In great alarm, Han Li thought of another way to dodge, but it was too late.
The giant’s hand radiated with green light and Han Li felt his surroundings grow tense as if it had turned to steel. Even with the immense power of his body, Han Li’s movements slowed and he found it difficult to escape.
In that delay, the giant green hand firmly grabbed him.
The green giant’s strength was absolutely no weaker than Han Li’s.
The giant sinisterly smiled at seeing his strike land true and revealed a violent expression.
Green light surged through his hand as he exerted strength in his hand, intending on crushing Han Li alive.
Han Li’s face largely changed and he suddenly muttered an incantation. Azure light continued to surge through his body, glaring from the giant’s hand. Then, his body seemed to become crushed as it turned into specks of light.
The spirit light condensed in a nearby space, creating an azure talisman. Suddenly, it swept off into the distance.
The giant looked at the display with surprise.
A hundred meters away, space fluctuated, followed by the flicker of Han Li’s appearance. Although he was somewhat pale, he quickly collected himself and summoned the azure talisman into his hand.
As he found himself in a moment of peril, he used the Spiritform Talisman’s ability to substitute himself, thus allowing him to escape calamity and displace himself a distance away.
After tempering the talisman for so many years, the Spiritform Talisman’s abilities were far greater than before.
At that moment, the giant spat out a beam of light at the silhouette, suddenly blurring as he approached the haggard Han Li.
However, despite Han Li’s ruined clothing and pale complexion, he turned to look at the giant with a sinister smile.
Astonishingly, this was a different “Han Li.”
The giant blinked and couldn't help but show his bewilderment.
The “Han Li” before him immediately lit up with black light and suddenly shrunk into a black-haired monkey that was only a half-foot tall.
It was the Weeping Soul Beast!
When Han Li launched his previous attack, he secretly released the Weeping Soul Beast and had it take his form.
The Silver Tier Wood Spirit had been too distracted to notice. With the protection of his illusions and the Weeping Soul Beast, he activated the High Zenith Invisibility Talisman and was able to quietly escape.
Otherwise, with the Wood Spirit’s immense spiritual sense, Han Li truly wouldn’t have been able to fool the giant at such a close distance.
The green giant faintly sensed that something was amiss and recalled the golden specks that Han Li released from his sleeve. Then, his expression sank as he swiped at his back.
As one that was both person and tree, the wood spirit’s body was extremely hardy, but his body’s senses was dull. Originally, he didn’t believe that Han Li had a true method of harming him.
But after he swiped his hand behind him, his eyes lit up as he discovered several inch-large golden beetles laying in his palm.
“What is this?”
The huge giant was startled and soon he clenched his hand, but he unfolded it to discover the beetles were safe.
His face drastically changed.
When Han Li saw this from a distance, a fierce expression appeared on his face and he gave the beetles a command with his spiritual sense.
Suddenly, the giant’s back flared with golden light as half-foot-long golden beetles began to strangely appear. They crawled over half of the giant’s body and began wildly devouring it.
Han Li watched with an emotionless expression, but his heart stirred.
Although the Gold Devouring Beetles were said to have nothing they couldn't eat, that was only a record in the mortal realm. It was also recorded that wood and jade treasures could restrain them. The wood spirit tribe’s half-human half-tree fusion was truly bizarre. Although their bodies resembled huge trees, he wasn’t able to determine if they could be considered wood-type treasures.
As the experiment went on, the giant soon let out a scream of agony. He slapped at his back with all his might, but the beetles continued to fiercely consume him. He near-indestructible crystalline body was now being easily torn apart by the beetles.
With several hundred of these beetles gnawing away at the giant, the giant sensed the agony of being torn apart despite his dulled senses.
Han Li was overjoyed. After he waved his sleeve to collect the Weeping Soul Beast, his body lit up with azure light and he tore through the sky as an azure streak.
Although the Gold Devouring Beetles were enough to deal with the giant, he couldn’t deal with any of the giant’s full-powered attacks. It’d be best if he put distance between them.
“Gold Devouring Beetles! Fully matured Gold Devouring Beetles! You actually possessed such demonic insects!” The giant’s screams sounded as if it was having a most fearsome nightmare.
Soon after, the sounds of repeated explosions sounded and green lights instantly filled most of the sky.
Han Li didn’t turn around and continued his escape with all his speed. In the blink of an eye, he was over the horizon. After several more flickers, he was long gone.
A short moment later, a huge ball of light raised to the sky where the giant originally stood. It flew off past the sky in defeat. The faint silhouette of the badly damage giant could be seen within.
There was a cloud of golden insects closely pursuing it.
With one trailing after another, they flew off a different direction from Han Li.
Not long after, the golden beetle cloud buzzed as they circled and flew back. Not only did they return to their inch-large size, but beetles flew in unorganized disarray.
Fortunately, the Gold Devouring Beetles weren’t slow. They streaked past the air like bolts of lightning.
Five hundred kilometers away in an area with scattered rocks, Han Li sat cross-legged with a pale complexion. He was doing his utmost to command the beetles back to him.
He already consumed a truly significant portion of his spiritual sense.
When the beetles finally returned to him, he eventually lost control of his body as it trembled and fell. At that same time, he put his hands behind his head and let out a painful groan.
A quarter hour later, he was able to collect himself and sit back up.
Using the beetles had been extremely dangerous, resulting in nearly all his spiritual sense being wasted. But even so, his spiritual sense only suffered minor damage.
It seemed he wouldn’t be able to use the beetles for pursuit to prevent excessive drain.
Nevertheless, if he hadn’t pursued the wood spirit with the Gold Devouring Beetles, the wood spirit would have discovered something amiss and wouldn’t have given up so easily.
Now, the Silver Tier Wood Spirit suffered much damage from the Gold Devouring Beetles. Even if he was braver, he wouldn’t dare to continue tangling with Han Li.
Han Li stroked the Spirit Beast Ring underneath his sleeves and let out a long breath.
In a secret forest myriad kilometers away, the Silver Tier Wood Spirit Mu Rui was sitting underneath a huge tree in his giant form. One of his arms and nearly half of his body had disappeared, but countless green specks of light flew out from the forest and wildly rushed into his body.
The giant’s missing body parts regrew at a visible speed.
In the time it took to finish a cup of tea, the specks of light ceased and the giant’s body was completely restored. But when he opened his eyes, they now appeared exceptionally dim.
He held his hands in an incantation gesture and the giant’s body spat out a hollow phantom. It then blurred and condensed into a pale green-skinned wood spirit.
The giant then flashed with light and scattered away, turning into a huge tree.
After the wood spirit returned to its original form, he glanced in the direction where he fought with Han Li.
“How v
ery troublesome. This person possesses hundreds of Gold Devouring Beetles. If I were in peak condition, I could take the risk of killing him and have the beetles lose control.
But after receiving two heavy injuries in succession, I suffered too much damage to my spirit tree. If I encounter those beetles again, I might truly die. It appears that I have no choice but to give up pursuit.” After his expression wavered while in thought, he eventually shook his head and came to a decision.
He turned into a ball of silver light and soared back in the direction of Black Leaves Forest.
Not long after, Han Li restored a portion of his spiritual sense in another area. Not daring to stay in the area any longer, he suppressed his migraine and tore through the sky in an azure streak.
He was heading in the direction of the Southern Skyline.
Two months later, Han Li arrived above a barren plateau. Soon after, he sought out a small earthy mountain in a remote place and burrowed into it with a yellow flash.
In the heart of the mountain, he easily dug out a hidden room thirty-meters-wide and put it into order. Then, he drank several medicine pills and sat down cross-legged.
A month later, Han Li opened his eyes, revealing their recovered spirit. His spirit, mind, and body made a full recovery.
Chapter 1392: Third Refinement of the Thunderstorm Wings
Han Li didn’t immediately stand up. Rather, he started to mutter to himself inside the hidden room.
Not long after, he shook his sleeve and summoned an azure ring in his palm.
It was the storage bracelet of the Black Phoenix Clan’s Xiao Hong.
Although he suppressed her with the Divine Essensefused Mountain and spared her life, her storage bracelet was another story.
It could be considered the price for sparing her life.
As a demon cultivator and direct descendant of her clan, Han Li was very interested in what lay inside the storage bracelet.
With a brief look at the bracelet with his spiritual sense, his face lit up in joy.
It possessed many rare treasures.
First off, demon beast materials occupied nearly half of the storage bracelet with most of them rarely seen on the market. As a member of one of the seven great demon clans, she should have a far easier time gathering materials compared to humans. He was also overjoyed to find eight various-colored top-grade spirit stones shining in the corner.
Although this was the spirit realm, top-grade spirit stones weren’t nearly as precious as one might imagine in the mortal realm. However, they weren’t easily acquired either. Top-grade spirit stones were held in small number by high-grade cultivators, but never in large numbers.
In particular, one of the white spirit stones was a rarely seen wind-attribute spirit stone, much to Han Li’s delight.
Ever since he entered Deep Heaven City, he always wanted to acquire one.
In addition to this, there were also magic tools and various ancient treasures that didn’t catch Han Li’s eyes. These items couldn't compare to his Divine Essensefused Mountain and his Heavenvoid Cauldron.
Perhaps Xiao Hong didn’t care much for these treasures also; otherwise, she would’ve taken them out in battle.
Additionally, there was a small collection of medicine bottles in the bracelet that piqued his interest.
When he took them out in his hand, he began to identify them. Most of them were healing medicines with a few of them being cultivation advancement medicine and rare pill refinement materials.
One of the wooden boxes even contained a Zoysia Dragon Fruit.
Han Li bluntly took that out and put it safely away.
Then, he came across an odd silver bottle that was engraved with a black fire phoenix.
A sparkling golden restriction talisman was sealing it.
When Han Li saw this, his mind trembled.
He tore the talisman off and opened its lid.
Several pops later, three thumb-sized black medicine pills flew out from it and circled once in the air. They promptly turned into three nimble black flame phoenixes and flew off in different directions.
“Yi!”
Han Li yelped in surprise. Nevertheless, he reacted immediately. A grey mist of light flew out and swept up the three phoenixes.
In the grey light, the phoenixes slowly revolved in the air. Light flashed and turned into three jet-black medicine pills.
The grey mist folded and withdrew, dropping the three phoenixes into Han Li’s palm back in the form of medicine pills.
Han Li picked up one of the pills with two fingers and brought it close to his eye.
As medicine pills that can transform and fly, they were definitely valuable.
As Han Li’s expression turned grave, his mind was filled with various legends regarding medicine pills.
“Black Flame Pills!”
From the pill’s provoking appearance, Han Li’s eyes flickered and he immediately recognized them. His face lit up in ecstasy.
In the entire world, only the Black Phoenix Clan can refine these pills by using their personal flames. Even pill refinement masters aren’t able to duplicate them.
Refining these pills requires them to absorb the life flames of a Black Phoenix in addition to other mysterious materials. That is to say, even the Black Phoenix Clan can’t produce many of them. A clan member must be at Deity Transformation-stage or above, and even then, they can only refine a single pill every thousand years.
With high-grade Black Phoenix cultivators rarely seen, the Black Flame Pills are as previous as one might imagine. The pills are prized among humans and demons. The most important reason is that they are an optimal supplementary medicine pill for breaking the bottleneck to the Spatial Tempering stage.
Now that he had three of these pills, his odds of breaking through to Spatial Tempering increased by twenty percent. This left Han Li overjoyed.
After some more careful examination and verifying the identity of the Black Flame Pills, Han Li suppressed his excitement, returned the medicine pills to the bottle, and sealed it with talisman before carefully putting it away.
The most important point of breaking through to Spatial Tempering was unifying the five elements in his body into one. After cultivating the Divine Essensefused Light, he didn’t need to put much more consideration into that.
And with the three Black Flame Pills, he could search for more medicine and secret techniques to increase his odds of breaking through. His hopes of breaking through now greatly increased.
But now, his main goal would be to quickly cultivate to late-Deity Transformation stage. By using a large number of medicine pills, it’d only be a matter of time before he broke through the bottleneck of the mid-Deity Transformation stage.
What was most troublesome would be that his original medicine pills would lose efficacy after he entered late-Deity Transformation stage. He would need higher-grade pills in order to further progress.
While there were medicine pills effective for late-stage cultivators, they weren’t large in number. The most famous of them was the True Toad Liquid. In fact, the reason why he risked taking this mission was largely related to the spirit toad it required.
After some thought, Han Li suddenly recalled the mysterious guest that knocked on his door before he left Deep Heaven City and narrowed his eyes.
If it truly went as smoothly as that person proposed, he could obtain much True Toad Liquid. Although he couldn't use the green liquid to produce the medicine limitlessly, it would be enough for him to cultivate for some time.
Having carefully remembered the promises of his visitors, Han Li felt there were no other problems and let out a long sigh before tossing the matter to the back of his mind. With a single hand, he swept his hand past the storage bracelet and took another extremely important gain.
It was a sparkling rainbow feather. It was the Rainbow Phoenix Feather acquired by the two women of the Ye Clan.
Han Li lightly stroked the feather and the air shined with rainbow light
, nearly submerging the entire room with it.
Han Li’s heart stirred.
It was worthy of its reputation as the life feather of a True Spirit grade heavenly phoenix. With only the feather, it released an aura above any mystical bird found in the mortal realm.
Han Li stared at the feather and his vision flickered. He suddenly opened his mouth and spat out azure-white lightning.
A soft roll of thunder sounded. Sparks of light shifted several times, condensing into a pair of azure-white wings that were several inches large.
Han Li waved his hand at them and the miniature Thunderstorm Wings landed in his hand.
He swept his gaze past it and frowned.
There were a pair of slender holes in each of the wings.
They were from when the giant wood spirit used its fingernails to pierce through the wings.
Han Li’s frown then faded away.
He further examined the Thunderstorm Wings once through and concluded the damage would be easily fixed.
According to what the Soaring Sky Beast’s incarnation said, the so-called Thunderstorm Wings were originally formed from Kun Peng feathers and couldn't truly become a spirit treasure, because he couldn't activate the wind-attribute worldly laws contained in the Kun Peng feather. It also required a wind-attribute top-grade spirit stone.
That was the reason why he was originally looking for a top-grade wind-attributed spirit stone.
Now that he obtained a Heavenly Phoenix Feather, a true spirit material, his original plans had changed. He could add the feather into the Thunderstorm Wings.
The Heavenly Phoenix Feather was different from the Kun Peng feather. The heavenly laws it contained were awe-inspiring spatial abilities. If the feather's laws could be refined in the Thunderstorm Wings, its power would be as one imagined.
The next time he came across a fearsome existence like the Silver Tier Wood Spirit, he would have no need to receive its attacks and could easily escape.
Han Li fiddled with the wings and feather as he pondered.
Fortunately, he already had the experience of refining the Kun Peng feather into the Thunderstorm Wings. Otherwise, he truly wouldn’t have known what to do.
A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality c1-2248 Page 779