deciphering.

He did not overlook any detail, using the Boundless Mirror to thoroughly illuminate everything. This caused great suffering for Sun Luyao.

Even though he had already grown accustomed to being exploited to the point of exhaustion, such high intensity work still left him in unbearable misery.

However, having just made a mistake earlier, Sun Luyao felt guilty. At this moment, he could only grit his teeth and endure.

As for Li Fan, before fully analyzing the primordial world-protection formation, he would not allow the Boundless Mirror to collapse. He would precisely use source power essence to save Sun Luyao just before he broke down.

Time slowly passed, and the analysis of the formation was mostly completed.

They had reached the outer region of the central core.

But at this moment, Li Fan voluntarily stopped the exploration. The remaining source power essence was sufficient to support the Boundless Mirror in completing the final work. However, near this central core region, Li Fan faintly sensed a trace of danger.

After careful perception, Li Fan confirmed that this sense of danger did not come from the primordial formation itself, but from elsewhere.

“There is a restriction here?”

Li Fan narrowed his eyes.

“Sun Luyao!” he commanded skillfully.

Sun Luyao responded and forced his extremely exhausted spirit to reexamine the surroundings carefully.

“Senior, aside from the formation ruins, no abnormalities were found!” After completing the inspection, Sun Luyao hurriedly reported.

Li Fan pondered briefly and said, “Check again.”

This time, Li Fan personally guided the dim light of the Boundless Mirror. Using the method of investigating “folding,” he reexamined the space outside the core of the primordial formation.

As expected, he discovered a ring of alarm restrictions that had been folded multiple times, completely hiding their traces under normal conditions.

The aura of these alarm restrictions was also ancient.

However, compared to the primordial formation ruins, they seemed somewhat hollow in strength. They had already been broken, their core power gone, leaving behind only an empty shell.

Yet even this empty shell still gave Li Fan a fatal sense of danger.

“It should share the same origin as the Xuanhuang primordial formation, both originating from the upper realm.” After careful inspection without acting rashly, Li Fan reached this conclusion.

“If the restriction were intact, even with my accumulation over more than ten lifetimes in the Xuanhuang Realm, I would likely be unable to do anything against it. Fortunately, such a terrifying immortal restriction has already been broken by predecessors.”

Li Fan found the flaw in the restriction.

To be cautious, he sent a strand of divine sense to test it. After confirming it was not a trap, he brought the Boundless Mirror through the flaw into the central core region.

After a brief darkness, when light appeared again, what stood before Li Fan was no longer empty void.

Instead, it was a strange device.

It was composed of countless concentric rings of varying sizes. They shared the same core, but the rings were distributed in different orientations.

Describing them as countless was no exaggeration.

The number of rings forming this device truly could not be counted clearly by either divine sense or the naked eye. Although it had lost its power source and remained motionless, it still seemed to constantly change its number.