Staring at the bloody skeletal hand protruding from his abdomen,
With a crisp crack, the blue round pill was crushed into powder, then the skeletal hand abruptly vanished.
Hu Yue grunted. As the hand withdrew, he crumpled weakly to the ground, blood gushing endlessly from the gaping hole. The coppery scent of gore instantly filled the great hall.
Though not yet dead, he hovered at the threshold of oblivion.
The cries of
The poverty of his childhood, the family’s joy upon discovering his Spirit Root, the helplessness when his beloved senior sister married another, the pride of successfully forming his Core, the immense ambition to condense a Nascent Soul—all of it seemed to be fading away along with the growing chill in his limbs...
Yet Hu Yue was unwilling to accept this!
He refined three Flying Dagger treasures. When facing enemies, he usually released only two to kill. The third dagger never left his side.
Because this third dagger was forged using a special secret method. Though its offensive power when launched was average, its protective spiritual resonance far surpassed ordinary treasures by a great margin.
Moreover, he had spared no effort or blood to cultivate this treasure. Not long ago, it had reached the stage of spiritual resonance.
When faced with someone’s sneak attack, even without his conscious command, this treasure should have been able to sense the killing intent and automatically protect him!
"Unless the one who ambushed him..."
Hu Yue thought of something at the last moment, and with the final shred of mortal strength, he painfully twisted his head slightly, finally catching a glimpse of what lay behind him from the corner of his eye.
A whitish shadow was fiercely pursuing Jin Qing. Jin Qing, wrapped in a ball of silver light, retreated frantically, unleashing his own treasures to bombard the opponent, seemingly terrified of the white figure.
On the other side,
Qu Hun and Shi Die stood closely behind Han Li.
Qu Hun’s body was shrouded in bloody light, his hands continuously releasing purple flames to disperse the black qi that broke through the fiery ring.
Shi Die clutched a hazy white sphere, radiating bright light that deterred the occasional stray wisp of black qi from approaching her. Still, panic lingered in her eyes.
Hu Yue ignored the black qi and painstakingly examined the white shadow chasing Jin Qing.
It was indeed that white skeleton, dead for countless years. Yet it emitted a white mist, its body leaping with extreme agility. It bore no resemblance to a lifeless object.
Hu Yue let out a bitter laugh!
A cultivator at the Core Formation stage, taken down by a dead person’s skeleton—what an absurd joke!
Accompanied by this self-mocking thought, Hu Yue’s consciousness plunged into darkness, sinking into an endless slumber. Only that trace of self-mockery remained at the corner of his lips.
At the exact moment Hu Yue drew his last breath, Han Li’s expression was grim as he constantly scanned their surroundings.
Moments ago, as Hu Yue was ambushed by the leaping skeleton, a vast expanse of chilling ghostly mist had suddenly shot from the nearby walls, trapping them all within.
Fortunately, Han Li had already been somewhat prepared. Without hesitation, he opened the scroll he had just obtained. The result was the emergence of many spirit birds wreathed in ghostly fire from within.
Han Li had seen detailed records of these “Fat Sun Birds,” which looked like ordinary swallows but were cloaked in demonic fire.
Born from essence fire, they specialized in devouring various yin ghosts and fierce spirits, and were famous nemeses of such entities.
However, this type of bird had long been extinct in the cultivation world. The scroll only contained a fragment of its essence soul, capable only of releasing clones of the “Fat Sun Bird.”
These clones looked exactly like the real “Fat Sun Birds,” but their power was vastly different!
Otherwise, these black ghostly mists would not merely be temporarily dispersed, but should have been completely devoured.
Han Li wasn’t particularly worried about these persistent ghostly mists. Whether it was his “Azure
What made him uneasy was the master of the ghostly mist, who was still concealed nearby and hadn’t yet acted.
As for the skeleton, he saw it clearly. It possessed no true spiritual consciousness; it was obviously a puppet being manipulated. But this skeleton was somewhat strange—after enduring so many attacks from Jin Qing’s treasure, it remained unscathed. There must be some other mystery within.
As Han Li was pondering this, intermittent ghostly wails echoed from around them.