Chapter 499: Wolf Artifact Spirit
As Han Li continued to fly far away from Yuan Yao, he felt an impatient urge to take out the Heavenvoid Cauldron and examine the contents. Shortly after giving in to this urge, Han Li felt like spitting blood. No matter what methods he used, the cauldron lid wouldn’t open in the slightest.
Regardless of whether he wildly poured magic power into the cauldron, or struck the cauldron with his magic treasure out of frustration, the only response would be a flicker of blue light.
Han Li eventually managed to momentarily calm down and consider his situation. Apart from being able to shrink and enlarge the Heavenvoid Cauldron at will, there wasn’t anything he could do with it.
Having determined this, Han Li vented his frustrations in the barren seas for a long while. The target of his groundless insults was naturally the Master of Heavenvoid Hall.
It was clear that the Master of Heavenvoid Hall was a strange individual. It wasn’t that a Nascent Soul cultivation was needed, but rather that a trick needed to be used to open the cauldron. It wasn’t as simple as pouring spiritual power into the cauldron. Could it be that opening it had something to do with the Celestial Ice Flames that had surrounded it?
With his mind clouded by emotion, Han Li could only make some muddled guesses.
But after some further thought, it seemed rather normal that the top ranked secret treasure in the Scattered Star Seas would require some sort of trick.
After only a short moment, he was able to discover two of the ancient treasure’s remarkable abilities. Its simplest ability was activated by pouring spiritual power into it, producing a red and yellow barrier around the user’s body. He had personally witnessed its power inside Heavenvoid Hall when he saw it block Layman Qingyi’s grasp without the slightest harm done to it. Its defensive capabilities were clearly immense.
Its other ability required Han Li to silently mutter an ancient incantation to the scepter. After he immersed his spiritual sense into both ends of the scepter, he would be able to either separately summon two small wolves, with one red and the other yellow, or he could summon one large silver wolf.
The small red wolf seemed to be created from pure fire attribute Spiritual Qi and was innately capable of many impressive fire spirit magic techniques.
Similar to its counterpart, the small yellow wolf was created from pure earth attribute Spiritual Qi and was adept in earth spirit magic techniques. There were a few techniques that Han Li had previously learned, but he was quite surprised to find that the wolf didn’t understand earth attribute movement techniques.
As for the silver wolf, Han Li found it quite troublesome. He was incapable of controlling it. Although the silver wolf would respond to his orders, it would always move quite lazily.
When he ordered the wolf to display what magic techniques it was capable of, the silver wolf brushed him off as if it hadn’t heard him. Han Li was rendered speechless when he saw the human-like insolence in its eyes.
Han Li was able to make out that the silver wolf was clearly the true form of the scepter’s artifact spirit. As for the silver wolf’s stubborn disobedience, Han Li could only guess that it was likely due to him having yet to completely refine the scepter.
However, Han Li had clearly remembered the astonishment that the Bone Sage had revealed upon seeing it. He had even released his Gold Lightning Bamboo arrow in the presence of Zenith Yin for it. There was undoubtedly more to the silver wolf artifact spirit than meets the eye.
As a result, Han Li put away the jade scepter without the slightest discouragement, and decided to take a look at the other treasures he had gained in Heavenvoid Hall.
There were the many treasures that the old devils had given him: the White Rhino Emblem, the Glacial Ice Pearl, the Royal Scale Plate, and so on. Although he had found nothing wrong with them after further inspection, he didn’t dare to continue wearing them and placed them all in his storage pouch, apart from the Royal Scale Plate. Han Li was unwilling to forgo its extraordinary defensive abilities and decided to have it remain on his body.
As for the puppet fragments, the half-bottle of Myriad Year Spirit Milk, and the half-finger-long root of the Soul Nurturing Tree, Han Li also examined them.
As he rummaged through his new gains, Han Li had unintentionally found a few small rainbow beads. This had surprised him, but he soon remembered where they had come from. When he had first discovered the transportation formation at the Heavenly South Region, he melted the rainbow skeleton, producing these rainbow beads as a result. With the Bloodjade Spiders nearby the the skeleton, it seemed that the skeleton had belonged to the Bone Sage’s other treasonous disciple, Zenith Brilliance.
However, Han Li still felt quite confused on why the skeleton was rainbow and what relation it had with the Emperor of Yue.
But as he gazed at the beads, Han Li was reminded of the Heavenmend Pills that had flown out of the Heavenvoid Cauldron. However, those pills were much larger and also s.h.i.+ned with a far brighter light.
Han Li gazed at the beads in his hand and muttered to himself for a moment before putting them away with a solemn expression. Afterwards, Han Li verified his direction and donned his blood-red cloak before shooting off full speed ahead. He tore through the sky towards Heavenly Star City as a red shooting star.
Although he lost a large quant.i.ty of spiritual power by doing this, it was several times faster than the speed of a common Core Formation cultivator. Currently, he wanted to return to his cave residence as soon as possible, preferably before the other cultivators even left Heavenvoid Hall.
It would have been possible for him to abandon the residence were it not for the meticulously raised Gold Devouring Beetles he had left behind. He was unwilling to allow those insects to fall into the hands of some future excavator. Perhaps the plunderer would also possess a secret technique to hasten their maturation as well!
Besides, he had already decided to immediately renounce his cave residence after returning to Heavenly Star City, and use the city’s transportation formations to teleport him to the Outer Star Seas.
This way, he could both acquire more demon cores and avoid any of the attention he had attracted during his time in Heavenvoid Hall, allowing him to break through the early Core Formation stage as soon as possible.
After Han Li lost a majority of his magic power, he stopped using his cloak and switched to his normal method of flight as he held a mid grade spirit stone to slowly recover his magic power.
When his magic power was just about restored, he resumed his use of the blood-red cape and hurriedly tore through the sky.
In this manner, Han Li was able to travel a distance that would’ve normally taken him half a month in the span of a few short days!
On the way, Han Li had encountered a few cultivators, but they were only at the Foundation Establishment stage or lower. He was disinclined to pay them any notice and hurriedly shot past them. When they saw the speed of Han Li’s streak of light, they naturally knew that he was a Core Formation expert and didn’t dare to bother him.
But as Han Li drew closer to Heavenly Star City, he began to encounter cultivators at greater frequency, even spotting groups that could be considered an army.
After a month had gone by, Han Li finally encountered his first Core Formation cultivator.
When this cultivator saw Han Li, he vigilantly avoided him and clearly didn’t have any intention of talking with him. This was completely understandable. But when he saw two more Core Formation cultivators act in the same way, Han Li felt that something was amiss.
Could it be that a significant event had occurred while he was in the Heavenvoid Hall? When this thought emerged, Han Li grew worried as he hurried along his way.
One day, when Han Li was slowly flying across the sea with a spirit stone in hand, he spotted a group of about eight cultivators flying nearby.They were all at Foundation Establishment and seemed to belong to a some local power.
Han Li wordlessly flew towards them as a streak of azure light.
Han Li didn’t conceal himself, allowing the group of cultivators to see him approach. They raised an uproar, but the old man in charge berated them, causing them to stay still.
Although the old man in charge had fully whitened hair, he was quite intelligent. Without waiting for Han Li to draw close, he took the initiative to respectfully salute him and asked, “What can these Juniors help Senior with?” His mannerisms didn’t hold the slightest flaw.
The azure light faded away before them to reveal Han Li. He indifferently swept his gaze past them and calmly asked, “What sect do you belong to and where are you headed?”
The old man solemnly replied, “These Juniors belong to the Three Immortals Sect. We are under orders from the sect master to head to Heavenly Star City!”
Han Li frowned and grew silent for a moment before he slowly said, “Heading to Heavenly Star City? Along the way, I’ve discovered that there were many cultivators heading towards Heavenly Star City as well. However, they appeared quite nervous.”
The old man inwardly sighed, but he hastily laughed, “Haha! It seems Senior must have spent quite some time in a desolate area to not have heard of this. Not long ago, a great event occurred at Heavenly Star City. All the closest sects and powers have begun to send people to the city!”
A paragon of chill.