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

Luo Li was about to add a few more strokes to the diagram of the restriction structure when she noticed that Li Hanshan was somewhat absent-minded. Her clear eyes lingered on his face for a moment before she reached out and gently flicked his forehead with her fingertip.

"Grandpa, don't get distracted." Her voice carried a suppressed seriousness. "This branching path is crucial. If you don't memorize it, you'll easily get stuck halfway through when you go back to solve it. And then there won't be me there to help you redo it."

Li Hanshan suppressed those surging thoughts and refocused his attention on the diagram of the restriction structure in mid-air. Seeing that he had come back to his senses, Luo Li continued to add annotations to the silver-white lines. This time, she drew in greater detail, marking the direction of spiritual energy at each branching node, the connection between runes, and the order in which to pay attention when breaking the restriction.

"Look here," she said, pointing to a rune he hadn't noticed before. "This rune isn't part of the restriction; it's a mark used to identify when the restriction was set up. If you encounter a similar restriction in the future, you'll know it comes from the same lineage just by seeing this mark." She then drew a smaller rune next to it, with a similar structure but more complex strokes. "This is a later variant, indicating that the person who set up the restriction was constantly refining their methods. By paying attention to this detail, you can determine the chronological order of the restrictions, giving you a reference for prioritizing when breaking them."

The two sat by the river under the moonlight, meticulously examining the rolled-up animal hide scroll. Li Hanshan began with the basic variations, identifying the structure and function of each rune, then simulating the overall spiritual energy flow through different permutations and combinations. Luo Li occasionally offered a reminder when he got stuck, or corrected him when his understanding was flawed. Most of the time, she simply sat quietly beside him, nodding gently when he successfully deduced the complete path.

Time in the dream stretched out like a long thread, moving forward slowly and evenly. At first, Li Hanshan needed to repeatedly compare the scroll to confirm the exact structure of a rune, but as the number of deductions increased, the forms of those runes gradually became clearer in his mind, like a repeatedly drawn pattern finally revealing its complete outline. He began to be able to recognize the subtle differences among those variations at a glance, and could even predict the spiritual energy feedback they would produce in a specific arrangement.

Five years have passed. He has become familiar with over a hundred basic variations and can now independently perform deductions to break medium-difficulty restrictions. Luo Li changed to another scroll, which recorded higher-level rune combination methods.

Ten years have passed. He has also thoroughly grasped the rules of advanced combination methods, and his pure Yang primordial spirit has become more solid through continuous dual cultivation of spirit and soul.

In the fifteenth year, when he had fully grasped all the contents recorded on the last scroll Luo Li had given him, he could clearly perceive that the boundaries of the dream remained as solid as ever. He tentatively injected his pure Yang primordial spirit into that golden membrane and found that its strength far exceeded his previous expectations—with his current state of divine soul, the dream could last for at least another period of time, totaling more than twenty years.

"Fifteen years." Luo Li leaned against the bluestone, her hands supporting her at her sides, moonlight spilling onto her shoulders. "Grandpa, your current skill level would place you in the middle tier among the outer disciples of our Yao Guang Sect. You shouldn't be stumped by ordinary ancient restrictions anymore." As she spoke, she gave a small yawn, her voice soft with a hint of drowsiness. "But if you encounter anything more complex next time, bring it back to me anytime."

Looking at her weary yet still determined to speak, Li Hanshan felt a sense of certainty slowly but surely taking root and growing within him, like a seed falling to the ground. He said nothing more, simply nodded, then closed his eyes, letting the receding tide pull his consciousness away from the dream. He sensed that the golden membrane maintained its stable structure even after he left the dream, like a fortified city, its walls covered with intricate patterns.

When he opened his eyes, the dim light in the side hall was just as it had been before he entered the dream, except that a thin layer of dust had settled on the stone steps, indicating that some time had passed in reality. He looked down and sensed his condition. His Pure Yang Primordial Spirit was more solid than before he entered the dream, and the golden patterns on its surface were like refined iron that had been repeatedly polished, each line containing even purer fluctuations of soul power.

Without delay, he rose and walked to the tightly closed stone door, once again using his spiritual power to sense the arrangement of the runes. This time, the structures that had once puzzled him became clear in his eyes—he saw the variant of the marked rune, recognized the subtle differences between it and the more recent variant that Luo Li had taught him, and also saw the starting point of the branching path. He used pure Yang energy to penetrate in the reverse direction along the path marked by Luo Li, and the patterns on the surface of the runes, which had been twisted together like a dead knot, loosened piece by piece under his spiritual power, like a rope being untied.

The first layer of restrictions took a few breaths. The second layer took a little less. The third layer took only a few dozen breaths. Those rune combinations that once required him to repeatedly try to find their way, he could now judge their operating logic and weaknesses with just a glance. As he passed through the restrictive light curtains that were closing again, he could feel the runes behind him lighting up and then going out, like candle flames blown by the wind.

He ventured deeper and deeper. The further he went, the more horrifying the surroundings became. The relatively intact stone walls at the edge of the trial ground were gradually replaced by more complete ruins—the stone pillars were broken at increasingly chaotic angles, more molten stones were scattered on the ground, and the spirit runes on the walls were cracked from the inside by some kind of high-temperature force, leaving spiderweb-like cracks. The direction of those cracks was exactly the same as the crack that had pierced through the stone hall he had seen before, running from bottom to top, slightly to the west, as if some force had risen from the ground and swept across diagonally, tearing everything in its path to shreds.

He found a stone statue lying on the ground in a half-collapsed side hall. The statue's head was shattered, but several lines of inscriptions remained on the base, not yet completely worn away, recording the statue's worshipper—an elder who had been in charge of the alchemy department of the Yaoguang Sect for many years. Along the edge of the base was a smaller line of neatly written characters, added later, containing only one sentence: "13,000 years into the Yaoguang calendar, a great calamity for the sect."

Li Hanshan crouched down, his fingertips slowly tracing the strokes of the inscription. Thirteen thousand years of sect history, reduced to ruins overnight. He stood up and continued forward, making a new discovery as he passed through a cluster of buildings with their roofs flattened—the entrance to a cellar was mostly buried under rubble. After clearing away the debris, he found several scattered jade slips and a well-preserved storage bag in a corner of the cellar. The jade slips contained a long-lost alchemy technique, and the storage bag held a vast quantity of spirit stones. He carefully collected these items and continued deeper into the cellar.

After walking for a while, he arrived at a massive, entirely black palace. The roof tiles were completely shattered, and the spirit patterns on the eaves had been blown apart from the inside by some force, their edges curled like charred paper. As he passed through the twisted and deformed doorway, he found the light inside the palace even dimmer than outside, as if shrouded in an invisible shadow. In the center of the palace, a shattered suit of completely black demonic armor lay sprawled among the broken stone bricks.

The demonic armor appeared to be pieced together from countless layers of black scales, each edge bearing an extremely sharp, irregular curve, like shards of pottery that had been broken and then reassembled. A crack ran across the entire front of the breastplate, its edges bearing extremely fine silver patterns—the precision of these patterns far surpassing any forging technique he had ever seen. Each pattern was as fine as a hair sculpted with a micro-carving tool, arranged into a runic structure he couldn't comprehend at all. The aura emanating from those silver patterns was unlike any he had encountered in the Central Continent, carrying an extremely unfamiliar, even alienating, sense of incongruity, as if it were separated from the very laws of heaven and earth. It wasn't the residual spiritual power of a demonic cultivator, nor the demonic energy of a monster; it seemed more like a power from another system, inherently repelling the spiritual energy of this world.

Li Hanshan crouched down, carefully examining the structure of the demonic armor. He had never seen the material of those black scales before—it wasn't refined iron, nor black copper, nor any kind of spirit ore he recognized. The surface of the demonic armor showed no signs of melting or forging, no hammering patterns. Each scale seemed to have grown from a single, intact piece of material, interlocking with each other in an extremely precise manner. Even if most of it had been broken, the remaining parts still maintained their complete structural logic. This forging technique was unlike any he had ever seen in the Hehuan Sect, and it didn't even correspond to the weapon-refining theories he had learned from Luo Li.

He recalled the architectural runes that had been torn apart from the inside, the piercing crack running slightly westward from bottom to top, and then looked down at the shattered demonic armor. Its breastplate had a crack split open by some force—the direction of that crack was exactly the same as the piercing wound on the stone palace wall.

Were they the ones who destroyed the Yaoguang Sect?