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

Mountain top platform.

Li Hanshan stood before that magnificent hall.

The closer he got, the more he could feel the antiquity of the hall. The entire hall was made of bluish-white jade, and the frost of thousands of years had not left a trace on it. There was no plaque above the door, only a carved lotus flower with seven petals. The pattern of each petal was exactly the same as the embroidery on the hem of the yellow-clad girl in his memory.

Li Hanshan stretched out his hand, his fingertips forming the ancient incantation he knew so well it was almost instinctive.

To seal, to suppress, to gather, to defend.

Unlike when the outer light curtain of the ruins was opened, this time, after the runes on the palace door lit up, they did not immediately retreat—they circled around Li Hanshan three times, as if they were examining him or confirming his identity.

Take a breath.

Two breaths.

Three breaths later, the runes reluctantly dimmed.

boom--

Two jade doors, untouched for millennia, slowly opened inward. An aura that had slumbered for eight thousand years surged forth from within, desolate and vast, carrying a sorrow he could not quite describe.

"Girl," Li Hanshan murmured to himself, "I'm coming in."

-

In the distance outside the hall, towards the direction of Yuheng Palace.

The sect leader stood before the palace gate, gazing at the open hall in the distance, his eyes flickering slightly.

With her current Dao-level divine sense, nothing in the entire Yao Guang Ruins could escape her notice. But the main hall was the only exception—once the door opened, her divine sense probed inside, only to find it like a stone sinking into the sea.

"Even my divine sense can't penetrate it..." she murmured to herself, "What exactly does the restriction in this hall recognize?"

Yan'er stood half a step behind her and whispered, "Sect Leader, Master... he'll be alright, won't he?"

The sect leader did not answer.

She just stared at the palace for a long time.

-

Li Hanshan stepped inside.

The hall was more spacious than expected. There were no treasures galore, no mountains of magical artifacts and elixirs—only a vast, empty white jade palace. In the center stood a jade pillar so thick it would take three people to encircle it, its shaft covered with densely packed runes that extended to the dome, walls, and floor, forming a canopy covering the entire hall…

A grand formation.

No, it's not a grand formation.

Li Hanshan squinted, carefully examining the direction of the runes—the more he looked, the heavier his heart became. It wasn't a formation to trap enemies, nor was it a formation to gather spiritual energy.

That was a "township" formation.

Using the entire main hall as its vessel and eight thousand years of earth veins as its fuel, it suppresses something—the Demon-Suppressing Array.

"not good--"

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he hadn't even had time to turn around—

The attack has begun.

Without any warning, without any sound, something darker than the night, blacker than ink, silently detached itself from the shadow of the jade pillar, skimming the ground like a black lightning bolt, aiming straight for his back!

Its speed surpassed Li Hanshan's reaction time.

He only had time to turn his body half a foot to the side—

"laugh!!"

A sharp pain exploded in his left shoulder. The wisp of black energy grazed past his shoulder, his protective aura crumbled like paper, and his flesh was torn open with a deep gash that exposed bone. Even more terrifying was that there was no blood flowing from the wound—wisps of pitch-black energy were drilling into his meridians through the wound, and wherever it passed, spiritual energy melted away like ice and snow meeting fire.

"What is that?!"

Li Hanshan retreated dozens of feet, then swept his right hand across his shoulder, causing the Pure Yang True Flame to ignite and forcefully expel the wisps of black energy from his wound.

The black mist churned and condensed in the air.

Gradually, it solidified into a human shape.

It was a "person"—if it could even be called a person. Completely black, its skin like a frozen night, it had no nose, no mouth, only a single eye standing upright on its forehead. That eye had no white, no pupil, only a slowly rotating, all-consuming void.

The hairs on Li Hanshan's body stood on end instantly.

Extraterrestrial demons.

Again, extraterrestrial demons! They are not beings of this world, but come from the void beyond, feeding on the world's very essence. Wherever they go, spiritual energy dries up and laws collapse. These extraterrestrial demons have invaded many times, and each time, a piece of this world is torn away—

The depletion of the Sea of ​​Laws and the weakness of the world stem from these very things.

They also destroyed the Yaoguang Sect!

And the aura emanating from this extraterrestrial demon—

Late stage of Void Refinement.

He was four minor realms higher than him.

"Eight thousand years..." the extraterrestrial demon spoke. Its voice didn't seem to come from its mouth, but rather like scraping directly into a person's soul, hoarse and rough, like iron rusted for ten thousand years. "A full eight thousand years... I have finally waited for a living being."

Its Void Eye slowly rotated, locking onto Li Hanshan.

"The remnants of the Yaoguang Sect have trapped me in this coffin for eight thousand years... eight thousand years! They drained the spiritual veins of this hall to nourish this broken formation, grinding me down from the Dao Integration Realm to the late Refinement Void Realm..."

Its voice suddenly rose, and a frenzied greed burst forth from that eye of emptiness.

"But you came."

"You have a scent... a wonderful scent... the scent of emptiness... the scent of the primordial..."

"Eating you—not only will I recover, but I can also return to my peak condition!!"

The moment the words left its mouth, it moved.

Li Hanshan's pupils suddenly contracted.

It didn't "move"—one moment it was a hundred feet away, the next a pitch-black claw was already in front of his throat. It wasn't fast; the claw skipped all the distance in between, appearing out of thin air, as if it had always been there.

clang--!!

The broken sword barely lifted before exploding with tremendous force. Li Hanshan was sent flying backward, his boots carving two deep furrows, each over ten feet long, into the ancient white jade ground. A sweet taste rose in his throat, and he forced back a mouthful of blood.

He didn't even see how the other person got there.

"Space travel..."

Li Hanshan stared intently at the dark figure, his heart sinking.

Graveyard.

He then thought of the black mist on the cemetery.

Back then, he personally summarized that there were three reasons why the extraterrestrial demons were so difficult to deal with: First, ordinary spiritual energy attacks were like mud oxen sinking into the sea, and their quality was not high enough to cause any real damage; Second, each of them mastered spatial techniques, and they could travel short distances as easily as breathing, so you could never truly pinpoint their location; Third, their energy was separated from the spiritual energy system of cultivators by an entire world, and the two naturally repelled each other upon contact.

This one before us is more than a hundred times stronger than the black mist formed from the remnants of the spirits on the burial mound.

The one on the burial mound was, in the end, merely an aggregation of countless fragments of lingering resentment. But the one before us is a true, complete extraterrestrial demon—the one who descended with the great calamity eight thousand years ago and personally tore apart the Yao Guang Sect.

"Have you figured it out?" The extraterrestrial demon's single eye gleamed with a mocking, cat-and-mouse-like glint. "If you have, save your energy. Let me have my fill."

"Eat me?"

Li Hanshan slowly straightened up, and purple-gold flames silently ignited around his body, as if he were wearing a robe woven from flames.

"That depends on—whether your teeth are strong enough."