After the Elder Council had settled the matter of the Azure Dragon's death and Han Li's situation, everything in Sky Abyss City returned to calm for a time.
As the silver-haired elder had said, as long as no one leaked the information, the ordinary inhabitants of the city would have no idea that a peak existence at the mid-stage of Integration from the human race had already perished.
Of course, this news had not been kept from Fairy Lin Luan.
Upon learning of it, the woman had been visibly shaken and stunned on the spot, though she displayed no further unusual behavior afterward. She never again mentioned Senior Azure Dragon, as though she had never known the man at all.
However, the effort to recruit Han Li was not going smoothly.
During this period, Han Li had not shown himself even once. The official explanation, naturally, was that he had gone into secluded cultivation to work on some great divine ability.
This left Zen Master Jinyue with the feeling that he had no way to get started, and all he could do was wait patiently.
He did not believe that when the demon army launched its decisive siege, Han Li would still be able to remain hidden away in seclusion.
But aside from Zen Master Jinyue, Fairy Silver Light, and a handful of other Integration-stage existences, the remaining elders on the Council were soon drawn away by the demons' increasingly frequent harassment attacks, leaving them no time to concern themselves with Han Li's affairs.
Even the silver-haired elder, after making a few inquiries, plunged headlong into the tedious work of repelling the demons' wave-like assaults.
At this point, although the demon army had not yet committed its main forces to a full assault, the raids that had previously occurred only every few days had grown far more ferocious.
In fact, casualties among Void Refining cultivators had begun to appear with disturbing frequency in these attacks.
This put the elders of Sky Abyss City even more on edge. Every time the demons attacked, two or three elders had to deploy together before anyone could feel even slightly reassured.
In response, the entire interior of Sky Abyss City had been set into full motion!
All manner of artifact-forging workshops were operating at maximum capacity, sparing no materials in the production of magical tools and spirit artifacts. Cultivators skilled in talisman crafting had been gathered together as well, working day and night to produce vast quantities of low-grade spirit talismans.
In a battle of this scale, medium- and high-grade talismans were actually less useful than these low-grade ones.
After all, the materials and time required to craft a single medium-grade talisman could yield dozens or even hundreds of low-grade talismans, not to mention that the success rate between the two was as far apart as heaven and earth — utterly incomparable.
As for high-grade talismans, aside from a handful of grandmaster talisman crafters, no one else could possibly produce them.
Beyond the mass production of artifacts and talismans, the many newly arrived low-grade cultivators and ordinary body-strength practitioners within the city had been mobilized as well, organized into several large groups of varying size to serve as Sky Abyss City's reserve forces.
In addition to all these measures, Sky Abyss City had carried out a top-to-bottom inspection of its various defensive formations and restrictions several times over, to guarantee that these critical defenses against the demons were absolutely flawless.
In short, Sky Abyss City had taken on the unmistakable appearance of a great battle about to break.
And so, time flew by. In the blink of an eye, roughly half a year had passed.
On this particular day, inside Sky Abyss City's council hall, the silver-haired elder was discussing an urgent matter concerning the demons with Zen Master Jinyue when the hall doors were suddenly thrown open from outside, and a guard in silver armor rushed in.
It was one of the Sky Abyss Sentinels who had been standing watch outside.
"Who gave you permission to barge in here!" the silver-haired elder's expression darkened at the sight, and he demanded in a voice heavy with authority.
"Reporting to the lords — the spiritual energy outside is acting strangely. It appears that some senior cultivator is attempting an advancement tribulation!" The guard hastily bowed, his voice tinged with panic.
"An advancement? Could one of our fellow Daoists be breaking through to mid-stage Integration? If so, that would be good news. There's no need to be so flustered." The silver-haired elder blinked, his expression easing slightly.
"But the celestial phenomena in the distance are far too violent. It doesn't look like a mid-stage Integration tribulation at all — it seems even more terrifying than the tribulation of a late-stage Integration cultivator that I've heard about." The guard swallowed hard, his face showing genuine fear.
"Is that so? Master, let us go outside and have a look." The silver-haired elder was startled. His thoughts raced for a moment, and then he turned to Zen Master Jinyue.
"Very well. This old monk is quite interested to see which fellow Daoist has chosen this moment to undergo tribulation." Zen Master Jinyue agreed readily.
The two of them then followed the guard out of the hall.
The moment they stepped beyond the protective restrictions of the council hall, the silver-haired elder's expression shifted subtly.
With his divine sense at the mid-stage of Integration, he could easily perceive the abnormality in the ambient spiritual energy. What had been an exceptionally stable field of spiritual power now thrummed with restless vitality, as though some fearsome force was exerting its invisible influence upon it.
The elder's pace quickened unconsciously.