Chapter 9: There's Always a Way

Gazing at Kou Hong's testimony on the table, Li Fan felt disheartened.

Kou Hong hadn't lied to him, he truly didn't know how to allow mortals to leave the Immortal Realm.

"Immortal Realm..." Five reincarnations, three hundred years of longing, have now turned into an elusive mirage.

The dream of becoming an immortal shattered, Li Fan seemed to have aged overnight.

Not just physically, but also mentally.

"Immortal Realm..." He repeated this name in his mind, overwhelmed by profound regret.

"How did I end up being born in such a place after my reincarnation? If I had reincarnated in the regular Immortal Cultivation World, with the ability of [Real] to infinitely simulate life cycles, I would have certainly attained immortality. It's so frustrating that I had to be in this forsaken Immortal Realm!"

The information in Kou Hong's testimony once again crossed Li Fan's mind.

The so-called Immortal Realm, as the name suggests, is a land desolate of immortals. Thousands of years ago, the Ancient Xian Realm encountered a drastic change.

At first, it was just a pandemic sweeping across the mortal realm, and no cultivator gave it a second thought.

However, when a cultivator accidentally contracted this mysterious pandemic, things spiraled out of control.

After infecting the cultivator, this pandemic seemed to have mysteriously gained strength, and began to spread among cultivators.

The spread wasn't through any usual means, instead, it was through the spiritual energy that the cultivators relied on for survival.

The pandemic spread rapidly through the heavenly and earthly spiritual energy, pervading the entire Immortal Cultivation World. As for the cultivators who were infected, they heavily deteriorated in their cultivation, with severe cases losing all their cultivation overnight, becoming no different from mortals. They would perish within a few days, returning to the heavens.

As countless cultivators died, an air of despair spread amongst them.

In their desperation, some cultivators vented their fury onto the source of all this - humans.

Thus, the large-scale slaughter began.

Facing the high and mighty Immortal Teachers, mortals had little to no resistance and were butchered at will.

Soon, however, this slaughter was abruptly ended.

It wasn't due to a sudden realization of their mistakes, but because the cultivators were horrified to learn that with their mass extermination, the death of many humans did not eradicate the pandemic within them. Instead, the pandemic seemed to have been freed by the deaths and spread into the heavenly and earthly spiritual energy around them.

Within a short time, the concentration of the pandemic within the Immortal Cultivation World skyrocketed.

This led to even more deaths amongst the cultivators.

In despair, the cultivators had to abandon their sweeping massacre of humans.

However, waiting for their doom wasn't the way of the cultivators. While some cultivators began to research how to confront this pandemic, others proposed the infamous "The Great Migration Plan".

Despite facing opposition at its proposal, the plan was approved by the majority of the cultivators in the interest of their own survival.

The so-called "The Great Migration Plan" was based on the following considerations:

They could no longer kill the mortals, and a definitive solution to eradicate the pandemic seemed like a distant future. If they let mortals reproduce at will, with an increasing pandemic, the cultivators' lives would definitely become more challenging.

Since this bizarre pandemic could spread through spiritual energy, a natural solution was proposed.

All the mortals in the Immortal Cultivation World should be exiled to surrounding areas, like the Small Worlds and Broken Heavenly Caves, where there was no spiritual energy. They would then use an array technique to permanently isolate these places, preventing the mortals from returning.

This way, they would first solve the issue of mortals on a permanent basis, and then focus on finding a cure for the pandemic.

They weren't worried about where to relocate these mortals as there was an infinite number of undeveloped Small Worlds.

Thus, under the unified will of the entire Immortal Cultivation World, all the mortals began a migration process that lasted for hundreds of years.

How many mortals might die during this migration wasn't a concern for these cultivators. In the face of the cultivators' power, mortals had no chance of resisting.

So, after hundreds of years of The Great Migration, all the mortals in the Immortal Cultivation World were dispersed among various Small Worlds. Nearly a thousand years later, the concentration of the pandemic in the Immortal Cultivation World finally dropped to a lower level.

Over the course of a thousand years, cultivators, through continuous research, had finally found a method to purify the plague.

After thousands more years, these cultivators completely eradicated the threat of the plague.

However, much to their embarrassment, the remnants of the plague still lurked within the mortal bloodline.

While the world was devoid of mortals initially, it turned out that not all offspring of cultivators possess the qualifications for cultivation.

As a result, over time, the world once again bore countless mortals. Within these mortals existed the shadow of the plague.

Since the plague posed a unique threat to cultivators, the future generations of mortals aspiring to cultivate needed to clear their bodies of the plague.

Over time, the plague became synonymous with the dividing line between immortals and mortals, leading to its naming as the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma.

The destructive force of the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma had left a deep psychological scar on all cultivators. To prevent a resurgence of this Miasma, it became a common practice among them to avoid places where mortals had been expelled.

Eventually, these areas became known as the Immortal Realm.

There were countless large and small Immortal Realms, and very few cultivators were willing to risk entering these places.

For Li Fan to come across two, it was indeed a great stroke of luck.

However, neither of the two cultivators had a method for mortals to leave. How could Li Fan expect another, more advanced cultivator to break in?

Furthermore, as a mortal, his lifespan was limited. Even if he could continually simulate reincarnation cycles, it could only occur within the scope of his lifespan.

He was already seventy years old, with a biological lifespan of eighty-six years.

Within these sixteen years, the likelihood of meeting another cultivator was virtually zero.

Given this, how could Li Fan not feel despair?

He had clearly seen the hope of becoming an immortal and pursuing longevity, yet in the end, it all seemed like just an illusion.

Could it be that he was destined to live as a mortal and repeat this life cycle again and again?

Li Fan was truly unwilling to accept this.

The path to longevity was within his grasp, seemingly attainable, yet frustratingly distant and unreachable.

How could Li Fan resign himself to this?

Reflecting on his reincarnation cycles and the nearly three hundred years of waiting, Li Fan could not bring himself to abandon the path to immortality.

Was there really no other way?

Suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had cut through the fog, Li Fan suddenly remembered some things he had overlooked previously.

Thousands of years ago, how did the large group of mortals embark on their migration?

Although the Small World and the Immortal Cultivation World were adjacent, they were not the same world after all.

These mortals surely did not walk to this place, right?

There must have been some tools that brought them here, right?

Do these tools still exist today?

If he could find these tools, would it mean that he could proceed to the Immortal Cultivation World?

Even if it was just a minuscule possibility, it gave Li Fan a glimmer of hope for cultivating to immortality.

His mood became excited, and he hurried to the prison where Kou Hong was held.

He needed to consult Kou Hong to verify the feasibility of his idea.