Upon seeing this, Han Li's brow twitched slightly. He raised one arm, and a pristine, jade-white hand abruptly spread its five fingers apart.
With a piercing howl, five ghostly white skull phantom heads shot forth from his palm. In a single flicker, each one swelled to the size of a cart wheel.
They let out a bizarre cackle and opened their jaws wide, from which streams of five-colored frigid flames billled forth in torrents.
These were the Five Children Concentric Demons, long since refined and fused as one with Han Li's palm.
Originally, these five demons had been too weak to provide him much assistance in battle, so after entering the Spirit World, he had rarely summoned them against his enemies. However, Han Li had later stumbled upon a peculiar type of extreme cold energy by chance in the Vast Wilderness, and upon merging it with the Five Cold Extreme Flames, the demons' power had surged dramatically.
Though their intrinsic abilities remained negligible against high-ranking cultivators, the new frigid flames they could exhale possessed a startlingly immense might.
Under normal circumstances, Han Li himself could tap into the demons' power to wield a portion of this frigid flame's force, so he still refrained from summoning the Five Children Concentric Demons in most situations.
But the white-robed youth's display of icy cold energy was so formidable that Han Li had never encountered its equal in his entire life. Thus, he could no longer afford to hold anything back, and summoned all five demons in a single breath.
When the new five-colored frigid flame was sprayed outward by the five enormous skulls, the almost space-freezing cold that permeated the surroundings immediately diminished wherever it passed.
The sword formation regained its original flexibility.
Though Han Li's frigid flames still fell a step short of the white-robed youth's extreme cold, absorbing a portion of that cold energy was still well within reach.
Han Li's hands flickered rapidly as he drove the sword formation once more.
Countless azure sword lights crisscrossed and appeared within the formation, then converged toward its center, coalescing into a single enormous sphere of light.
The sphere radiated a hazy azure glow, its surface flickering with blindingly sharp sword light.
A dragon's roar that pierced straight to the ninth heaven rang out. The sphere shattered, and from within, a verdant azure coiled dragon burst forth, baring its fangs and brandishing its claws!
The dragon's entire body was covered in azure scales, each one polished bright as a mirror. It radiated an aura so terrifying it seemed capable of splitting heaven and earth, and lunged directly at the colossal white blade hovering in the sky.
A thunderous, heaven-rending explosion boomed through the upper atmosphere!
The instant the blade and the dragon made contact, both erupted in dazzling radiance. The extreme cold emanating from the blade flared threefold, and it cleaved into the dragon's neck — yet all that rang out was a muffled clang of metal on metal, without leaving so much as a faint scratch upon the scales.
However, the blade's extreme cold did manage to coat the dragon's upper body in a thick layer of ice almost instantaneously.
But in the next moment, the dragon's eyes blazed with fury. With a single writhe of its body, the ice cracked and shattered inch by inch. Then it thrust its head forward, jaws gaping wide as it bit straight down on the great blade, while two claws raked out in eerie silence and its massive body coiled around the weapon with menacing force.
A series of sharp cracking sounds rang out in rapid succession!
Despite the blade's terrifying might, its substance did not appear particularly resilient. Trapped firmly in the dragon's jaws, then raked by both claws, it immediately let out a mournful wail and began to splinter apart.
When the dragon's colossal body flashed around the entire blade and squeezed with all its strength, the weapon instantly dissolved into a cascade of crystalline motes of light that scattered into nothingness.
On the white-robed youth's face in the distance, a look of shock finally appeared. But without a word, the demon tapped the void before him several times, and a gust of pale white cold wind swept across — revealing dozens of crystalline flying knives, completely unscathed once more.
"Hm? This is—" Han Li's expression shifted as he witnessed the scene.
Only then did he realize that those seemingly irresistible, frigid flying knives had never been true magical artifacts to begin with — they were simply condensations of the opponent's extreme cold energy.
As long as the white-robed youth still possessed Magical Power, he could re-condense them endlessly.
This was far more than Han Li had anticipated.
But his shock lasted only a single instant. With a sharp focusing of his will, the dragon forged from countless sword lights let out a long cry and lunged, fangs bared, straight at the white-robed youth.
At the same time, a peal of thunder erupted behind Han Li as a pair of translucent, crystalline wings materialized. His eyes flashed coldly, and he transformed into a bolt of lightning that vanished into thin air.
The more terrifying the opponent proved, the more ruthlessly he had to strike.
Whether for the sake of his own survival or from the standpoint of the human race, this was an unquestionable truth.
The white-robed youth's pupils contracted upon witnessing this, but after a cold snort, the dozens of crystalline flying knives hovering before him hummed to life and shot skyward, instantly re-forming into a single snow-white colossal blade identical to the one before!
As for the youth himself, he stamped a foot and also transformed into a streak of crystalline light that merged with the giant. Then, with a sharp shriek, the combined form became a single blade of light that slashed viciously toward the azure coiled dragon.
The colossal blade now contained an immense power nearly double what it had wielded before. Before the blade-light even descended, the void was already saturated with a bone-chilling radiance that seemed to shroud half the sky beneath its shadow.
Yet the azure coiled dragon showed not the slightest trace of fear. Its scales bristled upward, transforming into a sky full of azure brilliance that crashed headlong into the blade-light.
For a time, everywhere one looked in the sky, there was nothing but cold white radiance and azure shimmer. The two forces interlocked, locked in a stalemate that neither side could break!