The instant the Green Bee's Primordial Spirit was destroyed, the demon bees buzzing through the mist several hundred zhang away flickered once on their bodies and burst apart in rapid succession, their bodies exploding one after another with muffled pops.
From the moment the great green bee's body was destroyed to the point when both demon souls perished, only a brief instant had elapsed.
Han Li spared no glance for the plummeting demon eagle's corpse. His gaze shifted instead toward the final high-ranking demon beast standing in the distance.
His eyes were cold enough to cut through bone.
The Two-Horned Demon had naturally witnessed everything that had just transpired, and a deep dread seized him. His face had gone faintly green.
Although the giant bee and the demon eagle had been weaker than him, their cultivation hadn't been worlds apart. Yet in the space of a single exchange, both had been effortlessly slaughtered by the enemy — their Primordial Spirits hadn't even managed to escape.
How could such a thing fail to send ice through his entire body?
Even if the opponent's success had been partly due to the element of surprise, the Two-Horned Demon asked himself honestly: under the same conditions, he could never have dispatched both companions so cleanly and decisively.
However, something about this demon's thoughts was also peculiar.
What exactly were those golden figures that had first appeared to lure them in, and the later one he had smashed with a single hammer blow? They had clearly sensed a powerful spiritual pressure emanating from above — otherwise they wouldn't have fallen for the trap so easily.
No matter what the case, if he went up alone to fight, the outcome would almost certainly be his own death. Better to wait for the reinforcements arriving behind him, then devise some other method to kill this opponent.
If that truly didn't work, he could simply risk violating the agreement between the mountain range and the outside world, lie in wait at the entrance, and slay this person there.
Surely the top-tier powers from the outside wouldn't come back into the mountain range to argue with the several Saint-tier lords over a mere single individual.
The Two-Horned Demon's cunning was truly formidable. Having recovered from his initial shock, he immediately formulated a counter-strategy.
So at the very moment Han Li's gaze fell upon him, he suddenly seized the empty air with both hands.
With two sharp whooshes, the two iron hammers shrank back to their normal size and flew back into his hands.
He then opened his mouth again and spat out the same triangular copper mirror from before, flicking a finger toward the treasure with rapid speed.
The mirror's surface hummed and shot out a mass of frigid light that swept downward.
A bizarre scene unfolded.
The instant the cold light landed, the towering figure of the Two-Horned Demon vanished from where he had been standing, as though he had simply ceased to exist.
The copper mirror then trembled faintly, transforming into a streak of afterimage that flashed into the void and disappeared without a trace.
This spectacle left Han Li momentarily stunned in the distance — it was somewhat beyond his expectations.
But his expression darkened almost at once, and a blue gleam flickered in his pupils, forming a wondrous vortex-like phenomenon. Anyone who met his gaze in that moment would feel as though their very soul were being drawn in.
Having apparently discerned something, Han Li pinched a seal with one hand and tapped two fingers swiftly against his brow.
A mass of black qi surfaced, condensed, and coalesced into an eyeball as black as ink.
This was the Dharma Eye of Destruction.
The instant the demonic eye took form, its pupil shifted, and waves of dark radiance rippled through it as faint symbols churned and surged within.
With a soft hum, a beam of pitch-black light roughly the width of a finger shot from the Dharma Eye of Destruction and vanished into the void without a sound.
Moments later, in a stretch of empty space roughly a hundred zhang away, an earth-shattering boom suddenly erupted. A halo of murky black light bloomed forth, and violent spatial fluctuations radiated outward.
With a muffled thump, a mass of extremely dim cold light was ejected from the halo, tumbling more than ten zhang before staggering to a halt.
The light receded, revealing the Two-Horned Demon — his face a mixture of fury and alarm.
Almost simultaneously, a peal of thunder crackled directly above the demon. A bolt of blue-white lightning arced forth, within which a human figure could faintly be seen.
"Not good!"
The Two-Horned Demon hadn't even steadied his footing yet, but the instant his eyes swept upward and registered the situation, his heart plummeted. Almost on pure instinct, both arms snapped upward.
The two great hammers in his hands screamed through the air and hurtled toward the figure above, smashing down with savage force. At the same time, a flash of crystalline light flickered across his chest as a blue banner flag flew forth and, with a single shake, expanded into a shimmering blue curtain of light that enveloped his body within.
Meanwhile, the Two-Horned Demon himself shot backward like a bolt from a crossbow, black light flickering around his form — intent on putting distance between himself and Han Li first.
But Han Li would never let the demon have his way. The blue-white lightning in the sky detonated with a deafening boom, and its color shifted, transforming into arcs of brilliant silver light.
The arcs then swelled violently, rolling and morphing into the form of a massive azure Roc several zhang in size. With a single spread of its great wings, it dove downward amid arcs of silver lightning as thick as a bowl's rim, striking with devastating force.
So swift was the attack that the instant the silver light flickered, the great talons had already seized the pair of black hammers hurtling up to meet them.
Thunder roared.
The hammers, as though made of paper, were pierced by the giant talons in a single flash, let out a mournful wail, and burst apart amid crackling arcs of silver serpents.
And in the very next heartbeat, the great talons paused not at all, slamming down directly onto the blue curtain of light surrounding the Two-Horned Demon's body.
To some surprise, the seemingly ordinary blue barrier flickered and transformed into a crystal-like shell of light.