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

In the lower deck, Ye Feiyan huddled in a corner, hugging her knees. Last night's words, "We'll continue tomorrow," hung like a knife over her head, leaving her speechless.

She had cried and hated, but in the end, all that remained was a deep-seated helplessness. Even the "Demon Seed" was broken; she had no more cards to play.

The portion of spiritual energy that was drained last night represented hundreds of years of her arduous cultivation. She could sense that her cultivation level had fallen to the threshold of the early stage of the Void Refinement realm; another half step and she would fall out of the Void Refinement realm.

And the one who started all of this is currently living a carefree life right above her.

When Li Hanshan pushed the door open, her body was taut like a fully drawn bow.

He simply tossed a fasting pill in front of her, glanced at her, said nothing, and turned to leave.

The hatch closed. Ye Feiyan stared at the pill for a long time, and finally, with trembling hands, swallowed it.

-

On the deck, the sea breeze was blowing.

Xiao An stood barefoot in front of the helm, her hands gripping the steering wheel. A deep blue soul force flowed slowly along the array patterns, making the flying boat stable and straight under her control. Hearing footsteps, she turned and gave Li Hanshan a sweet smile.

Li Hanshan did not smile.

His gaze swept across the ship's railing and landed on the top deck, his brow furrowing slightly.

His divine sense, like mercury spilling onto the ground, silently permeated the top floor. Inside the cabin, Yin Yue sat cross-legged, her body surrounded by silvery-white spiritual energy that flowed slowly—very slowly. The medicinal power of the pills was gradually dissolving, and the old wounds were healing little by little, but in Li Hanshan's eyes, that speed was no different from a snail's crawl.

At this rate, it will take her at least a year and a half to recover to the point where she can help him break through to the Void Refinement stage.

A year and a half later, the daylilies were all too old.

Li Hanshan climbed the steps and pushed open the top-floor cabin door without knocking.

"Let me help you."

Yin Yue opened her eyes. When she saw it was him, her gaze lingered on his face for a moment, and then, as if she had thought of something, a thin blush appeared on her usually cool face at a visible speed.

"No," she said.

"Why not?" Li Hanshan said matter-of-factly. "The Heavenly Demon Sect has been destroyed, the sect you've hated for hundreds of years has collapsed overnight; and Ye Feiyan, whom you despise, is now my prisoner—double happiness! Such a big event, shouldn't we celebrate?"

Hidden Moon: "..."

"There are many ways to celebrate." Her ears turned red, but her voice remained cool and indifferent. "Your so-called celebration, is it just another attempt to—"

"I do want to," Li Hanshan answered crisply and decisively, without even blinking.

The cabin was quiet for three breaths.

Yin Yue took a deep breath and turned her head away: "My injuries can be healed with medicine, no need for you to trouble yourself—"

"Pills?" Li Hanshan scoffed, walked straight to her and sat down cross-legged. "I just used my divine sense to examine your meridians. There's a crack in the third bone under your left rib, seven cold energies are wrapped around your heart meridian, and the Demon Moon in your dantian is just a shell—your injuries will take a year and a half to heal with pills, by which time it will be too late."

Yinyue's eyelashes trembled slightly.

Even Yinling might not be able to see her injuries so accurately.

As he spoke, he suddenly changed the subject, his tone as casual as if he were talking about the weather.

"Besides, I used Ye Feiyan's cultivation last night, and my cultivation level is already at its maximum. Since I'm not breaking through to the Void Refinement stage, this cultivation level is just sitting there, so I might as well use it to help you."

Hidden Moon: "..."

She turned her head, and for the first time, a very complex expression appeared in her clear, cold eyes—a mixture of shock and disgust.

"You're taking her…" Her fingers tightened slightly, "to use her cultivation to heal my wounds?"

Yin Yue looked at him and suddenly realized that she couldn't find any words to refute him.

What's even stranger is that beneath that strange feeling in her heart, there was also a faint, inexplicable sense of pleasure. That woman had set a trap for Li Hanshan last night, but her attempt to steal the chicken failed, and she lost some of her cultivation; now, that lost cultivation was to be transferred into her meridians to heal her injuries.

An eye for an eye.

"You need to recover quickly so I can help you break through to the Void Refinement stage." Li Hanshan became more serious. "That's the important thing."

Yin Yue's expression also gradually darkened.

"Breaking through to the Void Refinement stage..." she whispered, "With your foundation, you should have already achieved that. Why rush it?"

"Because there's no time left."

Li Hanshan stood up and walked to the porthole. Outside, the sky above the endless sea was as gloomy as iron, with black waves surging and stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Yin Yue, look at the current situation." His voice wasn't loud, but each word struck firmly. "The Heavenly Demon Sect has been destroyed. This is a good thing for you—the world is vast, and no sect can capture you again. But for me, it's precisely the beginning of danger."

"The Heavenly Demon Sect's foundation of tens of thousands of years was wiped out overnight. Tens of thousands of disciples surrendered or died, but some still managed to escape. The elders at the Void Refinement stage, the deacon at the Nascent Soul stage, and those disciples scattered outside who couldn't make it back to the sect in time—these lives were lost because I led the army of the Immortal Alliance to their doom."

"How long will it take for the news to spread? A month? Half a month?"

"By then, the entire Central Continent will know that it was Li Hanshan of the Joyful Union Sect who set up a teleportation array in the heart of the Heavenly Demon Sect, leading a massive army to break through mountains, destroy sects, and sever the lineage of humanity. The three sects of the Heavenly Demon Sect have been closely linked for tens of thousands of years. Now that the Heavenly Demon Sect has fallen, the people of the Joyful Union Sect and the Yinming Sect will have to sleep with one eye open at night. They will see me as a thorn in their side."

"You know the way demonic cultivators operate." He turned to look at her. "There's no reasoning with them, no rules to follow. Today a Void Refinement cultivator will try to assassinate me, tomorrow a group of assassins will try to kill me, and the day after tomorrow, some old monster who has been in seclusion for a thousand years might jump out—not for anything else, but to kill me to establish their authority and to vent their demonic anger."

"Besides, your father is not dead yet."

Yin Yue's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Senior Yinling said he fell into the void turbulence, and his fate is unknown." Li Hanshan's voice was steady. "But you and I both know that those who achieve Dao Integration are indestructible and indestructible as long as heaven and earth do not collapse. If he lives and recovers from his injuries, he will return one day—he can't take on the army of the Immortal Alliance, and he can't afford to offend Senior Yinling and the other two combined. But he still needs to find a place to vent his anger."

"At that time, the Holy Maiden of the Heavenly Demon Sect, Luo Hongying, and me, this easy bone to chew on—" Li Hanshan shrugged, "Who do you think he'll approach first?"

The air inside the cabin had cooled down a bit.

"I'm a peak Nascent Soul cultivator, someone who's considered a figure in the Central Continent, but in this situation—" he smiled, "I'm like a bone stuck in the throat of the demonic path, everyone wants a bite."

Inside the cabin, you could hear a pin drop.

"Therefore, I must break through to the Void Refinement stage as soon as possible." Li Hanshan squatted down again, looking into her eyes. For the first time, his gaze was serious and without a trace of jest. "And you need a safe place to recover from your injuries, and you need someone to shield you from the storms outside. Our interests have always been intertwined."

"Hidden Moon——"

He looked at her and asked, word by word:

"Would you be willing to help me?"

Yin Yue was stunned.

She cultivated demonic arts for hundreds of years, crawled out of the blood pool, and secured her position as a saintess amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Later, she infiltrated the Immortal Alliance alone, living a life of constant danger for hundreds of years. In her entire life, no one had ever looked at her so seriously and asked, "Are you willing to help me?"—not as an order, not as a means of exploitation, but as placing the choice squarely in her hands.

As if possessed, she heard herself say:

"……good."

She froze before she could even finish the word. For hundreds of years, she had cultivated demonic arts, making promises to her father, her sect, and even to her undercover superior in the Immortal Alliance—never once from the bottom of her heart.

This is the first time.