Yu Yang City was quite a distance away from An Yuan City.
But with the speed of flight on foot, Han Li only needed a year before he arrived near the ruins of An Yuan City.
The journey was quite dangerous, and he even went out of his way to travel through inhabited areas, but the distance between cities was truly far.
Along the way, he had no choice but to kill many wild beasts and a few low-grade demon beasts as well.
Of course, this was because he was travelling alone in the wilderness.
If he were travelling in a group, a few low-grade demon beasts wouldn’t dare to attack him.
Although it had been many years since he had been to the ruins of An Yuan City, it hadn’t changed by much.
He couldn't see the end to its ruined walls, but it was covered in layers of dust.
Han Li stood in place for a long while as his mind wandered.
He already cultivated the Vajra Arts to the peak of the seventh layer. So long as he breaks through this bottleneck, his cultivation will reach grand completion.
To tell the truth, the speed of his cultivation was far faster than he anticipated.
Since the spirit realm’s spiritual Qi was far greater than that of the mortal realm, it was already an ideal place for cultivation and with his body altered by many medicines and odd fruits, his body’s potential was at the peak of humankind.
In the past when he left An Yuan City with the Gold Jade Sect cultivators, they entered a demon beast nest. With his abilities, they were able to easily acquire the medicinal plant they were looking for.
In their joy, the cultivators gave Han Li a document guaranteeing his entrance to the Nine Profound Brightjade Pond. After they took back the jade medallions they entrusted to Han Li, they happily returned to their sect.
After they split up, he didn’t return the Mistress Fang or the Heavenly East Enterprise as he felt he had become too prominent. Instead, he chose to sneak into other human cities.
Furthermore, the blood curse contract had no effect on him.
His objective was Yu Yang City, one of the closer cities and a holy land for body refiners, as it would prove very useful to his cultivation. As for the short sword that was given to Han Li by the corpse puppet of the city lord, Han Li didn’t trust it at all; he immediately destroyed it after his encounter with the demon cultivator.
When he was halfway to Yu Yang City, he was at a crucial point in the consolidation of the Vajra Art’s fifth layer. Unfortunately, that was also when he was ambushed by several demon beasts.
Although he managed to kill them, he soon encountered backlash from the Vajra Arts and his cultivation sharply dropped by nearly an entire level.
During his moment of peril, he came across a young merchant named Fatty Fan that happened to carry a few suitable rare medicines.
Since Han Li was saved by these medicines, he felt grateful to the merchant, but he also wanted someone that could help conceal his existence. As such, he followed the Fatty Fan to Yu Yang City and helped him out in secret, expanding his auction house until it was one of the greatest in the city.
And as a spell formation master and possessor of immensely strong spiritual sense, a bit of practice was all he needed to become a spirit tool master.
He continued to stay at Yu Yuan City for several decades.
During this period, he reached the peak of the sixth layer and decided to make a journey away from the city.
In that year, he found out that the Gold Jade Sect’s brocade-robed man had already entered Core Formation-stage.
When the man surnamed Qin saw that Han Li had already completed the fifth layer of the Vajra Arts, a level that could compete with Core Formation cultivators, he was completely astonished. Nevertheless, he kept his promise and made arrangements for Han Li to use the Nine Profound Brightjade Pool.
By drawing the support of the pond’s extraordinary power, he was able to breakthrough the sixth layer bottleneck in a few short days, saving him at least a dozen years of bitter cultivation.
When he returned to Yu Yang City for his next decades of hidden cultivation, he eventually reached the bottleneck at the seventh layer.
To breakthrough the last bottleneck, he couldn't stay in the city and continue the slow method of bitter cultivation. He planned on using the most common method of body refiners to breakthrough a bottleneck.
That was to leave civilization and enter the savage wilderness, breaking through the bottleneck by force by hunting powerful demon beasts.
However, he would need to travel far away and it was likely he wouldn’t be returning to the region. As such, it’d be best for him to retrieve his treasures at the Azure Sifting Desert.
With his current achievements in body refinement, he could protect himself well enough, not to mention the various treasures he carried on him.
After he rested at An Yuan City’s ruins for half a day, he set forth towards the Azure Sifting Desert.
After a month, Han Li found azure sand and began to tread deeper in the area.
But soon, his face changed and alarm rang through his mind.
The desert was too quiet.
Apart from the rustling of desert winds, there was no other sound that could be heard. There should’ve been many beasts present in the desert. Even the few insects on the ground disappeared.
It was as if the Azure Sifting Desert turned into a dead land.
With faint shock on his face, his awareness became heightened to its utmost extent as he tread in the direction that he buried his treasures,
Although the sands frequently shifted in a desert, Han Li had done a bit of a trick when he buried his treasures. He used a particular method of searching for the treasure without using any magic power.
Over ten days later, Han Li arrived at some point in the desert and was dumbstruck when he saw a large white object not far away.
It appeared to be a shed crystalline shell of a large insect.
The shell had six three-meter-long wings and appeared to belong to a huge centipede.
As Han Li looked at the enormous centipede shell, he muttered in shock, “The Six-winged Frost Centipede? How was it possible? How could it evolve so quickly?”
When he took several steps forward and the centipede shell began to turn in the sand, he shook his sleeve and released a silver flash.
A light bang sounded out.
The silver light struck the crystalline shell and was repelled. It was a rope that sparkled with silver light.
It was the wyrm tendon that Han Li had someone refine before the beast torrent at An Yuan City. Over the past few decades, he used it considerably to much effect in killing many beasts and enemies. Later on when Han Li grasped spirit tool refinement, he hadn’t made any changes to it. At his stage of body refinement, ordinary spirit tools had little benefit to him, and he saw no use in changing it as it was easy for him to use.
In any case, under his control, the rope contained the force comparable to a magic tool. As the shell didn’t suffer the slightest damage, one could imagine how durable it was.
It was worthy of belonging to a Six-winged Frost Centipede that finally grew six wings.
Han Li swept his gaze past it and then he felt a wave of bewilderment.
He had twelve centipedes, but now there was only one. Where were the other eleven?
“Could it be…” A thought flashed through Han Li’s mind as he considered the possibilities and his face faintly changed.
At that moment, an odd shriek sounded from a distance, followed by rolls of thunder. A roiling black cloud rolled past the sky with flashing lightning and harsh winds.
When Han Li saw this, his lip twitched. When he saw the weather was changing, he couldn't help but narrow his eyes.
Although he wasn’t able to release his spiritual sense, the connection he felt in his mind couldn't be mistaken. In the distance, there was a Six-winged Frost Centipede hidden in the changing weather.
However, in the blink of an eye, the connection to his mind became somewhat unfamiliar.
After the Six-winged Frost Centipedes fully matured, they unexpectedly gained the heavenly power of calling upon wind and rain, much to Han Li’s astonishment.
The Six-winged Frost Centipede familiarity with manipulating the worldly origin Qi was an entire stage higher than when Han Li still possessed his cultivation. They were on the verge of Deity Transformation power.
Just as Han Li felt astonishment, he suddenly ring a loud buzzing in the air. From the other end of the sky, a large rainbow cloud swiftly rushed toward the black cloud.
Under close examination, his face turned pale.
Within the rainbow cloud were groups of winged scorpions. They were the size of a palm and were stained with all sorts of colors.
As Han Li felt his mouth grow dry, he saw a sixty-meter-long scorpion king in the middle of the swarm.
The scorpion didn’t have any wings, but it managed to suspend its huge body in the air with a poisonous mist. It had a thirty-meter-tall tail raised in the air that glowed green.
Han Li felt a chill run down his body.
But under closer inspection, he found out that the so-called scorpion king was actually condensed from countless small scorpions.
The other surrounding scorpions had done the same and wriggled together, converging onto the huge scorpion king.
Before Han Li realized what was happening, a fierce hiss sounded from a distance and the black cloud roiled to reveal a frost centipede that was over thirty meters long. It stretched its hideous head forward.
In that same instant, Han Li felt a faint connection to his mind and heart stirred, realizing what it was. “So that was it!”
The giant Six-winged Frost Centipede possessed the soul markers of a dozen of the four-winged centipedes. They either somehow fused together, or one of them ate the rest.
Under these circumstances, it created a fully mature Six-winged Frost Centipede.
However, where did these scorpions come from? When he crossed the desert with the Heavenly East Enterprise caravan, they would’ve definitely met their end if they came across the scorpions.
Just as Han Li mulled over his gloomy thoughts, the black cloud and rainbow mist struck one another.
Hissing filled the air and intermittent buzzing. Countless flying scorpions dropped to the ground, frozen by the icy winds that flew out of the black cloud.
However, balls of rainbow poison spat out from the flying scorpions soon consumed a portion of the black cloud, causing the cloud to violently roil.
In the blink of an eye, the black cloud grew sparse, revealing the lower half of the Six-winged Frost Centipede.
