His entire palm swelled up, conjuring a massive golden hand that snatched the crystal bead into its grasp.
Golden light flickered across the five fingers as countless golden runes surged from the palm, enveloping the crystal bead tightly in an instant and transforming it into a golden sphere of light.
Seeing this, Han Li let out a soft breath. While chanting an incantation, a slender crystalline thread shot from each fingertip and flashed into the golden sphere.
The next moment, along the crystalline threads, a wisp of gray-white gas so faint it was nearly invisible emerged from the golden sphere. Restrained by an invisible force, it was drawn into Han Li's palm.
Han Li closed his eyes and began quietly refining this strand of bizarre energy.
At this moment, a faint golden light circulated erratically across his body while his aura fluctuated between strong and weak, creating a rather eerie sight.
After a full several hours, when he opened his eyes once more, his face was filled with joy—he could clearly sense that the Magical Power within him had strengthened somewhat.
"Not bad—this is indeed the same kind of energy as that piece of Otherworldly Demon Gold from before. If that's the case, then as long as I can find more of this Otherworldly Demon Gold, it's not impossible to raise my Magical Power directly to the late stages of Body Integration or even Mahayana. That would save well over a thousand years of painstaking cultivation. It seems I really should pay a visit to Blue Cascade Lake if the opportunity arises." Han Li murmured a few words to himself, his expression shifting between light and dark.
After pondering for a moment, Han Li suddenly held up a finger before him.
A spiritual gleam flashed at his fingertip as a wisp of green gas was silently forced out, drifting faintly above his fingertip.
"Sure enough, this thing came out too. It seems I'll have to leave it stored inside the Demon Infant for now and keep it sealed." Han Li shook his head, his brows furrowing slightly.
However, the gray-white gas he had refined was less than a tenth of what the entire crystal bead contained. If he could refine all the energy in the crystal sphere, it would boost his Magical Power by more than ten percent—which was already a pleasant surprise.
But just to be safe, Han Li did not plan to refine all the energy at once. Instead, he intended to spend over ten days on it, refining only a small amount each time before consolidating his realm.
This was to avoid advancing too quickly and leaving behind unforeseen complications.
After all, the amount of mysterious energy he had obtained this time was ten times what he had gotten last time.
Having made his decision, Han Li flicked his sleeve, sending over a dozen gold-and-silver talismans flying out. They flashed and adhered to the golden sphere, sealing it firmly.
He then produced a small jade-white bottle, gave it a slight shake, and a stream of five-colored radiance sprayed out, sweeping the golden sphere inside.
Han Li smiled faintly, put the small bottle away, placed both hands on his knees, and entered meditation once more.
Over ten days later, without having set foot outside the pavilion even once, Han Li finally refined all the energy within the crystal sphere into pure Magical Power, significantly boosting his cultivation.
Over the following days, Han Li began frequently visiting various parts of Phantom Night City, collecting some texts and local specialties. He made several trips to the Ten Thousand Slave Tower in particular, and eventually purchased a set of secret techniques for crafting demonic crystal puppets from two Void Refining demon cultivators stationed there.
For this, Han Li not only parted with several top-grade demonic artifacts, but also paid an astronomical sum of demon stones that would make even a Demon Lord-level being feel the sting.
But Han Li felt it was well worth the cost.
This method of crafting puppets was entirely different from the puppet-crafting techniques of the Spirit World.
These demonic crystal puppets were not activated by infusing them with spiritual sense. Instead, they were triggered by pre-arranged restrictions and command tokens embedded within. This meant that as long as the puppets themselves were powerful enough, even low-level cultivators could control them with ease. Furthermore, there was no limit related to dividing spiritual sense—even low-level demon folk could effortlessly command an entire army of puppets.
When Han Li learned this, his astonishment could well be imagined.
Unfortunately, nothing in this world was perfect. While these demonic crystal puppets were certainly enticing, they had no shortage of drawbacks as well.
The most significant of these was that, since spiritual sense could not control them, these puppets could only rely on core restrictions to carry out simple commands and were incapable of executing complex orders.
And precisely because of this shortcoming, demonic crystal puppets were relatively one-dimensional in their attacks and considerably inferior in power compared to puppets of the same rank from the human world.
Secondly, the core that drove these puppets was extremely troublesome to craft, and the required materials were exceedingly rare. The cost was absolutely beyond what ordinary people could bear—the higher the grade of the demonic crystal puppet, the more staggering the price.
What left Han Li somewhat frustrated was that the puppet-crafting techniques he had obtained from the Ten Thousand Slave Tower at such great cost were only for crafting low- to mid-grade puppets. According to the two Void Refining demon cultivators stationed at the Phantom Night City tower, the techniques for crafting high-grade demonic crystal puppets were held exclusively by a few Demon Lord-level Elders at the very top of the Ten Thousand Slave Tower and would never be leaked.
The Ten Thousand Slave Tower rarely even sold such high-grade demonic crystal puppets to outsiders.
This left Han Li feeling somewhat regretful.
However, he did not dwell on it too much. High-grade demonic crystal puppets would not be of much help to him unless he had a considerable number of them. The reason he had paid such an exorbitant price was simply to use these techniques to verify and refine his own puppet-crafting skills, to see if he could integrate them and advance his puppet arts to the next level.
Han Li once again shut himself in at his residence and began painstakingly studying.
During this time, he attempted to craft some low-grade demonic crystal puppets to test his level of comprehension, and reaped considerable rewards.
One day, while he was inside the restrictions on the top floor of the pavilion attempting to activate a four-armed demonic crystal puppet, a low hum suddenly sounded from his body. A ball of white light flew out from his waist, flickered, and appeared before him, transforming into a piece of silk-like material.