The Eternal Saint of Alchemy

Late at night on the twenty-ninth day, his psionic core finally completed its final adjustments.

The feeling of newly generated spiritual energy flowing through the meridians is like a layer of silvery liquid, smooth and dense, without any obstruction.

The Moon Steps technique has finally been mastered.

He closed his eyes and sensed his spiritual core. The stability of the spiritual core was indeed much better than what was recorded on the scroll, and the structure of the spiritual power had become more refined. The spiritual power in his dantian was like a precision machine that had undergone precise adjustments.

He did not stand up immediately, but continued to meditate, practicing the Moon-Rank Technique from beginning to end.

After confirming that everything was normal, he opened his eyes and saw a faint ray of golden sunlight shining in through the window.

More than 30 days have passed. Although time flies, every step we take is in the most suitable place.

He stood up, closed the metal scroll on his lap, and walked down the spiral staircase.

When they reached the first floor, Master Cheng was standing on the stone steps, facing the direction of the white pagoda. He turned around, looked Xiao Fan up and down, and a smile appeared on his lips.

"Moon Rank?"

Xiao Fan stretched his wrists, shoulders, and neck.

"Now we can check the backup power supply to the north."

That morning, he arrived at the far north ice field once again.

The traces left after the channel was repaired have been covered by new snow, but the spirit core can clearly sense the location of those backup interfaces.

He crouched down in front of the first backup port, clearing away the snow to reveal a round stone slab, its color slightly different from the surrounding ice. The runes on the slab's edge were identical to the markings on the Split faction's deep amethyst.

Xiao Fan placed one hand on the stone slab, channeling his spiritual power—his Moon-Rank cultivation—into the stone slab.

When spiritual energy was injected into the stone slab, a silver halo appeared on it, the center of the slab sank in, and then split open to reveal a stone staircase extending downwards.

The space below the stairs was filled with a spiritual energy different from that of the original Aurora space. Its frequency was slower and its duration was longer, as if it had awakened from a deep sleep.

Xiao Fan walked down the steps one by one, and when he reached the bottom, the stone slabs had returned to their original state.

The staircase wasn't long, only about twenty steps, before he saw the end of it.

The space below isn't very large; it looks like a horizontal passageway extending outwards.

The walls on both sides of the passageway are inlaid with the same dark silver material as the square platform. Every so often, a bronze disc is inlaid on it. The surface of the disc has been oxidized to green, but the structure is still intact, and spiritual energy can still flow inside.

After walking for about 15 minutes, he came to a fork in the road.

The passages on both sides are exactly the same, the only difference being that the bronze discs on the left are much denser than those on the right.

He used his spiritual core to sense the flow of spiritual energy in the two channels, confirming that the spiritual energy on the right would merge with the main trunk of the aurora, while the spiritual energy on the left would be guided into another independent circulation system.

This time, he took the left-hand path.

After walking for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the passage suddenly narrowed, allowing only one person to pass at a time. At the end of the passage was an arched stone door that looked exactly like the entrance to the Gray Domain.

The stone gate had no patterns or designs, but instead emitted a faint silver light.

Just as Xiao Fan reached out towards the stone door, the new life force within his spiritual core resonated with the dark silver light, and the stone door silently opened inward.

Inside the door was a small stone chamber.

Each of the four walls of the stone chamber was inlaid with a square silver mirror, reflecting his own image. The mirror facing the wall was slightly larger than the other three, and beneath it was an open rectangular jade box.

He walked to the counter and looked inside—it was a white bone fragment, smaller than the palm of his hand, and its shape was very similar to the bone fragment he had found on the Silver Plains, except that it did not have a star map drawn on it.

It begins at Starfall Plain, passes through Aurora Plain, traverses Gray Zone, crosses Silver Plain, and finally ends on the black soil at the westernmost edge of Skyfire Plain.

It turns out that the teleportation rift beneath the stone tablet is connected by an undiscovered underground pipe, which in turn connects to the White Tower's spiritual energy network.

In other words, the entire system set up by the Grandmaster of Elixir was not composed of several independent relics, but rather connected by underground pipes to form a complete whole.

Each relic plays a unique role—the stele represents the entrance, the gray area represents the hub, the aurora plain represents the energy source, and the starfall principle represents the central control console.

Xiao Fan took out the bone fragment from the jade box, opened it, and saw that it was engraved with a few small characters: "This painting was completed by Fang Tai after seven days of seclusion."

Future generations can use this diagram to check the condition of each section of the pipe. Once the pipes are connected, the spiritual energy of the entire area will stabilize.

He carefully stored the bone fragments into his spatial artifact, checked the stone chamber again to make sure nothing was missed, and then left the chamber.

As he left, the stone gate slowly closed, returning to its original silver color.

During his return to the ground, he kept comparing the pipes on the skeletal map with the projection of the entire white tower. Apart from the northern end of the gray area, there were two branches that were not projected.

These branches are labeled "backup interfaces," and they are exactly the same shape as the backup interfaces north of Aurora Plains, only larger in area.

If these backup interfaces are activated and connected one by one, the redundancy of the entire spiritual energy network and its ability to resist risks will be improved accordingly.

When he returned to the Aurora Plains, the wind was blowing the snow on the ground so hard that it was whistling, and the silvery snowflakes formed a small arc of seven colors in the air.

He stood under the arc of light, holding the new bone fragment in his palm, feeling the newly generated Moon-Rank spiritual power appearing in segments, just as recorded on the bone fragment.

The next step is obvious—to activate the backup interfaces one by one, opening up all the pipes in the bone fragments, thus restarting the underground system set up by the Grandmaster of the Void.

There are six backup interfaces marked on the bone fragment map. One has been activated in the northern part of Aurora Plain, and the remaining five are located in two deep-buried locations on the eastern side of the gray area, the middle section of the silver plain, the southern edge of Starfall Plain, and the westernmost part of Aurora Plain.

Xiao Fan went to each of the locations marked on the map in order. He found the corresponding entrances to the first three locations and successfully activated the internal spiritual energy circuits.