Chapter 582: Betting Everything

Han Li shook his head, suppressing the hidden worries in his heart. He waved his hand slightly, summoning the True Word Wheel before him. After inspecting it, he found two more Time Dao patterns on it, which put his mind somewhat at ease.

He exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, then shifted his gaze to the pitch-black abyss below.

Since the baleful qi above had been nearly completely absorbed by Han Li, the rate at which baleful qi from the depths diffused upward had noticeably accelerated. Yet when he looked down, it was still bottomless, and he had no idea how deep this pit actually was.

As he pondered, Han Li flipped his hand to produce a pill, swallowed it, and closed his eyes to regulate his breathing for a moment. Then his eyes snapped open, and he leaped downward, rapidly plunging into the rolling baleful qi below.

As he expected, the deeper he went, the denser and more viscous the baleful qi became.

After descending only another fifty or sixty li, Han Li felt that the yin wind and baleful qi rushing toward him were already several times stronger than at his previous stopping point. Visions of mountains of corpses, seas of blood, and ferocious beasts began to reappear.

However, since his Divine Refining Art had now reached the fourth level of mastery, his tolerance for such illusions had increased. He did not stop but continued to press downward against the baleful wind.

After descending another thirty li, the surrounding yin wind slowed again, but the baleful qi grew even denser.

Han Li felt as if he were pushing through snow, making every step difficult.

Just then, a sudden change occurred!

In the void before him, specks of green light emerged and rapidly coalesced.

Before long, the green giant rat illusion that had appeared before materialized again, its body several times larger than before. Its skin looked as if it had been scalded by boiling oil, covered with charred wounds, and its face was completely hairless. Its two huge eyeballs dangled loosely in their bloody sockets, as if they might fall out at any moment.

With a sharp screech, the giant rat shook its body and charged at Han Li.

Accompanying it was an indescribable stench of blood. When Han Li smelled it, he felt as if a ten-thousand-zhang wave of blood was crashing down, about to swallow him.

However, Han Li was well prepared and remained unmoved. He silently recited the incantation of the Divine Refining Art and let out a low shout like a clap of thunder.

A powerful wave of divine sense instantly swept through his sea of consciousness, like a summer rainstorm, cleansing his mind completely.

The giant rat illusion charging at him also shattered with a bang and disappeared.

Han Li paused only briefly before continuing his descent.

He knew clearly that the denser and purer the baleful qi he absorbed, the greater the help it would be in breaking through his immortal apertures, and the faster his cultivation would advance.

After all, the time left for him was growing shorter. He had to seize every moment to enhance his strength; every bit of improvement increased his chances of survival.

But after descending only a few hundred zhang further, he was forced to stop again.

This time, what blocked him was not an illusion, but baleful qi that had reached an extreme density.

The baleful qi gathered below him had almost lost its misty state and no longer flowed. It looked like a black wall cast from ink.

Han Li could clearly sense that the baleful qi inside this “wall” was different from the qi swirling around him, though he couldn’t say exactly how.

After hesitating for a moment, Han Li bent down and tried to reach one hand into the wall.

The moment his hand entered the wall, a piercing, bone-chilling pain shot through his wrist and palm. Strands of frenzied baleful qi, like living things, coalesced into sharp needles and actively drilled into his skin.

Han Li shuddered violently and immediately tried to pull his hand back, but an equally strong force seized his palm, preventing him from withdrawing it.

With a faint blue light in his eyes, he looked closely and saw that it was the dense baleful qi, like needles piercing his hand, that was pulling his arm.

They twisted together, almost completely enveloping Han Li’s entire hand.

Han Li’s gaze sharpened. With a crackling sound, a golden electric light burst from his palm.

The black threads of baleful qi, jolted by the evil-repelling divine lightning, immediately withdrew from his palm and wrist, but still lingered around, unwilling to retreat completely.

Han Li took the chance to pull his hand out. Glancing at it, he couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath.

His palm was covered with a dense array of tiny red dots—hair-thin holes that had been pierced by the baleful qi. Faint wisps of black qi swirled within these holes.

With a crackle, a patch of golden lightning flashed across his palm and vanished, but the baleful threads in the holes were gone, and the holes quickly closed up and disappeared.

Han Li let out a light breath and gave a bitter smile inwardly.

Fortunately, he had withdrawn in time; otherwise, in just a few moments, this hand would probably have been completely ruined.

“Indeed, the deeper you go, the more aggressive the baleful qi becomes. By the time I reach the bottom, I won’t need to guide it—it will drill into my body on its own. Then controlling it to impact the apertures won’t be so simple…” Han Li’s eyes flickered as he mused.

He looked at the black wall of mist below him, a hesitant expression on his face.

Admittedly, once the baleful qi inside the wall invaded his body, it would be like a violent storm, extremely risky. One careless mistake could lead to utter destruction. But if he could control it, the efficiency of impacting the apertures would surely increase severalfold.

After a moment, a gleam of determination lit up in Han Li’s eyes.

Since he had already bet twenty years, why not add another wager to this gamble?

After all, for him now, there were not many choices left.

With a flicker of thought, Han Li’s figure flashed and he charged straight into the black wall.

Once inside the wall, Han Li felt his sea of consciousness sink, as if a thousand-jun boulder had been pressed onto it. A sharp ringing echoed in his mind, almost cutting off his five senses, making him barely aware of the strange phenomena around him.

Outside his body, the ink-like baleful qi wrapped around him, transforming inside into countless razor-sharp threads that pierced into his skin, deep enough to reach the bone.

Pain from both his sea of consciousness and his body struck simultaneously. It was as if a mountain of agony had crashed down on him, causing his entire body to tremble violently and his divine sense to begin to scatter.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to hold on, using the last shred of clarity in his divine sense to activate the Divine Refining Art.

The power of the fourth level of the Divine Refining Art, now fully mastered, was naturally extraordinary.

Han Li felt a hurricane sweep through his mind. The sharp ringing in his sea of consciousness vanished, and his divine sense returned to normal.

As soon as his divine sense recovered, he immediately used his mental power to guard his mind, while simultaneously activating the Profound Baleful Nether Spirit Art, guiding the vast baleful qi that had surged into his body toward his sixty-third aperture.

But as he activated it, Han Li’s expression changed.

He discovered that after guiding the surging baleful qi with his baleful qi technique, only a portion of it flowed toward that aperture; the rest, like wild horses, rushed uncontrollably into various parts of his body.

Crackle…

A series of popping sounds came from Han Li’s body, and large bumps rose on his skin.

His form also began to change, swelling and expanding at a visible rate, as if he were about to be burst apart by the baleful qi.

Shocked, Han Li did not lose his composure. He rapidly changed hand seals, trying to control the baleful qi flooding in from outside, but his body had become like a dam with its gates opened, unable to stop the torrent of baleful qi.

Just as his skin, inflated by the baleful qi like an air sac, seemed about to rupture, a small vortex formed at his shoulder, drawing another portion of the baleful qi toward it.

This vortex was actually another immortal aperture of Han Li’s. Under the extreme excess of baleful qi, it had also opened, joining the sixty-third aperture in receiving the impact of the baleful qi.

Han Li clenched his teeth, enduring the intense pain throughout his body, his mind stretched to the limit. He fully activated the Profound Baleful Nether Spirit Art, guiding the baleful qi that had entered his body to continuously impact those two apertures.

…

Cultivation in the abyss, oblivious to the passage of time, passed in the blink of an eye for over a decade.

On the cliff wall near the abyss’s exit, Jintong sat cross-legged on the ground, her hands forming a mudra, meditating.

Not far from her, the White Jade Pixiu lay on the ground with its forepaws under its chin, its eyelids drooping as if half asleep.

At that moment, a gust of wind arose, and a golden light flew down from above, landing on the cliff.

The White Jade Pixiu glanced up, saw that it was Crab Immortal returning from inspecting the formation, and lazily drooped its eyelids again. Jintong never opened her eyes.

Just then, from deep within the abyss came a rumbling sound, like the beating of a thunder god’s drum.

Following that, rolling baleful qi rose from the abyss like morning mist in the mountains, spreading to the top of the cliff.

Jintong’s eyes snapped open. She jumped up from the ground, bounded to the edge of the cliff, and peered nervously into the abyss.

Xiao Bai also got up from the ground, trotted over to her, and said, “Boss, this commotion—could it be that the master is about to…”

“Uncle…” Jintong seemed not to hear Xiao Bai’s words. Her expression was extremely complex as she murmured to herself.

Her tone carried a mix of anticipation, worry, excitement, and anxiety.