Chapter 551: Devouring the Flood Dragon

A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality

First, I want to thank everyone for their opinions and thoughts on how we should overhaul completed novels. We've reviewed nearly 2000 comments across multiple platforms and forum, and while we haven't responded to everything I can promise I HAVE read it all. First, I'm going to briefly go into some of the things which were discussed which may or may not work, because I don't want people to think I ignored anything. I'm putting those in 'spoiler' tags so people who don't care can skip it. Then, we'll talk...

Chapter 551: Devouring the Flood Dragon

Han Li squinted while gazing at the scene through the red mist.

The Venomous Flood Dragon’s scales had been torn away under the onslaught of the Gold Devouring Beetles. However, the shredded skin and flesh underneath spouted out a seemingly endless mist of bloodlight, melting large quantities of the beetles into a black liquid. Not long after, the many beetles that had surrounded the flood dragon had nearly all perished.

As of current, the mutilated body of the Venomous Flood Dragon was oozing green blood from all over. He stared at Han Li with a bone-deep hatred.

Han Li’s heart trembled. It appeared that the Venomous Flood Dragon’s reputation wasn’t undeserved. His Gold Devouring Beetles had already evolved to a point where ordinary magic treasures could hardly pose a threat to them. It was obvious how deadly the mist of toxic bloodlight was from how easily the beetles had been exterminated.

Soon, a sneer reappeared on Han Li’s face. The demons had no idea just how many beetles he possessed. Even if he had to expend most of them, he would definitely slay each and every one of them.

With that thought, he took a quick look at the swarm of beetles that were covering the demon tortoise. He heard the incessant sound of grating from their direction, but the insect swarm appeared to be nearly motionless. If it weren’t for the faint demonic Qi that leaked out from the beetles, Han Li would’ve dared to believe that the demon was already dead.

Although he felt uncertainty swell in his heart, Han Li raised his arms into the air without any further thought and tossed several spirit beast pouches out. Suddenly, a huge hum of insect wings reverberated throughout the room as over a hundred thousand black-tainted Gold Devouring Beetles appeared.

Upon seeing such a large quantity of beetles, the flood dragon revealed an expression of despair.

At that same moment, Feng Xi’s expression abruptly changed to reveal astonishment.

It was said that exotic spirit insects had a far shorter lifespan than common spirit beasts. Although their incubation period was quite short and they laid hundred of eggs when breeding, they would ordinarily only breed once every hundred years. After hatching and accepting a master, they would need several tens of years of training and nurturing before they could be truly used. Additionally, the greater the power and the higher the grade of the insects, the more time was required. As a result, only a few cultivators were renowned for their insect control techniques in the Scattered Star Seas despite the numerous cultivators that practiced such techniques. They were especially rare to find past Core Formation stage!

Most insect controllers would only possess about a thousand exotic insects in their lifetime if they were lucky. In most of these cases, they had inherited a majority of their insects from a master in order to acquire such an amount.

Additionally, exotic insects were said to be far weaker than spirit beasts. It wasn’t uncommon to see an entire swarm of insects be exterminated in a single battle. As a result, there were few cultivators that used insect control techniques despite knowing that their powers were great.

As a result, Feng Xi and the flood dragon were in disbelief after seeing Han Li release such a vast quantity of insects. Despite being metamorphosis stage demon beasts, they still felt fear at the ferocity of Han Li’s beetles.

Of course, if they knew that this might was coming from insects that had yet to fully mature, they would be left in even greater shock.

Without paying any further attention to the hate, fury, and fear in the flood dragon’s eyes, Han Li quickly uttered an incantation and had the flying insects separate into several groups before sending them off to maul the flood dragon.

A mist of bloodlight spurted forth once more from the flood dragon’s wounds, and liquified any Gold Devouring Beetles that it touched. However, the beetles swarming around the ceiling of the room held no fear. After a short moment, the mist of bloodlight shrank and dimmed, eventually disappearing to reveal the flood dragon’s wretched expression.

Han Li’s eyes brightened as he saw this and had another group of beetles immediately fall upon flood dragon, drowning him once more in a sea of gold, silver and black. This pattern repeated over and over: the swarm would be melted by the toxic bloodlight only to be replaced by yet another swarm after it faded away. Eventually, the Venomous Flood Dragon could no longer endure, succumbing to the repeated swarms of Gold Devouring Beetles.

When Feng Xi saw this, his expression faintly changed, but he immediately wore a face of calm. He merely stared at Han Li with an icy gaze.

Han Li snorted and had the insect swarm depart from the body, revealing the remains of the Venomous Flood Dragon. A sparkling fist-sized, blood-red core could be seen within.

A strange emotion flickered from his eyes, but before he took any action, the demon core took off into the air with a flash of blue light, heading in the direction of the room’s exit. Han Li instantly reached and shot an azure swordstreak from his hand.

The demon core wobbled through the air from the strike before an inch-long miniature flood dragon suddenly emerged from within the demon core in a flash of blue light. It was the flood dragon’s primal soul.

When the flood dragon’s soul saw that it had been revealed, it panickedly disappeared with a flash of scarlet light.

A chilling glint flickered from Han Li’s eyes. He slapped a spirit beast pouch at his waist, summoning a yellow streak of light. When it fell onto the floor, a small, gloomy monkey with a lazy appearance appeared. It was the Weeping Soul Beast.

Han Li didn’t have the time to worry about the beast’s mood and slapped its head, causing the Weeping Soul Beast to involuntarily snort and shoot a yellow light out from its nose. The yellow light spiralled through the air before eventually enveloping an empty area. With a flash of yellow light, the miniature flood dragon’s soul appeared.

Soon after, the yellow light wrapped around the the flood dragon’s soul and dragged it back into the Weeping Soul Beast’s nose.

The flood dragon’s soul was naturally unwilling to face death and stopped itself halfway by releasing a blinding blue light. The blue light stopped the yellow mist in its entirety.

With a soul that powerful, it was worthy of belonging to a desolate beast at the metamorphosis stage. It was far more capable than any grade seven demon beast. Of course, this was also partially due to the Weeping Soul Beast’s young age. Otherwise, it would’ve fully displayed power for which it was famed.

Han Li never intended for the Weeping Soul Beast to truly suck in the flood dragon’s soul. Grade eight demon beast souls were an extremely precious material, and he naturally wasn’t going to waste it.

As a result, while the Weeping Soul Beast and the flood dragon’s soul were locked in confrontation, Han Li disappeared with a blur. He reappeared a moment later next to the flood dragon’s soul with his hand covered in sparkling azure light. Unable to escape, the soul entered Han Li’s tight grasp.

The soul was only several inches long, but it managed to forcefully sway his hand in its struggles. However, Han Li had already prepared a jade bottle in his other hand. In a single, quick movement, Han Li enveloped the flood dragon in azure light and slipped it into the bottle. He quickly covered the bottle and carefully placed it into his storage pouch. At that moment, he finally let out a breath of relief.

Han Li then turned around to face the demon tortoise, possessing not the slightest intention to delay it’s death.

But at that moment, a brittle crack sounded out. The light barrier was finally broken through by the two huge swords. Without turning his head, he opened his hand and shot a wide cloud of azure light from his palm. A moment later, the light brought back the Thunderstorm Wings and dropped them into his hand. Since he couldn’t deal with them at the time being, he stuffed them into his storage pouch for later.

This action caused Feng Xi to nearly spit out a mouthful of blood. His originally calm expression was now brimming with hatred.

Han Li’s gaze fell upon the mound of beetles lying on another part of the room. He let out a low whistle, and the beetles flew off, revealing the demon tortoise underneath.

Han Li felt his breath turn cold.

The demon tortoise’s body was shredded and mangled, but his body was enveloped in a faint yellow light. His bare flesh was squirming before Han Li’s eyes and was healing at an amazing rate. In an instant, a majority of the wounds had already healed.

Wearing a stupefied expression, Han Li bitterly yelled, “A self-mending body!”

Self-mending bodies were quite common amongst demon beasts, and there were many low-grade demon beasts that possessed one. It would allow for quick recovery from wounds and for severed limbs to regrow. However, this instinctual trait was rare amongst high grade demon beasts. Despite having killed so many grade six and seven demon beasts, Han Li had never seen an ability of near rebirth such as this.

Han Li was immensely shocked to discover that this grade eight demon tortoise actually possessed such a trait.

But with this, Han Li’s problems had grown much larger. Apart from somehow slicing open the demon tortoise’s head and shattering its demon core, Han Li had no other methods to kill it. Unless he could somehow exhaust his regenerative abilities, he was helpless.

Unfortunately, he had only refined his Bamboo Cloudswarm Swords several tens of years ago, and he had scarcely spent any of that time tempering them. As a result, they couldn’t be considered powerful amongst magic treasures of cultivators at a similar grade, despite being made out of the legendary Golden Lightning Bamboo and being refined with the exceedingly precious crystal.

In the past, he had mostly relied on the magic treasure’s quantity and astonishing coordination to slay grade six and seven demon beasts. Of course, while its power was immensely strengthened when a set of twelve combined together into a huge sword, this was merely one of the beneficial aspects of a set of magic treasure.

But even with the huge sword fusion, it was clear that he was incapable of defeating either of the present demon beast’s long cultivated bodies.

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