The journey was far more peaceful than Han Li had expected.
After stepping onto the route marked by the red line and navigating through several more left and right turns, Han Li encountered no restrictions or puppets whatsoever. Without any trouble at all, he arrived before a towering wall.
Gazing at the seemingly ordinary stone wall, Han Li flipped his hand and unfurled the tattered scroll once more, lowering his head to compare and verify.
"That's right! This is indeed the place!" After a moment, he murmured to himself.
He raised one hand, and five streaks of cyan sword light shot out from his fingertips, piercing directly into the stone wall to a depth of several feet.
At the sight of this, Han Li felt a surge of delight.
There were no restrictions on the wall at all — there truly was something hidden within.
He then rotated his five fingers slightly, and the five sword beams spun half a revolution in unison, easily carving out a circular opening roughly ten feet high with their razor-sharp edges.
With a gentle push from his other hand, a large hole appeared in the stone wall, revealing pitch-black darkness within.
With a flick of his wrist, the sword beams vanished, and a white sphere of light rose from his palm instead, drifting leisurely into the opening.
Han Li didn't hesitate. His figure moved, and he slipped nimbly inside.
It was a small chamber — no more than twenty feet high, with a length and width of roughly fifteen to twenty feet. Thick dust blanketed the floor.
But right in the center of the chamber sat a crude teleportation array.
The formation was arranged haphazardly, and the runes carved into it looked incredibly rough, as though someone who understood nothing about arrays had copied one by rote.
Han Li's brow furrowed.
Could it be completely unusable — or already abandoned?
He stepped forward a few paces and used his own knowledge of formations to inspect the teleportation array.
After a long moment, he let out a deep breath.
Though crude, the array was still functional, and it didn't appear to be a long-distance teleportation formation. He estimated that wherever it sent him, he wouldn't end up tens of thousands of miles away in some uncharted place.
Han Li took out several spirit stones and quickly fitted them into the slots around the edges of the array.
After a low humming sound, the formation emitted a faint glow.
Seeing this, Han Li allowed himself a slight smile.
But he didn't rush to activate it immediately. Instead, he turned back to look at the hole he had opened, a thoughtful expression on his face.
He then walked over and cast several minor restoration spells in succession upon the opening. The rubble instantly reassembled to seal the hole, restoring the stone wall to its original appearance.
Only then did Han Li clap his hands together, step onto the teleportation array, and vanish amid a flash of white light, completely at ease.
The next instant, his figure materialized within a layer of faint mist — humid and warm, carrying an indescribable fresh fragrance that assailed his nostrils.
But Han Li was standing in a battered array, staring blankly ahead with his mouth hanging wide open, unable to close it for a good long while.
Roughly ten feet in front of him appeared a milky-white pool some thirty or more feet across. The white mist and the fragrant scent both emanated from this pool.
Yet what truly stunned him was not the pool itself, but the fact that within it stood a nude female figure, half-submerged and facing him in the posture of bending down to scoop water.
The impossibly full curves, the porcelain-like luster of ivory-white skin, and the jet-black, lustrous hair cascading to her waist — all of it unmistakably identified her as a beautiful young woman in the bloom of youth.
Such an unexpected encounter made Han Li swallow hard, his thoughts going momentarily hazy. But when his gaze fell upon that breathtakingly lovely face — one frozen in an expression of utter disbelief — Han Li paused, then let out a bitter smile.
"Miss Yuan, what a coincidence! Meeting here again. Though I'm afraid my timing might be somewhat inappropriate!" Han Li let his gaze sweep boldly and without any restraint over the woman's exposed body, and said in a flat tone utterly devoid of sincerity.