While the Confucian scholar surnamed Zhong and the woman surnamed Le were discussing the eerie peculiarities of the Devilfall Valley, Han Li was already a hundred li away.
Nothing else happened along the remainder of his journey, and after several hours he successfully arrived at the cave entrance of the inner valley.
Taking out the Two Provenance Ring once more, Han Li used this treasure's protection to enter the passage within the cave.
The several-li-long tunnel didn't take much time to traverse. Before long, Han Li emerged from the section containing the North Aurora Origin Light and spotted the somewhat whitened cave exit ahead.
His spirits lifting slightly, he quickened his pace.
Moments later, Han Li's vision brightened. He once again found himself standing before the cliff face of the outer valley.
Han Li raised his head to gaze at the dim sky. Though it still looked unpleasant, it was far better than the near-omnipresent blood-colored radiance within the inner valley.
He swept his spiritual sense over the surrounding area. Nothing unusual was happening, and it didn't seem like any other cultivators had discovered this place. Only then did Han Li let out a small breath of relief. His gaze shifted and settled on the rock wall beside the cave entrance.
Without hesitation, he raised a hand and flicked a green spell seal shooting outward. It flashed once with spiritual light before plunging into the rock wall and vanishing from sight.
Then, without another word, Han Li brought both hands together into a spell seal, and a low, drawn-out chant left his lips. A bizarre scene unfolded!
The seemingly ordinary rock wall suddenly gave rise to a layer of hazy green light that shrouded the entire cliff face within its glow. Then, one after another, small swarms of golden Gold Devouring Beetles burst forth from the light screen, and silver crystal chunks of varying sizes tumbled down from the insect clouds. The largest were the size of a fist, while the smallest were barely bigger than beans.
In the blink of an eye, a small pile had accumulated on the ground before Han Li. Each piece gleamed like silver, though slightly translucent.
These were the crystals refined from raw Celestial Steel Sand ore.
At first, Han Li's expression remained composed as the first few pieces fell. But once the crystals on the ground grew to more than a dozen, he couldn't help but show a look of astonishment.
"Young Han! The Celestial Steel Sand vein here is far richer than we originally anticipated. It seems even those mechanical puppets I've been developing can all be refined with this material!" The voice of Great Development Spirit Lord suddenly rang out in Han Li's mind, brimming with uncontained excitement.
"Indeed. This junior didn't expect the Celestial Steel Sand vein here to be this extensive either. This time, the harvest is truly extraordinary!" After the last swarm of Gold Devouring Beetles dropped the Celestial Steel Sand crystals they had extracted, Han Li glanced at the small pile of gleaming silver on the ground and replied with delight.
He swept his sleeve across the ground. A wave of green mist swept over the surface, and in an instant the ground was completely bare. Every last Celestial Steel Sand crystal had been collected into Han Li's storage pouch in the blink of an eye.
Then, with a sharp whistle from his mouth, the golden insect cloud circling at low altitude swooped down en masse, all of them burrowing into the spirit pouch.
After finishing all of this, Han Li patted the storage pouch with one hand, and a transparent pearl the size of a thumbnail appeared in his palm.
Opening his mouth, he immediately sprayed a burst of green spiritual energy onto the pearl.
The originally clear and crystalline pearl shimmered with light, and then a green luminous dot the size of a soybean materialized within it.
Han Li stared at the orb in his hand with flickering eyes for quite some time. He furrowed his brow slightly, raised his head to look around, and oriented himself by identifying the directions.
Only then did spiritual light flash around his body as he transformed into a streak of green light that shot skyward, hurtling off in a particular direction.
Even while flying, Han Li kept the orb cradled in one hand. After traveling a certain distance, he would invariably lower his gaze to check it, then readjust his flight direction accordingly.
As a result, Han Li's speed couldn't exactly be called fast. He flew along at a steady, unhurried pace.
After flying dozens of li and passing over a stretch of barren wasteland, Han Li suddenly let out a soft "Hm?" and halted his light in midair.
Then his figure dipped downward, descending within a cocoon of green light.
When he was about thirty-odd zhang above the wasteland below, his descent halted once more. His eyes flashed as he looked downward.
There, lying on the wasteland directly below, was the corpse of a male cultivator, severed in two. Long-congealed blood that had turned black stained a large area around the body. And the corpse itself appeared completely bare — the storage pouch and magic treasures it should have been carrying were nowhere to be seen.
"So it seems someone finally couldn't resist making a move." Han Li studied the corpse for a moment, then sighed softly to himself. He had just confirmed that there were no spatial rifts nearby. This cultivator had definitely been killed by another.
Han Li didn't linger here any longer. He quickly left the spot and continued onward toward his destination.
Although he believed that at this point in the valley, only those two late-Nascent Soul fellows posed a genuine threat to him and the rest shouldn't be anything to worry about, if a group of cultivators banded together and specifically set a trap targeting him, the danger would be no less significant.
Such a possibility was virtually nonexistent, of course, but given Han Li's instinctive caution, he couldn't help but raise his vigilance a notch for the remainder of the journey.
Less than half a day later, Han Li hadn't encountered any ambush, but he did come across two more unfortunate cultivator corpses — victims of invisible spatial rifts.
When Han Li saw their incomplete, mutilated bodies, he could only shake his head.
Following the guidance of the spiritual light within the orb, Han Li finally appeared above a dense, verdant forest.