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

It took Yin Yue three whole days to recover.

For those three days, she lay almost the entire time on that brocade quilt. At first, she didn't even want to move a finger, but later she was able to sit up by supporting herself on the edge of the bed and drink a few sips of spiritual tea. Finally, on the evening of the third day, she stood at the door of the house, leaning on the door frame.

Her complexion had returned to its usual cool and aloof state. Her silver-white robe was fastened again, and her veil was back on her face, concealing her complexion, which had regained some luster after three days of rest.

But Li Hanshan noticed that she was walking a beat slower than usual. It took her several breaths longer to walk the few steps from the edge of the bed to the door.

All of this is because he really went a little too far with his chisels that day.

If it were a dual cultivation, Yin Yue wouldn't have suffered so much. But Li Hanshan decided to break through to the Void Refinement stage later, and that day he was only focused on enjoying himself, so Yin Yue naturally suffered a lot.

He didn't say anything, but simply put the house back into his storage ring, tidied up the surrounding array flags, and covered up the traces of the battle as much as possible. The spatial barrier of the secret realm had repaired itself most of the time in three months, and the crack that Hidden Moon had torn open had long since closed, leaving only a very faint trace, which would disappear completely in a few more days.

As the two left the secret realm, Yin Yue summoned her silver-white flying boat, which took off and flew towards the Immortal Alliance's coast. A sea breeze blew from ahead, causing her veil to cling tightly to her jawline. She stood at the bow, her gaze fixed on the boundless sea in the distance, remaining silent for a long time.

"Have you thought about the teleportation array plan?" Li Hanshan asked, leaning against the ship's railing. The airship glided smoothly through the clouds, the waves beneath its feet stretching into blurry gray-blue streaks as they swept backward.

Yin Yue didn't turn around; her voice came from ahead: "I've thought it through. There's a solitary peak to the northeast of Wanxian City. The spiritual veins there aren't strong, but they're very stable. Set up one end of the teleportation array there first."

"Where is the other end?"

"Inside the Heavenly Demon Sect."

Li Hanshan raised an eyebrow. This answer was bolder than he had expected. The Heavenly Demon Sect had Dao Integration cultivators stationed inside, and its protective array was far more secure than any city in the Immortal Alliance.

Setting up a teleportation array directly in someone's home is tantamount to holding a sharp blade to the enemy's throat. But just as easily, once discovered, the person who set up the array won't even have time to escape.

Are you sure?

"Of course I'm sure." Yin Yue's tone was as calm as if she were just stating a normal itinerary. "I have a cave dwelling in the Heavenly Demon Sect. It's in a remote location and is surrounded by independent restrictions. The teleportation array is set up inside that cave dwelling."

Li Hanshan remained silent for a moment. A cultivator at the late stage of the Void Refinement realm, who had been infiltrating the Immortal Alliance for countless years, while also maintaining a private cave within the Heavenly Demon Sect—what exactly was her status within the Heavenly Demon Sect? And what made her willing to take such a great risk to destroy her own sect?

"The Heavenly Demon Sect seems to have treated you quite well," he said, "they even preserved your cave dwelling. So why did you destroy it?"

Yinyue stood at the bow of the ship, her lips pressed into a thin line beneath her silver veil. The sea breeze swept in from the side, causing her robes to flutter loudly.

She remained silent for a long while, so long that Li Hanshan thought she wasn't going to answer, before finally speaking, his voice a few decibels lower than before: "You've asked too many questions."

Li Hanshan didn't press further. He could sense the barely suppressed coldness in her voice when she said those words, and knew that further questioning would yield no answer.

He steered the conversation back to the teleportation array itself: "The other end of the teleportation array is inside the Heavenly Demon Sect, and my part of the setup is fine. But you need someone on the other end to simultaneously activate the array base for a complete teleportation channel to form. Since you're not here, who will do it?"

"I have my own plans." Yin Yue turned around, her calm eyes lingering on his face for a moment. "You just need to set up the array base here in Wanxian City. I'll handle the rest."

Row.

Li Hanshan asked no further questions.

The flying boat continued flying northwest, passing through the deep sea area shrouded in spiritual mist, crossing the outer perimeter of the Nanling defense line, and finally landing at the dock of a small town on the eastern coast of the Immortal Alliance.

As the two disembarked from the flying boat, dusk had already fallen. The dock was brightly lit, with various flying boats and spirit ships moored among them. The shouts of the fish market vendors and the sweet aroma of spirit tea shops mingled with the smell of the sea in the air.

Yin Yue didn't linger, leading him through the crowd at the dock and along the bluestone street to the teleportation array in the city. A silvery-white light appeared and then faded, and when the two sensed solid ground beneath their feet again, they were back on the teleportation array platform outside Wanxian City.

As dusk fell, the city of Wanxian was ablaze with lights, and cultivators thronged its streets, their various lights weaving a flowing net of light across the night sky. Yin Yue did not enter the city, but instead led him northeast, flying to the foot of a solitary peak a thousand miles away from Wanxian City.

The mountain peak was about a thousand feet high, and its entire body was composed of grayish-white rocks. The surface of the mountain was covered with sparse shrubs and vines. At the top of the mountain, there was a platform surrounded by natural rock walls, and several unknown spiritual trees were planted around it. The canopies of the trees rustled in the night wind.

At the edge of the platform stood a small stone house, its door half-open. Inside, there was nothing but an abandoned wooden table and a few scattered pottery jars, clearly indicating that it had been uninhabited for many years.

Yin Yue stopped on the platform in front of the stone house, turned around and looked at him: "Set it up here. The location is secluded, outside the patrol range of Wanxian City, and won't be noticed by passing cultivators. Are your twelve array artifacts enough?"

Li Hanshan walked around the platform, using his divine sense to perceive the direction of the earth veins beneath his feet and the concentration of spiritual energy. There was indeed a tributary of a spiritual vein flowing beneath this solitary peak. Although the spiritual energy was not particularly dense, it was stable and pure, enough to support the daily operation of a teleportation array.

He took out the array blueprint from his storage ring, unfolded it on the stone table, and compared it with the direction of the earth veins. He then placed a positioning array flag at each of the four corners of the platform. After confirming that the orientation and angle were correct, he nodded to Yin Yue.

"Is a month enough?" Yin Yue asked.

"That's enough." Li Hanshan took out the array artifacts one by one from his storage ring and arranged them neatly on the stone table.

The twelve dark gold array artifacts gleamed with a warm, cool light in the glow of the luminous pearl, and the fine, spiderweb-like silver-white runes on their surfaces flowed quietly like tamed streams.

"Let me know when you're done." Yin Yue stood at the edge of the platform, her silver veil fluttering gently in the night breeze. Her gaze fell on the brightly lit silhouette of Wanxian City in the distance. After a moment of silence, she spoke, "I need to leave for a while to take care of some things."

"Where to?"

"Persuade the higher-ups of the Immortal Alliance." Her voice was as clear and bright as ever. Moonlight fell on the silver patterns along the edge of her veil, making the fine lines appear like frozen streams. "The teleportation array is set up, but someone has to convince the Immortal Alliance to use it. Otherwise, having a passage without an army is not enough to win this game."

Li Hanshan looked at her, and the questions that had lingered in his mind for so long resurfaced. Getting the Immortal Alliance to use a teleportation array to attack the Heavenly Demon Sect was no less difficult than setting up the array itself.

The Immortal Alliance's higher-ups are cautious; they wouldn't mobilize a large army deep into the Demonic Sect's territory just because of a mere Refinement Elder's words. Yin Yue is likely trying to persuade the very top figures of the Immortal Alliance. "Who are you going to persuade? The Sect Master of the Azure Sky Sect? Or the Pavilion Master of the Cloud Hidden Pavilion?"

Yin Yue didn't answer immediately. She turned around, her calm eyes appearing exceptionally deep in the moonlight, like two pools of water soaked by the night. After a moment, she spoke, her tone still clear and crisp, but with an added air of undeniable certainty: "Harmony with the Dao."

Li Hanshan's heart skipped a beat. Dao Integration cultivators were the Immortal Alliance's top combat force and the core of its decision-making body.

Yin Yue was about to persuade one, or perhaps all, of those three Dao Integration cultivators. This was far more risky than anything she had said before. Dao Integration cultivators possessed divine sense far surpassing those at the Void Refinement stage; they could see through the very essence of heaven and earth, and their insight into the human heart was truly terrifying.

Her background might not withstand such scrutiny.

What are the hidden cards that Yin Yue has up its sleeve?

"Are you going alone?" he asked.

"Alone." Yin Yue turned around, her silver-white robes billowing like wings in the night wind. "You just focus on setting up the formation. I'll come back in a month and take you to the Heavenly Demon Sect then."

She took two steps forward, and her figure began to become translucent, like a piece of frost melted by moonlight slowly dissipating.