Chapter 1651: The Spirit Realm Hundred Clauses — The Thought-Nurturing Bead
He turned his head toward the source of the golden light.
In the distance, the long-haired alien had somehow extricated himself from the golden sphere, and beside him now stood a blue humanoid puppet roughly two zhang tall.
The puppet's entire body shimmered with a bluish cast, one arm raised high, faint golden arcs of lightning flickering between its five fingers.
This alien named Jia Tianmu had not merely brought along two high-grade puppets — the newly appeared third puppet could actually release the Baneslaying Divine Lightning.
That truly caught Han Li off guard.
But Han Li's shock lasted only a moment!
In the next instant, the Great Peng flapped its massive wings several times and instantly arrived above the silver warship in a gust of wild wind. Azure light flickered across its body and its frame swelled by another half.
Then its two enormous claws, crackling with blinding arcs of electricity, slashed downward with devastating force.
Several muffled booms rang out as both claws plunged into the hull of the warship simultaneously, then wrenched apart to either side.
Amid peals of thunder, a gaping hole was torn through the warship's body.
The Great Peng then opened its beak and spat out a thick arc of lightning that vanished instantly into the hole.
As the lightning flickered, screams erupted from within the warship — countless Horned Demon Clan cultivators had been obliterated by the electrical discharge in a single instant.
The Great Peng was far from finished!
Its wings beat furiously downward, and a white, hazy hurricane materialized out of thin air.
The Great Peng released its claws, and the enormous warship, caught in the howling gale, went tumbling straight down.
With a thunderous crash, the warship smashed into the ground.
The Great Peng let out a long cry, folded its wings, and rapidly shrank amid flickers of azure light, reverting to human form in the blink of an eye.
Han Li swept a glance over the ground, formed a series of hand seals with both hands,
and dozens of azure flying swords materialized all around him simultaneously. With a tremor, they transformed into dozens of streaks of azure light and shot downward.
In an instant, the warship below was slashed to pieces by the storm of sword-light, and finally it detonated with a deafening explosion.
As for the other warship that had crashed, Han Li had no intention of letting it off either — he directed his flying swords to destroy it as well.
At this point, the Horned Demon Clan warriors and the two-headed giant eagles that had been watching the battle had also been cut down by another eighty or ninety percent at the paws of the Leopard Qilin Beast and the Howling Soul Beast.
Only a handful who had fled to a great distance from the very start had escaped with their lives.
Han Li couldn't be bothered to send his two spirit beasts after the survivors. He simply raised a hand, and a black ring whistled through the air.
The giant black ape instantly shrank in size, and both it and the Leopard Qilin Beast transformed into a streak of golden light and a streak of black light respectively, vanishing into the black ring.
Han Li flicked his sleeve, and the ring whistled back, which he tucked away once more.
Only then did he look toward Jia Tianmu in the distance and suddenly transform into a streak of azure rainbow, shooting toward him.
With a single flash, he materialized like a specter roughly a zhang in front of the alien, his eyes fixed coldly on the other, his face utterly expressionless.
Jia Tianmu felt a chill run through him, but a smile appeared on his face regardless. He cupped his fists and said to Han Li:
"I thank this fellow Daoist for stepping in to save me. I will absolutely not go back on my promise. Once we return to my clan, I am willing to gift you one Spirit-Attuned puppet."
"You've got quite the nerve — dragging me into your mess. Aren't you afraid I might just kill you right now?" Han Li narrowed his eyes, a trace of killing intent surfacing between his brows.
"Fellow Daoist jests! If you truly intended to do so, you would have killed me along with the rest back then. Why would you have left me alive until now? Besides, I did what I did because I had no way to protect myself at the time — it was truly a desperate measure. I humbly ask for your understanding, Senior." Jia Tianmu replied with an apologetic smile.
"How did you detect me down below? I'm quite confident in my concealment technique — no one below my level should be able to see through it." Han Li fell silent for a moment, then abruptly asked.
"With your abilities, how could my humble cultivation possibly discover anything? The reason I detected your presence was entirely because of this." After a slight hesitation, Jia Tianmu opened his mouth, spat something out, caught it in his hand, and gently held it up.
Han Li focused his gaze on it and saw that it was unmistakably a round bead of alternating black and white, its surface faintly revealing whorl-like clusters of spiritual energy that appeared and vanished.
"What is this?" Han Li felt it looked faintly familiar and asked in puzzlement.