Formation Traps the Demon

Han Li did not linger over the scattered fragments. After sweeping the area to ensure nothing was missed, he turned his full attention to subduing the giant mantis.

He had no intention of letting this demon beast go. The creature’s forelimbs alone were a superb forging material rarely found in the cultivation world, not to mention whatever else its body might yield.

The thought of capturing it alive and taming it crossed his mind, but only briefly. He dismissed it at once.

He knew too well that every demon beast a cultivator could command had been bound by restrictive spells since infancy, trained and broken in bit by bit. The idea of simply claiming a powerful spirit beast raised by someone else was pure fantasy.

The cultivator from the Imperial Spirit Sect had only lost control of the giant mantis because his original body had been destroyed and he had become someone else. Had that not happened, the beast—once fully tamed—would have been loyal for life, far more faithful than any human.

As for whether to send word to the Seven Sect Alliance, Han Li still could not verify the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator’s claims. He decided to stay put for a few days and see how things developed.

His speed was considerable. Even if he left late, he could still reach the Seven Sect camp on time.

And so, taking a full day, Han Li quietly set up the “Reversed Five Elements Formation” in a dense forest not far from the cave.

This time, he did not deploy a hasty portion of the formation as he had during the palace battle. He laid it out in its entirety. It was significantly more powerful than before.

During this interval, he spotted the giant mantis leaving to hunt once more. It returned with a massive black tiger, drawing a surprised murmur from Han Li.

A black tiger was something he had never seen before. It was clearly no ordinary beast. What a shame that such a rare creature would end up as nothing more than a meal in the mantis’s gullet.

Once his preparations were complete, Han Li slipped into the cave at noon.

But he was in and out in moments. He shot out of the cave atop his Divine Wind Boat and flew straight for the formation.

The shadow that burst out behind him was, of course, the giant mantis he had disturbed.

He had set up his trap nearby. By the time the mantis left the cave, it was already inside the formation’s range. The insectoid beast had some intelligence, but it knew nothing of formations. It fell into Han Li’s snare without resistance and was trapped within the array.

For the next two days, Han Li let the giant mantis dash around wildly inside the Reversed Five Elements Formation. He let the formation’s illusion and bewilderment effects do their work, confining the beast to a few acres of land.

Only when the mantis had exhausted itself and tried to lie still in the center of the formation did Han Li release his puppets. The puppets harassed the beast relentlessly from outside the formation, denying it even a moment’s rest.

The mantis was a variety with extremely high attack power but middling defenses. It could not afford to let a single puppet blow land on its body. It had to keep both scythe-like forelimbs swinging constantly to block their strikes.

After half a day of this, the mantis could no longer hold out. The puppets began to land hits. Though the wounds were light, the beast’s strength was already spent. Han Li, meanwhile, had cycled through replacement spirit stones for the puppets five or six times.

Judging the moment ripe, Han Li sacrificed his Talisman Treasure—the small yellow-handled knife. Under cover of the puppet assault, he drove it straight through the giant mantis’s head, killing it inside the formation.

With the deed done, Han Li could not suppress a flash of elation. He walked to the beast’s corpse, pulled out his silver greatsword, and neatly severed both razor-sharp forelimbs.

Then, holding out great hope, he began to probe the mantis’s abdomen methodically.

He was hoping this beast might be a fifth-grade demon. If so, he might harvest an extremely rare demon core.

Suddenly, joy flickered across Han Li’s face. But it twisted into puzzlement just as quickly. When he pulled his hand out of the corpse with a mixture of surprise and uncertainty, it held several elliptical objects of uniform size, pale white and streaked with blood vessels.

“Demon beast eggs?” Han Li murmured in astonishment.

Foolish as he might be, he could hardly mistake these for a demon core.

His surprise was not over. He reached in again and fished out seven or eight more. Together with the first batch, there were over a dozen.

Han Li stared at these egg-sized things, then broke into an unreserved smile.

What an unexpected windfall!

But then something occurred to him. He frowned and pressed a finger against one of the white eggs, closing his eyes to sense its energy.

Moments later, the smile on his face curdled. There was not a trace of life force inside. It was a dead egg.

Such things were common among demon beasts, after all.

Demon beasts were not ordinary insects or animals. Procreation was never easy for them.

Han Li’s expression darkened. He tested the remaining eggs, one by one. All were dead. He wet his lips, deeply frustrated.

Inwardly fuming, he considered burning the eggs to ash. But after a moment of hesitation, he pulled out a jade box and stored them carefully.

“This giant mantis was no ordinary demon beast. Even dead eggs might have some use,” he thought reluctantly.

After also removing the mantis’s pair of gray wings, Han Li reduced the carcass to ashes. Then he headed for the cave.

He held little hope, but he wanted to see if there was anything else worth taking.

When he entered the cave and searched it, he was stunned.

In a corner of the cave lay a skeleton wrapped in gray robes. A complete storage pouch was still fastened at its waist.

Han Li’s heart pounded as he picked up the pouch.

He knew without asking that this skeleton must be the remains of the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator. The man had not bothered to hide his storage pouch before leaving his body. This truly surprised and delighted Han Li.

Of course, Han Li did not know that the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator had been wounded too gravely, his flesh on the verge of perishing. There was no time for finishing touches. He had only managed to wrap up the “Green Flame Sword” and condense a fraction of his golden core’s energy into a green pellet before fleeing his body in panic with those two items.

Delay, and both his body and his primordial soul would have perished together.

Naturally, Han Li was intensely curious about this storage pouch belonging to a Core Formation cultivator.

He forced down his excitement and extended his spiritual sense into the pouch, beginning a thorough examination.

But when his spiritual sense had made a full circuit, Han Li was nearly angry enough to faint.

The pouch was enormous, but it contained nothing but bottles and jars. Most were labeled as feed for some demon beast or insect—completely useless to Han Li. A smaller portion was slightly better: samples of various insects, similarly labeled with their names.

Han Li gave them a cursory examination. To his astonishment, most of the insects in those bottles were still alive.

No one had fed them for years, and they were still alive. Remarkably resilient!

As for the high-grade talismans he had hoped for, the magical tools he urgently needed, and the Talisman Treasures he wanted—there were none in the pouch. Han Li was speechless for a long while.

Fortunately, at the very bottom of the pouch, he found a green jade slip. When he read its contents, he grew deeply interested.

It contained the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator’s notes on raising strange insects. The jade slip introduced thousands of species Han Li had never heard of, and also contained secret techniques for breeding and controlling them. What interested Han Li most was that the cultivator had ranked these insects by their power.

The giant mantis was on the list. Though it was gray in color, the cultivator had called it a “Golden-Back Demon Mantis,” which made Han Li blink in confusion.

But the giant mantis was ranked only seventy-third among the many strange insects. There were seventy-two species even more fearsome ahead of it. This revelation struck Han Li as deeply unsettling, given what he had seen of the mantis’s power.

Han Li read on with great relish for a long time before withdrawing his spiritual sense from the jade slip. He pondered for a moment, then began comparing the insect samples he held against the descriptions in the slip.

The more he compared, the more dissatisfied he became.

Whatever other uses these insects might have, their rankings were far too low! Only two species ranked within the top hundred, and both were barely clinging to the tail end.

The vast majority were two or three hundred places down.

Han Li did not know that if the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator had heard this complaint, he would have cursed Han Li up and down. Strange insects like these were not easy to collect. Even those in the three hundred range were rare breeds, and the cultivator had spent centuries gathering them through forceful means.

(Well, that’s the chapter done. Time to sleep!)