I'll make you the furnace and the cauldron, so you can refine Yin and Yang and prove the Great

The light at the end of the passage changed from silvery-white to a warm amber color, like the oil seeping from ancient wood after it has been polished. When Li Hanshan stepped off the last step, a completely different echo came from his feet—no longer the hollow footsteps in the air, but a solid, heavy sound of stone colliding.

He stood on a wide stone platform, before which stood a half-collapsed stone palace. The palace should have originally had nine tiers of eaves, but now only the bottom two tiers retained a relatively intact outline; the higher beams and pillars, like skeletons gnawed by a giant beast, leaned askew towards the hazy sky. The remaining spiritual patterns on the eaves had long since faded, but glimpses of its former exquisite beauty could still be seen in the remaining lines.

Li Hanshan slowly stepped down from the stone platform. The cracks in the bluestone slabs beneath his feet were covered with dark gray moss, soft and damp to the touch, like walking on a layer of withered leaves pressed down by time. His divine sense silently spread out, perceiving the surrounding environment.

On the east wall of the stone hall, there was a crack that ran the entire length of the wall, its edges smooth as a mirror, so even that it didn't seem like it had been caused by natural weathering. Li Hanshan crouched down, his fingertips tracing the edge of the crack—the touch was cold and dull, a mark left by some extremely high-temperature magic that had melted the stone in an instant. The crack ran from bottom to top, slightly westward, as if something had risen from the ground and swept across diagonally, splitting the entire wall in two.

He stood up, his gaze passing over the crack into the interior of the stone hall. The light inside was even dimmer than outside, but he could still make out the scattered fragments on the floor: broken stone pillars, overturned incense burners, and shattered offering tables. In the center of the floor was a depression, several feet in circumference, its edges smooth, as if pressed into the ground by some extremely concentrated force. At the bottom of the depression lay several dark brown marks, their original color indistinguishable, but Li Hanshan was familiar with those dried and solidified blood-red remnants.

He passed through the side corridor of the stone hall and arrived at a relatively open courtyard. The courtyard was paved with neat square stone slabs, most of which were broken, with thick vines and shrubs growing from the cracks, completely disrupting the original orderly layout. In the center of the courtyard stood an old tree that had long since died, its trunk so thick that it would take several people to encircle it. The bark had completely peeled off, revealing grayish-white wood, which looked like a dried-out skeleton in the hazy sunlight. Scattered beneath the tree were several broken jade slips, the runes on their surfaces eroded to the point of being almost illegible.

Li Hanshan didn't pick up the jade slips. His gaze passed over the withered tree and landed on the half-open bronze door at the other end of the courtyard. The door was about ten feet tall, its surface covered with fine patterns that faintly reflected a silvery light in the hazy light. The patterns followed the same direction as those he had seen in the Trial Tower, with that familiar upward curve at the end of each stroke.

As he approached the door, he could sense an extremely faint fluctuation of spiritual energy seeping from its surface. This fluctuation was incredibly thin, like spiritual spring water diluted countless times, almost imperceptible. But Li Hanshan's divine sense, like a sophisticated sensor, instantly discerned its nature upon contact—it was a restriction, and its principle was identical to that of the silver-white runes within the Trial Tower.

He took a half step back, carefully examining the patterns on the door. Most of the runes on the door's surface were worn away, and only a few relatively intact characters could be barely discerned. He recognized one as a variant of the "Seal" incantation, its strokes mirroring those Luo Li had taught him in his dream; another was a simplified version of the "Suppress" incantation, its upward curve at the end resembling the hem of a garment lifted by the wind; and there was one he wasn't entirely sure about, but its edge had an extremely fine indentation, as if it had been pushed outwards by some force.

"The restrictions surrounding this ruin... were added later." Li Hanshan finally confirmed the strangeness he had vaguely sensed since entering the ruins. The wear and tear on the restrictive runes surrounding the trial grounds did not match the degree of decay of the buildings themselves—the broken edges of the building ruins were covered with thick moss and weathering layers, indicating they had been in existence for at least several thousand years; while the wear on the runes was relatively shallow, and although equally ancient, they had not reached the level of complete weathering seen on the buildings themselves. They were inscribed after the buildings were destroyed, some time later.

This means that after the Yaoguang Sect was destroyed, the survivors re-established the seal on the ruins.

Li Hanshan stood before the half-open bronze door, his mind racing with various thoughts. If the Yaoguang Sect was truly and completely wiped out back then, who carved these later-added restrictions?

He recalled the portrait of the founder beneath the branch of the Hehuan Sect in the Northern Wilderness. The woman in white, barefoot, standing by the river, had a face exactly like Luo Li's.

Li Hanshan leaned against a pillar in the corridor, closed his eyes, and pieced together the clues one by one.

The Yao Guang Sect was reduced to ruins overnight, with all its cultivators either killed in battle or missing. But one person survived. That person re-established a protective barrier on the ruins, sealing the site, and then re-founded the He Huan Sect. That person was the founder of the He Huan Sect, and also Luo Li.

If Luo Li is indeed the founder of the Hehuan Sect, then why did she found it? What caused the destruction of the Yaoguang Sect? The existence of those restrictions itself indicates one thing—she harbored deep feelings for this ruin; she didn't want it to be completely erased. She wanted to preserve something, even if it was just some broken walls and crumbling stone pillars. Furthermore, the Yin Book cultivation method she passed down is completely different from the method she practiced in the Yaoguang Sect. The essence of the Yin Book is the exploitation of one's own life force, the foundation upon which later disciples of the Hehuan Sect cultivated. Why would she pass on such a cruel method to her descendants?

Unless, she suffered a great blow in that incident, which changed her views on the path of cultivation.

Li Hanshan recalled Luo Li's appearance in his dream. She was always smiling, her tone light, barefoot as she waded through the river trying to catch the moon's reflection, as if nothing in the world could weigh her down.

It's hard for Li Hanshan to associate her with the founder of the Hehuan Sect.

You should know that when the girl first heard about the Joyful Union Sect, she was filled with righteous indignation and searched everywhere for its whereabouts, wanting to eliminate it as soon as possible.

Li Han opened his eyes, his gaze returning to the bronze door. The silver-white runes on the door's surface shimmered faintly in the hazy light, like embers diluted countless times by time. As he gently touched the edge of the "Seal" incantation, a subtle warmth spread through his fingertips—the runes were responding to his pure Yang energy.

Li Hanshan withdrew his hand, standing in the shadow of the pillar, gazing at the withered ancient tree in the courtyard, recalling another matter. The ancient medicinal herb field he and Ye Shuanghua had visited before, the remnant array deep underground. The voice emanating from the array claimed to know the secret of the Yao Guang Sect's destruction. It said its voice possessed a strange magnetism, and that it paused for a moment when mentioning pure Yang energy, as if savoring the aftertaste of something delicious. That thing was sealed beneath the outer restrictions of the Yao Guang Sect, and was also related to its demise.

Extraterrestrial demons.

Li Hanshan suddenly thought of these four words.

The Northern Wilderness Sword Sect was destroyed by the extraterrestrial demons, and the Yao Guang Sect was reduced to ruins overnight. Could it also be the work of the extraterrestrial demons?

If the Yaoguang Sect was destroyed by extraterrestrial demons, what did Luo Li, as a survivor, experience during that catastrophe?

Li Hanshan stood in the courtyard, his Pure Yang Primordial Spirit like a flattened lake, its surface calm and undisturbed. The thoughts churning within him surged beneath the surface like undercurrents, firmly suppressed by that tranquil layer. He didn't rush to confirm his guesses, because he knew that once something took shape in his mind, it would sprout like a seed, and without sufficient evidence, excessive speculation would only cloud his judgment.

He withdrew his hand from the bronze door and turned to walk back into the corridor on the side of the stone hall. At least for now, one thing was certain—the restrictions on this ruin were indeed related to Luo Li. The techniques used to create the runes, the direction of the strokes, and the proportions between the runes all matched the array formation knowledge he had learned from Luo Li. He continued forward, passing through the half-open bronze door.

The space behind the door was more open than the stone hall, resembling a plaza with its roof flattened. Several broken stone pillars remained around the plaza, their carvings mostly weathered away, leaving only faint outlines of the lines. At the end of the plaza was another tightly closed stone door, its runes denser and more intricately arranged than the previous one.

Li Hanshan stood before the stone gate, his pure Yang energy flowing slowly within him, gathering the spiritual power depleted during the battle and his journey. His gaze fell upon the runes, and he began to examine their structure one by one—some he recognized, some he had never seen before but whose function he could deduce from the strokes, and some he couldn't understand at all. These runes presented an arrangement he had never seen before, like deliberately scrambled puzzle pieces.

He took out several Rejuvenation Pills and swallowed them, then sat cross-legged on the stone steps in front of the stone gate. He began to test the runes one by one with his pure Yang energy. The first rune lit up slightly the moment it touched the pure Yang energy, then dimmed again, like a candle flame flickering in the wind. The second one didn't react, the third was equally silent, and when the fourth lit up, a very fine crack appeared on its surface, which then healed itself after a few breaths. He tried repeatedly dozens of times, finally grasping the operating rhythm of the first layer of the restriction—the runes would dim simultaneously for a moment at fixed intervals, and during those brief gaps, the restriction's defensive power would drop to its lowest point.

He condensed his spiritual energy into a needle as thin as a hair, precisely piercing the brief gap in the defense. The silver-white runes lit up simultaneously the moment they were pierced, their surfaces rippling with fine waves, but unlike before, they did not directly repel his spiritual energy. The barrier loosened for a very brief moment when he touched its core node, like a door being cracked open.

Seizing that brief window of opportunity, Li Hanshan used the method Luo Li had taught him to slowly infuse pure Yang spiritual energy along the edge of the core rune. Guided by him, the spiritual energy flowed like a wisp of smoke dispersed by the wind, following the strokes of the rune to each node, reactivating the connections that had become loose due to the erosion of time. He didn't know how those who later added the restrictions had considered the possibility of future intruders when setting up the runes, but he could sense that the construction logic of those runes was indeed from the same lineage as the array theory Luo Li had taught him. That embedded, fault-tolerant structure allowed him to decipher it much faster than expected.

Even so, it still took him half a day to loosen the seal on the door enough to pass through. As he squeezed through the crack, the silver-white runes on the door's surface lit up again and closed behind him. He glanced back at the stone door slowly returning to its original state and silently calculated—at his current rate of deciphering, it would take at least several months to enter the core area of ​​this ruin, with only a few days left. He could only move within a limited area.

The space deep within the plaza was more expansive than he had anticipated, branching into several paths. He chose the relatively wide main path directly ahead and walked along it for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, until he arrived at a half-collapsed side hall. The roof of the side hall had completely collapsed, revealing the hazy sunlight above, but most of the carvings on the four walls inside remained intact. The carvings were more detailed than the reliefs on the outside, depicting a group of cultivators arranged in a formation during some kind of ritual. At the center of the formation, a beam of light pierced through the heavens and earth, and at the edge of the light, the figures of the cultivators were dissipating.

Li Hanshan crouched down and rummaged through the rubble in the corner of the side hall for a while, finding a relatively well-preserved storage ring. The ring was made of some kind of dark blue metal, with a layer of fine patterns on its surface, most of which were worn away and indistinct, but the ring itself was still sturdy. He probed into it with his divine sense, and found that the space inside was several times larger than it appeared from the outside, containing more than a dozen bottles of pills, several high-grade flying swords, and a scroll of animal hide.

The elixir had long lost its efficacy and become a useless pill. He unfolded the animal skin scroll, which contained a weapon-refining method he had never seen before. The core steps repeatedly mentioned the concept of "drawing the power of heaven and earth into the weapon," which resonated faintly with the power he felt from the broken sword.

He carefully put the ring away, then searched the side hall again, finding several scattered jade slips and some spirit stones. After doing this, he left the side hall and looked up at the distant, higher area shrouded in gray mist. He could vaguely make out the outlines of several even more magnificent buildings, as if separated by an impenetrable curtain of water. He knew that was the area of ​​a deeper restriction, and with his current speed and abilities, he simply couldn't reach it before the window of opportunity closed.

He was preparing to turn back when he suddenly sensed a familiar, warm throbbing from the depths of his consciousness. The pulling force, like an undercurrent rising gently yet firmly from the ocean floor, surfaced his awareness. Li Hanshan hesitated for a moment. If he entered the dream now, it would mean staying in the ruins for a longer period, and he wasn't sure if the exit route would still be clear after the window of opportunity closed.

But he remembered the restrictions on the doors that were identical to the techniques he had learned, and he recalled Luo Li's calm and matter-of-fact tone when she taught him formations in the dream, as if those ancient runes were just commonplace things to her. If he could bring the specific structure of these restrictions into his dream and ask her for guidance, the speed at which he could break them might increase several times, at least allowing him to enter a deeper level before the window of opportunity closed.

Even if Li Hanshan hasn't left after the window period ends, as long as he understands the restrictions here, he can come and go freely in the entire ruins.

He made his decision. He turned and retreated to a relatively intact corner deep within the side hall, hidden by three walls. He sat cross-legged and set up several simple warning barriers around himself. Then he closed his eyes, letting the gentle pull of the energy draw his consciousness into the depths.