Just like prescribing the right medicine for an illness, the golden needle gifted by the Heavenly Doctor changed form the moment it came into contact with Li Fan's divine soul.
According to the shape of his soul, the needle's energy formed a tight, enclosing layer of protection around it.
"No wonder it can be controlled without refinement. It feels as if it were custom-made for me, a treasure perfectly attuned to my divine soul."
"Moreover..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes and mobilized his soul power, striking outward from within against the golden needle's protective barrier.
At the instant his divine soul impacted the layer, he felt the force being gently deflected, spreading outward like ripples across a pond.
The impact energy was evenly dispersed and easily neutralized.
If the inner protection was already this resilient, the strength of its outer layer could easily be imagined.
After a series of experiments, Li Fan concluded with just four words: "As solid as iron walls."
Gewoon een lepeltje voor het slapengaan. - 7 kg in 7 dagenMore details"However, the golden needle's protection only applies to the soul. When it comes to physical destruction, its defense is inferior to that of an ordinary armor-type treasure."
"The needle remains unbroken, and the man survives..."
"What the Heavenly Doctor said was not exaggerated. As long as the soul remains intact, with his power, recreating a physical body would be a trivial matter."
"To destroy the soul, one must first break through the golden needle's protective layer."
"In fact..."
A scene suddenly flashed through Li Fan's mind.
At the instant of a fatal blow, just before the needle shattered, a golden light would soar into the sky, carrying his divine soul back to the Heavenly Doctor's hand.
Li Fan was certain that the Heavenly Physician still retained partial control over the golden needle he had gifted.
Although this was done out of concern for "the only current successor of the Heavenly Law Realm," it was not necessarily a good thing for Li Fan.
How could one rest easy while another holds power at one's bedside?
With Li Fan's temperament, it was impossible for him to allow something he could not fully control to wrap around his divine soul.
If his soul were ever frozen, preventing him from returning to his true self, that would truly be eternal damnation!
"Is there any way to enjoy the needle's protection while ensuring absolute safety..."
Before the Faceless Stone Statue, Li Fan began to ponder.
At present, the trump cards he possessed that could restrain the Heavenly Doctor's power were few in number—and all of them were uncontrollable variables.
For instance, the Chaos, Hunger, and the Gray Mold.
A single misstep would lead to the destruction of the Xuanhuang World and mutual annihilation.
After much thought, Li Fan's gaze finally settled on the golden vow power generated by the Faceless Stone Statue.
Previously, he had stored all the golden vow-power within the calamity body inside his dantian. Whenever the capacity neared its limit, the vow-power would automatically compress itself without Li Fan's interference.
As a result, although the accumulated vow-power over this period had become incredibly vast, it still could not completely fill even a single Calamity body.
That Calamity body, shaped like Li Fan himself, now gleamed with sacred golden light.
The golden vow-power was a force that transcended the current level of energy Li Fan could comprehend. He had not yet found a proper method to utilize it.
All he could do was guide it slightly.
"Vow power... vow-power..."
"If I follow the will of my heart and urge it forward, could I perhaps draw upon its strength?"
With that sudden thought, Li Fan began his experiment.
The result was self-evident. It was as if they were two completely different species. The golden vow-power showed no response at all to Li Fan's summons.
After several failed attempts, Li Fan had no choice but to change his approach.
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He created another Calamity body and slowly guided the golden vow-power into it. At the same time, he urged the Calamity body to transform into a long rope-like form, resembling a conduit carrying the gradually flowing golden wish power.
This conduit coiled around the golden needle defense that enveloped Li Fan's divine soul, slowly weaving it into an external layer of protection.
Throughout the process, Li Fan was exceedingly cautious.
Neither the Heavenly Doctor's Golden Needle nor the Golden Vow-power were forces he could currently control.
He could only guide them, making them restrain each other. Only then did he feel somewhat at ease.
Indeed, doing this outside of his divine soul was extremely dangerous.
Even the slightest mistake could result in the annihilation of his divine soul.
But with the existence of [Truth] as his backup, Li Fan felt he had the qualification to take such a bold risk.
"If something truly goes wrong, the two forces will first notice each other as immense presences and instinctively ignore me, a mere ant. Such is their nature."
"In fact, this is safer than facing either one of them alone."
"This is what is called the Way of Balance."
Li Fan looked at the Calamity body filled with golden vow-power, now appearing as golden cords intertwined with the golden needle protection, and nodded in satisfaction.
If the Heavenly Doctor's Golden Needle were to erupt, it would certainly trigger the golden vow-power first.
And vice versa.
If Li Fan suffered a fatal blow from an external enemy, that attacker would face a dual counterattack from both the golden needle and the golden wish power.
To use a crude analogy, Li Fan was now like a man with two linked bombs tied to his body.
Any act capable of harming him could detonate the bombs entirely.
Li Fan believed that even a Longevity Immortal Heavenly Sovereign would not come out unscathed if struck by both powers simultaneously.
In fact, at a critical moment, Li Fan could even trigger the explosions himself to achieve unexpected results.
"Leverage the situation and control the flow. This is the essence of my nature…"
When the two forces finally reached equilibrium, Li Fan quietly admired his creation, feeling a brief surge of pride.
However, he quickly sobered up.
"This is merely a temporary expedient born of necessity. If I can fully understand the Heavenly Doctor's Golden Needle and form my own divine soul defense…"
"If the Heavenly Doctor could achieve this, then there is no reason I cannot."
Li Fan carefully sensed the energy attributes of the golden needle surrounding his divine soul, secretly contemplating while cross-referencing the contents of The Heavenly Doctor Immortal Scripture and The Mending Heaven Record.
Time passed without him noticing.
Eventually, Li Fan was startled by a sudden image in his mind.
It was news from the followers of the True Immortal of Salvation and Mortal Compassion. The task he had assigned them, to find someone capable of reconstructing a cultivator's former appearance from their skull—had finally yielded results.
Originally, Li Fan had thought it would be a simple matter. However, within the vast Xuanhuang Realm, apart from him, no one else had any such need.
Since the skill had no practical value, naturally no cultivator had ever studied it.
Only after Li Fan issued a bounty mission with sufficient rewards did some cultivators begin to attempt it.
"Tongyan Prefecture, Luo Suzhen."
After grasping the name and information of the target cultivator, Li Fan thought for a while and decided to go personally.
The matter was of great importance to [Truth], and he could not take it lightly.
His figure flashed and vanished like a ghost.
Before long, Li Fan arrived at Luo Suzhen's cave residence.
Like the eccentric cultivators Yin Shangren and Ximen Yu, Luo Suzhen also disliked living among others.