In the blink of an eye, nearly half of Blood Crow City had emptied out.
"This works in our favor. With all these demon cultivators providing cover, our risk will be considerably lower. But something's odd! With something this major happening, why hasn't the City Lord of Blood Crow shown himself? If he were leading the charge to organize the defense, these demons wouldn't be in such chaos," the long-haired man muttered with a frown, a puzzled look on his face.
Upon hearing this, a thoughtful gleam flickered in the eyes of Ancestor of the Long family.
Without further delay, the group followed a massive column of tens of thousands of demons and slipped quietly out of Blood Crow City.
The moment these demons cleared the city walls, they spontaneously split into more than a dozen smaller squads of varying sizes and transformed into a long, dark column that hurried off in the same direction.
Clearly, these demons were pinning their hopes on gaps or weak points in the encirclement of the Demon-Devouring Ants, hoping to find a way through and escape with their lives.
Their cultivation levels varied widely, and their fleeing speeds naturally differed accordingly. Without anyone to command them, the column had scattered into complete disorder within a short while.
The combined demonic lights and auras of the fleeing horde stretched a hundred li from front to back.
Those higher-level demons at the front had no intention of slowing down. Instead, they formed their own tight group and pressed onward at full speed.
The mid-level demons of somewhat lesser cultivation had no choice but to trail far behind, watching the high-ranking demons grow ever more distant until they vanished from sight entirely.
Han Li and his companions did not follow close behind the high-level demons. Instead, they quietly merged into the second wave, advancing at an unhurried pace.
After roughly the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the sky ahead suddenly erupted with rumbling explosions. A vast mass of purple clouds rolled into view at the horizon — an enormous swarm of Demon-Devouring Ants.
Within the purple ant cloud, bursts of black qi and thunder-fire roared ceaselessly. These belonged to the high-level demons who had arrived earlier and were already locked in combat.
Drawing slightly closer, one could see that the ant sea spanned over a hundred acres. Yet under the desperate onslaught of more than a hundred high-level demons channeling their full demonic powers, the ants burst into clumps of ash and rained down from the sky. In the blink of an eye, the swarm had shrunk by nearly half.
The demons behind saw this and were overjoyed, letting out long howls as they activated their demonic artifacts and joined the attack.
Under this combined assault, this swarm of ants was swept away in a matter of breaths.
Quite a few demons felt their spirits lift at the sight, momentarily thinking the Demon-Devouring Ants had been overrated — not nearly as terrifying as the legends claimed.
However, there were also many more experienced demons whose faces remained grim. After exchanging only a few brief words, they immediately prepared to flee onward.
It was at that moment that the previously cloudless sky suddenly dimmed. A layer of purple gauze appeared without any warning and began drifting slowly downward.
This purple gauze was in fact a far vaster sea of ants — tens of millions strong — that had concealed themselves high above. Having used the smaller swarms to pin the group temporarily, they had completed their encirclement overhead and now revealed their terrifying true form.
"We've been ambushed!"
"Break through! Only by breaking out first can we have any hope of surviving!"
Chaos erupted among the demons below. Startled and furious cries rose one after another as hundreds of streaks of fleeing light scattered in every direction.
As for how many would actually escape — only the heavens knew.
"Brother Han, Fairy Ye! No need to hide your cultivation any longer. Break out on your own!" Ancestor of the Long family's face darkened as he issued a low shout. He raised his hand and flung out a shadowy figure that swelled in the wind, transforming into a pure-white single-masted flying boat. He flickered onto it and shot off into the sky with a piercing whistle.
Elder Hui and the
"Fellow Daoist Han, I'll be taking my leave as well," the feathered-robe girl said with a radiant smile at Han Li. A five-colored radiance blazed across her body, conjuring the phantom of a ten-zhang-tall five-colored phoenix that enveloped her in a flash and vanished into the void.
An instant later, several hundred zhang away, the phoenix phantom silently materialized through a shimmer of prismatic light, then flickered once more and disappeared eerily once again.
Han Li watched all of this and let out a soft sigh. With a single hand forming a seal, a clap of thunder cracked behind him as a pair of translucent, crystalline wings unfurled.
The wings fanned gently, and he transformed into a single thread of cyan-white light that shot forward. In one flicker he vanished, only to reappear at the far edge of the sky. Another flicker, and he too was gone.
Just like that, the human cultivators had scattered and broken through in the blink of an eye, each acting alone and paying no further heed to the demon horde.
With their Demon Sovereign-level strength, their speeds of escape were far beyond what any ordinary high-ranking demon could match.
Before the ant sea above had even finished descending, Han Li and the others had already burst free at incredible speeds without so much as a moment's pause, continuing to fly onward without looking back.
Behind them, the remaining demons were instantly swallowed by the purple clouds, and the roars and explosions flared to a deafening crescendo once more…
The cyan-white streak of light that was Han Li flew several tens of thousands of li in a single breath before his expression suddenly shifted. He halted mid-flight, peered ahead, and a bitter smile crept onto his face.
Tens of li away in the sky before him, additional clusters of purple mist had appeared and were rapidly rolling toward his position.
"I didn't expect I'd have to force my way through this soon. Let's hope I don't attract the attention of that Queen Ant."