Chapter 1727: Bountiful Rewards
A crisp crack sounded, and dazzling golden light erupted from the golden disc. In the face of the enormous power of laws, it twisted and warped before shattering into pieces.
The golden disc proved to be extremely fragile and instantly disintegrated into countless specks of light, leaving only some faint spatial fluctuations in the air.
Right as this treasure was being destroyed, a thin and tall humanoid figure that was seated in a secret chamber deep within a certain sea of the Spirit Realm abruptly raised its head, and a pair of green fireballs appeared in its eye sockets, illuminating its facial features with great clarity.
This was a white skeletal face, and the two green fireballs that were flashing within the eye sockets presented quite a harrowing sight to behold.
Not far in front of the skeleton were 12 ancient copper lamps, each of which was around a foot tall. There were green flames of different sizes flickering within the lamps, the largest of which were comparable to the size of eggs, while the smallest ones were as thin as a pinky finger.
A hint of bewilderment appeared in the skeleton's eyes, and it cocked its head to the side in a contemplative manner. All of a sudden, a thought seemed to have occurred to it, and it abruptly opened its mouth to expel a ball of silver light.
A palm-sized silver disc appeared from within the silver light, and aside from the fact that it was of a different color, it was completely identical to the golden disc that had been destroyed in the Vast Glacial Realm.
However, the silver disc was riddled with countless tin and long cracks, and in the instant that it emerged, it let loose an anguished wail before vanishing into nothingness.
The green fireballs within the mysterious skeleton's eye sockets immediately swelled to several times their original size upon seeing this, and a thunderous roar of fury erupted from its mouth.
It then abruptly rose to its feet and suddenly made a grabbing motion toward a certain patch of space in a fit of thunderous rage.
Powerful spatial fluctuations immediately erupted forth as a giant inky-black claw appeared out of thin air, then grabbed toward the nearby wall.
A resounding boom rang out as the thick wall of the secret chamber was pulverized by the giant claw, but the skeleton's fury still didn't seem to have abated. It opened its mouth toward another wall, and there was black light flashing within its mouth, suggesting that it was seemingly about to blast out something.
However, right at this moment, its eyes flashed and it suddenly turned toward the 12 antiquated lamps on the ground. The green flames within its eye sockets flashed, and it seemed to have calmed down as it slowly closed its large mouth in the end.
The skeleton gritted its teeth and grumbled an unintelligible string of words before sitting down with its legs crossed once again.
Thus, the interior of the secret chamber fell completely silent again, and the green flames within the 12 lamps continued to flicker, illuminating the secret chamber in an unsteady light.
Green light flashed from the Profound Heavenly Sword, and its blade quickly vanished as it reverted back to its original wooden rod form.
The sword then emitted a clear ringing sound before drifting toward Han Li's arm as a ball of yellow light. The same faint yellow insignia then reappeared on Han Li's forearm, indicating that the Profound Heavenly Sword had been sealed again.
Han Li stared at the insignia on his arm with an elated look in his eyes.
He heaved a long sigh of relief before attempting to stand up from within the crater.
In the instant that the golden disc had been destroyed, all of his pain had been alleviated, leaving him feeling as if he had just survived an ordeal that would've surely resulted in his death.
However, it was still too early for him to be relieved. As soon as he rose to his feet, his legs suddenly gave out from under him, and he collapsed onto the ground again. Immediately thereafter, his entire body became numb, and this development was naturally quite alarming to Han Li, prompting him to release his spiritual sense to inspect his own internal condition.
The result of his inspection brought a wry smile to his face. Even though he was currently at the pinnacle of the late-Spatial Tempering Stage, his body was completely devoid of magic power.
It was quite clear that although that slash from the Profound Heavenly Sword had been devastatingly powerful, it had also sapped away all of the spiritual power within his body. On top of that, it had also completely devoured all of that mysterious energy that had flowed into his body. Otherwise, without that additional energy, there would've been no way for him to unleash that slash with the Profound Heavenly Sword.
Thankfully, only his magic power was currently completely depleted; everything else had been left largely untouched, so he was already extremely fortunate.
However, his meridians had been damaged by the excessive influx of energy from earlier, and now that his energy and magic power had been completely depleted, the after-effects naturally began to rear their ugly heads.
However, Han Li wasn't concerned about this. With his powerful self-regenerative abilities, he would be able to easily recover from this. However, the severe exhaustion of magic power was something that would take some time to recover from.
In any case, he was still extremely pleased overall.
He had confidence that he was different from other cultivators, and that it was only a matter of time before he reached the late-Spatial Tempering Stage with the assistance of his Rising Dragon Pills and other pills, but the rapid progress he had made today had saved him around 500 years or perhaps even 1,000 years of arduous cultivation. This was naturally a massively fortunate event for him.
With that in mind, a faint smile appeared on Han Li's face, and he cast his gaze toward the center of the tall platform.
There, the golden body was hovering in mid-air, and it was also seated with its legs crossed and its six eyes closed.
Through the spiritual connection between his primary and second Nascent Souls, he was immediately able to determine that his second Nascent Soul was completely fine; it was merely consolidating its current cultivation base with all its might after making so many breakthroughs in quick succession. Otherwise, if it weren't careful, its cultivation base could immediately fall back down a stage or two.
Furthermore, it had only been able to survive that rapid string of breakthroughs as Han Li was a Spatial Tempering cultivator himself. Otherwise, if the second Nascent Soul had truly only been a Nascent Soul Stage being, then just the inner demon backlash resulting from the massive cultivation base disparity would instantly drive it mad and result in its death.
Even so, the second Nascent Soul definitely wouldn't be fit to fight anyone in a short time. Without over 10 years of meditation, inner demons would potentially appear at any time to destabilize its cultivation base.
However, what was most remarkable to Han Li was the current state of the Provenance Golden Body.
After being broken down and refined on multiple occasions by that mysterious energy, countless purplish-golden runes had appeared over its body, and the aura that it was releasing was over twice as powerful as it had been in the past.
The Provenance Golden Body had been extremely powerful to begin with, and now that its powers had more than doubled, it had naturally become an extremely fearsome force to be reckoned with.
This was an unexpected pleasant surprise to Han Li, and even though he was doing his best to remain calm, he couldn't prevent a faint smile from appearing on his face.
Around two hours later, Han Li sat up before folding his legs. The damage that had been inflicted to his meridians had already largely healed, and he flipped a hand over to summon several medicine vials of different colors, then tipped out a few pills that were emanating fragrant medicinal aromas before taking them all at once.
The medicine vials then disappeared and were replaced by a pair of extremely vibrant green crystals.
Han Li immediately closed his eyes and began to absorb the pure spiritual Qi within these top-grade spirit stones as quickly as he could with the assistance of those pills.
Not long ago, Han Li had wished he could expel all of the spiritual power within his body, which was threatening to make him explode. However, now that he truly had no spiritual power left, he was forced to accumulate it little by little once again.
Han Li was left feeling rather speechless by this string of developments.
Time passed by quickly, and over half a day flew by in a flash.
Han Li abruptly opened his eyes, and a burst of light flashed through them, indicating that he seemed to have recovered some of his magic power.
His brows furrowed slightly as he slowly rose to his feet, and due to the breakthroughs he'd made, his body was now able to hold far more magic power than in the past.
The spiritual Qi in this place was far more abundant than that of the Spirit Realm, and so much time had passed since he'd taken those pills and began to use those spirit stones to replenish his own energy, but he had only recovered around 10% of his total magic power.
Of course, this so-called 10% was comparable to close to half of the magic power he had once had prior to his breakthroughs.
However, in this current situation, Han Li naturally couldn't just meditate for a few days and waste that much time. After he felt like he had recovered enough energy to protect himself, he immediately sprang into action again.
However, he didn't exit through the broken gate. Instead, he made his way toward the center of the stone platform.
The most precious treasure here, that golden disc, had been destroyed, but all of the other treasures here were still quite tempting to him, and he planned to take all of them.
This green chair that he was currently appraising was naturally one of those treasures.
The chair had cooperated with the golden disc up above, and it was clearly quite an extraordinary treasure in its own right. Han Li swept a sleeve through the air, and a burst of azure light immediately surged forth, following which the chair vanished in the blink of an eye.
After that, he cast his gaze around him, then abruptly appeared in front of one of the armored puppets.
Compared to the spirit chair, Han Li was more interested in these puppets. Following the destruction of the golden disc, the puppets had returned to their original stationary statuesque state, but Han Li didn't dare to look down on them at all.
Back when the armored puppets had been fully activated, the spiritual pressure they released was almost comparable to that of a Body Integration Stage being. If he could control these puppets to fight for him, then they would be an enormous asset.
With that in mind, he released his spiritual sense to infiltrate the puppet before him, but a peculiar look suddenly appeared on his face moments later.
The construction of this puppet was extremely rough, and the only thing that Han Li was unable to identify was the strange crimson stone embedded into the core of the puppet, which wasn't an ordinary spirit stone.
He didn't know what this strange stone was, but its surface was as smooth as a mirror, and it was flashing incessantly with countless thin golden threads within it. The spiritual light emanating from it was extremely faint, and it looked as if it could be snuffed out at any moment.
It was quite clear that the puppet's actions had already exhausted most of the energy within the strange stone. At present, it appeared that the stone only possessed enough energy to support one or two more attacks from the puppet.
Han Li's brows were tightly furrowed as he inspected the puppet for a long while, but in the end, he still swept a sleeve through the air to try and stow the puppet away amid a flash of green light.