Sparring?
The next day, True Bone Peak.
Morning mist wrapped around the mountainside like a gauzy veil, lingering tenderly without dispersing.
The entire True Bone Peak lay silent in the darkness before dawn. Only the cave mansion at the summit faintly emitted a few glimmers of cold, ghostly light, as though a sleeping colossal beast were hidden deep within the mountain's belly, drawing breath in its dreams.
Inside the cave mansion, the stone door of a secret chamber was tightly shut.
The four walls were all made of indestructible Azure Nether Stone, densely inscribed with array patterns.
Those patterns were intricate and profound, like ancient restrictions passed down from antiquity. They glimmered faintly at that moment, sealing off every sound and trace of aura from the outside world. Within the secret chamber, there was no alternation of sun and moon, no sound of wind or rain—only absolute silence, and within that silence, the faint, almost imperceptible sound of breathing.
At the center of the secret chamber, a lovely figure sat cross-legged, like a flawless ice sculpture.
She wore a plain-colored dress, its sleeves and hem hanging motionlessly.
The fabric was no ordinary silk. It had been refined from thousand-year Snow Silkworm Silk mixed with Cold Jade Marrow, flowing with a faint moonlike sheen in the dim secret chamber. It made her skin appear whiter than snow, crystalline and translucent, as though the slightest touch would draw forth a chill.
She was Han Yan.
Han Yan's eyes were tightly closed, her long lashes trembling faintly like fans. Her features were exquisite beyond compare, yet they carried an aloof chill that kept others a thousand miles away—the unique temperament of a ghost cultivator, cold and unfathomable, as if she had emerged from an icy abyss beneath the Nine Netherworlds.
Yet upon closer