"Even if I were to entertain wild thoughts right now, what good would it do?" Han Li glanced at the pool of subterranean fire and couldn't help but reply with a bitter smile.
"So long as you understand the consequences, that is enough." Though Feng Xi spoke those words, a cold smile played across his face—he clearly didn't believe a word of Han Li's protestations.
Han Li kept the bitter expression on his face while inwardly cursing the old demon under his breath. Then he walked to a corner of the formation and sat cross-legged.
Feng Xi watched with his own eyes as Han Li obediently took the position he'd designated, then nodded with satisfaction. He turned to the Venomous Flood Dragon and the Turtle Demon and said politely: "You two, dear brothers, please also step into the formation. Prepare yourselves!"
The Venomous Flood Dragon and the Turtle Demon heard this and raised no objections. They walked forward a few steps and entered the formation, taking their places on the spots they had long since memorized.
Feng Xi let out a soft laugh and patted the storage pouch at his waist. The pouch flew out on its own, drifting leisurely above the pool of subterranean fire. Its opening flipped downward, and a spray of prismatic light shot forth.
Within that radiance, a small ball of silver light suddenly appeared. It swelled from small to large, and in the blink of an eye transformed into a pair of bone wings roughly ten feet across, their surface gleaming with an eerie phosphorescent glow.
One wing was missing the upper half of its tip; the other was tattered and incomplete.
At first glance, they looked utterly unusable. Yet these broken bones shimmered with silver light and radiated an enormous pressure, commanding involuntary respect.
"So these are the wings of the Thunder Roc! Severely damaged, yes, but they still look extraordinary. Truly worthy of a primordial wondrous bird!" The Venomous Flood Dragon stared at the bone wings, clicking his tongue in amazement.
"Of course! This Thunder Roc didn't perish of old age or pass away peacefully. For its skeleton to be broken like this, it must have been trapped at the site of its death and besieged until it fell. Otherwise, with the Thunder Roc's near-unrivaled speed and its late-stage Transformation cultivation, it could at least have fled, even if it couldn't win." Feng Xi gazed at the object without blinking, a fanatical gleam gradually spreading across his face.
At this moment, Han Li was also studying the Thunder Roc's bone wings with an expression of surprise.
"Let's get started. Who knows how many months it will take to finish refining this thing!" The Turtle Demon, on the other hand, seemed to have little interest in the bone wings. After a brief look, he urged them to begin with unusual impatience.
Feng Xi blinked in surprise upon hearing this, then immediately recalled something and laughed at himself.
"Heh heh! I'd almost forgotten. Brother Turtle has barely passed his Transformation tribulation—it hasn't been a century yet. Naturally, anything related to lightning would make him quite uncomfortable. Then let's not waste any more time—let's channel our power together!"
The Venomous Flood Dragon would not object, of course.
From the mouths of the three came a stream of low chanting that Han Li couldn't begin to understand. A terrifying surge of demonic energy slowly emanated from their bodies, and each one lit up with a different color—white, blue, and yellow.
Whether it was the demonic energy released by the three that stirred the formation, or some other means they used to secretly activate it, the formation began to operate amid a faint trembling. The dozen-odd mid-grade spirit stones embedded around it blazed with blinding light one after another.
Han Li felt a twinge of unease and glanced around.
Just then, Feng Xi suddenly let out a low shout. He pressed his palms together and then pulled them apart downward. Two thick beams of white light, each as broad as an arm, shot forth simultaneously and plunged into the formation at his feet.
A humming sound rang out, and the ground shuddered gently. The pool of subterranean fire at the center of the formation churned into a frenzy of rolling flames.
With a whoosh, a ball of fire the size of a head shot up from the pool and hurtled straight toward the bone wings hovering above.
Explosive crackling followed as scorching crimson flames engulfed the bone wings entirely.
Seeing this, the Venomous Flood Dragon and the Turtle Demon exchanged a glance and raised their hands in unison. Dense streams of blue and yellow spiritual threads sprayed from their palms, piercing through the flames and wrapping tightly around the bone wings. The threads crisscrossed, glowed, and began reshaping the bones.
In just a short while, the two of them had used these spiritual threads alone to restore the broken bone wings to their complete form.
Han Li watched, thinking he was witnessing something truly eye-opening— when the demon cultivator Feng Xi's eyes flashed with an odd light. He formed a series of hand seals, then rapidly flicked his ten fingers outward.
Dozens of white light spheres, each the size of a thumb, shot forth and landed on the bone wings with perfect precision.
Instantly, a piercing crackle of thunder erupted within the flames. The bone wings, just repaired by the spiritual threads, crackled with countless tiny arcs of lightning.
These arcs were exceedingly fine, brilliant with silver light. After flickering outward, they quickly merged into the blue and yellow spiritual threads.
Once the threads absorbed the lightning, they blazed with silver radiance and fused together, their color shifting to a gleaming silver-white.
When he saw this happen, Feng Xi's expression turned solemn. He stamped his foot hard and drove a stream of hand seals into the formation.