Dong Xuan'er, who had been standing beside the strange man the entire time, was similarly enveloped by his rosy radiance, and the three of them shot backward at tremendous speed.
A resentful strike from a Core Formation cultivator — that was not something the three of them could withstand!
The white sword light that filled the sky, driven forward by the masked woman, pursued them for over ten zhang before suddenly dissipating without a trace.
At the same time, the woman standing atop her magical artifact swayed several times, her graceful figure looking as though she might fall at any moment.
Seeing this, the glamorous man and the Ghost Spirit Sect's young master were overjoyed and immediately switched from retreat to advance, charging forward.
Watching from below, Han Li's expression shifted slightly. Without a second thought, he slapped his storage bag, and thirteen Red Thread Escape Light Needles leaped into his hand. He gripped them tightly.
However dangerous it might be to act now, he couldn't just stand by and watch Nangong Wan perish.
After all, no matter how selfish and cold he could be, he wasn't truly heartless. Besides, he was confident that while he might not yet be a match for the Ghost Spirit Sect's young master and his companion, he had more than enough ability to escape if he set his mind to it.
Just as Han Li raised his hand, ready to release the flying needles and save the masked woman, the situation in the sky took a dramatic turn.
The masked woman, who moments before had seemed unable to keep her footing on the sword, suddenly steadied herself as Wang Chan and the others drew close. A cold gleam flashed through her beautiful eyes.
Wang Chan and the glamorous man saw this and their faces went pale with horror — they realized in an instant that they had been tricked.
But when they tried to turn and flee, it was already too late.
The woman raised both hands, and once again countless beams of soaring sword qi shot forth. Blinding white light completely engulfed the three of them.
Seeing this, Han Li felt a wave of relief, and his grip on the artifacts loosened slightly.
By now, the entire sky had been turned an ashen white by the masked woman's sword light. The blood mist and rosy radiance caught within that white glow, though swaying like small boats on towering waves, stubbornly held on by sheer momentum. In particular, the glamorous man and Dong Xuan'er, still within the rosy light, shot streams of strange green and red luminescence from their hands, managing to counter the frenzied onslaught of the sword qi.
This scene made Han Li furrow his brow. After a brief moment of deliberation, he vanished soundlessly from where he stood.
Meanwhile, the masked woman in the sky was consumed with anxiety.
Though she had used a ruse to trap these two juniors of the Demonic Path, her attacks at their current intensity were failing to overcome the three of them — something truly beyond her expectations.
Not long before, she had fought a pitched battle against a Core Formation cultivator from the Demonic Path. After exhausting her magical power, she had very nearly perished together with her opponent.
Though she subsequently fought her way out of the encirclement, her injuries were so severe that even she herself was shaken.
What was even worse, the treasure intimately connected to her Primordial Spirit had been heavily damaged in the battle and could not be used for the time being.
Moreover, with pursuers still on her trail, she had no choice but to resort to a secret technique that severely damaged her vital essence — forcibly extracting latent potential from her body to squeeze out just enough spiritual power to escape on her flying artifact.
Yet to her surprise, though she had shaken off most of the demonic cultivators, these three possessed peculiar demonic techniques and pursued her relentlessly, refusing to let go.
In that case, she had no choice but to find a way to eliminate the three of them. Otherwise, once the secret technique's effects wore off, even she — a Core Formation cultivator — would be completely at their mercy.
The reason she had chosen to stop here was that her spiritual sense had just detected the presence of a cultivator in this area. Though she didn't know who it was, there was no mistaking the absence of demonic energy from the Six Demonic Sects on this person.
Furthermore, this person was a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator — most likely either from a major cultivation family or one of the allied sects of the other five factions.
Reasoning that the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, she had fled here with every intention of dragging this cultivator into the fight as well, in the hope that things might turn around.
But to her complete surprise, this person's spiritual sense turned out to be quite formidable — from a great distance, he had sensed the disturbance and concealed himself, making it abundantly clear he wanted no part of any trouble whatsoever.
Left with no choice, the masked woman had to stop and face her enemies alone, filling her with seething hatred toward this person.
But just then, yet another fatal complication arose.
These three demonic cultivators proved to be astonishingly tenacious, and they carried extremely powerful defensive artifacts. With the techniques and powers she could muster from her dwindling spiritual reserves, she was unable to destroy them.
As for the high-grade talismans and other powerful artifacts she had once possessed, those had long since been completely exhausted in days of unrelenting combat.