Ten Years, a Hundred Battles, One Step Away, an Army at Yang Pass!

He rose and pushed open the door.

The wind atop Yang Pass's walls was as bitter as ever. In the distance, the Sea of Yin Qi churned just as it had before, as though his five thousand years of seclusion had been no more than a brief descent beneath the surface.

Those five thousand years of cultivation had been a long, painstaking refinement inside the Eastern Emperor Bell, yet only an instant had passed outside.

But Li Beichen's progress was real.

He no longer needed to sit in stillness and accumulate power. He needed to nourish his Dao through battle, testing it again and again in combat until he forged a breakthrough.

From then on, he joined a Quasi-Saint-level squad and began hunting deep within the Sea of Yin Qi.

After a mission, others often needed days or even months of rest to recover in body and mind. Li Beichen moved almost without pause.

No sooner had one squad returned than he secured a place with the next, leaving himself scarcely a moment to breathe.

Word of this pace soon spread through Yang Pass. Even Quasi-Saints hardened by countless battles took notice.

More than once, people urged him not to throw himself into such endless, exhausting slaughter. However deep his foundations, they feared that too much strain would eventually leave hidden damage.

The matter even reached his master, Yang Jian.

Yang Jian came to see him in person. After his Heavenly Eye swept over the flow of Li Beichen's energy and the state of his Dao foundation, he said only one thing.

"No harm. Let him go. This is his road to becoming a Quasi-Saint."

Only then did the others fall silent. They finally understood that Li Beichen was unlike ordinary Great Luo cultivators—or even ordinary Quasi-Saints.

Under a hunting