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

The sound of flowing water filled his ears. When Li Hanshan opened his eyes, he found himself standing on the familiar riverbank. The moonlight still shone on the water, turning the entire river into a silvery white. The blue stones on the bank gleamed warmly in the moonlight, and the distant horizon was shrouded in a thin layer of mist, like a watercolor painting that had been repeatedly blurred and diluted.

But this time, Luo Li was not there.

Li Hanshan sat down on the bluestone and waited. He could feel that the boundaries of the dream were more stable than before. The golden membrane was like a city wall that had been repeatedly reinforced, firmly surrounding the entire world. After the Pure Yang Primordial Spirit took shape, his control over the dream was several times stronger than when he was a Nascent Soul. Even without deliberately injecting soul power, this membrane was enough to support him for a long time.

A moment later, ripples appeared in the air ahead, and a white figure emerged from them.

"Grandpa!" Luo Li's eyes curved into crescents when she saw him. She took a few steps to stand in front of him and looked him up and down. "You've broken through to the Nascent Soul stage! I knew you could do it!" Her voice carried a suppressed surprise, as if she had expected him to break through, but she still couldn't help but be happy when she saw it with her own eyes.

Li Hanshan sat down on the bluestone and patted the spot beside him. Luo Li sat down next to him, her bare feet swinging gently, the moonlight casting a silvery halo on her ankles. Li Hanshan looked at her profile, at her clear, innocent eyes that shimmered with a gentle luster in the moonlight, and countless questions surged in his mind, yet he dared not speak them aloud.

"Grandpa, what's wrong?" Luo Li turned her head to look at him, seemingly noticing that he was lost in thought. "You seem to have something on your mind."

Li Hanshan was silent for a moment, then shook his head and posed a question he had prepared beforehand: "I recently encountered some ancient restrictions, the methods are very peculiar, like a long-lost school of martial arts. I tried to break some of them, but I still can't quite grasp some parts. Could you take a look?"

As he spoke, he raised his hand and began to draw in the air. The spiritual light at his fingertips condensed into fine silver lines in mid-air, arranging them one by one into the structure of the restrictions within the architectural ruins, accurately reproducing the strokes and spacing of the runes. He deliberately omitted the specific background, retaining only the structure of the restrictions themselves.

Luo Li took a few steps closer, her gaze falling on the diagram of the emerging restriction structure. She looked at it for a moment, her brows furrowing slightly before relaxing, revealing a hint of surprise: "This technique… is a restriction technique from the Yao Guang Sect." Her voice carried a certainty, as if confirming something. "I've seen similar variations in the fragments in the Scripture Pavilion. How did you encounter this restriction?"

Li Hanshan's heart skipped a beat. The Yao Guang Sect's restrictive technique was now confirmed; the restriction was most likely set up by the girl.

"I encountered it in an ancient ruin." He tried to keep his tone steady. "Those restrictions are very ancient; the outer layer has weathered away most of it, but the internal runic structure is still functioning. I tried to decipher part of it, but I found that the arrangement of those runes didn't match any of the array theories I had ever learned. I only figured it out after piecing together the complete structure."

Luo Li didn't press for the exact location of the ruins. She crouched down, carefully examining the diagram of the barrier structure in mid-air, and pointed to several nodes with her finger: "The movement of these runes is indeed very ancient, belonging to an early variant of the Yao Guang Sect. I've seen similar records in the tattered scroll I did see. But more crucial is this—" She pointed to a rune within the barrier that particularly caught her attention, "The structure of this rune is different from the common 'Gathering' technique; it has an extra bend at its core. Did you notice it?"

Li Hanshan followed her fingertip. The rune was indeed different from most of the gathering runes he had seen outside; it had an extra bend in the center that he had previously overlooked. After carefully sensing it for a moment, he was shocked—that bend changed the flow of spiritual energy in the entire rune, making it no longer just a simple gathering rune, but adding a layer of "guiding" function, transporting the gathered spiritual energy to the next node along a specific path.

"I haven't seen this variant in ancient ruins," he said truthfully.

Luo Li stood up, her tone carrying the earnestness characteristic of a teacher: "This variant of the rune is mainly designed to deal with situations where spiritual energy is too concentrated. If there's a ley line beneath the area covered by the restriction, the concentration of spiritual energy will far exceed normal levels. Ordinary spirit-gathering runes would shatter due to overload, so this bend is needed to divert the energy. To break this restriction, the key isn't to brute force the rune itself, but to first find the path that diverts the spiritual energy and then penetrate in the opposite direction."

As she spoke, she added a few more silver-white lines to the diagram, marking the paths of spiritual energy flow between the runes. Her fingers moved quickly, as if the layout had already taken shape in her mind, and she was just taking this opportunity to review it.

Li Hanshan gazed at her earnest profile, the moonlight casting a warm glow on her features. Luo Li was indeed teaching him diligently, like instructing a beginner on the stroke order of basic runes. Another thought churned in his mind—she was the girl from eight thousand years ago; would that girl still exist eight thousand years later?

If she is, then where is she?

But he suppressed these thoughts. He couldn't ask. That sense of life-or-death crisis was like an invisible blade hanging over his head; if he touched on a question he shouldn't, that blade would fall. "By the way, little girl," he changed his approach, "what is your master's cultivation level?"

Luo Li stopped what she was doing, looked up at him, as if she hadn't expected him to ask this. "My master..." she thought for a moment, "She passed through the Five Signs of Decay of a Celestial a hundred years ago, and is now a Mahayana cultivator. In about three hundred years, she will be preparing to ascend."

"The Five Signs of Decay of Heaven and Man?" Li Hanshan grasped at that unfamiliar term.

"It's just tribulation," Luo Li said matter-of-factly. "After reaching the Mahayana stage, there's a period of time during which the five signs of decay occur. If you survive it, you can advance further; if you don't, your soul will be scattered. My master's tribulation a hundred years ago was extremely dangerous; she almost didn't make it through. But since then, her foundation has been completely solidified, and ascension in another three hundred years shouldn't be a problem." As she spoke, her tone carried a suppressed pride, the kind of tone one would use when proud of one's teacher.

Li Hanshan remained silent for a moment, repeatedly going over the terms "Five Signs of Decay of Heaven and Man," "Mahayana," and "Ascension" in his mind. Luo Li's master was the head of the Yao Guang Sect. The Yao Guang Sect had been destroyed eight thousand years ago. If that head had truly ascended, then she had avoided that catastrophe. If she hadn't ascended, then she might have perished at the time of its destruction. "And you?" He suppressed that thought and asked another question, "When do you plan to break through?"

Luo Li tilted her head and thought for a while, as if seriously calculating time: "Master said he will ascend in three hundred years. I want to at least reach the Dao Integration stage before then. After Master ascends, the Yao Guang Sect will need someone to take over, and the position of sect leader will most likely be passed to me. If my cultivation is not high enough, I'm afraid I won't be able to hold the fort." She paused, glanced at him, and her tone became a little lighter, "Thanks to your dream, Master, otherwise three hundred years would have been impossible."

Li Hanshan's heart stirred slightly: "Is this dream helpful to your cultivation?"

"Of course," Luo Li said matter-of-factly. "Although you can't directly increase your cultivation level in dreams, the effect of dual cultivation of spirit and soul is bidirectional. Every time Grandpa studies formations, weapon crafting, or spirit refining techniques with me in a dream, my spirit and soul receive the same level of tempering. Moreover, the flow of time in dreams is so much slower than in the outside world, which means I have dozens or even hundreds of times more time to comprehend the techniques. My master used to always say that my cultivation speed was too fast and that my foundation would be unstable, but now that I have this dream to settle down, she's not worried anymore."

As she spoke, she reached out and traced a few more lines in the air, filling in the last few blurry nodes on the diagram of the restriction's structure: "Look, once you've cleared this branching path, the core defense of the entire restriction will loosen. First, use pure Yang energy to penetrate along this path, then break through the main runes from the inside out. It should be several times faster." She clapped her hands, as if she had completed a satisfactory task. "Grandpa, try it again when you get back. You should be able to break through most of it. If there are any new changes, bring them to me next time."

Li Hanshan firmly memorized the newly added silver-white lines deep within his consciousness, and repeatedly reviewed the complete diagram of the restriction structure in his mind. He felt that with the methods taught by Luo Li, he could indeed break through seven or eight tenths of the outer restrictions in the Yao Guang Ruins, at least enough to allow him to penetrate into the complex of buildings he could only see from afar before. "Girl," he suddenly asked, "how much of the Yao Guang Sect's restriction techniques have you learned?"

Luo Li thought for a moment, then held up five fingers: "About fifty percent. There are nearly a hundred volumes of texts on restriction techniques in the Scripture Pavilion, and I haven't finished reading them all yet. But the ones you encountered should be enough, after all—" She paused, as if remembering something, her tone becoming lighter, "After all, those are just more basic variations. The truly profound core restrictions, even I haven't fully deciphered yet."

I haven't fully understood it yet.

From this perspective, the girl at this time was not the one who set up the restrictions on the ruins of the Yaoguang Sect.

"It should be the Dao Integration Realm, or even stronger. Otherwise, with the current strength of the Hehuan Sect, it's impossible that they couldn't handle this site. They could have forcibly opened it."

Li Hanshan once again sparked various speculations.

If that's the case, then the girl now has quite a bit of time before the Yaoguang Sect is destroyed.

Li Hanshan didn't know the exact time, but he figured it was no less than a century.

"Could my current interactions with the girl change history, or perhaps, in fact, be a part of history itself?"

Various thoughts arose in Li Hanshan's mind. He didn't know what was going on, or whether Ya Tou was still there.

But suddenly he really wanted to try, to see if he could change the girl's trajectory through this dream, so that she could survive and live to this day.

He wanted to save the girl!