As soon as Lü Tianmeng died, the hundreds of small jade rulers lost the spiritual energy supporting them. In an instant, their green light shattered. They then gathered together, revealing their original talisman form before drifting lightly to the ground, landing right between Han Li, Xuan Le, and the blood-red spider.
Xuan Le stared at Han Li with an expressionless face, making no move. Han Li glanced at the blood spider, then looked at Xuan Le, before silently raising his hand. A white scale shield materialized. At the same time, eight streaks of white light flared around him, and eight puppet beasts appeared at his side.
Xuan Le’s expression finally shifted slightly. He raised his hand, recalling the small yellow bell, and said flatly, “I never expected Junior Brother Han to also be skilled in puppetry. But your cultivation seems a bit lacking—do you think these few puppets can be my match?”
Han Li’s expression remained unchanged. He merely asked coldly, “Did you release the spider on purpose?”
“That’s right!”
Xuan Le admitted it readily. He flipped his hand, and a red gossamer cloth, similar to a cloak, appeared in his palm.
“Aren’t you afraid of miscalculating and ending up killed by this monster?” Han Li licked his dry lips and sneered.
“Heh. Killed? By this fourth-level demon beast that’s nothing more than a tough body and some brute strength?” Xuan Le mocked, his face full of disdain.
“Still, you’d better play with this Crystal Spider properly. Let’s see if you can keep your little life!”
With that, he draped the gossamer over his body. Though he was still standing there, all traces of his aura vanished instantly.
Han Li was slightly surprised and couldn’t help but stare at the gossamer cloth for a few moments.
By now, Xuan Le was retreating with a smile toward a corner of the cave, looking completely intent on staying out of it. Han Li’s mind raced, and he quickly guessed the gossamer’s purpose. His expression darkened as he hurriedly looked toward the spider.
The blood spider was glaring at him with fierce light in its eyes, its two fangs clacking together. It had already marked him as prey.
Han Li thought for a brief moment, then his figure flickered. He shot at high speed toward the corner where Xuan Le stood.
But the moment the blood spider saw Han Li move, its crimson light surged, and it charged at him too.
However, the puppet beasts—already prepared—opened their mouths and fired successive beams of light in rapid succession. They struck the blood spider squarely, knocking it into several somersaults and temporarily preventing it from chasing Han Li.
Seeing Han Li rushing toward him at terrifying speed, Xuan Le’s heart lurched. He was deeply wary of Han Li’s lightning-fast movement technique and dared not let him get close. Without hesitation, he hurled the small bell at Han Li while radiating light as a fiery-red armor materialized over his body. The gossamer cloth, now useless, was put away.
But when Han Li saw the massive bell bearing down on him, he raised his hand. A small mirror appeared in his palm. A beam of azure light shot out, instantly knocking the expanding bell back to its original size and freezing it in midair.
“The Azure Condensing Mirror!” Xuan Le cried out in alarm. This was a top-grade magical artifact famous throughout their sect. How could he not know it?!
Panic began to set in for Xuan Le. He had thought the Heaven-Shrouding Bell could buy him at least a little time, but Han Li hadn’t even paused. How could he not panic?
Fortunately, the opponent was still over thirty feet away. Xuan Le threw out an Ice Rain talisman he had just pulled out. It instantly transformed into a dense barrage of ice spikes that shot toward Han Li. In his mind, as long as Han Li blocked with his white shield, his speed would surely slow—and that would be enough for him to activate a powerful artifact he had just retrieved.
Han Li saw the mass of ice spikes coming. A cold light flashed in his eyes. Instead of blocking, he waved his hand, storing the small shield in his storage pouch. His speed suddenly doubled, and his body twisted in an impossible contortion, slipping through the ice spike barrage without a scratch.
When Xuan Le saw this, his composed demeanor vanished entirely. His face turned deathly pale.
Seeing Han Li arrive before him in the blink of an eye, Xuan Le had no choice but to forget about activating any artifact. He could only pour all his spiritual energy into the fiery-red armor, praying that this top-grade defensive artifact could withstand the immediate crisis.
When Han Li saw the opponent’s armor blazing with blinding light, killing intent surged in his eyes. He opened his mouth, and a black, pointed object—prepared long in advance—flew out with startling speed. It pierced the armor with a piercing shriek, followed by an earth-shattering boom.
Then a streak of azure sword energy materialized out of thin air. Han Li flickered, and he was already standing behind Xuan Le.
Xuan Le stood frozen in place. The fiery-red armor on his chest now had a fist-sized hole, draining it of all spiritual power and rendering it useless. His head, without any sign, suddenly rolled off his body. After Han Li had broken through the armor, he had used Azure Yuan Sword Energy to directly sever his head. The storage pouch at his waist was naturally snatched away by Han Li in passing.
Han Li looked at the storage pouch in his hand, feeling an indescribable emotion!
A cultivator at Late Foundation Establishment had just been killed like this. Surely he had found it hard to believe before his death.
But Han Li understood clearly. The reason his opponent had fallen to him was partly due to the element of surprise, and entirely because the confined terrain had limited him. In a normal aerial battle between cultivators, his opponent would never have given him a chance to get close. With a distance of dozens of feet between them and the mobility granted by flying artifacts, the opponent’s speed would have been no worse than Han Li’s maximum movement technique.
Moreover, to destroy the opponent’s armor, Han Li had used a one-time self-destructing artifact refined from a juvenile ink dragon horn, trading it for mutual destruction with the armor.
Speaking of this horn, the shopkeeper who had refined the artifact for him had kept lamenting, saying that if this ink dragon horn had grown for another twenty or thirty years, it could have been refined into an incredibly powerful artifact, instead of being used as a consumable because it was too brittle in its early stages.
But now, it seemed using it to kill a Late Foundation Establishment cultivator was still an excellent trade.
Just as Han Li had stored the Azure Condensing Mirror and the opponent’s bell, explosions erupted one after another behind him. He paused, patted his storage pouch without hesitation, and several second-level puppet beasts flew out. The original eight had finally been caught by the blood spider and torn to shreds in a few moments.
Now, the blood spider turned and charged at Han Li again!
Han Li raised his hand. A pair of Black Dragon Grips flew out and suddenly enlarged, intercepting the giant spider in midair.
The puppet beasts’ light beam attacks followed immediately, ceaselessly striking the demon beast’s crimson body, finally pinning it down in one spot, unable to advance.
In desperation, the blood spider sprayed several mouthfuls of spider web. Unfortunately, the moment Han Li saw the beast use this technique, he dodged with a flicker. As for the puppet beasts, any that were too slow and got tangled by the web strands, Han Li immediately recalled to his storage pouch and replaced with another, not interrupting the puppets’ continuous attack.
However, Han Li had to abandon his thought of using the talisman treasure to finish the beast off. After all, using protective shields or artifacts to directly take the spider’s web was unwise.
With no choice, Han Li sighed and maintained this level of attack on the spider, not daring to relax even slightly.
After a quarter of an hour, it finally went as Han Li had predicted. The blood-red color on the spider gradually faded, and pitted damage marks began appearing on its shell. Clearly, this demon beast’s true essence was exhausted, and it could no longer use spiritual energy to coat its entire body and resist the attacks.
A smile appeared on Han Li’s face. The spider seemed to realize the danger too, trying several times to break out of the puppet beasts’ suppression and dash toward the cave entrance, but each time the puppets forced it back with a rapid volley of light beams. In the end, Han Li simply trapped it there to death.
When the blood spider’s last wisp of true essence was depleted, it could only curl into a ball, powerless to fight back. Han Li then switched to the incredibly sharp Silver Glow Sword. With a few steps forward, he severed the spider’s head with a single strike. Sure enough, though the beast’s shell was hard, without magical energy to protect its body, the silver sword broke through its defenses with ease.
After that, Han Li sat down on the ground nearby, silent for a long time.
After a while, he looked around at the many dead cultivators, feeling for the first time how fragile the lives of cultivators could be. It filled him with a touch of sorrow. Perhaps one day, he too would die at the hands of another cultivator, or be devoured by some demon beast?
Once he had rested enough, Han Li first picked up the small jade ruler talisman treasure. Then he searched every corpse for their storage pouches.
Finally, he cautiously approached the teleportation array, his gaze flickering as he studied the five-colored skeleton and the token it held.
“The Grand Teleportation Token! That’s what Lü Tianmeng called this token!” Han Li fell into deep thought.