"A Mahayana existence!" Han Li's heart tightened. The light of escape around his body vanished, and he froze in place without so much as a twitch.
That terrifying spiritual sense then swept back and forth through the surrounding ten-thousand-li radius several times before finally retreating, apparently satisfied.
For a time afterward, nothing unusual emanated from deep within the mountain range.
"That kind of spiritual sense couldn't have been released by an ordinary adult Shura spider. Could there really be a Shura spider here that surpasses the average Mahayana being? If such an entity exists, any further approach with ordinary concealment techniques would likely fail to deceive its spiritual sense. Still, projecting spiritual sense over such a distance without any noticeable weakening must mean it's being augmented by some kind of treasure." Han Li stood where he was without immediately taking action, his thoughts churning while a look of gravity settled onto his face.
If it truly was an existence comparable to a True Spirit, even he could not afford to disregard it.
After deliberating for a good while, he finally made his decision. With a flick of one hand, a purple talisman materialized, and with a soft *pop*, it burst into clouds of purple qi that enveloped his body. Countless runes surged forth within, condensing into a small patch of purple mist.
When the purple qi silently dissipated, the space inside had gone completely empty. In order to avoid alerting the enemy, Han Li had deployed the Taiyi Transformation Talisman once more.
Now that his body had been rendered into a state of nothingness, he had nothing left to fear. He drifted inward toward the depths of the mountain range.
Although his ethereal state prevented him from traveling at full speed, each gentle sway carried him several dozen zhang forward, and he entered the mountain range in the blink of an eye.
Relying on a wisp of spiritual sense he had previously planted on the young woman, he could still pinpoint her exact location despite the thousand-li distance between them.
So Han Li was in no particular hurry to close the gap, content to trail behind her at a leisurely pace.
However, after penetrating roughly ten thousand li into the mountains, his brows furrowed involuntarily.
He had assumed that since the Shura spiders had built their nest here, the surrounding mountain range would be remarkably devoid of other creatures — or at the very least, devoid of anything too powerful. But when he had quietly swept his spiritual sense outward, he discovered dozens of Spirit Transformation and Void Refinement stage exotic beasts along this section of the mountain range's edge alone, along with two Body Integration stage monstrous birds.
One of those birds was covered in crimson plumage like living flames, its body as massive as a bull. The other was sheathed in ashen steel feathers, with an unsightly fleshy growth on top of its head.
The pair perched on the broad limb of a colossal tree roughly a thousand li away — one holding its head high, glancing about ceaselessly, the other with half-closed eyes, apparently dozing.
All the other exotic beasts had taken on half-human, half-beast forms and were patrolling their respective territories in organized teams.
Every single creature in this Minor Shura Realm appeared to have been subdued by the Shura spiders.
Beyond his initial surprise, Han Li found himself marveling at the sight.
When the Spirit King and the others had described the Shura spiders, they had never once mentioned that these creatures were capable of recruiting other beasts.
Either the Spirit King's group had severely underestimated the Shura spiders' intelligence from the very beginning, or these monsters had undergone some kind of mutation within the Minor Shura Realm — otherwise, the scene before him was far too bizarre.
Recalling that the Shura spider from earlier had been able to assume a human form even at the Void Refinement stage, the latter possibility was almost certainly more likely.
Han Li turned this over silently in his mind, and his wariness toward the Shura spiders grew by another measure. Nevertheless, he continued to follow the young woman from a great distance, showing no intention of stopping.
After a full half-hour of flight — covering a million li — he finally spotted, nestled among the mountains in a stretch of open plain, a green stone city that rose abruptly from the ground.
The entire city was constructed from massive blocks of green stone, and the walls towered several hundred zhang high. Yet the city itself spanned only a few dozen li in circumference, looking more like a fortress than anything else.
Strangely, atop those towering walls — which were decorated with all manner of green-stone beast statues — not a single soul could be seen standing guard.
Even more bizarre still, the city had no gates or entrances of any kind, sealed on every side by those towering walls without so much as a crack.
Han Li's eyes flashed with blue light. Rather than using his spiritual sense, he relied directly on his spirit-eyes to examine every detail outside the city.
But when he intensified the blue glow, attempting to pierce his gaze through the walls and peer inside, countless white runes suddenly surged within his vision. Blossoms of white lotus materialized, forming a barrier that blocked his sight entirely.
"The Great Transformation White Lotus Restriction! What is going on!"
Han Li blurted out in shock, hastily withdrawing his spirit-eyes, his face once more showing undisguised astonishment.
The restrictive formation he had just witnessed was the renowned signature barrier of a prominent race in the Spirit Realm — one that could even momentarily shield against the spiritual sense of a Mahayana being. How on earth had these Shura spiders come to deploy it?
Before his shock had fully subsided, a wisp of spiritual sense in his spiritual sea suddenly jolted. His expression darkened on the spot.
And almost simultaneously, from within the seemingly silent stone city, a thunderous boom cracked across the clear sky. A blood-red spectral image of a spider as massive as a mountain range materialized out of thin air.