Han Li immediately set out walking at a swift pace, and it took him nearly half a year before he finally reached the vicinity of the old ruins of An Yuan City. Along the way, he climbed mountains and crossed valleys, choosing paths where human settlements were more abundant, though the distances between cities were still quite vast. On his journey, he had to defeat numerous ordinary wild beasts and several low-level spirit beasts. Of course, this was due to the fact that he was traveling alone through the wilderness. If a large group of humans had been traveling together, these lower-tier spirit beasts would likely have remained unharmed. The ruins of An Yuan City, now so long since he last visited, had changed little from when he first left—its broken walls and collapsed structures stretched out endlessly, still veiled in thick layers of dust. Han Li stood still at the site for a while, motionless, yet his thoughts were continuously active. His Jingang Sect technique had now reached the seventh layer, at a critical stage of breakthrough. Once he passed through this bottleneck, the seventh layer would be able to reach a state of near-perfection. In fact, his current progress in cultivation was far faster than he had originally anticipated. Among these, there was the reason that the spiritual realm possessed denser spiritual energy far exceeding that of the human realm, yielding exceptional effects when infused into the body, as well as the fact that his body had undergone transformations through various spiritual herbs and rare fruits, making his innate potential far surpass the human limit. Back then, when he accompanied the Qin-named man and others into the giant beast's lair, his keen insight and innate abilities enabled him to effortlessly secure the Xueyin Zhī. The senior disciples of Jin Yu Sect were overjoyed and immediately drafted a joint recommendation document to nominate him for admission into the Jiuxuan Mingyu Spring. After exchanging their jade pendants for the document, they happily returned to their sect. After parting ways with the other cultivators, he decided not to return to Fang Lady’s residence, as he felt he had already become too conspicuous at Tian Dong Trading House. Instead, he intended to blend into other human cities. After all, the blood-covenant document held no effect upon him. His natural destination was one of the nearest cities—Yuyang City—long cherished by physical cultivators, which would undoubtedly prove highly beneficial to his cultivation journey. As for the Fēi Fèng clan's immortal maiden, the short sword token and the names and locations she had revealed during her manipulation of his corpse—Franch would naturally no longer believe anything. Immediately after parting ways with her, he had shattered the sword. On the way to Yúyáng City, during the crucial moment when he was solidifying his fifth-level cultivation, he unexpectedly encountered several ambushes by wild beasts. Though he defeated those beasts, he soon suffered a reversal from the power of the Jīngāng Sect's cultivation technique, experiencing a significant drop in his cultivation level, and seemed poised to fall back to one level. At that very critical moment, he encountered Fan Fat, then merely a small merchant in Yúyáng City, who saved him with a rare pill he had conveniently carried. Thus, Franch felt deeply grateful and also sought someone to shield his presence, so he followed Fan Fat back to Yúyáng City, quietly supporting him in expanding his auction house into its current scale. As for the crafting of spiritual artifacts— With his mastery of array techniques and the insight of a Yuan-Shen cultivator, only a slight practice would be needed to produce refined concoctions effortlessly. He had resided in Yuyang City for several decades. During this time, he once left the city for a while when he encountered his sixth-layer bottleneck, spending a year or so to locate the mountain gate of JinYu Sect and the gentleman in a brocade robe who had already advanced to the Jiedan stage. Upon seeing that Han Li's Jingshan Sect technique had matured to the fifth layer, and that its strength alone allowed him to hold his own against a Jiedan cultivator, the Qin-named man was astonished and thus did not hesitate to fulfill his promise—actually arranging for her to soak in the Jiuxuan Mingyu Spring once. Thanks to the spring's extraordinary power, he broke through the sixth-layer bottleneck within just a few days, saving over a decade of arduous cultivation. Only after returning to Yuyang City to deepen his practice for over twenty years did he encounter the current seventh-layer bottleneck. To overcome this final hurdle, he would no longer be able to rely on the city's routine, laborious cultivation methods. He intended to break through his current limit using the most commonly employed method among body-cultivators—departing from human cities and venturing deep into perilous wilderness, where he would kill powerful beast-creatures to forcibly push himself past his threshold. However, such a journey would require him to travel to distant lands, possibly never returning to this region. Therefore, he decided to carry all the treasures hidden within the Qing Luo Desert with him. With his current body-cultivation level, he could generally protect himself on his own, so it was wise to keep the treasures close. After resting for half a day at the ruins of Anyuan City, Han Li set out once again, heading directly toward the Qing Luo Desert that day. A month later, Han Li stepped onto the silvery-gray sand and began to journey deeper into it. Yet, not long after, his complexion began to change, and he grew increasingly surprised. The desert was too quiet! Beyond the constant rustling of wind and sand, there was no other sound to be heard. Several bird species that should have appeared in the sky were entirely absent, and the insects and scorpions on the ground had vanished as well. It seemed as though the entire Qing Luo Desert had transformed into a realm of stillness and death. Han Li was somewhat astonished, and heightened his vigilance to an extraordinary degree, making straight for the spot where he had originally buried the storage scrolls. Although the desert terrain frequently changed, when he had first concealed his treasures, he had certainly taken special measures—enough to locate the exact spot without even using any magical power. He took a few steps forward and circled the silvery chitin several times. Suddenly, his sleeve trembled, and a beam of silver light shot out. "Ping!" The light struck the translucent chitin and was instantly rebounded, forming a shimmering, rope-like strand. Han Li glanced around, his mind now filled with new doubts. There should be twelve six-winged frost centipedes, yet there was only one chitin shell nearby—where were the other eleven? "Could it be..." A sudden inspiration struck him, and his face grew pale. At that moment, an odd, distant howl echoed through the air, followed by阵阵 thunder. On one side of the sky, dark clouds surged rapidly, lightning flashing and thunder rolling, with a fierce wind howling loudly. Witnessing this spectacle, Han Li's lips twitched slightly. Faced with such shifting celestial phenomena, he could not help but slightly narrow his eyes. Though his spiritual awareness remained unextended, the sense of connection between him and the distant creatures was unmistakable—there, clearly, was one of his six-winged frost centipedes. Yet, at the very moment of connection, it felt strangely unfamiliar. After evolving into its mature six-winged form, this centipede had apparently mastered the celestial arts of summoning wind and rain—something that left Han Li utterly astonished. This indicated that the Six-Winged Frost Scorpion could skillfully harness and mobilize the fundamental qi of heaven and earth, seemingly surpassing even his master in cultivation, nearing the stage of fully achieving the Perfected Immortal realm. As Han Li found it hard to believe, a sudden, resonant hum erupted once more. Then, from the opposite sky, directly across from the black clouds, vast patches of vividly colored mist suddenly emerged and surged toward the other side. Upon closer inspection, Han Li grew pale. Within the shimmering hues of the mist, a multitude of flying scorpions with pairs of wings on their backs appeared—each about the size of a palm, their bodies displaying a rich array of colors, filling half the sky. What struck Han Li as particularly astonishing was that at the very center of the formation, a colossal Scorpion King, measuring over twenty zhang in length, stood prominently. Though this scorpion bore no wings, its immense body was suspended in mid-air by a vibrant, shimmering venom mist. Its long, overhanging stinger, stretching nearly ten zhang, arched upward, glowing with an eerie green luminescence. Han Li drew in a sharp breath at this sight. Yet, as his gaze settled This so-called "Scorpion King" was actually formed by the aggregation of tens of thousands of small scorpions. Countless flying scorpions, indistinguishable from their surroundings, gathered into a cluster and, through a slow, continuous movement, coalesced into this massive creature. When Han Li still hadn't quite grasped what was happening, a strong wind roared from afar, and as black clouds rolled and surged, a snow-white earthworm of over a dozen zhang in length emerged, revealing a monstrous form. At the very same moment, the somewhat hazy connection in Han Li's mind became noticeably clearer. He gave a subtle nod, silently exclaiming, "Indeed!" Within the six-winged frost worm's body, there were simultaneously twelve traces of the four-winged spirit essence—representing the combined essence of twelve four-winged earthworms. It remained uncertain whether these twelve had fused into a single entity or whether one had absorbed the other eleven. Only thus could such a mature, fully formed six-winged frost worm have come into being! Yet, where had these flying scorpions originated from? When the Tian Dong trading convoy first passed through this desert, encountering such a swarm of insects would have meant certain death for them. As Han Li grew increasingly frustrated, the black clouds and colorful mist suddenly collided at a distance. Immediately, a chorus of shrieks and hums intertwined and flashed, and countless flying scorpions were instantly transformed into blocks of crystalline ice by the clear, cold breezes blown out by the Black Cloud Sect, then plummeted straight down from the sky with a crisp cracking sound. However, the colorful toxic gases spewed out from the mouths of the scorpions quickly absorbed and partially consumed the black clouds, continuing to surge forward with relentless vigor. As a result, the black clouds that had previously obscured the centipedes grew thinner, revealing a portion of the snow-white centipedes. (First update!) ------------ Next chapter, to be posted later!