"Alright, settle down, settle down, minions. With the resources here, I expect a considerable improvement in your current cultivation. This portion of our resources is solely reserved for the Spiritual Bones technique. Try your best tonight and we will see if there's hope for any near-future breakthroughs."

Handing Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian a sack each, Han Xuhan sent them to his backyard to cultivate. Being undead came with many disabilities; the lack of the need to sleep wasn't one of those. Even peak physique transformation realm cultivators had to sleep regularly to be in their best shape.

It was pointless to make little Zhe cultivate the Spiritual Bones technique. Han Xuhan wanted to see if Kong Ye and Yuen Zhou's combined teaching proved to be effective for someone so young. If that bore some fruit, he'd try to teach the technique to little Zhe. After all, it was practically custom-made for living skeletons.

"Papa, I wanna play with them!" the snake screeched from his shoulders as it watched them go outside.

"They're going to work all night, little Zhe. Why don't you go play inside your pit?" Han Xuhan proposed.

"NOOO!!! Yuck! I can't play there!"

"Why not? It's a nice place!"

Hai Yin Zhe didn't answer him, seeming distracted by a small bottle of meridian stimulating syrup on the bedside desk due to its sweet flavor.

"Papa..."

"That's not something you can eat, little Zhe."

"Uwaaaahhh!"

With a soulful cry, little Zhe crawled down inside his robe and started weeping.

". . ."With the most neutral expression he could muster, Han Xuhan opened the cap of the bottle and gobbled up most of the syrup in one go. By the time little Zhe had recovered, the bottle was filled up once more with a mixture of water and the remaining few drops of the syrup, capped and sweet-scented just like before.

"Fine. Here you go. Don't drink the whole bottle at once."

Little Zhe's sniffing stopped instantly. Biting the bottle ferociously, the snake crawled off his shoulders and slithered away outside.

"Don't disturb your big brothers. Play by yourself!" He shouted the reminder and plopped down on his bed, dead tired.

But resting had to be postponed. He still had business to attend to.

Eyes closed, Han Xuhan slipped into his mental world, slowly moving some qi through his invigorated meridians. A second later, he was inside his dao tower, in the form of a mass of light surrounding a miniature version of his physical self; at least that's how Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian had described his appearance.

Han Xuhan made visits to Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian's rooms, and peeked at Hai Yin Zhe's pit from above cautiously.

No abnormal changes. The hole looked as sinister as ever despite being empty. It wasn't too difficult to believe that this pit led to an entire different planet that resembled hell.

Routine checks done, he floated upwards into the dome.

The graffiti on the rounded walls whizzed around, seeming rather lively. Han Xuhan recalled the last time he had entered this place. It hadn't even been a week, yet it felt like a lifetime ago.

He had almost forgotten his status as an Initiate Law Manipulator under Qian Yun's care.

A few seconds later, Han Xuhan found himself in his spawn point inside the realm of laws, surrounded by the globular walls and facing the cylindrical tunnel.

"Ey, Brother Yun, you alive over there?" His shout reverberated through the tunnel.

After almost a minute of silence, Qian Yun's reply sounded.

"I expected you to return sooner. It's been a while since you've asked me to teach you law manipulation."

"I got caught up with some tasks in the sect."

"The tournament, I presume?" Qian Yun remarked in a questioning tone

"....Wait a damned second, how did you come to know about the tournament?"

"That's not something you need to be concerned about," Qian Yun replied in a monotone.

Han Xuhan peered into the cylindrical tunnel for a long moment before backing off from the topic. Some ideas were taking shape in his mind. But more clues had to be collected before he could make a decision. For now, he'd let that pass.

"Make preparations for the displacement spell. I'm sending over the manual you'll be instructing me on."

Han Xuhan left the realm of laws and his dao tower, breaking out of meditation. The manual he had gotten from Mu Ran was finally about to be of some use!

One good thing about the realm of laws was that he could traverse there even when he was asleep. That's how Qian Yun used to summon him initially.

His body never got tired regardless of how long he stayed there. Even his mind didn't feel particularly fatigued, which he suspected was because his actual self, soul, and mind did not get fully transferred to the realm of laws, only a portion or certain aspects of himself did the traveling.

It was an excellent place to cultivate any technique related to the laws of the universe. Naturally, he had come up with the plan to cultivate Kong Ye's technique during the daytime and learn the language of laws from Qian Yun at night.

Han Xuhan opened up a chest he had hidden inside a hole in his ceiling and carried the scroll to his backyard. A checkup on his two older minions showed him that both of them were diligently burning through his resources.

Despite being one of the biggest spendthrifts of the Crimson Snow sect, Han Xuhan felt a phantom pain in his chest watching the scene.

'You two better make that count!' he roared silently before leaving.

At one corner of the backyard, the familiar engravings on the ground had almost been covered by soil and grass.

Han Xuhan cleaned up the dirt and redrew some of the alphabet that had grown obscure.

The displacement spell was not a difficult task to execute. He had grown familiar with the technique after using it so many times to deliver resources to the Holy Land of Laws.

The scroll was delivered smoothly, and in return, Qian Yun sent another pile of garbage. Residue of half-eaten meals, torn-up clothes sporting dried blood, and some foul-smelling vases...

This guy was soiling his backyard from another realm! Yet he could not complain!

Han Xuhan called Zhanxian to clean up the mess and went inside. It was time to give his body some rest, and his cultivation some boost.

Seconds later, he was back inside his spawn point in the realm of laws. Silently, he awaited for Qian Yun to throw a hissy fit. It didn't take very long...

"HAN XUHAN!"

"Present!"

"This...you...HOW?! When did you steal this? This belongs to our Holy Land!" Qian Yun howled in anger.

"I can't see why you're getting so worked up over this, brother. You were tricked into becoming a slave of that Holy Land. It's been what...seven weeks? Seven weeks and you seem ready to kill for your Holy Land."

". . ." Qian Yun failed to follow up with an appropriate answer to that. But when he did reply, it was Han Xuhan's turn to be dumbfounded.

"So it was you all along! You were the one publicizing the cultivation techniques of our Holy Land!" Qian Yun growled, his fury spiking with every syllable.

". . .How did you know?!" Han Xuhan gasped.