The door to the secret chamber inside the cave dwelling finally swung open.
A shadowy figure, hair disheveled and face obscured, slowly emerged from within.
At that moment, a flash of yellow light appeared and Qu Hun instantly materialized beside the person, his expression utterly vacant.
"Hehe… Core Formation. The Golden Core is finally complete!" After surveying everything beyond the secret chamber and Qu Hun standing at his side, the figure suddenly threw back his head and burst into laughter that carried an unmistakable hint of a dragon's roar and a tiger's growl.
The face revealed through the tangled, unkempt locks of hair was none other than Han Li's—the same Han Li who had entered the secret chamber sixty years ago.
But the man standing here now had a sharp, piercing light in his eyes, and every gesture radiated an imposing bearing, as though he had become an entirely different person.
Having finished his laughter, Han Li gazed upon the world outside the chamber and felt a strange sense of unfamiliarity wash over him.
Sixty years spent shut away from the outside world left him with a keen impression that times had changed while he remained untouched, as though everything that had happened before had grown impossibly remote.
Han Li did not linger where he stood. Instead, following the imprint of his memory, he made his way back to his sleeping quarters.
When he emerged a short while later, his complexion was radiant with renewed vigor. He had restored his appearance to what it had been decades ago—a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties.
His expression, however, was now extraordinarily cool and composed. Without any haste, he walked toward the insect chamber.
The Gold Devouring Beetles inside the chamber were utterly different from what they had been decades ago!
Not only had their numbers swelled to a terrifying several tens of thousands, but the originally silver shells now bore flecks of gold, lending them a far more fierce and menacing appearance.
Han Li showed no surprise at the sight. Qu Hun had already informed him of this development years ago—he was simply seeing the reality of it with his own eyes now.
Truth be told, even Han Li himself had never expected it. That sudden flash of inspiration years ago—to use the Nishang Grass in experiments with the Gold Devouring Beetles—had inadvertently solved the problem of how to cultivate them.
After he went into seclusion, Qu Hun continued to feed the beetles Nishang Grass with its unfurled leaves every single month. After consuming the grass, the beetles grew increasingly irritable and violent in temperament.
After three or four years of feeding, the beetles finally underwent a mutation.
They had actually begun devouring one another after finishing a feeding of Nishang Grass.
Within just a few days, the original several hundred beetles had been reduced to a mere dozen or so. But those that survived were vastly superior to their former kin in both size and aura.
Moreover, shortly after consuming their fellow beetles, these survivors actually began laying eggs of their own accord. Each one produced nearly a hundred eggs before slowly perishing.
In this way, Han Li obtained over a thousand eggs at once.
The eggs hatched in barely a year's time, entirely on their own.
So Qu Hun resumed feeding them Nishang Grass, allowing them to continually devour one another and reproduce.
After several such cycles, the numbers of Gold Devouring Beetles surged wildly.
If not for the fact that the number of Nishang Grass stalks capable of being accelerated in growth was limited—causing each round of mutual consumption to be delayed further and further—the swarm would surely have grown far beyond its current numbers.
What was even more astonishing was that each generation born from this process of mutual consumption and reproduction grew stronger and more ferocious than the last, and even their shells were transitioning from pure silver to bearing golden flecks that showed a clear trend of expanding.
This led Han Li to wonder whether the beetles would truly advance to the next rank only once their shells had turned entirely gold.
Standing outside the insect chamber, Han Li stared at the mass of Gold Devouring Beetles for a long while, his eyes flickering with thought. He said not a word.
He knew full well that this method of breeding and cultivating Gold Devouring Beetles was certainly not the orthodox technique used by the ancient beast-controlling cultivators.
Because he believed that the miraculous ripening effect of the mysterious small bottle was absolutely unique in this mundane world.
Perhaps this method was actually superior to the insect-cultivation techniques of his predecessors.
At this thought, Han Li allowed himself a faint smile. He turned and walked toward the adjacent insect chamber not far away, where two Blood Jade Spiders were kept.
Although, at Han Li's direction, Qu Hun had used only a small portion of the Green Liquid produced each year to cultivate the spirit herbs needed for manufacturing Spirit-Feeding Pills, the two Blood Jade Spiders had been fed these pills for such a long time that they had already ascended several ranks and were now peak fourth-level demon beasts.
They looked exactly like the White Jade Spiders he had once encountered in the underground cavern—their entire bodies crystalline as jade, exquisitely beautiful!
Han Li's arrival clearly startled the two white spiders. Connected to his mind by now, they immediately rushed toward the stone door with eager energy, as though they wanted to play and frolic with him.
Han Li felt a surge of warmth and promptly opened the stone door. The two Blood Jade Spiders leaped out at once, circling around him ceaselessly.
Han Li stroked their backs for a while, clucking his tongue in admiration at their stunningly translucent bodies! Only then did he store them in a spirit beast pouch and turn to leave the insect chamber.
As for the Gold Devouring Beetles, Han Li had no intention of putting them to use just yet.
He planned to wait for several more generations to hatch and for their bodies to fully transform to gold before deploying them—a hidden trump card he kept in reserve.