Almost at the exact same moment as the burly man's body was destroyed, Han Li also gave a muffled groan, and the additional head and pair of arms he had attained instantly disintegrated into specks of golden light. The golden suit of armor he was wearing also quickly disappeared, along with the azure horn on his head.
His giant body then reverted back to its original size, and he was back to his normal human force. However, at this moment, his face was completely pale and devoid of color, and his aura was also rapidly on the wane.
In the instant that he reverted back to his human form, Han Li flipped both hands over to produce several small vials, and he opened all of them before tipping the pills in the vials into his mouth without exercising any discretion.
An unhealthy flush then appeared on his face, and it was only alleviated after a layer of azure light flashed over his face.
Han Li exhaled as his expression eased slightly, and he cast his gaze toward the spot where the burly man had been standing just a moment ago. The giant golden palm had disappeared in the instant that he had reverted back to his human form, so there was nothing to be seen in the distance.
However, just as Han Li was about to withdraw his gaze, spatial fluctuations suddenly erupted, and a ball of black light appeared, containing the three-headed devilish lion puppet that had only just barely managed to escape the massive golden palm.
It also cast its gaze toward the spot where the burly man's body had just disappeared, and its three heads let loose thunderous roars of fury in unison.
"I've been cultivating that physical body for over 100,000 years; how dare you destroy it! I'm going to tear you into shreds and torture your soul for all of eternity!"
The devilish lion then instantly pounced toward Han Li as a streak of black light. It knew that in Han Li's current severely debilitated state, there was no way that he could be a match for this puppet. Thus, in its fit of fury and resentment, it was determined to kill Han Li as revenge for destroying its physical body.
Han Li's brows furrowed slightly upon seeing this, and he murmured to himself, "So he abandoned his physical body to save his soul. If he's only possessed a puppet, then he should be nowhere near as powerful as he normally would be."
As soon as his voice trailed off, he immediately stomped a foot onto the ground down below, and a small white light formation appeared, upon which his body began to blur.
"I won't let you get away!" the devilish lion roared in an urgent voice at the sight of the teleportation formation, and it sped up significantly, reaching Han Li in a flash before slashing its claws toward him in an attempt to tear his body apart.
However, it was already too late. A buzzing sound rang out from the formation, and Han Li vanished amid a flash of white light.
The devilish lion puppet's claws instantly tore the light formation apart, but Han Li remained completely unscathed.
However, the devilish lion clearly wasn't going to give up so easily. It released its enormous spiritual sense throughout the surrounding area, then opened all three of its mouths to blast three pillars of light toward a certain area of space.
The three pillars of light struck the same spot in the air, and a loud explosion erupted as a figure stumbled out of thin air. A vicious look immediately appeared on the devilish lion's center head, but its expression then abruptly stiffened.
The figure that had appeared up ahead was a small golden beast; it was none other than the Leopard Kirin Beast.
The small beast had somehow switched places with Han Li and withstood that attack in his stead.
It possessed early-Body Integration Stage powers and it hadn't expended much magic power during this battle, but it was clearly no match for the three-headed devilish lion. Not only had it been forced to reveal itself by the devilish lion's attack, a large patch of its golden fur had been charred black as well.
Despite this, the Leopard Kirin Beast wasn't backing down at all, and it immediately let loose a low roar as a layer of golden light flashed over its body, upon which its charred fur immediately regenerated back to its original condition. At the same time, a golden Kirin projection had appeared behind it.
"So you possess a Kirin bloodline! Hmph, even so, you're only asking for death by standing in my way!" the three-headed devilish lion harrumphed coldly as it lashed out with one of its inky-black paws.
Countless arcs of black lightning appeared over the paw, then vanished amid a resounding boom.
In the next instant, black lightning appeared in the air above the Leopard Kirin Beast, then formed a giant black lightning paw that was around 10 feet in size before crashing down with tremendous force.
Before the paw had fallen upon the Leopard Kirin Beast, several bolts of black lightning came crashing down in advance. Spatial fluctuations erupted down below, and an azure humanoid figure appeared.
It was none other than Han Li, and even though his aura was still very feeble, he remained completely unfazed by the sight of the giant lightning paw crashing down from above. Instead, a cold smile appeared on his face.
Right at this moment, the Leopard Kirin Beast let loose a ferocious roar and split up into over 10 projections in mid-air, all of which appeared right above Han Li's head in a wraith-like manner.
The projections then unleashed countless yellow claw projections that hurtled through the air, intertwining to form a giant net that sped directly toward the black lightning paw.
A resounding boom rang out as black lightning erupted from the giant black paw, destroying the oncoming net of claw projections with ease.
Around a dozen thick bolts of lightning then destroyed all of the Leopard Kirin Beast projections, and the true body of the Leopard Kirin Beast was also struck. It let loose an anguished howl as it sprang back for over 100 feet. An even larger section of its fur had been charred black, and its aura had also been debilitated somewhat.
The devilish lion chortled with glee as the giant lightning paw crashed down directly toward Han Li, yet just as it was about to fall upon him, Han Li suddenly brought his hands together before bringing them apart, upon which a long dragon's roar rang out.
A streak of golden light erupted from between his hands before flashing through the black lightning paw up above, upon which the giant paw was instantly reduced to nothingness.
The devilish lion was quite befuddled by this development, yet before it could figure out what had happened, the golden streak of light suddenly circled around before transforming into a massive pillar of light that was over 10,000 feet tall.
Within the pillar of light was a halberd projection, and countless specks of golden light instantly appeared in the surrounding area before surging toward the projection like moths to a flame.
An astonishing aura was then released by the golden halberd, stirring up all of the world's origin Qi in the entire heavens.
Right at this moment, the halberd projection flashed with golden light, and the entire pillar of light transformed into a colossal golden halberd.
The three-headed devilish lion's expression changed drastically upon seeing this, and it immediately attempted to flee as a streak of black light.
A cold light flashed through Han Li's eyes as he pointed a finger at the devilish lion, and the enormous golden halberd immediately came crashing down upon it.
The devilish lion appeared over 1,000 feet away after just a single flash, yet just as it was about to unleash an ability to escape out of the spatial restriction, the air suddenly tightened around it, and it found itself unable to muster up any magic power.
"Crap!"
An expression of shock and horror appeared on the devilish lion's face, immediately following which its vision turned dark, and its consciousness completely faded.
From Han Li's perspective, the giant golden halberd had fallen upon the three-headed devilish lion before instantly reducing its body to dust; even the devilish soul of the burly man contained within the puppet had also been completely destroyed.
Only now was the burly man truly dead, and no trace of him was left in this world.
Han Li heaved a long sigh of relief as his expression eased significantly. The attack that had dealt the killing blow just now was naturally none other than the Heavenly Halberd Talisman that he had painstakingly refined.
As expected of a powerful talisman from the True Immortal Realm; it was able to instantly vanquish such a formidable enemy. Of course, this was also due to the fact that the burly man's body had already been destroyed, so it was in a severely debilitated state. Otherwise, that talisman alone wouldn't have been enough to kill him.
As for the ability he had used earlier to destroy the burly man's physical body, that was one of the most powerful abilities recorded in the Provenance True Devil Arts.
However, just as the burly man had said, Han Li's current powers and physical constitution weren't enough to unleash such an ability; it was something that he could only use without suffering backlash after reaching the Grand Ascension Stage.
Han Li had experimented with the ability during his time in seclusion, so he was naturally aware of this as well.
However, the Holy Nirvana Body was simply far too powerful; even the First Nirvana Transformation was able to drastically enhance his magic power and physical strength.
Thus, after much painstaking effort and consideration, Han Li finally thought of a way to forcibly unleash the ability, which was to temporarily stimulate the true spirit blood within his body and draw upon its power to fuel the ability for him.
Currently, employing this method harmed Han Li almost as much as it did his opponent; not only was the ability extremely taxing to use, the true spirit blood that he had to expend to use it was an extremely heavy price to pay. Thus, he initially hadn't planned to use this ability in this battle.
However, that burly man had been truly formidable. In particular, the Nine Devilish Hierarchical Spears he had unleashed were comparable in power to a full-force attack from a Grand Ascension Stage being. If he had faced that attack in nothing more than his Giant Mountain Ape form, he would've at least been severely wounded, if not killed on the spot.
Thus, he had no choice but to release his Nascent Soul and draw upon his own true spirit power to manifest those true spirit avatars to help him withstand that attack.
However, the burly man wasn't someone who could be killed through normal attacks, and seeing as he had already activated his true spirit blood at that point, he decided to bite the bullet and use the Holy Nirvana Physique.
Of course, Han Li was able to use the ability without any fear of its after-effects as he also had another trump card in the form of the Heavenly Halberd Talisman up his sleeve. Sure enough, the combination of those two trump cards had allowed him to slay this extremely formidable devilish lord.
