"Oh! The surface of this stele—" Before Han Li could figure out what was happening, Old Man Fu suddenly pointed at the back of the stone tablet, his face full of astonishment.
Han Li raised an eyebrow. If he remembered correctly, the back of the stele had been completely blank—there was nothing there.
But the old man wouldn't make such a gesture without reason. Han Li's figure flickered slightly, and he materialized at the back of the stele with an eerie, almost instantaneous movement. Now the rear face of the tablet was turned toward him.
After sweeping his gaze across its surface, Han Li was momentarily stunned.
The back of the stele had fractured into pieces, and within some of the deeper crevices, a bright, gleaming blue light was flickering.
"Spirit stones?" Han Li's eyes flickered, though he wasn't entirely sure.
He suddenly flicked his fingers rapidly, and over a dozen streaks of azure sword Qi shot forth in a crisscrossing web. In an instant they coalesced into a ball of green light that enveloped the upper half of the stele.
Stone chips flew in every direction, and the air nearby grew hazy with dust.
But given the sharpness of Han Li's sword Qi, it was only moments before a blue glow appeared beneath the blade light, growing steadily brighter.
When Han Li finally stopped and the azure light dissipated, what was revealed before him was the stele, its surface carved away. Embedded in the middle of the stone was a deep-blue crystal, as though it had grown there all along.
The crystal was several feet in length, shimmering with a lustrous blue hue and extraordinarily translucent. Although it was not entirely exposed, it appeared to be flat and rectangular.
The entire bluestone stele seemed to have been nothing more than a thick shell encasing this crystal.
"It's not a spirit stone," Bai Yaoyi said. Her beautiful eyes, black and white as night and day, blinked twice before she spoke with certainty. "Although it looks very similar to a water-attribute spirit stone, what it contains is not water-attribute spiritual energy."
"Indeed, it's not a spirit stone. No one would use raw spirit stones to forge something like this, nor would they inscribe symbols directly upon them. This appears to be some kind of inscribed tablet." Han Li gazed at the exposed portion of the crystal. Seeing the ancient symbols embossed on its surface—each one raised or indented—he let out a soft breath.
Without further hesitation, he gathered his Magical Power throughout his body and extended a single hand toward the crystal, clutching at it through empty air.
A green spectral hand materialized before the stele. Its five hook-like fingers reached forward and seized the top of the crystal, pulling upward with tremendous force.
It was extraordinarily heavy, as expected. But with preparation this time, Han Li relied on his formidable Magical Power and forcibly wrenched the crystal free from the stele entirely.
A blue, luminous crystal tablet appeared before Han Li, its surface alive with flowing inscriptions that radiated a faint, ethereal blue glow.
Han Li studied the writing on it for a brief moment. Something stirred in his heart, but his expression betrayed nothing. Instead, he formed hand seals with both hands and pointed rapidly at the crystal tablet.
The tablet shuddered and swiftly shrank. In the blink of an eye it had transformed into a half-foot, brick-shaped object, then vanished into the sleeve of Han Li's robe with a soft whoosh.
Old Man Fu and Bai Yaoyi were equally intrigued by the crystal stele, but seeing that Han Li clearly had no intention of producing it for their inspection, they prudently chose not to bring it up. Instead, after a brief discussion with Han Li, the three of them decided to continue ascending the mountain along the stone staircase.
They had now confirmed that the faint rumbling they had been hearing was indeed coming from above.
The three concealed themselves once more and took to the air.
Han Li, of course, had no way of knowing that the rumbling they heard was actually the sound of the Ye family cultivators laboring furiously to break through a restriction at some point high up along the mountain path.
Nor was the distance between them and the Ye family cultivators as close as they imagined. There was still at least one layer of restrictions separating them from the Ye family's position.
After all, the cave to which the teleportation array had delivered them was at a far lower elevation on the mountain compared to the fixed point from which the Ye family had entered through the gap in the restrictions.
At that moment, the strange person and the Grand Elder of the Ye family—both mighty cultivators at the late stage of Nascent Soul—hovered motionless in the air above a rocky outcropping.
Not far away, below them, the remaining Ye family cultivators stood in their assigned positions within a hastily arranged formation array. Channeling the array's power, they drove a variety of treasures forward in a desperate assault against an enormous, half-glimpsed ceremonial archway that loomed on the stone stairs ahead.
The Devil also mingled among the Ye family cultivators, directing a pitch-black flying sword summoned from who knew where, attacking with a perfectly expressionless face.