Wave after wave of white runes surged from the blood pool, flickering as they poured into the crystal coffin and vanished the instant they entered.
Immediately, a ball of white light coalesced inside the coffin, instantly taking the form of a blurred white human silhouette.
Seeing this, Xu Jiao waved his sleeve forward without hesitation.
In the blink of an eye, a small blood-colored bottle flew out from his sleeve, hovered briefly, and then floated motionless before the white-robed man.
Xu Jiao took a deep breath, raised one hand, and his five fingers rapidly flickered through a series of gestures. Magical incantations flashed and vanished as they sank into the blood-colored bottle.
The surface of the small bottle immediately took on a glistening layer of blood-red light, and after a slight tremor, its stopper flew off on its own.
With a muffled pop, a single blood thread sprayed out from the bottle's opening. Under the driving force of Xu Jiao's incantations, it shot toward the crystal coffin hovering above the blood pool.
It vanished in a flash!
The blood thread effortlessly penetrated into the blood coffin.
A bizarre scene unfolded.
The white silhouette within the blood-red crystal coffin — the instant the blood thread entered, as though it had been dyed red — abruptly transformed into a blood-crimson color.
Witnessing this, the surrounding Xu family cultivators all seemed to know the critical moment had arrived. Their bodies blazed with spiritual light as the incantations pouring from their mouths rose to a fever pitch.
As for Xu Yuan and the other three Void Refining stage cultivators, they drove the blood-colored banners before them even more frenziedly.
In the blood-colored radiance above the formation, vivid crimson runes materialized, spinning rapidly around the blood-colored crystal coffin without pause.
From within the blood-colored vortex in the pool, a piercing shriek erupted in that same instant!
Dense clusters of blood threads shot out from the blood pool, piercing into the blood coffin in the blink of an eye, where they rapidly wound themselves one by one around the blood-colored human figure.
With so many blood threads shooting in simultaneously, the originally blurred blood-colored figure was transformed into a humanoid blood cocoon. As more and more threads surged in from below, it grew larger and larger, and clearer and clearer.
In barely a moment, the blood cocoon had not only grown to the size of a real person, but the features of eyes and nose had begun to faintly emerge on its head.
From a distance, it was truly eerie.
But if one focused one's spiritual sense and scanned into it, one would discover that although blood threads continued to pour into the cocoon, those that had wrapped around it earlier had begun to turn white and wither from the inside out, crumbling to ash and vanishing.
As time ticked by, no matter how frantically the Xu family cultivators drove the formation, the blood threads spurting from the blood pool simply could not increase in number.
Under these circumstances, the humanoid blood cocoon not only failed to continue growing, but began to shrink bit by bit. Amid the writhing of countless blood threads, the cocoon's face actually took on an expression of pain.
The faces of Xu Jiao and the other high-ranking Xu family members all changed drastically as they desperately channeled their Magical Power.
But all they could manage was to prevent the blood cocoon inside the crystal coffin from deteriorating further.
After a while longer, the Xu family cultivators' faces had turned abnormally pale, all looking as though they had completely exhausted their Magical Power.
Seeing this, Xu Jiao's heart was filled with anxiety, and he could no longer help but look toward Han Li in the corner of the hall.
He saw that Han Li was still sitting cross-legged in the same spot, one hand lightly propping up his chin as he gazed at the scene before them, wearing an expression of deep contemplation.
"Senior Han..." Xu Jiao called out in a pleading tone, seemingly about to say more.
But Han Li seemed to know what the white-robed man wanted to say, and spoke first, cutting off his words.
"There's no need to be anxious, Fellow Daoist. Since I agreed to help, I naturally know what I'm doing."
With that, he rose unhurriedly to his feet, casually raised a hand, and slapped his own crown.
A flash of black light, and a small black figure, no more than half a foot tall, materialized before him.
The small figure was clad in a suit of black battle armor, empty-handed, its face devoid of expression — this was Han Li's second nascent soul.
Next, Han Li swept his sleeve again, and a ball of golden light shot forth. After a flicker, it transformed into a small golden beast.
The tiny beast radiated a terrifying aura, its eyes cold to an extraordinary degree — it was the Leopard Kirin Beast.
The moment they saw this nascent soul and this beast, Xu Jiao and the cultivators were all inwardly startled.
But before they could react, Han Li flicked his sleeve and issued a quiet command.
"Go."
Immediately, the devil nascent soul above him formed hand seals, its body flickered, and it vanished from where it had been.
The next moment, Old Man Xu Huo heard a whistling sound above his head as the black nascent soul eerily materialized out of thin air.
The old man's expression shifted slightly as several treasures inside his body stirred restlessly, and his wariness multiplied tenfold.
But the devil nascent soul paid no attention to the old man below. Instead, its two small hands thrust forward from a distance and struck the blood banner before it.
With two muffled pops, two beams of black light shot forth and sank straight into the blood banner.
The banner, which had begun to dim due to the old man's insufficient Magical Power, immediately let out a hum as its blood-red light blazed once more — its brilliance far exceeding what it had been before.