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

The lingering spiritual energy above the ruins was slowly dissipating. The dark gray fragments that had been shattered by the pillar of light fell like ashes onto the scorched earth, turning the entire valley into a mottled grayish-white.

The spatial barrier of the secret realm reassembled amidst the aftershocks of the shattered pillar of light. The surface of the pale golden light curtain was riddled with cracks and was repairing itself at an extremely slow pace.

Yin Yue stood before the crack she had torn open, her silver veil fluttering gently in the warm breeze of the secret realm. She didn't speak immediately, her gaze lingering for a long while in the center of the now-flattened valley before slowly walking down from the edge of the crack and landing on a piece of rubble several dozen feet away from Li Hanshan.

"A mid-stage Void Refinement cultivator, vaporized by your single sword strike." The extremely brief pause at the end of her sentence betrayed that she was not as calm as she appeared. "In all my years, I have never seen a Nascent Soul cultivator achieve this. What was the source of that sword strike you just unleashed?"

Li Hanshan put the broken sword back into his storage ring and stretched his slightly stiff knuckles. He didn't answer her question immediately; his seventh-level Void Refinement spiritual sense had already quietly spread out, covering the entire secret realm. He sensed that the almost extinguished wick in his dantian was slowly regenerating spiritual power, and he also sensed that the late-stage Void Refinement spiritual power fluctuations around Yin Yue, though steady, carried a trace of fatigue naturally left after continuously impacting the sealing barrier for four days and four nights.

His face remained impassive, but his fingers subtly gripped the edges of the sixth-tier purple lightning talismans in his storage ring. Although Zhou Heng was dead, Yin Yue was still a late-stage Void Refinement cultivator, far stronger than Zhou Heng.

Although the two sides reached an agreement, Li Hanshan had to be wary of her suddenly making a move, especially knowing that she possessed a Dao artifact.

Yin Yue seemed to sense something. She didn't approach, but merely tilted her head slightly. Her calm eyes lingered for a moment on the subtle movement of him gripping his storage ring before looking away. "Don't worry, I won't go back on my promise."

Li Hanshan loosened his grip on the ring, his expression remaining calm: "I just have a habit of keeping something in reserve."

"It's okay to keep a few tricks up your sleeve." Yin Yue turned around, her gaze falling on the edge of the dense forest covered with spirit trees in the distance. "Take care of those tails first."

She raised her hand, and a silvery-white spiritual energy shot out from her fingertips, piercing through the dense forest canopy with precision like a stretched thread, forcefully pulling He Yuan and the two disciples out of the ancient trees where they were hiding. The three of them were bound around the waist by the spiritual energy, dragged from mid-air to the center of the ruins like cats being grabbed by the scruff of their necks, staggering and falling among the rubble.

Zhou Ping and Zhao Yao were both deathly pale. They couldn't even stand up after landing. He Yuan struggled to his feet, his thin face filled with fear and despair.

"Senior, spare my life!" He Yuan knelt on the rubble, his forehead pressed against the scorched earth, his voice trembling. "I was deceived by that man. I truly didn't know he was a spy for the Demonic Sect! I only coveted those spirit stones and had no intention of harming anyone—"

Yin Yue didn't look at him. She walked up to He Yuan, squatted down, and took out a jet-black bead from her sleeve, crushing it. The moment the bead shattered, it turned into an extremely thin wisp of black mist. The mist, like a living thing, burrowed into He Yuan's brow, and contracted sharply when it touched the edge of his sea of ​​consciousness.

He Yuan's body trembled violently for a moment, his mouth opened wide but no sound came out, veins bulged on his forehead, and his eyes were filled with an extreme pain and helpless bewilderment. The black energy condensed deep in his sea of ​​consciousness into a dark mark as thin as a hair, like a venomous snake branded into his soul, quietly coiled at the edge of his sea of ​​consciousness.

"Heavenly Demon Seal." Yin Yue stood up, her tone as calm as ever. "With a single thought, your soul will begin to disintegrate from the depths of your sea of ​​consciousness, leaving you no chance to even possess another body." She turned to Zhou Ping and Zhao Yao, and similarly injected the black energy into their foreheads. The two collapsed to the ground before they could even scream, their bodies convulsing for a while before they could barely regain their balance.

When He Yuan came to his senses, he was as if he had been pulled from the water, his gray-white robe soaked with cold sweat and clinging to his body. He knelt on the rubble, his forehead slamming heavily against the scorched earth, his voice dry and hoarse, as if all hope had been utterly crushed: "This junior knows his sins. This junior is willing to obey the orders of senior, and will never dare to have the slightest disloyalty again."

Zhou Ping and Zhao Yao also knelt down, kowtowing even more forcefully than He Yuan, as if expressing their submission in the most primal way.

Yin Yue didn't even glance at them. She slightly raised her chin, her tone carrying a calm indifference born of waning patience: "Get lost."

As if granted a pardon, He Yuan scrambled to his feet and, dragging Zhou Ping and Zhao Yao along, stumbled and ran towards the crack at the edge of the secret realm. The three of them were grazed by the remaining edge of the spatial barrier as they passed through the crack, but He Yuan ignored it and, with his two disciples, disappeared into the depths of the spiritual mist without looking back.

Yin Yue watched the three figures disappear beyond the crack before turning back to Li Hanshan. Moonlight seeped in through the crack in the pale golden light barrier at the top of the secret realm, making her silver veil almost transparent. She spoke, her voice regaining its clear and languid tone: "Alright, the tail's taken care of. How are you?"

Li Hanshan leaned against a boulder that had been partially flattened. His pure Yang energy circulated slowly through his meridians, sensing that the wick in his dantian, though dim, hadn't extinguished. "I need to recover," he said truthfully. "Zhou Heng certainly has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. After nine days and nine nights of fighting, many parts of my meridians were damaged, and my spiritual energy is almost depleted. However—"

He paused, his gaze falling on the calm eyes behind Yin Yue's silver veil. "After you recover, you can attempt to break through to the Void Refinement stage. I'll need your help then."

Yin Yue paused slightly the moment those words were spoken. The eyes behind the silver veil did not look away, but the moonlight fell on her ears, revealing a very faint blush.

She looked away, her gaze falling on the dense forest in the distance, which had been mostly destroyed by the aftershocks of the battle. After a moment of silence, she spoke: "You recover first. We'll talk again in three months."

She spoke in a clear and crisp tone, but with a hint of deliberate composure than before.

Li Hanshan didn't press further, only nodding slightly. He sat cross-legged beside the boulder, and the pure yang energy re-condensed into a slow and stable cycle in his meridians, smoothing, repairing, and stabilizing those meridians that were exhausted from continuous battle.

Xiao An emerged from his sea of ​​consciousness, setting up a dark blue soul power barrier beside him. Then, he transformed into a shadow and merged into the surrounding rubble, silently guarding his surroundings.

Yin Yue did not leave. She sat down on a boulder several dozen feet away from Li Hanshan, her silver-white veil fluttering gently in the wind.

She closed her eyes to regulate her breathing, gradually replenishing the spiritual energy consumed by the continuous impact on the sealing barrier. Occasionally, she would open her eyes, her gaze falling on the slowly recovering purple-gold halo in the distance, before looking away again.

Three months passed quietly in the secret realm.

Tender green shoots sprouted anew from the edge of the dense forest ravaged by the battle, and the scorching spiritual energy seeping from the cracks in the mountain cleaved by the Crimson Sun Sword gradually cooled, transforming into a gentle, warm current. The spatial barrier of the secret realm slowly repaired itself, becoming solid and intact once more, like a glass wall that had been repeatedly patched up and finally restored to its original state.

When Li Hanshan opened his eyes, the wick in his dantian had reignited into a stable golden flame, and the silver-purple lightning patterns on the surface of his pure yang primordial spirit, which had dimmed due to excessive consumption, had regained their former luster.

He sensed the spiritual energy flowing through his meridians, which was more transparent than it had been three months ago, and he also sensed the spiritual foundation of the seventh level of the Void Refinement stage deep within his sea of ​​consciousness. He slowly stood up.

Yin Yue stood on a boulder not far away, her silver veil gleaming coolly in the morning light. Sensing his rising presence, she turned around, her calm eyes falling on his face, without rushing to speak.

Li Hanshan walked up to her, circulating his pure Yang energy through her meridians to confirm that she had fully recovered. He said, "You've basically recovered."

"We can begin!"