Chapter 263: Testing the True Wheel

With a thunderous boom!

Nine enormous serpent heads simultaneously crashed into a sword curtain formed by nine massive azure sword lights, only to be rebounded by the sword light and flung back.

The entire azure sword curtain remained motionless.

Han Li made a hand seal with his sword art, and all the azure sword lights immediately turned their blades downward, moving in perfect unison.

A sense of cosmic desolation instantly spread through the air.

Hu Zhen and the others felt this aura and, seeing the majestic formation of ten thousand swords standing like an army arrayed for battle, suddenly felt that their own hastily assembled Ten Thousand Swords Formation, with its mere thousands of swords, was as feeble and ragged as a motley crew.

"Go!"

He let out a soft shout, and instantly azure light blazed as ten thousand swords shot forth.

The dense sword lights traced long, narrow azure trails across the sky, as brilliant as a shower of falling stars.

The nine giant serpents seemed to have sensed the danger and had already fled deep into the thick fog.

But the sword lights of the Azure Bamboo Cloudswarm Swords pursued them straight into the fog.

Rumble...

Accompanied by a series of earth-shaking sounds, several floating peaks within the fog were pierced by the sword lights and shattered, with countless White Ghosts perishing in the process.

"Roar..."

A moment later, seven or eight more miserable beastly howls echoed from deep within the fog.

A faint smile curled at the corner of Han Li's mouth as he flickered and gracefully descended into the fog.

But as soon as he flew into the mist, his brow furrowed—the thick fog had the ability to block divine sense.

Above, the round-faced youth and the others, seeing Han Li's carefree figure disappear into the fog, felt greatly reassured and couldn't help but exclaim, "Elder Li truly has the bearing of a sword immortal..."

Hu Zhen heard this, but for some reason, a widely circulated rumor within the sect suddenly came to mind.

It was said that within the Candle Dragon Dao, there had always been a great sword immortal hidden, known as the 'Number One Sword Cultivator of Tiannan'...

This thought flashed through his mind and vanished, after all, such baseless rumors were mostly just hearsay spread by sect members. Even many true immortals in the sect, with their extensive experience, had never heard of any place called Tiannan.

In the vast thick fog, Han Li's eyes glowed with water-blue light as he sped downward, quickly covering several hundred li. Along the way, he saw huge broken rock fragments floating everywhere—remnants of the peaks his sword lights had cleaved.

Yet the depth of the great chasm still exceeded his expectations. Flying nearly another thousand li downward, he still couldn't see the bottom of the abyss.

The surrounding light was extremely dim, and the fog was so thick it was almost tangible. His divine sense was mostly blocked, and he could perceive nothing beyond a thousand zhang.

Before his eyes, if not for his Bright Spirit Eyes, he would have been unable to see anything at all.

Looking at the blurry giant shadows around him, Han Li realized that within this dark abyss, there were also massive floating peaks, seemingly even more numerous than above the fog, as if this abyss itself was the true body of the Floating Mountain Secret Realm.

Though the nearby peaks were pitch black, he could see faint, shifting shadows on them, as if living creatures were moving about—perhaps the remaining White Ghosts.

As he descended, the distance between him and his flying swords grew shorter. Finally, after passing a colossal peak, he saw a patch of azure light deep within the fog.

Nine azure flying swords, surrounded by a giant azure sword shadow, were embedded in a black giant peak.

"Moo..."

Before he could approach, a low beastly roar came from the black peak. Han Li looked closely and saw that beneath each azure flying sword, black light shimmered.

By the azure light of the sword bodies, he saw that the entire peak was entwined by an immensely thick black serpent body, with nine enormous heads pressed against the ground, each pierced by a flying sword.

After a careful look, Han Li realized that this was not nine giant serpents, but a single nine-headed serpent.

At this moment, all nine heads of the giant serpent had been pierced by the sword blades. Most of its eyes were listless and dull, only the eyes on the central head still held a faint golden light, though they too seemed devoid of much spirit.

Han Li waved his hand, and the nine flying swords embedded in the serpent heads immediately hummed, trembled, and then flew back, merging into a single azure long sword in midair before returning to his side.

He raised his hand to grasp the sword hilt, flew down to land before the serpent head that still held a trace of life, and looked into its eyes.

Suddenly, Han Li's brow tightened. He tapped the serpent head with his toe and flew backward.

The serpent head exploded with a bang, flesh and blood flying everywhere. A black shadow shot out from within and swiftly pursued Han Li.

Han Li fixed his gaze and saw that it was actually a young man clad in black scale armor.

His face was deathly pale, his eyes extremely narrow, almost slanting into his temples. He had no eyebrows, leaving a bare expanse, with hollow cheeks and a protruding jaw. His mouth contained only four sharp fangs, and within it was a crimson forked tongue. On each shoulder grew four fist-sized fleshy tumors, making him look like a hideous, partially transformed demon beast.

His figure flickered through the thick fog, arriving in a flash with incredible speed. In his hand he held an unknown white bone spike, thrusting it straight at Han Li's heart.

Han Li swung his longsword downward, chopping at the white bone spike.

Just as the sword edge was about to strike the bone spike, the snake demon man twisted aside with uncanny strangeness, his neck suddenly stretching more than ten times its length. His head circled around to Han Li, mouth wide open, lunging at Han Li's neck to bite.

With a crisp clang, the white bone spike was severed by Han Li's sword.

At that moment, the snake demon's fangs had already reached Han Li's neck.

Just as it was about to bite down, a golden light suddenly burst forth behind Han Li, and a circular wheel emerged, shining brightly.

On the wheel, twenty-four semi-transparent runes twisted and flickered, emanating a distinct wave of law power that instantly enveloped an area of ten zhang in all directions.

In an instant, everything around seemed to fall into stillness. The thick fog also appeared to cease its churning,凝固 in place.

A flicker of terror flashed in the serpent demon's eyes. Though his body felt no heavy restraint, his movements had become excruciatingly slow, and his wide-open jaws could not close. He could only watch helplessly as Han Li, smiling, moved his neck away from under his fangs.

"Seems the effect is not bad."

Han Li chuckled softly, turned around, and grabbed the demon by the neck with one hand while raising the other to strike down on his head.

He had intended to use this opportunity to test the power of the True Word Wheel, deliberately allowing the serpent demon to approach. Otherwise, with his current cultivation, this demon would have died ten times over.

"Bang..."

A sound like a watermelon splitting slowly echoed, as if stretched out tenfold.

Han Li pulled an immature black nascent soul from the shattered head, rubbed it between his palms, and ground it to ashes.

Then, the golden wheel behind him dimmed and slowly merged into his body.

Only after the True Word Wheel disappeared did the surrounding space return to normal. The thick mist began to flow naturally, and the serpent demon's body suddenly plummeted downward, but since his neck was still in Han Li's grip, he did not fall directly into the abyss.

"It seems that with the support of twenty-four Dao patterns, the wheel's range hasn't changed, but the deceleration effect has increased significantly—probably by more than ten times," Han Li murmured to himself.

This time, breaking through to the twelfth immortal aperture took considerable effort, consuming almost as much time as all the previous apertures combined, and this was only achieved with the aid of continuously taking various rare elixirs to refine one's cultivation; otherwise, the normal time required would have been a hundred times longer.

Having successfully advanced to the mid-stage True Immortal realm and cultivated the first layer of the True Word Wheel Sutra, he was now formally qualified to comprehend the power of time law and attempt to condense law threads.

Thinking thus, Han Li waved his hand, pulling the snake demon's mutilated corpse to his side, extracted a dark golden pellet tinged with some fishy smell from its chest cavity, and casually put it away.

Then, with a casual toss, the snake demon's remains fell into the deeper parts of the Great Chasm, and after a few dozen breaths, sounds of contention and tearing suddenly came from below.

In the depths of the Great Chasm, there seemed to be even more abyssal creatures.

Facing the abyss, Han Li gazed for a moment, then withdrew his gaze, turned, and flew to the peak where the giant snake had previously coiled. The snake body that had once coiled on the peak had gradually shriveled, transforming into a huge nine-headed snake slough.

According to Han Li's speculation, this snake demon had cultivation close to the early True Immortal stage, but for some reason, it had only recently begun to shed its skin and transform. Needing a large amount of food, it had been hunting white ghosts extensively, even daring to rush out of the Great Chasm and injure disciples of the Candle Dragon Sect.

After being wounded by the Azure Bamboo Cloudswarm Swords, it was forced to transform prematurely, and was thus slain by Han Li here.

Han Li waved his hand, storing the snake slough into his storage bracelet. This material was extremely tough and possessed some medicinal properties, making it useful for refining either armor or elixirs.

With the snake slough gone, the true appearance of the entire floating mountain was revealed, and patches of deep blue fluorescence began to glow on it.

Han Li flew over to take a closer look and found dozens of ice-crystal-like blue plants growing on the floating mountain. Their shape resembled orchids, but the leaves were translucent and luminous, appearing quite extraordinary.

However, upon observing them, he could sense little spiritual energy fluctuation, as if they were merely ordinary plants.

Just then, the leaves of these deep blue spirit plants suddenly trembled simultaneously, emitting a buzzing sound.

At first, the sound was very faint, but as it echoed through the empty abyss, it grew louder and louder.

"This is..." Han Li frowned, suddenly recalling that the abnormal rise of the thick fog seemed to have been accompanied by this peculiar sound.

After a brief deliberation, he simply collected all of these deep blue spirit plants and put them away.

After examining the abyss for a while longer and confirming that there were no more such spirit plants, Han Li then flickered his form and sped upward.

However, just as he was about to exit the thick fog, he suddenly halted his movement, not rushing out, but instead flying toward the already shattered floating peaks.

These peaks had originally been outside the thick fog, covered with many spirit herbs. Due to this incident, they had been swallowed by the fog, and thus the sect naturally could not hold him accountable.

Under such circumstances, if he did not collect some, wouldn't it be a waste?