Han Li narrowed his eyes slightly, then flipped his palm over. A pale-yellow gourd no more than an inch tall materialized in his hand. He tossed it forward.
The gourd inverted itself, and after crystalline runes flickered across its surface, it swelled wildly in size, transforming into a massive object the size of a house in the blink of an eye.
Han Li tapped a single finger toward it.
A deep rumbling boomed from within the enormous gourd, and countless motes of crystal light sprayed out from its mouth — each one a translucent grain of sand no larger than a broad bean.
They were none other than the Fiendish Gold Spirit Sand that Han Li had obtained in the Devil Realm many years ago.
The grains of sand tumbled through the void, and in an instant, each one split into a hundred, then each hundred into a thousand, until they had merged into a vast, glittering sea of sand.
"Go."
Han Li swept one sleeve and issued a cold command.
The crystalline sand roared forward, rolling toward the opposite side in a torrent that blotted out the sky.
In the blink of an eye, the two seas of sand collided violently high above, producing a grating, ear-piercing grinding sound as dazzling radiance in both yellow and crystal erupted from the point of impact.
The yellow sand churned wildly, constantly morphing into the shapes of tigers, leopards, jackals, wolves, and other demonic beasts that lunged forward to tear and batter the opposing crystalline sand.
But the crystal sea was like a fathomless ocean. No matter how eerily the yellow sand shifted its form, the crystalline sand simply drove each individual grain to spin slowly, grinding every particle of yellow sand that touched it to pulpy dust.
The outcome of the clash was all but decided in the span of a few breaths.
The yellow sand sea shrank at a rate visible to the naked eye, and after only a handful of breaths, its area had been reduced to less than half its original size.
Seeing this from within the yellow gale, the Yang Deer looked momentarily startled, but it immediately let out a cold snort and took a massive stride forward.
With a deafening boom, a violent spatial ripple surged outward, and the Yang Deer's colossal figure crossed hundreds of zhang in a single step, materializing directly above Han Li. Its two fleshy palms crossed slightly in front of its body, then hammered downward like a pair of small mountains.
Before the palms had even fallen, two layers of near-transparent white halos bloomed from their surfaces, and a suffocating, viscous force immediately enveloped Han Li.
Han Li raised an eyebrow. He reached out into the void, and a green sword several feet long materialized in his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he slashed upward.
A flash of green light!
A green arc more than ten zhang long surged skyward. It vanished for an instant, then struck the milky-white halo with devastating force.
A muffled boom!
Green radiance and white light swirled and flickered against each other, and the green arc was repelled.
Rather than growing alarmed, Han Li grinned. His arm suddenly swelled to nearly twice its original thickness, and iridescent purple-gold scales surfaced across his skin. He then drove a single fist skyward with earth-shaking might.
The Yang Deer's face twisted into a ferocious grin. Its shoulders jerked, and two more surges of colossal power flooded into its palms. The milky-white halos descending toward Han Li blazed with blinding intensity, and the viscous force enveloping him thickened several times over.
The beast intended to crush Han Li into paste with a single blow.
The instant Han Li's seemingly slender fist made contact with the milmy-white halo, a pattern composed of innumerable silver runes lit up across its surface, and from within surged an inconceivably terrifying force.
BOOM!
A world-shaking detonation rang out.
Both layers of the milky-white halo shattered inch by inch in the same instant, and the two fleshy palms were blasted apart by raw force.
The Yang Deer itself trembled as that horrifying power struck its body and involuntarily staggered backward.
After more than a dozen heavy, earth-shaking steps, the beast finally steadied itself. When it looked back at Han Li, its eyes burned with mingled shock and fury. It let out a low growl, opened its maw, and spat out a wind blast roughly a zhang in diameter. The blast flickered once and then arrived so close to Han Li it might as well have teleported.
Only then did the tremendous wind pressure carried by the blast produce a piercing shriek in the surrounding void.
CRACK!
Han Li's purple-gold arm blurred, and the massive wind blast was swatted away just as indistinctly. It streaked off into the distance and detonated upon striking the ground far away, erupting into a white sun. The shockwave that unfurled from the blast flattened everything within a radius of more than a li.
Witnessing this, the Yang Deer's face turned an ashen shade of iron.