This woman was so gentle in appearance, yet her words cut like blades of ice. "Have you changed your mind, then?" Han Li exhaled, uttering a remark that surprised the woman. "I suppose you're not entirely useless after all—at least you still have some sense!" said the woman, remaining composed. "If you truly intend to kill me, I'm certain I won't have a single moment to open my eyes!" Han Li smiled calmly, his demeanor unchanged. "I'm Nan Gong Ping—call me by my name, please. It sounds as if I'm some old lady!" said the woman, turning her head back without expression, offering no further comment. Hearing this, Han Li paused momentarily, then silently chided himself: "Having reached the Dan stage, isn't she supposed to be a grandmother by now?" Han Li's true energy had been completely drained by her, leaving him deeply frustrated. Yet, with his life hanging in her hands, he could only quietly curse her under his breath. "Although you treated me as your cousin yesterday and only saved me then, I still owe you a debt of gratitude—after all, it's my personal favor, Nan Gong Ping. Moreover, I accidentally absorbed your true energy last night, which helped stabilize my condition and prevent it from worsening. This favor I will surely repay." The woman spoke calmly, facing away from Han Li. "These two incidents are merely a slight reprimand for you!" Nan Gong Ping said, her voice growing cold. Yet when she spoke of being pressed by Han Li, a faint blush rose to her cheeks—though it quickly faded, and her expression turned as frosty as ever. Hearing this, Han Li found himself at a loss. When it came to matters of propriety between the sexes, trying to reason with a female cultivator at the Jian Dan stage was simply self-inflicted trouble. A single disagreement might well earn him two more slaps! At this moment, he was determined to slice through the meat on his plan board exactly as he wished. Moreover, he sensed that this woman's treatment of him may not have stemmed solely from yesterday's accidental encounter, but rather from a genuine desire to teach him a lesson—to settle the score with Nan Gong Wan. With this thought, Han Li suppressed his rising anger, gently stroked the slightly swollen cheeks, and remained silent. Seeing Han Li so accommodating, without uttering a single protest, Nan Gong Ping was momentarily surprised. Indeed, just as Han Li had anticipated, this woman had long been preparing for the moment when Han Li would raise any objection about yesterday's events—she would then immediately give him further cause to feel the pressure. Yet now, Han Li's quiet, tactful demeanor had left her without any further grounds to act. Thus, she only coldly exhaled and said without hesitation, "Since the slap has already been delivered, I shall now explain how I intend to repay your great kindness. I have two options for you: first, I can present you with a substantial number of spiritual stones—so many that you will be utterly astonished—enough to compensate not only for the loss of your cultivation level but also for the act of saving your life. Alternatively, you may accompany me to join the retreating delegation of our sect. Once our six sects have stabilized, I will personally prepare some spiritual pills and assign you a young female disciple from our sect to jointly cultivate with you. This way, you will be able to restore your original cultivation level swiftly. You have merely suffered a significant depletion of your true energy; thus, when you undergo renewal, there will be no further obstacles." As I suspect, with just a few decades of dedicated effort, you should be able to restore yourself to your former state. Of course, during this time, if I feel like it, I might even pass on a few of our sect's secret techniques to you! After all, our Yanyue Sect is quite different from your Huangfeng Valley—a rather eclectic and mixed-up lineage. Many of our secret arts remain strictly internal, passed down only within the family, and their wonders are simply beyond the imagination of outsiders. The very technique I absorbed from you yesterday—automatically drawing upon your cultivation—was one such secret. This truly seemed strange—had the other party set some kind of trap for him? Han Li thought this as he hesitated, glancing at Nan Gong Ping. Yet in her eyes, he saw a faint, complex expression—seeming both hopeful and slightly anxious. Han Li was momentarily taken aback, even more confused. He rubbed his nose vigorously, drew his arms close, and rested his right hand on his chin, pondering deeply. After a full incense-burn duration, Han Li still hadn’t spoken. But Nan Gong Ping couldn’t help but raise her elegant brow, her lips slightly parted, urging him: “Then, have you decided?” Her expression now clearly showed impatience. Upon hearing her prompt, Han Li lifted his head, glanced at her thoughtfully, and then slowly said: “I’ve decided—I’ll take the first condition. All I need from you is a few spiritual stones. As for my cultivation level, I’ll find ways to restore it myself. You needn’t worry about that.” His tone remained calm and composed. Nangong Ping was momentarily stunned by Han Li's decision, her face revealing a strange expression. She studied Han Li's features for a while, then suddenly raised her hand and tossed a red storage sack toward him. "The spiritual stones are inside, along with some commonly used materials—I'm sending them all to you," Nangong Ping said, her voice slightly cold. Han Li paid no attention to her tone and simply grasped the storage sack in his hands, then immersed his awareness into it to scan its contents. Even though he had anticipated something, the dozens of mid-tier spiritual stones and the variety of miscellaneous materials still surprised him. Suddenly, Han Li brightened, lifting his head and urgently asking, "Master, do you still have any more Yuan-Yu stones? Could you possibly give me a few more?" Han Li's words caused a flicker of surprise in the woman's eyes. Yet after quietly searching her person for a moment, she produced several white jade stones and tossed them over. Han Li received them with great delight. Thus, the materials he needed to repair the teleportation array were already at hand, no need to search for them. "Is there anything else? If not, I shall be on my way," Nan Gong Ping observed coldly as she watched Han Li's actions, suddenly speaking without any expression. "Oh... nothing at all to trouble you, sir!" Han Li straightened his posture and shook his head. Hearing this, Nan Gong Ping gave a soft, disdainful huff and immediately turned to walk toward the entrance of the tree hollow. But as she reached the entrance, she paused and turned back, speaking calmly: "Han Li, I wonder if you're truly foolish, or simply showing off your cleverness!" With that, a sword flashed from her sleeve, and in a moment of white light, she had stepped onto it. Yet at that very moment, from behind her, Han Li uttered a lazy remark: "Master, don't forget to ask Nan Gong Wan to say hello to me!" Upon hearing this, Nan Gong Ping's form paused momentarily, then remained silent, transforming into a streak of white light and soaring upward through the entrance. He didn't know whether she had agreed or had simply ignored him altogether. Seeing this, Han Li chuckled softly, rubbed his nose, and then sat down squarely on the ground, staring blankly at the entrance of the cave, lost in thought. To this day, he still couldn't understand how his entire cultivation could have been drained away by this woman. Was the Masked Moon Sect's technique truly that dominant? Wasn't it even more strange than the blood sacrifice ritual of the Black Death Sect? However, Han Li believed that such a technique for absorbing a person's cultivation must have numerous limitations and drawbacks; otherwise, the cultivators of the Masked Moon Sect would have been wiped out one after another throughout the immortal realm. Han Li's conjecture turned out to be remarkably accurate. It was actually a matter of pure coincidence that Nangong Ping could absorb Han Li's true energy. After performing her secret technique, her own true energy had already been severely depleted. Unless something unexpected occurred, she would surely experience a significant decline in her cultivation level. Although she could still maintain the level of a Condensation Stage cultivator, several decades of dedicated cultivation had undoubtedly been lost. After the disappearance of her secret techniques, she had assumed herself would fall into the hands of those two magicians, and thus resolutely activated the cultivation technique known as "The True Decision of Cycles." Once this technique was employed, any external observer using spiritual energy to probe her body would be naturally drawn and held fast by the spiral true energy forming within her, with their own true energy cultivation gradually being completely drained. Had it not been for the fact that the young woman awoke promptly and halted the technique in time, Han Li would have likely lost even his final reserves of cultivation. Of course, this unusual technique comes with extremely strict conditions: it must be activated only when the practitioner is experiencing significant depletion of true energy. Secondly, if, after the technique has been practiced for some time, no other practitioner's qi replenishes the internal deficiency within the user, the practitioner will eventually experience a complete contraction of their qi, leading to a self-explosive demise—essentially a semi-sacrificial technique. However, what seems most underwhelming is that although this ability can draw upon others' qi, it is limited to only restoring the user's original deficiency, and cannot be used to enhance the practitioner's own spiritual power or cultivation level in any way.