Just as Lady Mu was about to seize the treasures, the ground below her flashed bright green and several verdant serpents shot out and wrapped around her at lightning speed. With their prey fully restricted, the snakes immediately struck at her with their fangs.
Bang. The woman’s sentient treasures formed her a barrier of white light, repelling the attack and revealing their true form as green vines, but they still restrained her nevertheless.
Lady Mu expressed the same alarmed fury as Han Li had.
She hadn’t expected that there was someone following her as well. Having trapped Han Li and cleared the barrier for the treasures on the table, wasn’t she being taken advantage of? Who could’ve closely followed behind her Sun Moon Shuttle and remain completely undetected?
The reason why she was able to stealthily burrow underground was because she possessed a silver medallion that the Three Elders of Kunwu had left behind. It allows her to temporarily control a portion of the restrictions in the hall, giving her access to burrow underground.
At that moment, a strange tinkling laugh rang clear and a tall green silhouette silently emerged from the nearby ground. A pair of icy green eyes stared at her, causing her heart to shudder.
After clearly seeing the form of the new encounter, she cried out in shock, “A Treant Lord! How can such a monster exist in this world?”
Although the green silhouette had a human-like appearance with all the appropriate limbs and head, its body was made of bark skin and more akin to a walking tree.
When the Treant Lord heard her cry, it sneered and paid little heed as it blurred towards the table, clearly intending on claiming the treasures for itself.
Lady Mu’s heart sank. Even if she could escape, it was too late to block the monster.
But an unimaginable scene soon followed.
Before the Treant drew close to the table, the fragments of the painting Han Li tore up suddenly shined with specks of yellow, white, and red. They formed a tri-color gust that flung the ball of green light over thirty meters back.
The ball was dispelled back into its original position and was thrown into an uncontrollable tumble.
After several rolls, the tall monster managed to regain control and stood up. It looked at the mists of light with unspeakable terror.
The three mists circled around the table and transformed into three indistinct foot-tall silhouettes: the Daoist, the Confucian, and the Buddhist figures from the painting! Their eyes emotionlessly gazed at the Tree Spirit in the distance as if it was already dead.
“The Three Kunwu Elders!” The Treant Lord shouted in terror. Without another thought, its body glowed green and it flew headfirst into the Greatnorth Essence Lights, not daring to turn back.
Then, the three miniature men silently pointed at the small sword, monk staff, and the scroll on the table.
The three treasures hummed and trembled, jumping into the air and forming three streaks of light, immediately disappearing as soon as they appeared. In that next moment, just as the Treant Lord was about to enter the Greatnorth Essence Lights, the streaks re-appeared and converged together in a single attack. It was too late for the treant to dodge!
A flare of tri-colored light ruptured, followed by a deafening explosion. An instant later, the green light drowned it all out as it flared like a sun. When it eventually faded away, all that was left behind was the three treasures.
The combined strike had entirely vaporized the fearsome Treant Lord.
At that same moment, one of the four crimson wood tiles had combusted into ash.
The three treasures used to exterminate the demon circled once in the air before floating down to their original position on the table. As for the three men, they vanished as if they had never existed.
These three were threads of spiritual sense that the Kunwu Masters had left behind in order to prevent the treasures from falling into the hands of any demons or other evil beings. They were the last restriction that existed in Kunwu Hall.
The Treant Lord possessed the greatest cultivation of the four demons, but it had been destroyed by the treasures in a single strike. It was completely out of luck to have lost its life in such an abrupt manner.
Lady Mu rejoiced at this sudden turn of events. With the death of the treant, the vines clasped around her immediately lost their spiritual nature and burned to nothing in contact with the white ethereal flames.
She took a deep breath and recovered her bearings, only to be interrupted by a muffled bang from behind her, followed by a roar of thunder.
“Senior Martial Sister, be careful!” The beautiful female cultivator shouted out.
Lady Mu felt her heart tremble and she waved her hand without another thought, commanding all the treasures to rise as they shakily floated towards her.
In that mere moment, a clap of thunder called out from above and a silhouette appeared with it. He reached out for the treasures, causing them to cease flying in Lady Mu’s direction and towards him instead.
Having seen his escape from the scarf’s imprisonment and his use of lightning movement, Lady Mu released several glacial needles from her mouth in furious alarm, tearing through the air towards Han Li.
At the same time, she flung her sleeve, sweeping up the treasures in a red mist.
Han Li’s expression sank, and he spat out the Snow Crystal Pearl to face the incoming needles. With one hand, he created a large azure hand and grasped at the treasures. With the other, he summoned the Triflame Fan.
An ominous glint shining from his eye, he waved the fan at Lady Mu without any hesitation.
Although he planned on first dealing with the woman who originally ambushed him from within the shuttle, he was resentful at Lady Mu for having trapped him in the scarf and found himself in a crucial moment in the struggle for the treasures.
As a result, the silver needles were blocked by the Snowcrystal Pearl, and the hand of light grabbed ahold of her mist. Then, the fan trembled and a tri-colored inferno burst forth in the face of Lady Mu. Having previously witnessed the fans fearsome might, she knew it wasn’t something she could withstand. Helpless, she could only quickly fly backward.
When the Triflame Fan’s strike missed, the attack ruptured and filled the air with a halo of tri-colored light and immense spiritual pressure. Even Han Li couldn't help but take several steps back. The large azure hand and Lady Mu’s red mist had been on the edge of the attack’s scope and completely disappeared.
With all of the treasures falling out from the red mist’s grip, he felt elated.
However, it was then that three opposing lights emerged from the Greatnorth Essence Lights at the front of the hall: a crimson silhouette, a silver streak, and a ball of purple mist. All of these figures immediately fade from sight as soon as they disappeared, in a display of clear skill.
Han Li inwardly cursed, but he was quick to react. Rolls of thunder sounded out as he arrived above the treasures. He was only the first one there, and the other three each appeared nearby in quick succession and simultaneously attacked him as they attempted to seize the treasure for themselves.
Unable to deal with any of the others, He quickly swept up the two treasures closest to him with azure mist: a wooden tile and a sparkling red scroll. When he attempted to take the next closest item, the monk staff, over ten beams of crimson light attacked him from above along with a series of golden soundwaves.
With no better option, Han Li could only retreat and evade the attacks for the time being.
As a result, the crimson silhouette had seized the monk staff itself.
The purple mist and silver streak cared little for anything other than the two wooden tiles that dropped nearby for fear that they would be seized by someone else.
When he saw this, he paused in surprise. Then, the crimson silhouette reached out to grab the green seal.
“Stop, The Dragon Call Crest isn’t yours!” A woman’s voice hastily shouted. A white jade ruler suddenly floated above the crimson silhouette and smashed without mercy.
Before the ruler even landed, it released what sounded like a Buddhist chant and summoned countless white loti into the surrounding air, each of them the size of a bowl. They all radiated with seven-colored Buddhist light, covering not only the silhouette, but the silver streak and purple mist as well.
Just as it so happened, Han Li’s previous retreat had put him out of range of the ruler’s attack.
Dumbstruck, Han Li heard the woman shout and the lotus’ simultaneously rupture, converging together, each to form the petal of a giant lotus. Countless Buddhist scripts flowed out from every petal and the chanting began to resound throughout the hall like an army.
Trapped inside the flower, the three figures weren’t able to pick up any of the treasures and all began to sway as if they had become drunk.
