Chapter 1034: A Blood Saber
Han Li took a deep look down the cliff and said, “It’s no matter. Regardless of how powerful that being may be, it should’ve been immensely weakened after being suppressed for so many years. Furthermore, there should’ve been many late-Nascent Soul cultivators to deal with it.”
Soon after, he beckoned to Gui Ling and the two slowly floated down.
The darkness was unfathomably deep. After floating down for a quarter hour, they still hadn’t reached the bottom.
Han Li felt both sullen and bewildered.
At this depth, his surroundings had already become shadowed and dark, and his vision was limited.
He raised his head and could only faintly see a white dot shining far away.
Under the present restrictions limiting one’s spiritual sense, a common cultivator would only be able to sense movement within a hundred meters.
But Han Li had the Brightsight Spirit Eyes, allowing him to clearly see a kilometer around him.
As they continued to drop, Gui Ling suddenly shouted, “Fellow Daoist Han, below us!”
Stirred by her words, he looked down.
Specks of light glowed not far below them and they could see the faint outline of a huge building.
His expression stirred and he moved to get a closer look when saw something flash from the corner of his eye. A crimson light was silently sweeping towards him from the darkness.
He was suddenly barraged by a bloody scent assailing his nose which filled him with absolute disgust.
‘Master Scatterwind!’ Han Li’s heart trembled.
The crimson light was as fast as lightning, arriving before him in the blink of an eye. If it weren’t for his continued vigilance, he feared that he would’ve been too slow to act.
He quickly raised his hand and summoned a sparkling small silver disk: the Tailstar Essence Shield.
It violently surged in size and a sheen of white light emerged from it to cover Han Li.
Before an eye could even blink, crimson light cascaded around him, leaving him completely surrounded.
Hiss. A three-meter-long saber suddenly emerged from the light and struck the silver barrier.
The saber appeared peculiar as it was as narrow as two fingers and as thin as paper, not to mention the demonic crimson glow on its surface.
The barrier swayed from the strike before shattering into tiny fragments. The saber moved on to directly strike at the Tailstar Essence Shield.
The shield brilliantly flashed and its surface turned sleek as a mirror. Crimson and silver intertwined, finding them at a deadlock for the time being.
Just as the tension in his heart eased, the blood saber suddenly warped and twisted around the shield with an unbelievable flexibility.
Seeing that the saber had snaked around to strike him, he shot backward and flicked his fingers, releasing azure swordstreaks to repel it.
Clangs of metal sounded out as the saber incisively slid through all of them in a single blow and continued towards Han Li without the slightest obstruction.
Han Li’s face paled and he opened his mouth to spit out an object wrapped in azure light.
A crisp clang rang as the crimson saber was blocked by not the object, but the light that surrounded it. It was the Heavenvoid Cauldron.
“Yi!” A surprised yelp came from the distance.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Han Li summoned his Thunderstorm Wings and blinked over thirty meters away. He then raised his hand and had the Tailstar Essence Shield and the Heavenvoid Cauldron shoot back towards him.
Then, the crimson light surrounding him surged and rushed at him in every direction, filling the air with a disgusting bloody scent.
Han Li coldly snorted and held his hands in an incantation gesture. Thunder sounded out and a barrier of golden lightning emerged from his body, dispersing the crimson that attempted to approach him and held them at bay.
Divine Devilbane Lightning! When the hidden figure saw this, he was surprised and knew that they had encountered a fearsome opponent.
Han Li looked at the figure in the distance and coldly said, “Master Scatterwind? Is that you?”
The person didn’t reply. Instead, the saber let out a hum and absorbed all of the crimson light nearby. Then in a blur, the figure disappeared into the darkness along with the weapon.
“Fellow Daoist, are you alright?”
The ambush had taken place in only a moment, and Gui Ling was caught off guard. She anxiously asked about his well being, fearing that he would rebuke her afterwards.
“Yes. As I expected, it does resemble a Devil Dragon Blade. A common treasure would’ve been split in two by the initial attack, but my shield managed to block it well enough,” Han Li calmly stated. Then with a wave of his arm, the Tailstar Shield returned to his hand.
When he glanced it over, he saw a deep slender cut on the surface. Han Li’s eyes widened in surprise and he frowned.
As he poured great amounts of spiritual power into it, silver light began to wander across its surface and the cut was slowly mended. With a now restored shield, he put it away and absorbed the cauldron back into his body.
“Did Brother Han clearly see the person’s appearance?”
“No, spiritual light masked his body, I wasn’t able to see if he was truly Master Scatterwind. However, his cultivation didn’t seem very high.” With that said, he turned to look at the silhouette of the large building and narrowed his eyes in contemplation.
Although Gui Ling wished to proceed, she didn’t know what he was thinking and simply remained at his side.
Without raising his head, he indifferently said, “Fellow Daoist Gui, I will treat your hesitation to act as a single mistake and ignore it. I hope you will not have any further thoughts of this in the future.” Then, he flew down in an azure streak before she could reply.
Gui Ling felt her heart thump, but was relieved after hearing that he didn’t plan on harming her. But for a time, her expression was conflicted. She did have a few erring thoughts a moment ago, and it seemed that the Han Li had sensed this from the portion of her soul possessing her lifesoul tile.
A long while later, Gui Ling let out a wry laugh and helplessly followed suit.
Han Li arrived above a huge square platform and began to calmly examine his surroundings.
Apart from veiled steps heading downward, there was no other course.
“So this is the Devil Suppressing Pagoda,” he muttered.
Gui Ling landed behind him. Having heard his words, she quickly explained, “You may not know this, but the pagoda is structured quite oddly. They constructed it so that its peak is on the lowest floor. The deeper one heads in, the more fearsome the monsters it imprisons.
“So it was like that!” Han Li nodded and looked around him once more. He acted as if nothing from moments ago had happened at all, causing her to hold him in even more fear.
He tossed a moonlight stone into the air and had it float above him. After calling out to Gui Ling, they began the descent into the pagoda.
The first few floors were exceptionally wide and peaceful as there were no ghosts inside. It seemed the cultivators who arrived first had cleanly wiped them out.
However, there were many signs of battle. There was fighting to prevent others from heading further inside.
When he arrived on the third floor, a scorched corpse lay sprawling at the side of a stone pillar. Han Li examined it for a while before concluding that it didn’t belong to someone he could recognize, likely a Ye Clan cultivator.
However, this one had released his Nascent Soul before his body perished, but it was unknown if it managed to successfully escape.
Oddly, there was nothing of note on the fourth floor, but once he entered the fifth, he found two more corpses. One was a shade of dark green, having perished from some kind of fierce poison. As for the other, it belonged to the large man from the band of vagrant cultivators. His head was lobbed to the side and his body was shredded to pieces. His severed head donned a face of disbelief.
Although Han Li felt his heart tremble at the sight of this, he didn’t slow his stride. After turning the corpses to ash, he solemnly entered the sixth floor.
To his unexpected surprise, he found a living person, a palace-robed woman sealed in a huge chunk of ice — Bai Yaoyi.
Her eyes were shut and she had her hands clasped in a gesture around a crystalline flying sword.
If it weren’t for the faint spiritual fluctuations he sensed from her, he would’ve believed her to be dead from her deathly white complexion.
However, he didn’t immediately free her and instead swept his entire spiritual sense past the floor. When he made sure the area was clear, he softly placed his hand against the block of ice.
Then with a crackle, a layer of purple flames ignited from his palm and quickly ate away at the cold Qi.
In the blink of an eye, the huge chunk shrunk and soon, Bai Yaoyi was released.
As the last of the ice evaporated from her body, her eyelashes fluttered before she opened her eyes.
When she saw that Han Li had appeared in front of her, her tense expression instantly relaxed.
“So it was Brother Han! I had begun to worry.” Bai Yaoyi weakly smiled. It was clear her vitality was greatly weakened.
Han Li frowned and examined the woman’s expression before slowly asking, “If I remember correctly, Fellow Daoist Bai cultivated an ice-attribute technique. Could it be that you sealed yourself in the ice?”