“We sure found the right person. Brother Han, listen well!” Yan Li’s face brightly lip up upon hearing his reply and she began to speak to him in voice transmission.

As Han Li attentively listened to her, a pensive expression appeared on his face.

As Yuan Yao quietly stood at the side, her eyes glistened while she looked at Han Li’s face.

When Yan Li finished her voice transmission, Han Li let out a long sigh and said, “This technique will do. However, I fear that I’ll only be able to do this inside the infernal river with the help of you two.”

Yan Li giggled and said, “That’s right. The Yin Qi in the infernal river only resonates with pure Yin Qi in our bodies. Of course, the ghost matron can also do this, but she won’t remove the mark I place down.”

Han Li nodded and said, “Good, but I have to ask, how do you want me to help you?”

Yuan Yao slowly said, “I suppose it would be impossible to make the ghost matron completely abandon us, but it would be possible to have her postpone consuming us. So long as we can delay it until after we enter the infernal river, we will have an opportunity to escape their control.”

Han Li’s brow stirred and he didn’t immediately answer. He knew the two would go into more detail.

As a result, Yan Li immediately continued, “The ghost matron and the other monarchs view Han Li’s a.s.sistance with great importance. So long as we leak out that we were old friends of deep importance and Brother Han openly displays affection towards Little Sister Yuan in front of the ghost matron, she would temporarily spare us, even if she had some doubts.”

“Be affectionate towards Lady Yuan?” Shocked, Han Li quickly shot a glance at Yuan Yao.

Despite the many years she cultivated, when Yuan Yao heard Yan Li’s words, her face flushed with a deep red, revealing a lovely appearance.

“If it"s only with words, I will do it. However, the ghost matron and Mu Qing have already come to some sort of agreement. I don’t know how effective this will be,” Han Li warned.

“There was something like that?” Yan Li’s face slightly changed and she wryly laughed.

Yuan Yao’s expression faintly changed and she wryly laughed, “If that’s true, there is some risk. But apart from this plan, we have nothing else. We’ll only be able to rely on our luck, and how heavily the demon monarchs view Brother Han.”

After some thought, Yan Li solemnly said, “Let’s go with that. Fellow Daoist Han has confirmed our words so we may as well speak of more serious things. We’ll have the ghost matron believe that Brother Han is infatuated with Junior Martial Sister Yuan. In this case, the ghost matron should be somewhat apprehensive and shouldn’t dare to harm us. In addition, the ghost matron knows a bit about our history, so Fellow Daoist Han’s disguise as a Flying Spirit Tribe member must be broken.”

Han Li shook his head and said, “My disguise as a Flying Spirit Tribe member was only temporary to begin with. I don’t care if the ghost matron knows or not. They don’t care about my ident.i.ty as a Flying Spirit Tribe member but the Divine Devilbane Lightning I carry.”

Yan Li proposed, “In that case, we’re relieved. There is no time to lose. Once the ghost matron emerges from seclusion, let’s act according to plan. So long as she doesn’t touch on our true plan, Fellow Daoist Han may as well reveal a few details about our time in the mortal world. After all, lies that contain truth are the most convincing.”

Han Li lowered his head in thought and felt that there were no problems. He calmly answered, “Yes, I can do that. I will do my best to a.s.sist you.”

The two felt great relief when they heard this and they couldn"t help but look at Han Li with a close att.i.tude.

The three then chatted about the particulars a bit more and the two women said their farewells.

Even as the ghost matron was still in seclusion, the two women didn’t dare to be careless and hastily returned to the deepest level of the earth abyss.

When Han Li saw the two travel off in Yin winds, soon disappearing from sight, Han Li suddenly shook his sleeve.

A light flashed from his body, taking the form of a three-meter-tall peac.o.c.k with bright beautiful feathers.

It unfolded its wings and rainbow light glared, causing the nearby s.p.a.ce to hum.

The rainbow light swept up in a wind and the peac.o.c.k turned vague, immediately turning into a rainbow mist, directly heading to the heart of the mountain range.

Not long after, Han Li appeared back in his cave residence and closed the door to his seclusion room once again.

Two months later, a ball of black wind directly made its way to Han Li’s residence and bluntly dropped down. Then it vanished as if it sank into the mountain.

The few restrictions Han Li placed down didn’t have any effect on it.

After two hours, the gate to Han Li’s residence opened and the black Yin wind flew out, flying into the distant sky.

A short time after, the gate slowly closed.

As time quickly pa.s.sed, the mountain was covered twice over in snow, winter had pa.s.sed twice.

...

On the seventh level of the earth abyss, dark Qi gathered there the densest.

There were a few powerful earth abyss demons that have yet to gain sentience, but the four demon monarchs held them in fear regardless.

Even the white-haired beauty that was particularly fond of Yin Qi was unwilling to establish her cultivation palace on this floor and instead established it on the floor above.

But one day on the seventh level, countless demons arrived from a desolate grey desert in dense formations of untold size.

Most of them consisted of a few common low-grade earth abyss demons and there were a few that appeared odd.

A portion of them was covered in a large Yin Wind, faintly revealing countless ghost images. Furthermore, they wailed with ghostly howls, causing the other demons to distance themselves in fear.

Above these Yin winds floated the white-haired beauty, and behind her stood eight black figures.

They were all ten meters tall and donned an especially sinister set of armor. There were a few that were unharmed and those that wielded blades. As for their faces, they were blurred and couldn"t be seen.

Near the eight black figures, there were two beautiful women floating at their side.

They were Yuan Yao and Yan Li.

And outside the scope of the black winds, there was an arrangement of puppets of various heights and styles.

Most of them were carved out of claw and were ten-meters-tall. Their bodies flickered with a grey, white, and brown light, but they were clearly carved with crudeness. A small portion of them was carved out of black-green wood and there were others were metal-attributed puppets s.h.i.+ning with black light.

These puppets were refined meticulously regardless of their exterior material and had a talisman formation on their surface.

However, the most eye-catching of the puppets was a purple-red hundred-meter-tall puppet that had six eyes.

This was the colossal Purpleblood Puppet that was refined underneath Di Xue’s Bloodflame Palace.

However, this puppet now appeared tens of times smaller, and it no longer appeared as fearsome as before.

On the shoulders of the Purpleblood Puppet stood two crimson-robed men with their hands behind their back.

And at the very front of the puppets and demons, others flew high in the air.

A man entirely wrapped in a black cloak were among them. He was the most mysterious of the four demon monarchs, Liu Zu. Astonis.h.i.+ngly, a three-meter-wide eyeball floated above his head and flickered with grey light.

Not far away from Liu Zu floated a huge golden flower.

Mu Qing stood above it and looked up the sky with a raised head. Standing at her side was a golden ape wearing swords behind his back and had bright cold eyes.

Beneath them floated over a hundred high-grade demons with solemn expressions in half-demon form.

And at the apes side, there was an azure-robed youth with his arms crossed, watching everything in silence.

He was Han Li, who had been summoned by force after spending several years in cultivation.

At that moment, he was looking at the puppets and demons around him. His face was expressionless, but his heart felt quite shaken.

From the number of low-grade demons, they must’ve represented most of the power the demon monarch’s controlled in the earth abyss.

Besides the demons, the ghosts in the black wind and the myriad of puppets were clearly the strongest forces among them.

These forces must’ve taken the demon monarchs several hundreds of years to gather.

Their willingness to spend such strength ill.u.s.trated their determination to succeed in the infernal river. It was unknown what the area contained, but it caused them to risk everything.

As Han Li inwardly pondered, he saw Liu Zu move and his cold voice commanded, “Fairy Mu, the time has come. Quickly offer the blood feed and advance the last blood offering.”

When Mu Qing heard this, she nodded and waved below her.

The several figures flew out from high-grade demons, each one had bare hands, but had several blood-red pouches at their waist.

In the blink of an eye, they flew high into the air and grabbed their pouches, shaking them down into the air.

As a series of pops sounded, crimson light flashed. A dozen streams of blood rivers shot out from the pouches.

A dense mist of putrid blood Qi suddenly scattered and filled the air.

The blood rivers condensed in midair and seemed to concentrate together as if they were alive, turning into a hundred-fifty-meter-wide blood ball.

At that moment Mu Qing stepped on her golden flower and a black formation suddenly flashed from it. Her figure promptly vanished.

In the next moment, the huge blood ball flickered with black light and Mu Qing reappeared near it.

She wore a sullen expression and raised her hand. Suddenly, a small black vial was summoned into the air and flew up to the blood ball.

Forming an incantation gesture, the black vial spun and its lit vanished.

The vial released several fist-sized black-red objects, blurring into the blood ball and disappearing without a trace.