At this moment, the beautiful eyes behind Silver Light Fairy's mask actually betrayed a trace of pain. She suddenly opened her mouth and spat out a small silver sword.
The flying sword flickered, transforming into a streak of silver light that circled her shoulder — and cleanly severed the very arm she had just been pressing down. Yet strangely, not a single drop of blood flowed from the wound.
The instant the slender arm separated from her body, it was engulfed with a soft hiss in a mass of blood-colored flames, rapidly burning to ash amid the roaring fire.
"Blood-Eroding Demonic Flame — it really is this vicious demonic flame! Brother Han, be careful! This is one of the four great demonic flames of the demon race. Once it touches you, there is absolutely no way to remove it, unless you possess one of the legendary rare treasures that can shield the body." In a mixture of alarm and fury, Silver Light Fairy called out a warning to Han Li.
She then flipped her free hand, and with a flash of green light, a white pill with a refreshing fragrance suddenly materialized in her palm. She tilted her head back and swallowed it down.
In the blink of an eye, green light swirled around the severed arm stump, and a new arm of extraordinary whiteness and softness materialized once more, looking exactly the same as before.
But the delicate face beneath Silver Light Fairy's mask had gone deathly pale, making it abundantly clear that the price of this limb-regeneration technique was far from trivial.
"Blood-Eroding Demonic Flame! So it really is this thing. It seems I truly underestimated you. But that's all the better — it means your status among the demon venerables is far from ordinary, and all the more reason to kill you." Han Li's gaze swept briefly over Silver Light Fairy's newly regrown arm before shifting to the three-headed, six-armed demon across from them that towered like a small mountain. A flash of killing intent flickered through his eyes.
"Kill me? With just the two of you?" The demon that the single-horned elder had transformed into opened all six eyes simultaneously, and all three mouths let out a contemptuous roar of laughter. Then it violently shook the massive black staff in its hands, and immediately, thunderous booms echoed ceaselessly through the void. Moments later, enormous staff shadows that loomed like mountain ranges swept toward both Han Li and Silver Light Fairy at once.
Before the staff shadows even drew near, a suffocating wave of spiritual pressure warped and hummed through the surrounding void, as though it truly possessed the power to rend heaven and earth.
"Hmph. It seems you do have some confidence in your brute strength."
Seeing this, Han Li was not alarmed in the least. Instead, his pupils narrowed coldly as he let out a faint snort. He then formed a hand seal, and golden light erupted violently from his body as his frame surged in size.
In just a single breath, he transformed into a golden-furred giant ape of towering stature with fully bared fangs.
With a clutch at the void, a black mountain peak and a cyan mountain peak appeared simultaneously in his hands. With a mighty heave of both arms high into the air, both peaks swelled to enormous size, transforming into mountains hundreds of zhang tall that shielded him completely from the sky full of staff shadows.
The strength of the Force Venerable's demonic form was absolutely staggering, and those staff shadows were incomparably fierce. Yet when they struck the two mountain peaks, they only produced a cascade of blinding light and earth-shattering booms.
Then, after the sky full of staff shadows dissipated, the surfaces of both mountain peaks showed nothing more than some pockmarked indentations — and no other damage whatsoever.
The single-horned elder stared, all three of his heads showing expressions of utter disbelief.
"Impossible! My Coiling Dragon Great Strength Demonic Art has already reached the grand completion stage — how could any human Body Integration cultivator possibly surpass me in raw strength? Wait... that transformation of yours is—" The single-horned elder blurted out in shock, but when he focused his gaze to carefully study Han Li's giant ape transformation, a look of alarm and suspicion suddenly crept onto his face.
"Heh heh, that's simply because you haven't seen enough of the world. It would be impolite not to return the favor — why don't you take this strike?" The golden ape spoke in a cold, mocking voice. It then slammed the two mountain peaks together and hurled them forward with tremendous force.
With two explosive booms, the two mountain peaks tore through the air, leaving deep white trails in their wake.
When they were still twenty to thirty zhang away from the single-horned elder's demonic form, an invisible torrent of force transformed into a violent gale that swept down upon him first.
Wherever it passed, the very void seemed to crack apart inch by inch.
Witnessing this scene, the single-horned elder was horrified. But unwilling to accept defeat, all three of his heads let out a sharp, ferocious shout as he wildly spun the massive black staff.
In an instant, waves of staff-shadow mountains rolled forward to meet the two hurtling peaks.
With a single deafening boom like the sky collapsing and the earth splitting apart!
The three-headed, six-armed demon felt a sudden numbness in both hands as the massive staff grew scorching hot and flew from his grasp. At the same time, a tremendous force struck his body, and he could not help but vomit a mouthful of black blood. His massive frame shuddered violently as he was sent hurtling backward.
The two mountain peaks merely paused slightly in midair before slamming downward once more, completely unscathed.
Just as a single crushing blow would have reduced this demon to a bloody pulp, the single-horned elder — in a panic of rage and terror — suddenly detached all six of his own arms simultaneously. They transformed into billowing blood mist that engulfed his body within.
With a thunderous crash, the two mountain peaks hammered mercilessly into the blood mist — but found nothing inside. The single-horned elder had somehow employed some unknown secret technique to escape from the spot in a bizarre vanish.
Han Li's giant ape form froze for a moment, then its great mouth split open in fury. It suddenly slapped both palms against its chest, and a crack split open between its brows, from which a pitch-black vertical eye emerged.
Deep within that eye's pupil, black light simply swirled for a moment before a beam of black light the thickness of a bowl's mouth erupted from it, vanishing in a flash into the void before it without a trace.
The next instant, a muffled, rumbling boom erupted from high in the sky several hundred zhang away.
Then, with a low roar, the demon's enormous figure stumbled out from a patch of spatial fluctuations over there.
Seeing this, Han Li wasted no more time and pointed at the two mountain peaks in the distance.
Immediately, the two great peaks trembled. One of them shimmered with silver runes on its surface as a vast expanse of grayish misty light rolled forth, while the other radiated ten thousand rays of cyan light, unleashing countless invisible threads of sword qi.