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

The stone steps gleamed with a bluish-gray luster under the moonlight, each step as smooth as a mirror, not even a speck of moss growing in the crevices. When Li Hanshan stepped onto them, the ground felt solid and slightly cool, as if he were walking on stone freshly washed by water. After walking about a hundred steps up the steps, his view suddenly opened up—a grand hall entirely constructed of bluish-white jade stood on a flat platform at the end of the valley. In front of the hall was a square about a hundred feet square, paved with the same bluish-white stone slabs, gleaming warmly in the moonlight.

The roof of the main hall is remarkably well-preserved, its upturned eaves resembling a soaring roc. Several bronze bells, mostly rusted, hang from the eaves, tinkling softly in the night breeze. The hall's doors consist of two plain white stone panels, their surfaces devoid of any runes or decorations, smooth as pebbles washed by flowing water for millennia. Only a faint sliver of silvery-white light shines through the cracks in the doors, proving that the hall's protective spells are still active.

But Li Hanshan's gaze did not fall on the door. His gaze fell on a stone tablet standing in the center of the square in front of the palace.

The stone tablet was about half a person's height, its entire surface jet black, starkly different from the surrounding bluish-white stone. Its surface was polished to an extremely smooth finish, like a black mirror that had been repeatedly wiped clean, reflecting a cold, eerie luster under the moonlight. Several lines of text were engraved on the tablet, the strokes clear and fresh, each ending with a familiar upward curve—it was Luo Li's handwriting. When she taught him formations in his dream, every line she drew in the air with her fingertips ended with the same curve, like the hem of a garment fluttering in the wind.

Li Hanshan stood in front of the stone tablet, his gaze falling on the few lines of text, reading them one by one.

"One cannot advance without refining one's emptiness."

Five words. Just five simple words, without any extra explanation or deliberate warning. They were simply engraved on the pitch-black stone tablet in a handwriting he knew all too well, like a whispered admonition from thousands of years ago.

He crouched down, his fingertips slowly tracing the strokes of the words. The stone surface was cool and smooth, and the depth of the characters was uniform. It was clear that the person who carved the characters had used extremely stable spiritual power to etch them onto the stone surface, and each stroke carried a calm and determined strength.

His fingertips lingered for a long time on the upward arc at the end of the curve before he withdrew his hand and stood up.

Xiao An floated up from behind him, her emerald green eyes falling on the few lines of text. After reading for a while, she silently retreated without asking any questions. Having followed Li Hanshan for so many years, she had long since learned not to say a word when he needed quiet time to think.

Li Hanshan stood before the stone tablet, the moonlight casting his shadow into a long, dark silhouette. He could clearly sense that while there were no runes visible on the plain white stone doors of the hall, the entire hall was shrouded in an extremely subtle spiritual energy fluctuation, like a lake that had been flattened to its limit. The surface appeared calm and still, but beneath it lay a vast power capable of crushing any cultivator below the Refinement Void Realm.

He closed his eyes and probed the subtle spiritual energy fluctuations with his divine sense. As soon as his divine sense touched the edge of the fluctuations, he felt an immense, almost unshakeable resistance surging from all directions, as if he were pressing his palm against an iron wall buried deep underground. No matter how he pushed, he could only touch the surface layer, which was almost impossible to move.

"One cannot advance without refining one's emptiness."

This statement was indeed not an empty boast. The defensive layer of this hall far exceeded all the restrictions he had previously broken. With his current cultivation level, even if he used all the array knowledge Luo Li had taught him, he might not be able to pry open even a corner of this barrier. Forcing an attempt would only increase his energy expenditure and might even trigger a backlash from the restrictions.

Li Hanshan withdrew his divine sense, opened his eyes, and gazed at the plain white palace gate for a long time. A mountain breeze blew from the valley entrance, sweeping across the pale blue stone slabs of the plaza, causing his robes to flutter in the wind. Moonlight bathed the entire palace in a soft, silvery-white halo, like an ancient painting carefully preserved for thousands of years, quietly awaiting someone who could truly understand it.

"Let's go," he finally spoke, his voice neither loud nor soft, as if discussing the itinerary with a fellow traveler. "We'll go back."

Xiao An's soul stirred slightly: "Senior, inside this great hall..."

"There must be something good inside." Li Hanshan turned around and walked down the stone steps he had come from, his steps steady and without the slightest hesitation. "But since this stone tablet is erected here, it means that what's inside this hall isn't something I should touch right now. I'll come back after I've reached the Void Refinement stage; by then, the restrictions here shouldn't bother me."

He took a few steps, then stopped and glanced back at the grand hall standing quietly in the moonlight. In Li Hanshan's view, the inscription on the stone tablet was left by Luo Li; she never did anything without a reason. Since she had specifically erected this tablet, there must be a reason.

Xiao An didn't ask any more questions, transforming into a dark blue light and merging into the soul banner at his waist. Li Hanshan walked alone down the stone steps into the valley, passing through the herb garden he had emptied of its spiritual herbs, and headed towards the outer edge of the ruins along the route he had come from. His steps were lighter than before, the joy that had risen in his heart from the large harvest of spiritual herbs and the new sword was settling, replaced by a renewed sense of certainty.

"Refining Void." He murmured the term to himself. Between the first level of the Nascent Soul stage and the Refining Void stage, there are the ninth level of the Nascent Soul stage, the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, and that insurmountable chasm between them. Even for a genius cultivator, it would take at least several hundred years of arduous cultivation to go from the first level of the Nascent Soul stage to the Refining Void stage. For an ordinary cultivator, it would take even longer, and they might never be able to break through in their entire life.

But he possesses the Yang Ce cultivation technique, the assistance of Ye Shuanghua, Zhang Qingxuan, Yin Lingyue, and other women, and the ancient spiritual herbs he harvested from these ruins. He doesn't need hundreds of years.

He recalled the barrier he had sensed in front of the main hall. The thickness of that barrier was exactly the same as the residual aura he had sensed in the Yaoguang Sect's cemetery. It was the accumulation of spiritual energy at the Dao Integration level or even higher. If he had forcibly broken through his cultivation level before the Void Refinement stage to touch this main hall, what awaited him would definitely not have been any coincidence.

"The Nascent Soul stage is still too low," he muttered softly as he passed through the slowly shrinking rift in the outer layer of the ruins' protective barrier. His voice sounded distant in the hazy mist. "At its peak, the Yao Guang Sect had one Mahayana cultivator and over ten Dao Integration cultivators, yet it was still wiped out. The current He Huan Sect, other demonic sects, and even the righteous immortal sects of the Southern Region are all far, far weaker than the Yao Guang Sect of the past. If the extraterrestrial demons were to descend once more, Nascent Soul cultivators wouldn't even qualify as cannon fodder."

Li Hanshan stopped and stood at the edge of a ruin illuminated by moonlight. His gaze passed through the broken stone pillars and collapsed walls, looking towards the distant secret realm sky that was faintly visible in the twilight.

He must become stronger. Strong enough to face those things that come from beyond the heavens.

The protective fissures surrounding the ruins are slowly contracting, the silver runes at the edges closing in layer by layer like a drawn curtain. The once open passages are gradually narrowing, and grayish-white mist is gushing out from the edges of the fissures, increasingly blocking the gaps that were just wide enough for a person to pass through.

But Li Hanshan felt almost no resistance when passing through those rifts. His pure yang energy was like a token recognized by those runes, automatically identified and allowed to pass when he approached the edge of the rift. Even the shrinking light would pause slightly when he passed by.

After passing through the last rift, the mist suddenly dissipated, and his vision opened up again. The amber sky of the Myriad Spirits Secret Realm reappeared above him, glowing with a warm, gentle light in the twilight. The distant mountain outlines seemed to be edged with gold in the setting sun. Most of the hordes of demonic beasts that had once densely surrounded the ruins had dispersed, leaving only a few scattered individuals lingering at the edge of the barrier. Occasionally, they would paw at the pale golden light barrier, only to be bounced back a few steps, growl a few times, and then slink away in frustration.

Li Hanshan stopped on a low hill trampled by the beast horde, gazing at the closing protective barrier around the ruins. The attacks of those demonic beasts were indeed fierce; tens of thousands of them had been attacking for dozens of days, yet the barrier hadn't suffered any substantial damage. The entire barrier was connected to the earth's veins, continuously drawing spiritual energy from them to repair itself. As long as the earth's veins existed, this barrier would never be breached. No wonder those Nascent Soul cultivators had left before the window of opportunity closed.

He withdrew his gaze, closed his eyes, and focused his consciousness into the Yang Pattern on his abdomen. The golden mist within the Yang Pattern space continued to churn slowly, and the flowers belonging to different people bloomed quietly within it. He sensed each one one by one—Hua Nongying's flower bloomed gently and steadily, Yun Shuyue's flower shone with a clear, watery light, Liu Ruoxue's flower exuded an icy blue chill, and Yin Lingyue's flower shone with a serene, dark purple light. When he touched Ye Shuanghua's silvery-white flower, a sharp pain, as if pricked, suddenly shot through his fingertips.

Ye Shuanghua was fighting. He could sense her state through the connection between the Yang and Yin patterns—her spiritual power was fluctuating violently, her aura sometimes strong and sometimes weak, as if she were being continuously suppressed. The feedback from the depths of the Yang pattern was like a candle flame flickering in the wind, its brightness uncertain, and each flicker made his heart tighten slightly.

"She's over there!"

Li Hanshan sensed Ye Shuanghua's direction, and his figure transformed into a streak of purple-gold light, soaring into the sky and rushing towards Ye Shuanghua's location.

The distance of three thousand miles was covered in less than half an hour by a Nascent Soul cultivator flying at full speed.

As he crossed the last mountain ridge, the sight he sensed caused his pupils to contract sharply—hundreds of miles ahead, in a valley leveled by the aftershocks of battle, two figures were flanking a silver-white sword light. Ye Shuanghua's silver-white outfit was torn in several places; the sleeve of her left arm was ripped open from her shoulder, revealing a bleeding wound. Her face was pale, her breathing rapid. The light of her Jinghong Sword, though still sharp, was noticeably shorter than usual, and the light on its surface flickered, indicating that its spiritual energy was nearing depletion. Yan Qingsong stood several dozen feet directly in front of her, his iron-gray spiritual energy condensing into a thick layer of armor around him. Each swing of his grey-white halberd carried the unique, heavy force of a seventh-level Nascent Soul cultivator, causing Ye Shuanghua's sword light to slightly deflect. Huo Yuan then harassed Ye Shuanghua from the side with his dark blue short staff. Each time the dark spirit pearl at the head of the staff lit up, it would shoot out an extremely thin beam of dark blue light, which would penetrate through the gaps in Ye Shuanghua's defense, forcing her to be distracted and block.

"Junior Sister Ye, you've endured all this alone for so long, why bother?" Yan Qingsong's voice echoed from the valley. "Hand over those few spiritual herbs you obtained from the ruins, and I might allow you to leave with some dignity."

Ye Shuanghua didn't answer. She gritted her teeth, her Jinghong sword twirling half a circle in front of her, deflecting Huo Yuan's sneak attack, then sidestepping Yan Qingsong's sweeping halberd. The halberd tip grazed her waist, tearing another gash in her robes. She staggered slightly, then forced herself to steady herself, but Li Hanshan could see she was at her limit—her breathing was nearly twice as fast as normal, her sword-wielding hand trembled slightly, and the silvery-white sword light was dimming bit by bit.

Li Hanshan did not explore further. His spiritual power surged, and his escape light became even faster as he rushed towards the valley.