The Lightning Escape
1,605 words
As the days passed, the intervals between Han Li’s Wind Spirit Restriction bursts grew longer.
From once every few hours, it stretched to half a day, then to a full day before he had to suppress it once. Each attack was weaker than the last.
Finally, after a two-day lull, the Wind Spirit Restriction steadied itself—the Ripping Wind Beast had abandoned its activation.
Naturally, Han Li was overjoyed.
Whether the beast had been thrown off by distance or caught up in its own trouble, this was the perfect window to escape.
Without hesitation, he drank a drop of Spirit Liquid, fixed a direction, and shot into the sky without further caution. He flew far from that stretch of sea.
On a small island tens of thousands of li away, the Ripping Wind Beast sat cross-legged in an empty cave, its face ashen.
After all that chasing back and forth, it had finally exhausted its magic power and could no longer suppress the foreign object in its body.
Unlike Han Li, this demon could not afford to instantly restore its magic with ten-thousand-year Spirit Liquid. Forced to stop on this island, it planned to spend some time thoroughly resolving the trouble in its core before resuming the hunt.
It would definitely retrieve that pair of Wind Lightning Wings it had painstakingly refined.
After swearing a venomous oath, the ninth-grade Ripping Wind Beast closed its eyes and entered a trance of oblivion.
…
Over a month later, Han Li appeared on another strange, deserted island.
After confirming that no human cultivators or high-level demon beasts were nearby, he dove onto the island and quickly carved out a simple stone cave.
Setting up a few concealment arrays at the entrance, he hurried inside and sat down, then took out the pair of Wind Lightning Wings.
Staring at the wings, now shrunk to the size of his palm, Han Li could not suppress a look of delight.
These spirit wings required wind-and-lightning power to drive. Since the ninth-grade Wind Tear Beast Wind Xi himself only possessed wind power, that meant one did not need both—if you had one, you could use the treasure.
Han Li himself could wield the Bixie Divine Lightning, so he naturally had the ability to control this treasure.
If this object were truly as miraculous as the Ripping Wind Beast had claimed, mastering it sooner would greatly improve his chances of survival.
However, upon closer inspection, the silver-white long feathers on the wings appeared slightly unstable and blurred.
Han Li understood at once: this was because the treasure had been retrieved too early, before it had fully set.
Though not the complete loss the beast had threatened, delay would indeed reduce its power considerably.
But Han Li’s face showed no panic. He immediately bit his finger, dripped a drop of Essence Blood onto the wings, and activated a technique to complete the soul-binding ritual.
Watching the wings absorb his blood, Han Li’s eyes glittered coldly. He tossed the treasure into the air.
The Wind Lightning Wings floated in midair as if weightless, hovering still.
Without looking, Han Li flicked his ten fingers. One fine arc after another shot from his fingertips, striking the spirit wings and triggering a low rumble of thunder.
His expression solemn, Han Li’s golden arcs grew denser.
Soon a pale golden electric cocoon appeared in the air, wrapping the Wind Lightning Wings inside.
The thunder softened.
Seeing the wings inside the cocoon slowly absorbing the arcs of Bixie Divine Lightning, Han Li finally breathed a little easier.
Over the next ten-odd days, Han Li used his divine lightning to gradually stabilize the wind-and-lightning feathers of the wings. Because they had absorbed the Bixie Divine Lightning, faint golden threads appeared within the silver feathers—barely visible to the naked eye.
Having completed the treasure’s solidification that several demons had left unfinished, Han Li withdrew the arcs. With a sweep of azure light, he rolled the Wind Lightning Wings into his body.
Then he left the cave, flew to the island’s sky, and prepared to test this treasure’s usage and power.
Standing at a high altitude, Han Li took a light breath, circulated his magic power, and activated the Wind Lightning Wings within his body.
Instantly, spiritual energy swelled behind him. With a “puff-puff” sound, a pair of wings over a zhang long materialized on his back.
Silver-white long feathers, faint golden threads within.
Han Li glanced back. With a thought, he lightly flapped the wings.
They felt weightless, as if they were not there.
Curious, he reached out and touched one of the Wind Lightning Wings—cool, with a slight tingling sensation.
At this, Han Li frowned. He pressed harder, and his whole hand slipped right through.
“What’s this?” Startled, he looked inward.
The palm-sized Wind Lightning Wings were still resting quietly above his dantian, faintly glowing white. What had appeared outside was not the physical treasure itself but entirely spiritual energy transformed into wings.
This surprised Han Li.
Calming himself, he began channeling magic power into the wings. Silver light flashed from the wings behind him. With a slight flap, he shot forward with a “whoosh,” easily gliding through the air.
After circling a few times, he stopped and stroked his chin in thought.
The speed was unremarkable—no faster than before. It seemed he would indeed need to inject lightning power to test it.
With that thought, he wasted no time in mobilizing the Bixie Divine Lightning. Two faint golden arcs traveled into the spirit wings inside his body.
Immediately, thunder rumbled from behind. Han Li threw a glance: silver-white arcs danced over the wings, which stretched wide of their own accord, exuding an eerie aura.
With a thought from his divine sense—“Boom!”—a flash of silver before his eyes, and he had teleported to a spot over ten zhang away faster than a blink.
He was startled at first, then overjoyed.
Then, with a light flap of the wings, another crack of thunder, and he appeared twenty or thirty zhang away at another spot.
For the next while, Han Li transformed into a streak of silver lightning, flashing hundreds of zhang in an instant—appearing far away, vanishing close by, his whole form ghostlike and uncanny.
“No wonder the Lightning Escape is called the most mysterious of escape techniques—its speed is far beyond ordinary Five Elements escape arts! I wonder how heaven-defying this treasure will become after long cultivation. No wonder the ninth-grade Ripping Wind Beast went to such pains to refine it. With its already peerless speed and these Wind Lightning Wings to complement it, there would be few beings in the world capable of killing it.” Reappearing in a flash of silver arc, Han Li stroked one wing, murmuring with barely contained joy. Then with a flash of white light, the wings dispersed on their own.
Han Li had no intention of staying long. He wanted to leave the Outer Star Sea and return to the Inner Sea quickly.
He knew that though he had shaken off the ninth-grade Ripping Wind Beast for now, given its monstrous speed, it would soon search the nearby sea and come after him again. He had no intention of sitting around waiting for it to find him.
The Inner Star Sea was the domain of human cultivators. Even mighty as it was, that beast would never dare venture deep into that territory.
Once he formed his Nascent Soul in the Inner Star Sea, he would no longer have to fear it.
As for the trouble of having those Nascent Soul old monsters hunting him for the Void Heaven Cauldron, that was now thirty or forty years in the past. The heat should have mostly cooled down.
Besides, with his late Core Formation cultivation, as long as he didn’t run into dreadnoughts like Man Brutal Beard and a few other experts, even if he couldn’t beat Extreme Yin and his ilk, he could still escape.
With his plan settled, Han Li returned to the stone cave on the island and briefly inspected the storage pouches of the Turtle Demon and the Poison Flood Dragon.
They contained a surprisingly large number of demon beast demon cores and some extremely rare precious materials.
Among these materials, he found a fist-sized black turtle shell and over a hundred blood-red scales—items the two demons had shed during their transformation. These were even more valuable.
A pleasant surprise.
If he used these two items to refine protective armor, it should be no worse than Man Brutal Beard’s Imperial Scale Armor.
But now was not the time for that. Han Li retrieved the formation flags from the cave entrance and left the island, heading straight for the sea area where the Sublime Sound Sect’s market was located.
Since the Sublime Sound Sect had already built a teleportation array, by now they should be almost ready.
Whether by persuasion, coercion, or force, he intended to use that array to teleport to the Inner Sea.
Han Li did not know where the Sublime Sound Sect’s market had been relocated, but if he found any well-informed human cultivator, he should be able to locate it.
What he did not know was that the escaped Turtle Demon had, in a deep-sea cave thousands of zhang below the waves, already reported the Poison Flood Dragon’s death to the nearby sea’s Flood Dragon clan chief—a ninth-grade Li Fire Flood Dragon, also a mid-stage transforming demon.
(Well, a new month has begun. Wang Yu hopes you continue to enjoy this book. Fellow Daoists who have monthly tickets, please cast a few at the start of the month!)