Chapter 1106: A False Past

"The masterminds are the Four Ancient Immortals?" Lu Yang froze for a moment, a peculiar expression settling upon his face.

Did Left Historian Immortal mean that the shadowy figure the Fairy had been searching for was merely a fabrication of the Four Ancient Immortals, and that they themselves were the true masterminds?

Qing He had never expected that when they had allowed Left Historian Immortal to peer into the past to observe the crime, this would be the revelation he beheld.

"Everything I say is the truth!" Seeing the varied, skeptical looks on everyone's faces, Left Historian Immortal grew anxious.

Every time he recalled this matter, a cold sweat would break out across his skin; when the Four Ancient Immortals had questioned him, their countenances had been gentle and amiable, granting his every request.

Initially, he believed this to be a genuine display of affection, but after witnessing the truth of the past and looking back at them, he felt only that their smiles concealed something bizarre and murderous.

Had he not quickly mended his words and claimed to have seen nothing, he would have met a violent end on the spot!

"Did you never consider that the past you witnessed might be a falsehood?" Lu Yang could not help but ask. No matter how he looked at it, this seemed entirely wrong. Setting everything else aside, were Ying Tian Immortal and the other three the type to plot against the Immortal Fairy just to obtain the Fruit of Immortality? What could they possibly gain?

In the words of the Immortal Fairy herself, once one becomes an immortal, who would still tire themselves out pursuing power? It would be far too exhausting.

"To confirm whether what I saw was true or false, I even peered into the entirety of the pasts of Ying Tian Immortal and the other three!" Left Historian Immortal spoke with intense agitation. He had bottled this secret up for nearly four hundred thousand years, and today he was finally letting it all out in a single breath.

"I saw the severed Divine Wood give birth to a consciousness and become the Immortal of Samsara. I saw Ying Tian Immortal buried in a tomb as a funerary object. I saw the Qilin Immortal born from the essence of heaven and earth. I saw the Immortal of the Nine Heavens born into the Lianshan Clan, a great family of the human race."

The origins of the Immortal of Samsara, the Qilin Immortal, and the Immortal of the Nine Heavens were no secret. Only Ying Tian Immortal’s background, being somewhat unbefitting of his grand status, was rarely spoken of to outsiders. This proved that on this particular point, what Left Historian Immortal had seen was real.

"I also saw that while the four of them appeared righteous and noble on the surface, their actions behind the scenes were riddled with calculations. They said one thing to your face and did another behind your back, driven purely by self-interest!"

"They approached you only because they coveted your talent. You alone deduced the concepts of the 'Embryonic Dao Fruit' and the 'Dao Fruit,' groping your way toward the realm of the 'Immortal.' Such talent is unparalleled throughout ancient and modern times!"

"They feared you would be the first to achieve immortality. That was why the Immortal of Samsara persuaded you to abandon the Dao Fruit of Nirvanic Extinction and switch to the Dao Fruit of Immortality. His original intention was to trap you in that endeavor, preventing your ascension. He never expected you would let go of your obsession and actually condense the Dao Fruit of Immortality. This filled them with deep jealousy and bred a murderous intent, leading them to strike you down!"

Lu Yang frowned. What on earth was going on? The events Left Historian Immortal described sounded exactly like someone projecting conspiracy theories onto the Four Ancient Immortals.

"Wait, did you just say the 'Dao Fruit' was deduced by the Fairy alone?"

Lu Yang turned to question the Immortal Fairy. "Fairy, I recall you saying that the 'Dao Fruit' was the result of a joint deduction by the five of you?"

"Yes." It was not just the Immortal Fairy.

Both Hui Doudou and Qing He also remembered it that way. The past Left Historian Immortal had seen was flawed!

"That is impossible!" Left Historian Immortal was stunned. A world-shattering event like deducing the "Dao Fruit" was something he could not possibly remember incorrectly.

Lu Yang spoke in a heavy voice, "If it truly were the four immortals who acted, how did they manage to make the entire world forget about the Fairy?"

"They must have possessed a method unknown to me!" Left Historian Immortal refused to admit his error.

Faced with what could hardly be called an answer, a suspicion formed in Lu Yang's mind. "The past you witnessed was not the true past, but a false history fabricated for you by the mastermind pulling the strings!"

Yet Lu Yang could not understand why the mastermind would leave such a massive loophole as "the Fairy realizing the Dao Fruit entirely on her own" in the fabricated past. Was there some unavoidable reason for it?

Could it be...

"Fairy, if Ying Tian Immortal and the other three truly possessed the temperaments described by Left Historian Immortal, what would you have done?"

"What would I have done? I would have stayed far away from them, of course," the Immortal Fairy stated as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She could easily tell who was good and who was bad.

"Then, if you were deducing the Dao Fruit, would you still have invited the four of them to participate?"

The Immortal Fairy rested her chin in her hand, pondering what her actions would have been, before answering with absolute certainty.

"No, I would have deduced it entirely on my own. Even if I were by myself, I should still have been able to achieve the result."

"That explains it. The past the mastermind allowed Left Historian Immortal to see was a hypothesis based on a shift in the personalities of the four immortals!" Lu Yang declared with absolute conviction.

However, Lu Yang had not yet figured out how the mastermind had accomplished this. Only a Dao Fruit could influence the observations of the Insight Dao Fruit.

Could this be the work of the Dao Fruit of Karma?

"How can this be? Is there truly a mastermind behind everything?" At this moment, Left Historian Immortal felt his entire worldview shatter. The personalities of the four immortals were not as vile as he had imagined; did they truly harbor no ill intentions?

"Then the one who threatened me back then was not the four immortals, but the mastermind?"

"Threatened you?"

"On the very night this matter concluded, someone was waiting for me in my palace. He demanded that I destroy my own Dao Fruit. He said if I did not, he would kill me directly!"

Recalling that figure, an uncontrollable terror began to spread through Left Historian Immortal's heart. "The aura that person exuded... he was absolutely capable of killing me!"

"Who was that person?"

"I do not know. He never showed his face. I always believed he was one of the four immortals. But if the past I saw was false, and a true mastermind exists, then the one who threatened me must be that mastermind!"

"Coerced by him, I had no choice but to relinquish my comprehension of the Insight Dao Fruit and destroy it."

"You no longer possess the Insight Dao Fruit?"

"Yes."

Left Historian Immortal offered a bitter smile. The Insight Dao Fruit could illuminate all directions. Had it remained, he would have been able to locate the Immortal of Nirvanic Extinction and would never have blundered so fatally into choosing the Demon City to make his move.

"Then what exactly was the Great Age Conflict you predicted later on?" Qing He asked. The notion of the Great Age Conflict originated from Left Historian Immortal, who had claimed that a great struggle would erupt in the future three hundred and ninety thousand years later.

Left Historian Immortal sighed. "Though I lost the Insight Dao Fruit, I am naturally skilled in divination. While it cannot match the heights of the Insight Dao Fruit, its efficacy is still quite remarkable."

"Through divination, I foresaw that in the future three hundred and ninety thousand years from then, an opportunity for immortality would manifest. Half-immortals and immortals from various eras would emerge to do battle, plunging heaven and earth into chaos. Some would achieve immortality, while other immortals would fall."

"However, my divinations are not entirely precise. For instance, according to my results, the Great Age Conflict should have already commenced by now. The various factions ought to have long since been at war; the world should not be this peaceful."

"Furthermore, I also divined that I could obtain an Embryonic Dao Fruit of Immortality by establishing the Immortal Sect. You have all seen the outcome of that; I did not succeed."

Lu Yang's expression turned increasingly peculiar. It seemed that if he hadn't discovered the headquarters of the Immortal Sect back then, Left Historian Immortal might actually have succeeded.