Hearing Han Li's words, Silver Light Fairy's gaze flickered behind her mask, but ultimately she raised no objections.
The guards nearby, seeing this, naturally responded in quick agreement without hesitation.
They relayed the orders to the others, who hurried to activate the teleportation array.
Without a second word, Silver Light Fairy's white robes drifted as she stepped to the center of the formation.
Han Li smiled faintly and walked onto the teleportation array with unhurried composure.
A moment later, the array beneath their feet began to emit a deep hum, while a milky-white spiritual light suffused the surroundings.
Their figures flickered once, and amid the blinding surge of light, they vanished without a trace.
Han Li felt only a brief swirl of radiant light around him before everything before his eyes blurred into indistinctness.
With his current level of cultivation, a teleportation of this distance did nothing more than leave a faint heaviness in his head — no other discomfort whatsoever.
But the instant the surrounding light dissipated and his feet touched solid ground once more, his spiritual sense swept outward without the slightest hesitation, enveloping everything in the vicinity.
His expression darkened at once, and a flicker of cold light passed through the depths of his pupils.
Almost simultaneously, the air around him erupted with sharp whistling sounds as countless dark streaks shot toward him from every direction — a dense rain of them, numbering in the hundreds.
Without thinking, Han Li formed a seal with one hand, and a ring of gray, hazy light suddenly materialized around his body. At first it was only about ten feet across, but with a single flash it expanded exponentially, engulfing all the incoming projectiles within its bounds.
The dark streaks trembled and were immediately frozen in place by a strange force within the gray glow, their true forms revealing themselves one by one.
They were black crossbow bolts, each roughly a foot long, their surfaces gleaming with an oily dark luster. The tips shimmered with an eerie purple radiance, apparently coated with some manner of deadly poison.
Only then did Han Li leisurely sweep his gaze across his surroundings.
He found himself standing in a massive hall over a hundred zhang wide. Lining the walls were fifty or sixty demon warriors clad in black armor, each cradling a dark crossbow. Every one of them stared at Han Li and Silver Light Fairy with expressions of utter shock.
Most of these demons possessed cultivation around the Core Formation stage, with a scattering of Nascent Soul–level ones mixed in among them.
But the strongest among them was a single-horned demon at the Deity Transformation stage, his skin coarse and rough, his eyes a vivid green.
This leading demon stared in horror at Han Li and Silver Light Fairy, then suddenly let out a piercing shriek:
"This is bad — a human Integration-stage monster! Retreat, now!"
Even before the words had fully left his mouth, a thunderous boom erupted from his body as a thick mass of demonic energy exploded outward, rapidly spreading to fill nearly the entire hall.
Using the billowing demonic energy as cover, he transformed into a streak of black light and bolted toward the exit at full speed.
The remaining demon warriors, naturally, were equally terrified and scrambled to escape using their own escape arts.
But Han Li was hardly about to let them have their way. A murderous glint crossed his face, and the gray haze surrounding him contracted violently. The black crossbow bolts that had been suspended motionless in the air suddenly reversed course, hurtling back in the direction they had come from.
Their speed was now more than ten times faster than their original velocity!
In the blink of an eye, the demon warriors screamed as they tumbled to the ground one after another.
Then the gray light within the hall churned and rolled, and countless slender gray threads materialized out of thin air. With a single sweeping motion, every demon warrior's body was bizarrely torn apart in all directions.
Amid the flashing of innumerable gray motes, not even a Nascent Soul managed to escape.
But it was not yet over. Han Li cast a cold glance at the leading demon, who had already bolted to the gateway in the span of those brief moments, and thrust one hand out to grab at the empty air before him.
With a muffled thwack, a massive cyan hand materialized above the demon and slapped downward with lightning speed.
A scream of agony!
The Deity Transformation demon could not begin to withstand the immense power of the giant palm. He did not even have time to release his protective treasures before he was smashed flat into a bloody paste.
Only then did Han Li sweep his sleeve through the void. With a flash of radiance, the sky full of gray threads and the cyan hand dispersed and vanished like illusory phantoms.
He then turned his head toward Silver Light Fairy, who had arrived through the teleportation alongside him, and spoke with a mild smile:
"Daoist Silver Light, it seems this location was indeed discovered by the demons. But they don't seem to have placed much importance on it — they only dispatched this small a force to keep watch."
"It's not that the demons don't take it seriously," Silver Light Fairy replied, apparently well-informed on the matter. "It's simply that the human race has opened far too many concealed transit points outside the various cities. The demons cannot possibly station heavy garrisons to monitor every single one. Having a Deity Transformation–level demon present at this transit point actually means it's already been given a fair amount of attention."
"I see. Your words make perfect sense, Fairy." After a brief moment of thought, Han Li let out a soft chuckle.
He then flicked a finger, sending a fireball arcing outward. With a flash, it transformed into a crimson firebird that swooped down toward the ground.