Sword-light flashed wildly!
Over a thousand zhang of silver lightning blazed to life, and several towering pillars of wind were severed into multiple sections mid-air, scattering into gusts of wild gale.
Punch-force arrived without a sound!
At the centers of some of the wind pillars, golden light flickered, revealing enormous vortexes spanning roughly an acre each, spinning rapidly around.
The wind pillars shuddered and were wrenched apart as these golden vortexes, born from within the pillars themselves, violently sucked them in — dissipating them into formless, scattered energy.
Under the combined efforts of two Mahayana-stage existences, even such terrifying heavenly might was forcefully broken apart and driven back.
Once clear of the storm sea, the Mo Spirit Holy Vessel immediately surged in speed and flew straight out of the canyon.
In the journey that followed, Han Li and his group encountered no further significant dangers. Half a year later, they finally flew into the Spirit Race's Spirit Domain.
Han Li and the others stood at the upper deck of the great vessel. In the distance, they could already make out a natural wall of continuous, relatively low mountain peaks stretching across the horizon.
Behind these enormous walls of stone, a colossal peak soaring tens of thousands of zhang high pierced through the nine heavens and vanished into the clouds.
Along the misty mountainside, triangular prism-shaped towers could be seen faintly — built densely across the slopes, seeming to blanket the entire mountain.
"That ahead is the Spirit Race's famed Spirit Sky Fortress! In truth, calling it a fortress is somewhat misleading — it's more like a city. Its function is actually quite similar to our two races' Heavenly Abyss City: it exists specifically to block alien races from invading Spirit Race territory. However, rather than enveloping the entire domain with a grand defensive formation and leaving only a single exit like our Heavenly Abyss City, the Spirit Race's territory is surrounded on most sides by treacherous, impassable terrain. Large armies simply cannot traverse it. As long as a few key chokepoints are held, the Spirit Race remains perfectly safe. That's why they don't have just one such fortress — they have seven of them altogether." Mo Jianli stood on the great vessel, explaining to Han Li as though lecturing.
"Even if this fortress's defenses are extremely tight, bypassing it entirely should be effortless for people of our caliber. Or does Brother Mo think it would be better to enter the Spirit Sky Fortress openly?"
"We didn't make any prior arrangements with the Spirit King for a meeting. Besides, that Thunderclap Talisman is no trivial matter — we shouldn't draw attention to ourselves. We simply need to find the Spirit King quietly." Mo Jianli had clearly already thought this through at length and answered without hesitation.
"Brother Mo makes a fair point. Then let us bypass the fortress and slip into the Spirit Race's territory in secret." Han Li nodded, offering no objection.
The others followed their lead and naturally had nothing to say against it.
The great vessel altered course and shot off toward one side.
At almost the same time, inside one of the prism-shaped buildings atop the colossal mountain behind the "great wall," a beautiful woman who appeared to be in her early thirties stood before a white wall inscribed with an astonishing number of formation runes, her delicate brows furrowing slightly.
In her monitoring, a formation pattern on the white wall had just flickered with a faint anomalous fluctuation — extremely weak, but indicating that an object carrying tremendous spiritual pressure had indeed appeared in the area in front of the fortress. Otherwise, it would never have registered on this Divination Diagram.
At this thought, the woman immediately called out a command toward the door.
A Spirit Race guard clad in full battle armor entered and bowed respectfully before her.
"Greetings, Examiner!"
"Go check Sector Huoli Three — there are some anomalous fluctuations over there." The woman gave the order without hesitation.
"Understood!" The armored guard replied respectfully, then lowered his head and withdrew from the room.
Moments later, a squad of over a hundred Spirit Race guards departed the Spirit Sky Fortress and headed straight toward the area where the Mo Spirit Holy Vessel had previously been.
By now, of course, the vessel had already carried Han Li and his companions over a million li away, and the guards returned empty-handed.
When the beautiful woman heard the report, her brows furrowed deeply once more.
For some reason, though the detected fluctuation had been rather unremarkable — quite possibly just a false reading — she felt a faint, inexplicable unease that refused to settle. Her mind simply would not calm down.
Perhaps she really did need to rest.
After careful deliberation, the woman attributed it to the fatigue of long-term monitoring duty and, with a touch of self-deprecation, pushed the matter from her thoughts.
Meanwhile, Han Li and his group were quietly flying over a stretch of pitch-black waters.