The Blood Drill

Han Li did not look at Emperor Yue’s venomous expression. His gaze lingered on the dimmed blood-light surrounding the man.

Floating motionless within that blood-light were a golden ruler, a pair of purple odd blades, and a blue longsword—the magical tools that had belonged to Song Meng and the others. They hung there without a tremor, as if their spiritual nature had been extinguished.

A thoughtful glint passed through Han Li’s eyes. This person’s protective demon-light specializes in corrupting ordinary magical tools. Among my equipment, only the Black Flood Dragon Piercers are not afraid of such evil techniques.

He also noted that only this one man had come out alone. The blue-robed man who called himself the Black Fiend Sect Leader had apparently truly died beneath the Heaven Thunder Seed.

The thought eased Han Li’s mind, but he gave his opponent no chance to recover. With a command from his divine sense, the dozen or so puppets before him launched their attack. Arrows and beams of colored light cascaded down without pause, striking at the enemy below.

Song Meng and the others, shaken by the loss of their tools, dared not use their own magical instruments again. But seeing Han Li attack, they acted in unspoken accord—forming hand seals, chanting incantations, hurling spell talismans at the figure below. They all understood the same truth: only by crushing this last enemy in one concerted push could they preserve their lives and escape the nightmare of their fallen comrades.

Emperor Yue, below, watched them with a blank expression. He casually drew a line in front of him with his bare hand, and a massive blood-colored light-shield materialized to intercept everything. All the attacks landed harmlessly against that giant, conjured shield. But the blood-light around Emperor Yue’s body grew thinner, almost flickering, as if it might collapse at any moment—which only drove those above to attack with even greater ferocity.

Emperor Yue snorted coldly. Without another word, he reached into his robes and produced a small dark-green bottle. With practiced motions, he poured out a single pill the size of a dragon’s eye. The pill was a vivid, bloody red and gave off a pungent, meaty odor—it hardly looked like a proper medicine. Yet Emperor Yue tossed it into his mouth without hesitation and cast the bottle aside. The bottle had held only that one pill.

The moment the blood-red pill entered his stomach, something astonishing happened.

Emperor Yue’s spirits visibly lifted. The blood-light around him flared brilliantly once more, and all his wounds vanished at a speed visible to the naked eye. In that single, brief instant, the fearsome enemy Han Li had been facing appeared restored to full vigor. His expended mana and injuries had returned to the state they were in before Han Li used the Heaven Thunder Seed.

“What the hell? That can’t be possible!”

Song Meng stared, still holding the dozen ice spikes he had already formed, forgetting even to throw them. He muttered the words over and over, unable to believe his eyes.

Han Li was equally stunned. He had no idea what kind of substance the man had consumed to produce such an against-the-heavens effect. None of the classics or tomes he had ever read had mentioned anything like this.

“He took a Bone Marrow Replenishing Pill,” said a cold, clear voice from behind Chen Qiaojian.

Han Li blinked in surprise. Chen Qiaojian turned her head in delighted recognition.

“Senior Sister Zhong! You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Nothing serious. But I swear I will kill that fiend for what he did to Senior Brother Liu,” said Zhong Weiniang, now fully conscious. She managed a faint smile at Chen Qiaojian before her expression turned icy with resolve.

“We all want him dead. The problem is, he wants the same for us,” Han Li said flatly without turning around.

Startled by his words, Zhong Weiniang looked down—and her face immediately darkened.

The great enemy Emperor Yue had withdrawn his light-shield into his body while they spoke. The blood-light around him had swelled to two or three zhang in thickness. The stolen magical tools floating within that light were slowly dissolving in its depths. Spells and puppet attacks alike were blocked at the surface of the blood-light, when only moments ago his protective aura had been mere feet thick. His cultivation had already far surpassed its previous level.

He lifted his head and gave Han Li and the others an icy stare. Then, without warning, he reached an arm backward and made a grasping motion in the air. A fiery red orb shot up from somewhere behind him and landed precisely in his palm.

Han Li’s eyes flickered. He instantly thought of the blue-robed man who had died beneath his Heaven Thunder Seed. So this orb is what he left behind. Now the “three blood-condensing five-element pills”—the pair of treasures that would greatly benefit Core Formation—are complete. If I can kill this wretch, I’ll have them both.

“Boy! Do you have another Heaven Thunder Seed?” Emperor Yue carefully tucked the orb into his robes, then fixed his eyes on Han Li, his voice cold. “If you do, I’ll stand here and take another one. Let’s see which is stronger—your thunder seed, or my protective demonic art.”

His words left everyone in the air frozen. They all turned to look at Han Li.

Han Li’s expression did not change, but inwardly he gave a cold snort. He replied calmly:

“I’m actually curious. Which of you is the real Black Fiend Sect Leader—you or that other man? And from the looks of it, you’ve absorbed most of his cultivation. I find it hard to believe there exists a cultivator willing to be a garment for another. That leaves me a little puzzled.”

Instead of answering the question, Han Li raised a new topic, a clear sign of defiance.

But Emperor Yue only showed a strange expression—half sneer, half regret. Then something seemed to cross his mind. The murderous aura on his face grew denser. His brows drew sharply upward.

Han Li’s heart tightened. He parted his lips slightly and sent a brief voice transmission to the others. Chen Qiaojian, Song Meng, and the rest all looked stunned.

Han Li saw this and said coldly:

“I’ve said what I needed to say. Believe it or not, that’s your choice.”

He had not used voice transmission for that last sentence, so Emperor Yue heard it clearly. The man’s face hardened. He raised a finger and pointed.

A beam of red light as thick as a thumb flashed out—gone in an instant, yet already before Han Li.

Startled, Han Li barely managed to raise his White Phosphorus Shield and his tortoise-shell tool in overlapping defense. A burst of azure light erupted from his body, and a green light-shield formed around him. Faced with an attack of unknown nature, he dared not show the slightest carelessness.

Two soft popping sounds reached his ears. Han Li’s body twisted sideways by instinct almost simultaneously. Then a heat on his right shoulder, followed by a sharp stab of pain.

He turned his head to look, his face grim. Blood was pouring from his shoulder. A finger-sized hole had been drilled clean through it.

He licked his dry lips, then looked down at the two defensive tools in front of him in disbelief.

A hole of the same size ran through both the stacked White Phosphorus Shield and the tortoise-shell tool. The unremarkable red beam had pierced them both. As for the Azure Origin Sword Shield on his body, it had been torn through in an instant, dissolved into nothing without a trace.

Han Li’s heart sank like a stone.

If he had not trained for years in the Smoke Step and developed sharp reflexes, that strike would have pierced his heart and ended him. In this cultivation world, one moment of carelessness could cost you everything.

The more he thought about it, the more his skin crawled.

He had known that absorbing most of the blue-robed man’s power would make Emperor Yue far stronger than before. But to reach such an absurd level—that was beyond anything he had anticipated.

What Han Li did not know was that while he was gripped by dread, Emperor Yue below was equally astonished that this attack had not killed him.

The move he had just used—called “Blood Drill”—might have looked effortless, but in reality, it was a technique he had cultivated over long, painful practice. He would slowly compress certain strands of his true essence dozens of times over and hide them inside his body for sudden lethal strikes. It was a completely one-shot attack.

The process of condensation was excruciating, and forming a single Drill took an immense amount of time. It was one of the killing moves of his demonic art. In the past, he had never failed to take a life with it—no cultivator had ever escaped. And now it had only lightly wounded Han Li. How could he not be stunned?

He only had one Blood Drill left inside him. Should I try striking Han Li again? He hesitated.

Chen Qiaojian and the others had witnessed the attack and seen Han Li wounded. Their faces changed drastically.

Without their realizing it, Han Li had become the pillar of their group. Seeing him injured threw them into panic.

“Go!” Han Li pulled his gaze from the wound and said the word without the slightest hesitation.

He poured mana into the Divine Wind Boat beneath his feet, and in a flash he was flying off to one side.

Song Meng, Zhong Weiniang, and the others exchanged glances, then followed close behind him.

Emperor Yue watched them go. At first, he was taken aback. Then he let out a cold laugh.

He blurred and appeared in midair, ready to give chase. But before him, ten puppets of various shapes encircled him tightly, blocking his path.