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

Let's turn back time to before a cup of tea.

The instant the Heavenly Demon Blood Array changed course and the crimson heavenly might pressed down, the silver-white pillar of light trembled violently, the forming spatial passage contracted wildly, and the buzzing emitted by the twelve array artifacts grew more and more mournful, like twelve birds with their throats being choked.

It was clear that the entire teleportation array was about to be completely suppressed.

Unnoticed by anyone, a wisp of pale blue light silently traversed the shadows among the rubble, like a drop of water flowing into a stream, quietly disappearing into the shaky pillar of light.

It's Xiao An.

The moment her soul left her sea of ​​consciousness, excruciating pain pressed in from all directions. Space was collapsing, and every wisp of turbulent spatial current was like a blunt knife, scraping at her soul with sharp, piercing pain. Gritting her teeth, she tightly enveloped herself in the wisp of pure yang energy that Li Hanshan had given her, and plunged into the depths of the passage without looking back.

This is not an impulse.

Even at the very beginning of setting up the formation, Li Hanshan had made the worst-case scenario plan. This was also Li Hanshan's backup plan.

Previously, Li Hanshan had spent a considerable amount of time teaching Xiao An, from the direction of array patterns to the breathing techniques for spiritual energy circulation, from locking spatial coordinates to self-rescue methods when passages collapsed—he broke everything down, explained it thoroughly, and poured it all into her mind. He once said something that she still remembers to this day—

"The formation is inanimate, but people are alive. If they try to suppress you from the outside, follow the collapsing spiritual energy deeper into the passage. I left something at the very end of the passage; if you find it, you'll have thirty breaths left."

At this moment, she was gambling on those thirty breaths.

Inside the passage, the silvery-white light had dimmed considerably, and the walls writhed and squeezed inward like living things, emitting a sickening groan. Xiao An, barefoot, struggled to traverse the ever-narrowing tunnel. Her "eyes" were not very useful in this soul form; she relied on her senses—the almost instinctive sensitivity to the flow of spiritual energy bestowed upon her by the Netherworld Records technique.

The turbulent currents were like knives. So she swam with them.

It collapsed like a millstone. She walked along the edge of the collapse.

Along the way, she "saw" scattered fragments of space and spiritual energy meridians severed by the power of the blood array, like a corpse with its tendons pulled out. The deeper she went, the heavier the compression became, and her soul body was compressed thinner and thinner. The dark blue light dimmed and dimmed, but she never stopped.

finally--

In the deepest part of the passage, in that desolate corner where even the power of the blood array had not yet spread, she "saw" that faint silver-purple flame.

A sword-shaped mark hangs quietly in the darkness, like a spark buried in ashes, yet to be extinguished.

That was Li Hanshan's soul imprint. It was the last spark left behind, fueled by his pure Yang primordial spirit, which was comparable to the late stage of the Void Refinement realm.

Xiao An rushed over, placed both palms on the mark, and recklessly poured all his spiritual power, along with that wisp of pure yang energy, into it.

"boom--"

A burst of silvery-purple flames erupted.

A point, a line, a surface. With that mark as the center, the broken spiritual energy channels were relit one by one, like spring floods rising again in a dried-up riverbed. The collapsed passage walls were pushed back inch by inch from the inside, and silvery-white light spread outward from the depths. Wherever it passed, groans turned into roars, and roars turned into the sound of the tide.

Xiao An was panting heavily; her soul had become almost transparent, yet she smiled.

The passageway has been reopened.

But that's not all; she still needs to sort out the passage and find the person on the other side of the teleportation channel.

She dared not stop, following the faint scent of the sea ahead, desperately swimming towards the other end of the passage. After swimming for an unknown amount of time, a silvery-white figure finally appeared ahead—Yinling stood in the center of the collapsed passage, her sleeves fluttering, struggling alone to hold up the ever-closing walls on both sides.

"Senior Yinling!" Xiao An's voice echoed through the passageway, "Senior Li Hanshan asked me to come here to pick you up."

Yinling turned around abruptly, a hint of surprise flashing in her silver-gray eyes, which then turned into understanding.

"That kid..." she muttered something under her breath, but before she could finish, the passageway behind her contracted violently again. Without hesitation, she grabbed Xiao An's wrist. "Let's go! You lead the way!"

Two figures, one in front of the other, traveled upstream along the newly relit passage towards the Heavenly Demon Sect.

Meanwhile, in the Heavenly Demon Sect, amidst the sky filled with stone dust.

No one knows what happened deep within the passage. No one knows that a spirit, carrying the last princess of the sea race, is inching closer and closer to the exit of this world.

They will arrive in a breath.