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

Yin Yue looked at the pillar of light that was teetering on the brink of collapse under the pressure of the Heavenly Demon Blood Array, and suddenly smiled.

First, there was a soft groan, then the laughter grew louder and louder, until her shoulders trembled and she bent over with laughter. As she laughed, tears streamed down her cheeks. She raised her hand to wipe them away, and her palm was covered in blood; she couldn't tell if it was from laughing or coughing.

"I've been plotting for centuries." Her voice was soft, as if she were speaking to herself. "From the day I infiltrated the Immortal Alliance, every day has been a calculation, every step a gamble. I've imagined countless endings—being discovered, surrounded and killed, having my soul extracted and refined. I even planned that when that day comes, I'll die with a smile on my face, never shedding a single tear in front of anyone."

"I thought I had taken everything into account..."

As she looked at the pillar of light, which was barely hanging on under the suppression of the blood array, her voice gradually lowered.

"Unexpectedly, it all came to nothing in the end."

She turned her head and looked at Li Hanshan. For the first time, his eyes, which were always clear and cold like the moon, were filled with undisguised apology.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I've dragged you into this."

Li Hanshan shook his head.

"I won't implicate anyone," he answered decisively.

He reached out and took Yin Yue's wrist, helping her stand up straight against him. His tone was as calm as if he were stating something perfectly natural: "I chose to gamble, and I chose to set up the strategy. Since we placed the bet together, if we lose, we'll share the burden."

Then he raised his head and looked at the man standing with his hands behind his back under the sky filled with stone dust and a blood-red dome, and slowly exhaled.

"To be in harmony with the Dao is to be in harmony with the Dao." His voice was calm. "I never imagined that our elaborate plan, which we staked everything on, would be shattered by you with a single fingertip."

The Heavenly Demon Sect Master looked at him, his interest growing even stronger.

"You're not bad either," he said calmly. "You've reached the Nascent Soul stage, your divine sense has reached the late Void Refinement stage, and you possess such swordsmanship. Given time, achieving Dao Integration is only a matter of time. What a pity—"

He didn't say anything about what was a pity.

Li Hanshan didn't ask. He simply turned his head to look at Yin Yue beside him and asked a question that had been weighing on his mind since earlier.

"I don't quite understand," he said. "He's your father. Why did you want to destroy the Heavenly Demon Sect?"

"Sister!" Ye Feiyan exclaimed first, covering her mouth, her eyes filled with shock. "How could you be so cruel! The Heavenly Demon Sect is your home, Father is your family, and you actually... you actually wanted to destroy us?"

Yin Yue ignored her.

She didn't even glance at her. She simply looked at the Heavenly Demon Sect Master and spoke, each word distinct and chilling, her voice like ice that had been tempered for millennia:

"He is not my father."

Li Hanshan raised an eyebrow: "Oh?"

"When I was just a child, my mother was already tormented beyond recognition by him. Her cultivation level decreased year by year, and she grew more and more withered. In the end, she couldn't even stand steadily and had to kneel to serve him tea."

"She was still smiling on the day her last bit of spiritual power was drained."

Yin Yue paused for a moment.

"Because she was finally free. Then they threw her into the Cave of Ten Thousand Snakes. I watched through the fence for three days, until there was no more sound coming from inside. I've remembered her last look at me for three hundred years."

"I was seven years old that year."

The air on the platform grew cold. Even the Third Elder, who had opened his mouth, swallowed back the curses that were about to come out. Several young disciples who were watching lowered their heads, not daring to look at her anymore.

"Heh." Ye Feiyan laughed, tears welling in her eyes. "Sister, your story is truly moving. But what's the use of saying all this? If Father hadn't treated you well, why would he have made you the Holy Maiden? The Holy Maiden of the Heavenly Demon Sect is second only to the sect leader, a position countless disciples dream of. You eat the sect's food, use the sect's resources, and then turn around and bite back—does that make sense?"

"Holy Maiden?" Yin Yue finally turned her head and looked directly at Ye Feiyan.

That glance was so still that Ye Feiyan's smile froze for a moment.

"I earned that myself," she said, emphasizing each word. "I crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, stepping over the bones of my fellow disciples, fighting my way through battle after battle. When I was fourteen, he threw me into a blood pool for trials; of the thirty-seven disciples who went with him, only I survived. He merely went with the flow, giving me a signboard—because a signboard is far cheaper than a pile of rewards."

"If he were truly good to me—" Her voice suddenly rose, "why would he assign me the mission to infiltrate the Immortal Alliance? It was a death trap with a nine-out-of-ten chance of survival! Do you know how I spent every day in the Immortal Alliance? I dared not extend my divine sense even an inch, dared not utter a single extra word in my sleep, and even a glance at a fellow disciple had to be mentally scrutinized three times! Just last month, someone even sent a secret letter to the Immortal Alliance's Enforcement Hall, revealing my identity!"

She stared intently at Ye Feiyan, her gaze sharp as a knife.

"That secret letter, was it sent by someone you arranged?"

Ye Feiyan's smile froze on her face.

"I survived countless brushes with death in the Immortal Alliance, I don't know how many times I walked on the brink of death." Yin Yue withdrew her gaze, her voice lowering again, becoming as soft as a sigh, "If it weren't for meeting Senior Yin Ling later and receiving her protection... I, Luo Hongying, would have died countless times already."

Fallen cherry blossoms!

It was only then that Li Hanshan learned her real name.

Her name is Fallen Cherry.

"Such a 'father,' such a 'sect'—"

She raised her head and looked at the Heavenly Demon Sect Master one last time. The tears in her eyes had long since dried, leaving only a deathly silence after everything had been burned away.

"What's wrong with me destroying it?"

"You're right!" Li Hanshan nodded.

He took half a step forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with her, meeting the gaze of the Heavenly Demon Sect Master, and said, word by word, "If you ask me, it was too late to destroy them."