The black-clad man's face was filled with disbelief. With a roar, his hands shot up and seized the arm protruding from his chest.
A cold light flickered in
A clear ring of steel!
The sword light flashed!
Not only were both of the black-clad man's hands effortlessly sliced away, but his entire body was cleaved in two by the sword light. A crystalline core and a ball of green flame that appeared within the ruined flesh were similarly torn apart in the same sweep. His soul didn't manage to escape even an inch.
The remaining six black-clad cultivators were struck with pale-faced terror. The leading man had been a high-grade Spirit General — in terms of both cultivation and magical power, he had been second to none among them. How had the opponent slain him with a single exchange?
Immediately, four of them bellowed in fury and shock, rolling mid-air to transform into four massive black birds that hurtled toward Han Li with menacing momentum. The other two exchanged a glance, then without a second word tucked their feathers away and shot off as twin streaks of dark light, fleeing into the distance.
The corner of Han Li's mouth twitched upward. Behind him, a clap of thunder rang out, and he vanished from the spot in a flicker of lightning.
The black birds froze with alarm, their charge faltering for just an instant.
It was in that brief hesitation that green light flickered, and a winged silhouette — ghostly, half-transparent — materialized beneath one of the birds.
Before the creature could react, it saw the phantom below raise a single arm, and a blinding streak of golden light flashed past and vanished in the blink of an eye.
The black bird shuddered. The next moment, a chill swept through its body. It split cleanly in two, the halves spiraling downward in a rain of blood.
The phantom to the west flickered and vanished again, reappearing beside another black bird. With the same casual raise of a hand, it released another beam of golden sword light.
This bird, too, was severed in two as swiftly as if it had been made of tofu. The iron-hard feathers that should have been nearly impervious proved utterly incapable of offering the slightest resistance.
And so Han Li's figure flickered through the air like a phantom four or five times. When he finally solidified, hovering calmly in midair, all four of the monstrous birds transformed from the black-clad cultivators had been slaughtered to the last one.
Han Li showed no sign of relenting. His gaze fixed on the two remaining black-clad cultivators who had fled several dozen zhang away, and with an expressionless face, he spread his wings. A streak of cyan-white radiance shot across the sky.
A piercing shriek that seemed to tear the heavens erupted without warning!
The brilliant arc had barely traveled ten-odd zhang before it blurred and condensed into a single thread of cyan-white light.
The thread twisted uncannily and slipped into the void, vanishing without a trace.
Behind one of the fleeing black-clad cultivators, the air rippled. The cyan-white thread emerged and pierced straight through his body. It circled him at blinding speed, and a flash of golden light blinked once and disappeared.
The black-clad cultivator was instantly split into seven or eight pieces. The thread twisted again and vanished back into the void.
The next instant, the other black-clad cultivator saw cyan-white radiance bloom above his head. The thread flickered out of the air, then blurred, and Han Li's full form materialized. Without a word, he swept one hand and a small golden sword appeared in his palm. It swelled into a thick pillar of sword light and slashed downward.
Golden light flashed as the blade of light reached the man's skull in the space between heartbeats.
The black-clad cultivator was terrified out of his wits. On pure instinct, he flapped both wings upward while slapping his own head with one hand.
The wings erupted with dark radiance as every feather transformed into countless arrows that shot upward in a dense volley toward the sky. At the same time, a black wooden shield surfaced from his skullcap, billowing into a mass of dark clouds that surged up to meet the descending sword light.
Whatever the wooden shield was made of, it was clearly no match for the sharpness of the
The golden flash split the dark clouds in two and continued onward, cleaving the black-clad cultivator through the middle without pause.
The volley of black arrows that reached Han Li's front was deflected by a curtain of gray radiance. The gray light swept across them, and every last arrow vanished into nothingness, utterly incapable of harming a hair on Han Li's body.
Han Li watched the corpses tumble earthward, and something occurred to him. He reached out with one hand and made a grasping motion through the air.
With a sharp whistle, a single black feather roughly a foot long flew from one of the body fragments and into his hand.
Han Li ran his fingers over the feather, his gaze flickering with interest.
The feather was lustrous black with a faint golden sheen running through it. When he gave it a slight shake, dark runes surfaced upon it and then burst into clusters of black flame, from which waves of searing heat radiated.
A look of keen interest crossed Han Li's face. A flash of black light passed over his hand, and the feather was stowed away.
As for the corpses, a single fireball dispatched them into ash.
His cyan arc circled low over the battlefield, retrieving every black feather from the bodies — claimed without ceremony as Han Li's spoils.
When the streak of cyan light appeared beside Bai Bi and the others, Han Li materialized once more.
"Let's keep moving," he said calmly, as if nothing had happened at all.