Chapter 89 – The Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect

The fall of Qi Refining stage cultivators was far less spectacular compared to that of Foundation Establishment stage cultivators.

There were no dazzling fireworks-like spectacles of Heavenly-Earthly Wonders—only two streaks of crimson clouds that suddenly materialized across the horizon.

“Qi Refining cultivator Si Kongyi, who practiced cultivation for thirty-five years. Slain by Qi Refining cultivator Li Fan in the Layered Cloud Sea…”

“Qi Refining cultivator Baili Chen, who practiced cultivation for three years. Slain by Qi Refining cultivator Li Fan in the Layered Cloud Sea…”

“Now comes death and dissolution of one’s Dao—the Dao is returned to the heavens!”

…

Beneath the fire-red clouds, Li Fan stood in silence, turning the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token over in his hands.

A long time passed before he finally suppressed the greed welling up within him.

“What a treasure. What a pity…”

“It is not my Dao.”

The Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token was the supreme treasure of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect.

The Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect was a secretive sect that had existed since ancient times.

Unlike other sects that established their schools upon mountains and broadly recruited disciples, the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect had no fixed headquarters. In fact, each generation typically had only a single successor.

Thus, when the Great Calamity descended, while all other sects were plunged into apocalyptic scenes of bloodshed and slaughter, the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect was scarcely affected.

The reason the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect could maintain an unbroken lineage for nearly ten thousand years with only a single member was largely thanks to its unique cultivation technique.

steal the heavens: Using one’s vital blood and certain special materials, one could craft a unique clone body. Unlike ordinary avatar techniques, this clone possessed its own distinct appearance, aura, soul, cultivation realm, and power—it even had its own independent fortune.

This clone could be treated as an entirely separate person.

swap the sun: When crafting a clone, if one incorporated the skeletal remains of a deceased cultivator or mixed in the vital blood of a living cultivator, one could strip away a portion of the target’s innate talents, fortune, and other attributes, grafting them onto the clone.

Of course, if that were all there was to it, it would still fall short of demonstrating the true power of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect.

The 《Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Scripture》, combined with the token in Li Fan’s hands—only together did they form the complete system.

This Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token had been forged several thousand years ago by the thirty-eighth generation successor of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect: Si Kongyue.

Back then, Si Kongyue had witnessed the Great Calamity descend with her own eyes—countless cultivators slaughtering one another, their lives worth no more than ants. Terrified to her core, she was desperate to find a perfect method to preserve her life.

And so, after a hundred years of painstaking, blood-and-tears research and studying countless artifact-forging methods, she finally crafted this Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token.

The token’s uses were boundless.

To say nothing of its extremely spacious storage space—once refined, the token could freely transfer between the original body and any clone, disregarding all spatial distance limitations.

Most crucially, through the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Scripture, she had transferred the very essence of life—both the clone’s and the original body’s—entirely into this token.

As long as the token was not destroyed, even if both the original body and clone were killed, one could consume the vital blood stockpiled within the token to reconstruct a brand new body.

Thus achieving “resurrection.”

Put simply, once the technique was fully cultivated, what appeared before outsiders—whether original body or clone—was merely an empty shell.

The Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token was the true body in all but name.

After Si Kongyue’s radical, unorthodox modifications to this technique, it had admittedly become somewhat sinister, but…

It was remarkably effective.

For thousands of years, relying on this uncanny technique, no matter what perilous situation they encountered, members of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect could always escape unscathed.

And so the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect had endured for millennia without perishing.

Until Si Kongyi encountered an anomaly like Li Fan—someone who could reverse the flow of time.

The Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Scripture was far from perfect; it had certain fatal weaknesses.

For instance, the original body and clone needed to maintain a certain distance between them. The farther apart the clone was from the original body, the more severely the clone’s strength would diminish. If the distance exceeded a critical threshold, the clone would be reduced to nothing more than early Qi Refining stage cultivation at minimum.

For another instance, since the essence of life was bound to the token, when members of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect died, a portion of their residual souls would be trapped within the token, unable to find release.

These residual souls often retained important fragments of memory from their lifetimes.

In moments of crisis, the token’s master could even release them to fight enemies.

Li Fan sent his divine sense into the interior of the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Token. The vast storage space within was completely empty.

Only Si Kongyi and one other residual soul with indistinct features drifted aimlessly within.

His spiritual sense transformed into a giant hand, seizing both residual souls and reading through their remaining memories.

After a long while, Li Fan finally understood how this millennium-old Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect had fallen into such dire straits.

The root of everything traced back to Si Kongyi’s opportunistic master: Si Kongbo.

For a thousand years, the Steal-the-Heavens, Swap-the-Sun Sect had traversed all manner of perilous situations, always emerging unharmed. As a result, they gradually grew arrogant, their conduct becoming ever more reckless and unbridled. By the time it came to Si Kongbo, this recklessness had reached its zenith.

On a distant continent, Si Kongbo—having broken through to the Foundation Establishment stage—grew dissatisfied with the clone he had previously refined.

So he decided to gather materials and refine a new one.

As luck would have it, he encountered a five- or six-year-old child in a remote mountain village.

The child possessed an Innate Immortal Body. Not only was the child gifted with immense physical strength, but the child’s cultivation speed was terrifyingly fast.

At such a young age, the child had already perfected Qi Refining and was preparing for Foundation Establishment.

This set Si Kongbo’s heart racing with desire.

After secretly observing for a time, Si Kongbo discovered that the child’s fortune was equally extraordinary.

Every time the child went hunting alone in the deep mountains, the child would return with all sorts of rare treasures and precious materials.

If he could strip this child’s fortune, the clone he crafted would be nothing short of extraordinary!

And so, blinded by greed, Si Kongbo crept in one night while the child was fast asleep, intending to steal the child’s vital blood.

What he never expected was…

This child had long since been claimed by a Nascent Soul powerhouse.

This Nascent Soul powerhouse was nearing the end of his lifespan and felt that a breakthrough was hopeless. So he searched far and wide for a suitable body to seize.

And he happened to find this extraordinarily gifted child.

Ordinary body-seizing methods would, to varying degrees, damage the foundation of the one being seized. This Nascent Soul cultivator was counting on reaching even greater heights—how could he allow such damage to occur?

So he adopted an extreme approach: transforming himself into a Heavenly-Earthly Wonder, so that when the child underwent Foundation Establishment, they could merge together perfectly.

That’s right—according to Si Kongbo’s surviving memories, a person could be refined into a Heavenly-Earthly Wonder.

Or rather, a large proportion of the Foundation Establishment singularities that continuously appeared throughout the world had been transformed from fallen cultivators.

When a cultivator perished, the so-called “returning one’s Dao to the heavens” was not merely an empty phrase.

A cultivator’s Dao, after undergoing transformation by heaven and earth over many years—shaped by the cultivator’s personality in life and the characteristics of the techniques they had practiced—would gradually coalesce into all manner of unique singularities, reappearing between heaven and earth.

Techniques that could not be co-cultivated in life must still serve their purpose after death.

This was the attitude that this heaven and earth held toward all cultivators.