The object was round and resembled a cocoon. It was emitting faint black light, and the image of a crimson malicious spirit could be seen on its surface.
The malicious spirit possessed a single horn and three eyes, giving off a very sinister appearance.
This cocoon was naturally formed by the Weeping Soul Beast. Back when the Weeping Soul Beast had last evolved, it had also transformed into a black cocoon just like this one. The image of the malicious spirit on the cocoon was identical to the one on the Weeping Soul Beast's back.
Han Li stroked his chin as he looked at this cocoon, and a hint of elation flashed through his eyes.
During the battle for the Spirit Land, when he was sucked into the Yin soul space, he had immediately sensed the abundant Yin Qi in the air. Immediately thereafter, countless vicious souls materialized, all of which swept directly toward Han Li, led by a powerful ghostly monarch.
Han Li naturally released his Weeping Soul Beast without any hesitation upon seeing this.
This beast possessed the incredible ability to devour souls, and as light poured forth from its nostrils, none of the normal Yin souls were able to put up any resistance as they were reduced to sustenance for the Weeping Soul Beast. Only that ghostly monarch was a little troublesome to deal with. It had cultivated its body to take on a substantial form, thus allowing it to resist the Weeping Soul Beast's light.
However, Han Li used his Thunderstorm Wings to appear behind it and unleash a sneak attack with his Divine Devilbane Lightning, upon which the situation changed drastically.
After being wounded, the ghostly monarch was no longer able to use its secret technique to stabilize its soul. In the end, the Weeping Soul Beast swooped in to devour the ghostly monarch during its battle with Han Li.
After engulfing so many vicious souls and this final ghostly monarch, which possessed powers comparable to a Deity Transformation cultivator, the Weeping Soul Beast immediately broke through its evolution bottleneck, thereby transforming into this black cocoon.
Thankfully, Han Li had witnessed the same phenomenon in the past, so he was filled with elation rather than panic.
As such, he didn't have any time to take care of the rest of the vicious soul as he forcibly broke out of the Yin soul space with his Law Destruction Eye, escaping into the outside world with this cocoon.
Now, he was placing the giant cocoon into this beast room, and he would only have to wait for some time for the Weeping Soul Beast to complete its evolution.
Han Li took one final long look at this cocoon before departing from this room, heading for his medicine garden instead.
The Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng, Dragon Scale Fruits, and other spirit medicines in the garden were quite rare even in the Spirit Realm, so Han Li had to treat them with care.
The only thing that was missing was the Profound Goddess's Palm that Han Li had painstakingly nurtured.
The palm had borne fruit in the human world, but it had completely wilted and disintegrated into dust as soon as Han Li took this fruit.
What was even more incredible was that the several cuttings he had taken from the palm in advance also disintegrated.
Thus, there was no way for him to plant it again.
It was most likely the case that not only had all of his cuttings been ruined, all of the cuttings carried by others had to have also ceased to exist.
That was the effect of the law of exclusivity.
No Profound Goddess's Palms could exist in the same world, and that was something that Han Li couldn't change.
Even the Deity Transformation and Spatial Tempering cultivators in the Spirit Realm were powerless to alter the laws of heaven and earth; they were only capable of using the world's origin Qi around them.
It would take beings of higher levels to be able to control such things; perhaps beings as powerful as heavenly true spirits would be capable of such a task.
This was also an indication of just how much the Profound Heavenly Fruit defied the natural order.
At the thought of the Profound Heavenly Fruit that he had finally obtained after several hundred years of work, Han Li was struck by a sense of excitement and elation.
Due to his ascension and his subsequent complete loss of magic power, he hadn't had any time to carefully inspect the Profound Heavenly Fruit.
Now, he had some time before he had to report back to Deep Heaven City, and that was a sufficient interval for him to do some research on the fruit.
As such, after setting up all of the required restrictions outside the cave abode, Han Li made his way into a secret chamber and sat down onto the ground with his legs crossed.
He flipped a hand over, and a pristine white box appeared over his palm.
The surface of the jade box was plastered with seven or eight restriction talismans, all of which were shimmering with spiritual light.
After a brief hesitation, Han Li tore off the talismans before slowly removing the lid of the box.
A shimmering white object that was several inches in length appeared before Han Li's eyes.
He extended a hand to extricate this object from the jade box, then carefully inspected it while stroking it with his finger.
The object was of a thin oval shape, and its surface was extremely smooth. It was ever so slightly yellow in color, and one end was slightly blunt, while the other was completely even, as if it had been chopped by a blade. It looked like a small oval rod.
However, it was only around half a foot in total length.
On the surface of the rod, there was a series of indecipherable dark green patterns. The rod appeared to be made from something that was a blend of metal and wood, and it was quite supple to the touch.
This peculiar rod was the fruit from the Profound Goddess's Palm.
The humanoid puppet had informed him that in the beginning, the fruit from the palm wasn't like this in the beginning. Instead, it was a spherical fruit that was shimmering with white light, and it only became like this after being fertilized by the green liquid for years on end.
Han Li was rather speechless when he first caught sight of this strange object.
Back when he had just obtained this fruit, he had only examined it for a short time, but he was still struck by how peculiar this thing was.
However, he was busy working toward ascension to the Spirit Realm at the time, so he didn't put in any diligent research.
After a brief pause, Han Li carried the object with one hand while extending a finger from his other hand. Azure spiritual light flashed from his fingertip as he gently tapped it against the rod.
The azure spiritual light tremored as if it had come into contact with some kind of restriction before completely dissipating, unable to penetrate so much as a single millimeter into the fruit's surface.
Han Li raised his eyebrows, but he wasn't surprised to see this. This fruit had always rejected any injections of spiritual Qi, and no spiritual power could be infused into it. After staring at it for a while longer, a thought occurred to Han Li as golden light shimmered from the hand that was carrying the fruit. A peculiar scene then unfolded; Han Li was able to sink his fingers into the fruit with ease, causing it to warp and distort as if were made from soft dough.
However, when Han Li released the fruit again, it instantly reverted back to its original rod form.
Han Li suddenly opened his mouth to expel a thin golden thread, which circled around the fruit once before returning to Han Li's mouth.
However, the sword thread formed by the Azure Bamboo Cloudswarm Sword wasn't even able to leave the slightest trace on the surface of the fruit. Han Li was quite intrigued to see this, and he flicked his finger to blast an arc of golden lightning onto the rod.
The arc of lightning was repelled by the fruit, striking a corner of the secret chamber, causing the entire chamber to tremor slightly due to the force of the resulting explosion. Han Li's brows furrowed slightly as he grabbed the air with his other hand, following which an egg-sized ball of silver flames emerged over his palm. Han Li immediately tossed the fruit into the fireball without any hesitation, but Han Li was disappointed by what he saw next.
As soon as the fruit was hurled toward the fireball, the latter suddenly dissipated into specks of silver flames before materializing to form that Spirit Devouring Fire Raven in the air several tens of feet away.
As soon as the Fire Raven appeared, it stared intently at the fruit with horror in its eyes, letting loose a few sharp and urgent cries to express its fear.
Han Li's brows furrowed even further as he grabbed ahold of the fruit again. His Spirit Devouring Heavenly Flames were a culmination of the most powerful Yin and Yang flames; how could it be terrified of a piece of fruit? That was truly a surprise to him.
Could it be that this fruit was even more mysterious and profound than he had anticipated?
Immediately thereafter, Han Li brought out his glacial flames, wind blades, and various other types of attacks to experiment on the fruit, only for it to remain completely unscathed throughout this sustained assault.
Han Li had even brought out a few Gold Devouring Beetles from the insect room and placed them onto the fruit.
In his memories, the Gold Devouring Beetles were capable of engulfing anything and everything, yet they displayed a similar reaction to the Spirit Devouring Fire Raven, hurriedly flying away in a panicked frenzy with no intention to try and devour this object whatsoever.
Han Li then tried using his Law Destruction Eye to attack the fruit, all to no avail, either. Despite Han Li's vast array of abilities, he was completely stumped and was left scratching his head.
He then injected all of his power into his eyes, upon which piercing blue light erupted from his pupils. He was trying to glean the internal structure of this fruit using his spirit eyes.
Much to his surprise, his spirit eyes revealed to him a pea-sized speck of white light within the fruit that was flashing in an extremely feeble manner.
Han Li was immediately reinvigorated upon making this discovery. However, further inspection yielded no other results.
During the next half a month or so, Han Li was almost constantly carrying out experiments on the Profound Heavenly Fruit. During the final few days, he even set up a few profound miniature formations within his secret chamber, trying to use the power of the formations to refine this fruit, but none of that worked, either.
On the final night, Han Li stroked the Profound Heavenly Fruit with his finger, but his expression was completely calm and devoid of urgency.
It appeared that without encountering any miraculous opportunities, he wouldn't be able to do anything to or with this fruit. However, after transcending his emotions of frustration and urgency, his mental state had become more resolute than ever.
As such, the past half a month or so wasn't a complete waste of time. However, he had to return to Deep Heaven City the next day. With that in mind, Han Li cast his gaze toward the Profound Heavenly Fruit in his hand again, this time, choosing to inspect the dark green patterns that he had paid minimal attention to in the past.
All of a sudden, an extremely peculiar look appeared in Han Li's eyes as a startling thought occurred to him.
The diagram depicted by and the colors of the patterns suddenly reminded him of something.
There was another object with similar patterns on its surface and even though its color wasn't completely identical to that of the Profound Heavenly Fruit, it bore a strong resemblance.
Why hadn't he thought of this object before?
