Chapter 1372: Beetles' Might
“An illusion technique?” When Han Li saw this, he was startled, but he waved his sleeves nonetheless. Tens of small golden swords swam around him like fish, each turning a foot-long in a blur.
He commanded them in his mind, and they each created several copies of themselves, adding more to the swarm.
Golden light filled the air. The swordstreaks weaved around, slicing apart the beasts in a hundred-meter radius.
Beast blood, howls, and corpses, filled Han Li’s surroundings.
He tightly frowned!
Be it the feedback from the swords or what he saw with his eyes, he sensed it all to be real. He couldn't distinguish these illusions from reality.
Despite his bewilderment, none of it showed on his face, and his swords continued their rampage and kept him safe.
Standing on top of the Shen Beast, the old Daoist wore an odd smile.
There were seemingly countless beasts surrounding Han Li. With the sharpness of Han Li’s swordlight, they cut down several hundred beasts in the blink of an eye.
However, the strange beast corpses seemed to float in the air rather than falling to the ground. It caused the bloody scent to grow increasingly dense and pungent.
Soon, just as Han Li felt something was amiss, the Shen Beast let out a cry. The chopped corpses turned into pitch-black fog and roiled underneath Han Li.
The several hundred swordlights continued to flutter around Han Li, occasionally chopping away at the black fog, but as more of the black fog tangled with the flying swords, they became sluggish.
Meanwhile, the Shen Beast’s giant body blurred and silently shot forward in a streak of black Qi, vanishing into the black fog.
A moment later, two long red shadows shot out from the black flog. In a blur, they strangely arrived in front of Han Li. One of them aimed for Han Li’s head while the other went for his chest, both striking at lightning speed.
Were it not for Han Li employing his full techniques to protect himself, including his Brightsight Spirit Eyes, he wouldn’t have reacted fast enough to block the attacks if he relying on his spiritual sense alone.
His face sunk. Without using any of his magic treasures, golden light flashed from his face and he smoothly whipped his hands in seemingly slow motion.
His hands turned sparkling gold as if formed of pure gold.
Bang, bang. The two golden hands grabbed the two scarlet tongues in a ball of flesh. Then, an immense force pulled at his arms.
His shoulders simply blurred as if nothing happened.
The old Daoist looked at this with shock.
The Shen Beast’s transformative abilities had not only reached perfection, but its immense strength was renown in the shadow tribe. A display of this strength was when it used its tongues to fling away the giant mountain from before.
Now, this unremarkable human youth was able to use his hands to grab ahold of the Shen Beast’s tongues with ease. It was rather inconceivable.
However, the old Daoist wasn’t truly worried. The Shen Beast had more than just brute force alone.
As expected, the two tongues remained motionless in Han Li’s grasp. Suddenly, white light glowed from them and the two tongues turned into huge scarlet pythons. They fiercely opened their mouths and they both aimed for Han Li’s head.
Han Li simply felt a huge tremble through his fingers as if the tongues became cold and slick, and they both attempted to go for Han Li’s head.
Blue light brightly flashed from his eyes and his golden hands blurred, each of them separately turning black and white. His black hand had a silver mountain image on its back and his fingers grew several times thicker.
Pop. Scarlet blood scattered. The hand squeezed down on one of the pythons, splitting it into two.
The large white hand had a white skull appear from each of its fingers. With a flick, all of the skulls bit seven inches deep.
The skulls began to wildly inhale, soon turning the serpent’s body into a husk drained of blood essence.
These were the results of the Divine Essensefused Mountain and the Unbreakable Cinque Devils being condensed into his two hands.
This method was only one cultivation technique that was mentioned in the Hundred Meridians Treasure Refinement Mantra.
The process of cultivating his body into treasures was an incredibly long process, but it allowed him to make use of his treasures ingeniously and several times quicker as well.
The cultivation of this not only condensed the power of the two treasures into his hands, but it fused the power of the treasures into one. It was incredibly flexible and their combined power would grant him greater odds of victory.
This surprise attack resulted in the Shen Beast’s tongues being eliminated.
The old Daoist clearly hadn’t expected this to happen. Before he could act from rage, two painful howls sounded from the black fog. Soon after, the black Qi parted and the Shen Beast emerged in the blur. Its body turned vague as it traveled through the air and it turned transparent.
The beast also possessed invisibility.
A short moment later, Han Li was able to hear the beast’s howls from all around him, hiding its concrete position.
Even with his Brightsight Spirit Eyes working at full force, he wasn’t able to see through it.
Even so, Han Li smiled.
He waved his sleeves around him, followed by buzzing. Countless golden specks rushed out from them.
These golden specks flew out and immediately surged in size. They turned into half-foot-long beetles.
They were the fully matured Gold Devouring Beetles that Han Li spent painstaking efforts to nurture.
These beetles numbered over a thousand and flew out nearby.
In the blink of an eye, the beetles spread through the sky and several of them knocked against the Shen Beast, revealing it.
Without needing Han Li’s command, the Gold Devouring Beetles buzzed and pounced at it. A cloud of beetles instantly drowned it.
The Shen Beast let out screams of pain, but with a pop, the beast’s body flew out in a black mist.
Normally, insects wouldn’t be able to do anything against an intangible body, but something extraordinary occurred.
Just as the black mist flew out from gaps of the Gold Devouring Beetles, the fearsome beetles’ claws flashed with golden light and firmly stuck onto the black mist, violently gnawing on it without any hesitation.
With over a thousand beetles, the huge black mist was reduced by a tenth in the blink of an eye.
Screams of pain continue to sound from the mist as the mist continues to roil. Then, ten slender silver serpents shot out from the mist, each of them three meters wide. They all swallowed ten of the beetles at lightning speed.
As the serpents blurred, another ten beetles disappeared into the serpent’s mouth.
But immediately after, the silver serpents hissed and they fell, turning back into clouds of black mist.
All the beetles flew out from the mist without the slightest damage and they circled around the mist to consume it.
Soon after, the black mist quickly turned into several beasts specialized in dealing with insects, but none of them were able to wound the beetles in the slightest. In a short moment, the black mist was torn away, quickly slowing down the speed at which these strange creatures appeared.
The beetle swarm had the black mist at its mercy in only the span of a few breaths. As the old Daoist watched from a distance, he stared at the beetles with an odd expression on his face.
“Gold Devouring Beetles! Fully matured Gold Devouring Beetles!” The old Daoist muttered. He slapped his head without the slightest hesitation.
Red light flashed and a crimson shadow emerged from the crown of the body’s head. It flew in a circle and suddenly turned into a fierce streak, blurring several times as it disappeared off the horizon.
The old Daoist’s body remained in place, now a shriveled corpse. With a gentle wind, the corpse scattered to ash.
“Yi!” Han Li remained motionlessly in place and stared in the direction that the crimson shadow fled. His expression wavered.
“He actually abandoned his exotic beast. Could it be that Gold Devouring Beetles are that famous?”
With that said, Han Li turned his head and looked at the black cloud. The beetles had consumed the black cloud in near entirety. Han Li stroked his chin and waved his hand, recalling the beetles. They circled around him and turned back into small pellets before going back into his sleeves.
With that done, Han Li wanted to fly over, but his complexion vastly changed and his body shook several times. He nearly plummeted from the air.
“How is this possible? My spiritual sense is so exhausted, I nearly injured my soul.” Han Li quickly looked inside him and his face paled.
He consumed nearly the entirety of his Spatial Tempering-grade spiritual sense. In the battle, he didn’t sense this in the slightest.
“Could it be...”
Han Li was reminded of his recent use of the Gold Devouring Beetles and his face grew unsightly.
He suddenly waved his sleeve and summoned a single beetle. It fluttered its wings and flew around nearby.
He immediately peered at his spiritual sense and soon, he stood still in shock.
At the same moment he released the beetle, his spiritual sense was slowly consumed. Although it didn’t appear harmful, it was only the result of a single Gold Devouring Beetles. If he were to command over a thousand of them, they would cause a bigger drain.
With his vast spiritual sense, he would hardly be able to sustain it for five minutes.
What was even more frightening was that he wasn’t even aware of this immense drain.