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

Li Hanshan's divine sense hovered at the edge of the adjacent cave like a stretched thread, taking in all the chaotic spiritual energy fluctuations around the woman.

Her condition was worse than he had initially thought. The spiritual energy in her dantian was like shattered glass, with chaotic vortexes churning on the surface and a rapidly drying riverbed beneath.

The fiery heat spread outward from the depths of her meridians, scorching her originally beautiful face into an almost transparent paleness. The beads of sweat on her forehead condensed into fine water droplets in the mist of the spiritual spring, and as they slid down her jawline, they were evaporated into white mist by the high temperature inside her body.

Her fingers gripped the spirit grass mat beneath her, and she bit her lip, leaving a small crack where the blood had dried into a dark red line.

Even though she was on the verge of losing control, she was still trying her best to suppress the surging and violent spiritual power within her body, like a volcano about to erupt being barely covered by a thin layer of ice, enduring the extreme pressure that could break through the suppression at any moment.

Li Hanshan withdrew his divine sense, got up and walked out of the quiet room.

Shen Qingyue was washing her talisman brush by the spirit spring pool when she saw him walk out with a solemn expression. She paused slightly in her movements but did not interrupt him.

He passed through the silvery-white light barrier and arrived at Shen Yun's room. She was sitting cross-legged on a stone platform, meditating. She opened her eyes when she sensed his presence.

"Do you know the person in the next cave?" Li Hanshan didn't beat around the bush and briefly described the woman's face and condition.

After hearing this, Shen Yun frowned slightly: "That is Lin Qingyin, the sect leader of the Lan Yue Sect. Her strength is at the late stage of the Nascent Soul realm, and she has been trying to break through to the peak of the Nascent Soul realm for some time."

She paused, her gaze grave. "The strength of the Lan Yue Sect is weaker than ours. Lin Qingyin used to be a disciple of the Bi Luo Sect, but for some reason she left the sect and went out to establish the Lan Yue Sect. Her foundation is extremely solid, so she shouldn't have made such a big mistake at this threshold."

Listening to her words and sensing the rapidly surging spiritual energy fluctuations in the adjacent cave, Li Hanshan shook his head: "Her aura is completely chaotic, and it's deteriorating at an extremely rapid pace. If she relies solely on herself to suppress it, she won't last more than two hours."

Shen Yun's expression darkened. She stood up and walked to the edge of the room, sensing the violently fluctuating spiritual energy aura emanating from the next room through the rock wall. After a moment of silence, she spoke: "The Lan Yue Sect doesn't have many spots for entering the core immortal island. She must have come alone this time to break through in seclusion."

She turned to look at him. "Once the array's restrictions are activated, only those holding the core immortal island token can enter their own cave dwellings from the inside. Even if people from the outside arrive at the entrance, they can only wait outside and cannot enter. But I don't know where they are."

Li Hanshan sensed the rapidly disintegrating spiritual energy fluctuations next door and could clearly hear his own judgment. He spoke, "I'll go. I have a way to get in."

Shen Yun's gaze lingered on his face for a moment: "You can open the cave's restrictions on the core immortal island? The structure of this formation is completely different from ordinary restrictions. Even a Void Refinement cultivator would need to expend a lot of time and spiritual energy to break through it head-on. Moreover, once the formation's backlash is triggered, the consequences would be unimaginable."

"Don't try to break it by force." Li Hanshan had already mentally reviewed the restrictive structures he had just sensed. At their core, they shared the same logic as the Immortal Alliance's teleportation array. He and Luo Li had repeatedly deduced the spatial rune deformation patterns in their dreams for so many years; the loopholes and weaknesses in those structures were no longer hidden from his eyes. "This array's restrictions have several extremely subtle weak points, completely imperceptible to ordinary cultivators. As long as we find the correct location and infiltrate with a specific spiritual energy frequency, we can tear open a gap large enough for one person to pass through without triggering any warning."

Shen Yun wanted to say something more, but Li Hanshan had already turned and walked towards the entrance of the cave. His voice drifted from ahead: "It's too late. Her spiritual power is rapidly dissipating, and she will be completely out of control in another incense stick's time." He did not stop walking.

As he passed through the pale golden barrier at the entrance of the cave, he felt the spiritual energy fluctuations that had been suppressed by the formation become even clearer—the neighboring cave was only a few dozen feet away from Cave No. 9, separated by three layers of rock walls and a barrier light screen, but the surging chaotic aura had already seeped out from the cracks in the rock as if it were a tangible thing, carrying a scorching heat that was almost enough to ignite the air.

He stopped in front of the cave entrance, his pure Yang energy flowing smoothly through his meridians. His Void Refinement level divine sense, like a stretched thread, probed the edge of the restriction, sensing each weak point he had repeatedly analyzed in Luo Li's dream.

A moment later, he raised his right hand, and spiritual power condensed at his fingertips into an extremely fine golden thread, which precisely pierced the gap where the left edge of the barrier met the rock wall.

The barrier trembled slightly the moment his fingertip pierced through it, like a fine ripple spreading across the surface of water after a pebble has been thrown in.

Without pausing, he slowly pushed the golden thread along the crack, weaving it through the densely interwoven rune nodes as if threading a needle through a narrow river. After a moment, the light of the barrier began to recede slowly from the center to both sides, revealing a crack just wide enough for one person to pass through sideways.

As Li Hanshan squeezed through the crevice, the aura inside the cave rushed towards him—scorching, chaotic, and carrying the unique, slightly fishy-sweet smell of spiritual energy about to spiral out of control, like the lingering bitter aftertaste of a pot of soup about to overflow. He stepped into the cave, his gaze falling on the figure sitting cross-legged on the stone platform.

Lin Qingyin remained seated cross-legged, but her back was slightly arched forward. Beads of sweat on her forehead condensed and dissipated repeatedly as they evaporated due to the high temperature within her body, causing strands of her hair to stick to the edges of her cheeks. Her gaze was fixed on the void before her knees, an abnormal dark golden light swirling in her pupils, like embers slowly burning deep within them. With each breath, visible fragments of spiritual energy escaped from her mouth and nose, dissipating into tiny specks of light in the air.

Li Hanshan crouched down in front of her, his pure Yang energy condensing into a warm, golden halo in his palm, tentatively probing towards her dantian. The moment his spiritual power touched the chaotic fluctuations surrounding her meridians, he felt a scorching backlash rushing back along his spiritual energy threads like a lit fuse, as if a startled beast had suddenly raised its head in the darkness.

"She's really about to succumb to demonic possession," Li Hanshan muttered to herself. She was completely enveloped by that demonic power. Her spiritual energy was mixed with a large amount of scorching impurities, and that fiery temperature was continuously overflowing from the depths of her meridians, burning and eroding her foundation layer by layer. If this dragged on any longer, the moment her spiritual energy completely spiraled out of control, the entire cave would be overturned along with her by the aftershocks of the explosion.

He recalled those nights he spent with Luo Li in his dreams. Once, the moonlight shone on the river, and Luo Li leaned against a blue stone, looking at him, when she suddenly asked about the cultivation techniques he practiced at the Hehuan Sect.

She said that although those techniques of dual cultivation lead to rapid progress, relying on the effects of dual cultivation in the long term can easily cause impurities to accumulate deep within the meridians. Without a sufficiently stable spiritual foundation to suppress them, it will eventually trigger a backlash from inner demons. Therefore, she taught him several techniques—using pure yang energy as a guide and spiritual power as a blade, to sever those meridians in the spiritual energy that have begun to mutate from within, like pruning a spiritual herb that has been eaten by insects.

He withdrew his thoughts and condensed his pure yang energy into a finer, more precise golden thread, which slowly seeped into Lin Qingyin's meridians. This time, he did not directly touch the core of her dantian, but instead started with the peripheral meridians that had been eroded by the power of inner demons, peeling away, guiding, and burning away the scorching impurities layer by layer at an extremely slow pace.

She could feel his spiritual energy seeping into the depths of her meridians in an extremely gentle yet firm manner. The scorching backlash was gradually receding under the continuous penetration of his pure yang energy, like ice slowly melting after being washed by spring water. Although her breathing was still rapid, the frequency was more stable than before, and the disordered spiritual energy showed some signs of calming down.

Li Hanshan did not stop. His divine sense, like a precise probe, slowly advanced along the lines of her meridians, marking, peeling away, and cleaning up the areas eroded by the power of her inner demons one by one.

The scorching impurities emitted extremely subtle hissing sounds under the continuous burning of the pure yang energy, like ice cubes falling into boiling oil, dissipating into tiny specks of light deep within her meridians. He felt that the spiritual energy within her body was stabilizing again at an extremely slow but irreversible pace, like turbid water gradually becoming clear after a period of settling.

But her face remained pale. After the chaotic spiritual energy was mostly calmed down, her tense body swayed slightly, as if a skeleton had been stripped of all its support, and then she leaned towards him.

Li Hanshan reached out and held her shoulder, feeling the slightly warm body heat emanating from her through his clothes as she leaned against him, like a sun-warmed pebble against his shoulder. Her breathing was no longer as rapid as before, but rather long and drawn out, as if it had been suppressed and was finally finding an outlet. Her tightly closed eyelashes trembled slightly in the mist of the spiritual spring.