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

Black mist slowly swirled above Lu Zhantian's tombstone, the hoarse laughter appearing and disappearing, like a thousand throats whispering in Li Hanshan's ear. His left arm still ached faintly; where the black mist had grazed, his skin had turned an unnatural dark blue, and pure yang energy was automatically flowing towards the wound, gradually forcing back the chilling aura that had seeped into his meridians.

"Extraterrestrial demons?" Li Hanshan repeated the term, his flying sword held horizontally in front of him, its tip trembling slightly, the pure yang fire coating the blade with a layer of purplish-gold light. He stared at the twisting and deforming humanoid black mist, the flickering scarlet light within it flashing uncertainly, like countless half-open, half-closed eyes simultaneously watching him.

The black mist did not answer. It only let out a sharper hissing laugh, then suddenly contracted into a black sphere the size of a fist, and then exploded in the next instant—transforming into dozens of hair-thin black tentacles that shot towards Li Hanshan from all directions. The tip of each tentacle was condensed with a tiny scarlet rune, emitting a chilling spatial fluctuation.

Li Hanshan was prepared. His flying sword drew an arc in the air, its purplish-gold sword light like a burning ribbon, precisely slashing at the tentacles that were shooting towards him. Where the sword light passed, the black tentacles, like blocks of wax pierced by a red-hot iron rod, broke in half, hissing black smoke rising from the broken ends before dissipating into nothingness in mid-air.

But several other tentacles simultaneously attacked from his blind spot, like venomous snakes controlled by an invisible hand, tightening around him from the ground, above his head, and to his left and right. Li Hanshan used the Fire Shadow Step, his body twisting rapidly in the confined space, his flying sword spinning like a wheel in his hand, severing each tentacle that touched the blade. But just before he could cut off one tentacle, the black mist flickered—it vanished completely.

Li Hanshan's heart skipped a beat, his Pure Yang Primordial Spirit frantically issuing warnings in his sea of ​​consciousness. Without a second thought, almost instinctively, he unleashed the Pure Yang Fire around his body. The purplish-gold flames exploded from his center, like a golden lotus in full bloom bursting forth where he stood. The flames radiated outwards in all directions, each petal formed from scorching Pure Yang energy, its edges swirling with the unique golden patterns of the Pure Yang Primordial Spirit, completely enveloping the space within a radius of several feet.

"Wrathful Lotus Buddha," he uttered in a low voice.

This is a technique created by Li Hanshan, which releases pure Yang fire in an instant, forming a 360-degree barrier without any blind spots.

At the same time, the black mist reformed where he had stood, and dozens of black tentacles shot out simultaneously like fully drawn bows, only to emit a piercing hissing sound upon contact with the pure yang flames, like ice cubes thrown into boiling oil. The tentacles rapidly curled, charred, and disintegrated under the scorching heat of the flames. The black mist let out a short, sharp shriek and abruptly retreated several feet, reforming into the blurry humanoid outline.

That was close.

Li Hanshan stood still amidst the fiery lotus, his flying sword once again held horizontally in front of him. He could feel his robes soaked with cold sweat; had it not been for his instinctive reaction just moments before, those tentacles would have pierced his heart. He stared at the black mist that was slowly repairing itself, his gaze becoming much more serious.

This creature's attack methods were even more bizarre than he had anticipated. The flying sword's attacks could indeed harm it, but each time it would vanish just before the sword's edge made contact, only to reappear in another direction, like a marble bouncing repeatedly on the surface of water. His previous sword strike had clearly locked onto its core, yet just before the sword tip pierced through, it suddenly collapsed, shifted, and reformed a few feet away, the entire process taking less than a breath.

"The Way of Space." Li Hanshan finally confirmed it. The black mist's speed seemed unbelievably fast, but it wasn't speed itself; it was direct, short-distance spatial traversal. Between each disappearance and reappearance, it opened up an extremely short passage in the void, moving directly from one point to another, traversing the distance of physical space. This was precisely the reason why ordinary attacks were so difficult to hit it—no matter how fast your sword is, it can't outrun the folding of space.

His pure yang fire burned quietly around him, isolating the invisible spatial fluctuations outside the range of the flames. The black mist seemed to be wary of the pure yang fire. After being forced back by his "Raging Lotus Buddha" attack, it did not approach rashly again, but hovered a few feet away. The scarlet light flickered uncertainly in the mist, as if it was reassessing how troublesome this prey was.

Li Hanshan didn't give it any more time to think. He put the flying sword back into his storage ring, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the long-tempered divine soul sword deep in his sea of ​​consciousness was already unsheathed.

The golden sword shadow silently pierced through the void, precisely striking the core of the black mist. The attack nature of the Divine Soul Sword is fundamentally different from that of a flying sword—it acts directly on the soul level, bypassing the physical transmission of space. The black mist's methods of traversing space are rendered useless before it. The instant the sword shadow pierced the black mist, it trembled violently. The crimson light within it simultaneously burst into a brilliant flash, then extinguished like a snapped wick. It let out an extremely piercing shriek, a sound like a thousand throats being torn apart simultaneously, echoing above the graveyard for several breaths before gradually dissipating.

But that wasn't enough. Li Hanshan could sense that the Divine Soul Sword had indeed severely injured it, but it hadn't completely obliterated it. Although the crimson light had dimmed considerably, it still flickered with a faint glow deep within the black mist, like a pile of charcoal that had been doused with water—appearing extinguished on the surface, but still smoldering inside.

"Xiao An!" he called out in a low voice.

The ghostly blue light within the soul banner suddenly exploded. Xiao An's figure flashed out from the banner like a silent bolt of lightning, her hands forming a hand seal. The ghostly blue light on the surface of her soul body condensed into a rapidly spinning storm around her. The ghostly blue soul power, like an ignited vortex, spread outwards from her hands, completely enveloping the space within a radius of several dozen feet.

"Soul Storm—Rise!" Xiao An's voice echoed in the wind, carrying a suppressed sharpness.

A dark blue storm, carrying extremely pure soul power, swept up the black mist that was attempting to reform. The black mist shrieked even more piercingly within the storm, its remaining crimson light extinguished one by one like candles blown out by a gale. Its form twisted, disintegrated, and contracted under the continuous onslaught of soul power, like fabric being torn apart in a meat grinder, becoming increasingly thin and fragmented. A dense cracking sound emanated from within the black mist, like countless tiny bones being crushed simultaneously. Finally, all the crimson light extinguished, and the black mist completely dissipated in the storm, transforming into countless tiny gray-black specks of light, like ashes scattered by the wind, slowly drifting down in the twilight above the cemetery.

Li Hanshan reached out and grasped a grayish-black speck of light that hadn't completely dissipated. The speck flickered slightly in his palm before settling down, like a tamed firefly. He could sense a faint fragment of consciousness within it—the last vestige of remnant energy left after the black mist had been completely shattered. He held the speck in his palm, attempting to probe it with his divine sense to obtain information, but the remnant energy was like a locked iron box, its surface covered with layers of chaotic fluctuations; his divine sense was repelled the moment it touched it.

"Senior, let me do it." Xiao An landed from mid-air. The dark blue light on the surface of her soul body had mostly subsided, but her spirit remained high. She reached out and gently touched the gray-black light spot with her fingertips. The Netherworld Record Technique was activated silently, and a strand of extremely pure soul power pierced the core of the light spot like a fine needle.

Xiao An's brows furrowed slightly as her soul power continued to seep into her fingertips, as if breaking through a seal that was wrapped in layers of magic. A moment later, she released her grip, and the point of light completely dissipated in her palm, turning into a wisp of extremely faint gray smoke that merged into the air. When she opened her eyes, her gaze held a solemn expression of confirmation. "Senior, I saw it."

"What is it?" Li Hanshan asked.

Xiao An closed her eyes and transmitted the information extracted from that wisp of soul power to him through divine sense sharing. A blurry image suddenly appeared in Li Hanshan's sea of ​​consciousness—beneath the gray-white sky, countless shattered remnants of consciousness drifted above the ruins like fallen leaves scattered by the wind. Each wisp of remnant consciousness carried extremely faint fluctuations of consciousness, seemingly possessing some kind of primal, instinctive attraction to each other. Drawn by some force, they converged from all directions onto the hill being buried, seeping into those bodies that were not yet completely cooled. As time passed, those remnants of consciousness slowly merged, intertwined, and settled within the bodies, eventually converging into an increasingly solid whole, like countless tiny streams flowing into the same lake. They were buried in the cemetery, trapped by the power of those restrictions, but over the long years they gradually adapted to those constraints, even finding a few gaps in the restrictions that did not prevent spatial movement—and then, they awoke.

"I see." Li Hanshan spoke slowly, his voice carrying a suppressed heaviness. This dark shadow was not originally a single entity, but rather a fragment left on the battlefield by the fallen extraterrestrial demons after the destruction of the Yaoguang Sect. It was attracted and gathered by the corpses of the cultivators buried in this cemetery, and eventually merged into the entity he had just fought.

He glanced down at the healing wound on his left arm, then looked up at the densely packed tombstones on the hillside, thousands upon thousands standing silently in the hazy light. Beneath each tombstone, there might have once been a vessel for the remnant spirit of some extraterrestrial demon. And the wisp he had just shattered was merely the largest and strongest of them all.

"There may be more hidden beneath this burial mound," he whispered.