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

At the gap in the sky, the blood rain continued.

Yin Yue slowly straightened up, supporting herself on Li Hanshan's arm. Her left arm had almost shattered; the pure yang energy that Li Hanshan had transferred to her had barely managed to reconnect her meridians. Her silver-white robe was stained with blood, and the dried bloodstains from her seven orifices resembled several dark red snakes lying on her pale cheeks.

She didn't even have time to adjust her breathing. She wiped the blood from her lips and looked past the sky full of escape lights and the sounds of battle, her gaze landing precisely on a bright red figure.

Ye Feiyan escaped very quickly.

She mingled among the fleeing disciples, her palace attire flickering in and out of focus, each time appearing dozens of miles away—that was the light of her blood escape technique. This woman, who usually wore a sweet smile, was more decisive than anyone else when it came to escaping for her life; from the moment the formation was broken until now, she hadn't looked back even once.

"Senior, she went north." Xiao An's soul appeared beside Li Hanshan, her dark blue figure appearing and disappearing in the blood rain. "She used a Blood Escape Talisman, and her speed is extremely fast."

"Can we catch up?" Li Hanshan asked.

Yin Yue did not answer. She took out a small white jade bottle from her sleeve, poured out three dark red pills, and swallowed them. The moment the medicinal power dissipated, her weakened aura slowly recovered. Then she activated her escape light, engulfing Li Hanshan within it.

"Blood Escape uses life essence; it can't escape more than ten thousand miles before you have to stop and catch your breath." Her voice came through the gale, as cold as if it had been tempered with ice. "I've been collecting these escape talismans for a hundred years. Today, I'm giving them all to her."

A silvery-white beam of light shot into the sky and raced northward.

Xiao An's figure dispersed, transforming into a wisp of dark blue smoke, silently following the trail of the escape light.

On the first day, the two sides, one in front and one behind, swept across seven mountain peaks and two great rivers.

Ye Feiyan's Blood Escape Talisman was indeed domineering. With each one she burned, her figure transformed into a blood-red meteor, flashing across thousands of miles. But every time she appeared, the silver-white escape light behind her would follow one after another—a talisman with flowing starlight burned out, tearing open a straight passage in the void, and when she reappeared, the distance had been snapped back to square one.

Star-Chasing Escape Talisman. Rank 7. Silver Bell made six of them for her in her early years.

By the evening of the third day, Ye Feiyan finally realized that something was wrong.

What made her heart sink even more was that she recognized the escaping light—a Star-Chasing Escape Talisman, a priceless seventh-grade escape talisman; there were only a handful in the entire Heavenly Demon Sect's treasury. When Luo Hongying burned these things one by one on her body, it wasn't out of fear or spite.

They were determined to take her life.

She stood atop a desolate mountain and looked back. The silvery-white streak of light trailed hundreds of miles away, like a sword hanging behind her, impossible to shake off or frighten away.

"Fallen Cherry Blossom..." she spat out the name through gritted teeth, "madwoman."

She could tell that Yin Yue's injuries were far more severe than hers; the wounds from clashing with a Dao-Merging cultivator wouldn't heal for months. Yet this woman hadn't rested a single day, chasing after them despite her injuries.

Ye Feiyan gritted her teeth and then burned another Blood Escape Talisman.

Does it hurt? Yes, it hurts. There are only five Blood Escape Talismans left. But she knows even better what will happen if they fall into the hands of that bitch.

On the tenth day, the streaking light swept across a patch of scorched earth.

In his mind's eye, Xiao An's voice suddenly rang out, carrying a hint of genuine confusion: "Senior, there's something I don't understand."

"explain."

"Why is she always fleeing north?" Xiao An asked. "The south is the territory of the Hehuan Sect, and the west is the Yinming Sect. It's better for her to just disappear into any branch and hide somewhere than to be chased like this in the wilderness. Even though the Tianmo Sect is gone, the three sects of the Demon Sect are still closely connected. As a mere Nascent Soul cultivator, wouldn't she be treated like a VIP in any sect she goes to?"

"It's precisely because she's a demonic cultivator that she dares not go." Li Hanshan gazed at the intermittently appearing blood-red light ahead, his tone as calm as if he were discussing something perfectly ordinary. "Once the Heavenly Demon Sect is destroyed, the 'shared ties' between the three sects will also be destroyed. She, a female cultivator at the mid-stage of the Void Refinement realm, went alone and destitute to seek refuge with the Joyful Union Sect—Xiao An, think about what the Joyful Union Sect does? With her looks and cultivation, if she fell into the hands of the Joyful Union Sect, the best outcome would be for some elder to take her as a cultivation vessel and drain her life force until she dies."

Xiao An let out a soft "Ah".

"What about the Yinming Sect?"

"The Yinming Sect is even more hospitable." Li Hanshan smirked. "Her flesh and soul are excellent materials for the Yinming Sect to refine corpses. They won't even blink when refining a Void Refining Corpse that has offered itself up."

There was a moment of silence within the escaping light.

"So, it's not that she doesn't want to go, it's that she can't go." Xiao An's voice lowered. "When the Heavenly Demon Sect was around, the three sects still had dealings and maintained a certain level of respect for each other. Once the Heavenly Demon Sect fell, she became unclaimed property—whoever finds her, she belongs to them."

"Um."

"These demonic sects..." Xiao An sighed softly, "Don't they have any trust in each other at all?"

"Or—" Yin Yue suddenly spoke, her voice clear and cold, carried on the wind, "why do you call it the Demonic Sect?"

Xiao An stopped talking.

Li Hanshan smiled and glanced at Yin Yue at the other end of the escape light. Her face was still pale, but her eyes were astonishingly bright, like two clusters of fire burning in the wind.

"Xiao An," he said in his mind, "remember this: in the territory of the Demonic Sect, the sharpest blade is always used to stab one's own people."

"Oh..." Xiao An seemed to understand but not quite.

On the morning of the fifteenth day, the sound transmission conch in Yin Yue's hand suddenly trembled slightly.

"Waaah—"

A long, clear conch shell chirped, piercing the gale and reaching their ears. Yin Yue's escape light paused slightly, slowing down.

A silvery sound emanated from the conch shell, not loud, yet each word clear, like a sea breeze brushing past the ear:

"The Heavenly Demon Sect has been destroyed. Those who surrendered have been incorporated into the army, and those who resisted have been executed. The cleanup will take some time."

She paused.

"The Heavenly Demon Sect Master—the three of us joined forces and severed one of his arms, forcing him to ignite his source energy. With the final blow, he fell into the void turbulence. No one knows where the turbulence leads. I followed the turbulence for three days, but I did not find his body."

"Whether he is alive or dead, we do not know."

The snail's call faded, and for a moment only the sound of the wind remained in the surrounding fields.

The moon's elusive light hovered in mid-air, motionless for a long time. The morning light fell on the tips of her silvery-white hair, illuminating her pale face almost transparently.

"Senior?" Xiao An called softly.

"It's alright," Yin Yue said.

Li Hanshan looked at her and suddenly asked, "Do you think the Heavenly Demon Sect Master will die?"

Yinyue turned her head.

"Of course I want him dead," she said. Five words, without any emotion.

Even if he is your father?

Yin Yue looked at him and nodded.

"That's right," she said, "even if he's my father."

After speaking, her clear, cold eyes fixed on Li Hanshan's face, and she asked, "Do you think he shouldn't have died?"

Li Hanshan shook his head.

"No. Of course I think he deserved to die," he said. "What I mean is—a Daoist isn't so easy to kill."

"In our cultivation so far, we've seen countless mountains of corpses and seas of blood. But a Dao-merging being is already close to the limits of this world. As long as the world doesn't collapse, a Dao-merging being is hard to destroy. Moreover, someone like him wouldn't easily give up his life."

Yin Yue remained silent for a few moments.

"Even if he doesn't die," she said, her voice as cold as ice as she activated her escape technique again, "he'll still suffer a great loss."

The silvery-white light flashed again, and it sped northward.

This pursuit lasted for one hundred days.

In the first month, groups of demonic cultivators fleeing north could still be seen beneath the escaping light. Ye Feiyan fled with suspicion, the blood-red light sometimes turning east, sometimes west, and even splitting into three streams, making it difficult to distinguish the real from the fake; only when she couldn't shake them off did she grit her teeth and ignite one. But Xiao An lingered hundreds of miles away from the escaping light, specializing in breaking these feints—every time a false light dissipated, the real body was always caught again.

In the second month, all signs of human habitation vanished, leaving only a desolate wasteland and a perpetual gray miasma. On the forty-first day, her last Blood Escape Talisman burned to ashes. From that day forward, she began burning her own life essence—without talismans as a catalyst, each escape attempt consumed her true cultivation. On the fiftieth day, she could no longer escape more than a thousand miles. When she landed, her face was as white as paper, and she had to hide for most of the day before daring to move again.

On the fifty-sixth day, she summoned the dark red flying boat. Its hull was engraved with the concealment array patterns of the Ye family, allowing it to fly close to the clouds, saving half its energy. Yin Yue didn't pursue; instead, she slowed her escape, trailing three hundred miles away.

"She wants to conserve her energy, which means she's running out of strength," Yin Yue said calmly. "Let her conserve. In the end, she'll have to pay the price."

On the seventy-ninth day, the flying boat, having exceeded its limits due to excessive speed, was abandoned by Ye Feiyan on a desolate plain. She glanced back at the empty sky behind her and felt despair for the first time—the silver-white streak of light was still there, neither near nor far, like an indelible scar etched into the sky.

No matter how many tricks she plays, she can't get rid of them.

On the ninety-ninth day, the world ahead suddenly changed.

The gray-black mist reached its end, and the wind stopped. In its place came a low, continuous rumble, like a giant beast sleeping at the edge of the horizon, its breath causing even the void to tremble.

Li Hanshan gazed into the distance—on the horizon, a line of dense, impenetrable blackness stretched across the land from east to west, seemingly without end. That blackness undulated, seemed to breathe, like a mountain range standing upright.

It's not a mountain.

It is the sea.

The endless sea.

They had arrived at the Endless Sea. If it were the old Li Hanshan, a hundred days would not have been enough to travel from the Heavenly Demon Sect to the Endless Sea. However, after his cultivation level improved, he saved a lot of travel time, and now it was enough.

"She's gone into the sea." Xiao An's voice came from the wind, tinged with a hint of solemnity. "Senior, the aura ahead... it's all in disarray."