The Eternal Saint of Alchemy

He watched for a whole night, and when dawn broke, he closed the scroll. The spirit core started operating on its own, adjusting its frequency to a new one that was even tighter and smoother than the day before.

While the cultivation of the Moon Rank doesn't require a hundred days, it still needs a stable process free from any interference.

He checked the time, then rolled up the reel and opened the window to let in some fresh air.

As dawn rises from the horizon, it connects the gray area with the aurora plain.

Before the Moon Steps Seclusion Plan had even officially begun, the White Tower received an urgent letter from West Wind Fortress.

Scarface arrived at the edge of the Gray Zone with his two henchmen. He hurriedly walked up to Xiao Fan and said, "Under the ice field north of the Aurora Plain, someone is digging on a large scale. The people we sent couldn't figure out what it was, but the ground shook several times, as if something was moving."

Xiao Fan immediately led Scarface towards the northern part of Aurora Plains.

The ice field was riddled with potholes, beneath which lay an ancient building complex. A huge square stone slab covered the ground, its surface engraved with spiritual energy channels, exactly in the same location as the White Tower.

Several openings had been dug in the drainage channel, and a faint silver spiritual energy slowly seeped out from the cuts, like a broken blood vessel that was still bleeding.

Scarface pointed to the depths of the pit and said, "When we arrived, they had already escaped. However, the digging tools were left behind—cold, hard rock drills commonly used by separatists, engraved with their special runes."

Xiao Fan squatted at the other end of the passage and observed the speed and direction of the spiritual energy leakage. He discovered that this passage was connected to the core passage of the northern branch of the Aurora Plain.

If left unchecked, the efficiency of spiritual energy transmission through this passage will gradually decrease, thus affecting the coverage of this area by the entire white tower projection.

He decided to plug the leak first, and only after confirming that his progress had reached the monthly level would he begin to systematically repair the northern branch.

The process of plugging the leak was much simpler than he had imagined, because although the spiritual energy in the channel had leaked out, the overall structure was still intact. As long as he used spiritual energy of the same attribute to reconnect them, he could repair it.

He placed his palm on the inner wall of the guide channel at the break and used the composite spiritual power tempered by the spiritual core to fuse them together piece by piece. In less than half an hour, the three broken parts had been repaired.

Scarface watched as he finished welding the last guide channel before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

"But the people who dug the tunnel ran away so cleanly, they must have had informants who knew we were coming. It's crystal clear who's watching you now."

Xiao Fan stood up, patted the frost off his body, and glanced at the edge of the pit he had dug, where some frost still remained.

"That person ran very fast, leaving all the tools at the scene without deliberately erasing any traces. The rate at which spiritual energy leaked from the broken section was also controlled to a level that could be detected. All of this had only one purpose—to avoid destruction and to repair it themselves."

When he crouched down to examine the damaged flow channel, the shape and depth of the cut revealed the excavator's precise blueprints, showing where the weak points were and where a single blow could break the structure without damaging the main body.

The letter Xie Changfeng left behind before he left resurfaced in his mind: "A new faction has emerged, and those old guys with differing ideas have been marginalized."

Compared to Zhou Lao's generation, this group is much more radical and has a better understanding of the weaknesses of the spiritual energy network.

These three cracks are not too deep; with his strength as a Star Rank cultivator, he can easily repair them.

In fact, they didn't really want to destroy the city, but rather wanted Roland to explore the deep structure inside the northern branch and guide him in the direction they wanted.

After returning to the White Tower, he activated the holographic projection and redrawn the spiritual energy structure diagram of the north side of Aurora Plain.

After the passage was repaired, he found several spare interfaces, the shapes of which were the same as the cold marks he had seen in the deep purple crystal of the Split Sect.

Once these connection points are activated, a new passage will open up to the depths of the Aurora Plains, which is one of the coordinates that are "recommended to be explored first" mentioned on the last page of the Moon Scroll.

The newly arrived separatist disciple has already shown him the next step.

These backup interfaces are obviously meant to be fully activated only when one reaches the Moon Rank cultivation level.

These people have been observing in secret for over a hundred years; it's time to break the last few seals left by the Grandmaster of Alchemy.

A cold wind blew from the north, making his clothes flutter loudly.

He turned around and walked towards the white tower.

Behind him, the waterway had returned to calm, with only a few excavation marks not covered by the new snow, looking like shallow scars.

In the afternoon, Xiao Fan began preparing for his Moon Rank cultivation.

It is expected to take thirty days, much shorter than the one hundred days required for the Star Rank, but the requirements are higher. It cannot be interrupted or distracted.

Ning Yao volunteered to take on the role of guard. She walked around the white tower once, while two members of the Silver Hammer Society guarded the two sides of the tower. Cultivator Cheng remained inside the tower, just in case.

Xiao Fan sat cross-legged in the center of the third floor, unfolded the moon-grade metal scroll, placed it in front of his knees, and began to finely adjust the scroll according to the instructions on it.

The spiritual energy recombination at the Moon Rank is completely different from that at the Star Rank.

The star staircase is like widening a broad river, while the moon staircase is like polishing the riverbed layer by layer, filtering out the impurities in the water layer by layer.

His control over spiritual power has reached a new level; he can even precisely control the subtle changes in the light patterns on the surface of the spiritual core.

This seclusion has lasted for fifteen days. On the holographic projection, three faint spiritual energy fluctuations appeared to the north of Aurora Plain.

Ning Yao noticed it while on patrol, but the fluctuation quickly disappeared. After checking, Cheng Xiushi concluded that it was just caused by the resonance of Moon-Rank spiritual energy and had no substantial impact.

On the twenty-third day, when Xiao Fan adjusted the frequency of his spiritual energy output, he triggered "Resonance" on a Moon Rank scroll. When he adjusted the frequency of his spiritual energy to the appropriate position, the entire White Tower lit up with silver light.

As the silver light flashed, the clarity of the entire White Tower area improved once again, and the backup interfaces on the northern branch were revealed for the first time—they were downward-extending passages, each connecting to an underground passage that had never been made public before.