Chapter 2356: Ghostly Face, Giant Flower, Puppet   As soon as his voice trailed off, Han Li swept a sleeve through the air to release a ball of golden light, which transformed into the featureless miniature figure that was the Gold Devouring Beetles.

"Jin Tong, follow Fellow Daoist Blood Soul for now, and make sure to protect her," Han Li instructed.

The miniature figure offered no response to this, but it immediately teleported over to the blood soul, hovering in a stationary manner above her head.

The blood soul had witnessed Jin Tong in action on the way here, a grateful look immediately appeared on her face. "Thank you, Senior Han. With Senior Jin protecting me, my safety in this Heavenly Cauldron Palace will be ensured."

She then summoned a pristine white vial before offering it to Han Li with both hands.

This was a vial that contained a drop of the aforementioned blood essence.

"There are other people who have arrived here even earlier than we have, so we should split up and begin our search right away," Han Li said.

The blood soul gave an affirmative response, and thus, each of them flew toward a different cluster of buildings with Jin Tong following along closely behind the blood soul.

In order to venture deeper into the Heavenly Cauldron Palace, Han Li had to eradicate the restrictions of other areas that stood in his way.

Thus, as soon as he appeared before a white light barrier, he immediately made a grabbing motion to summon an azure longsword, which he slashed viciously toward the light barrier.

The white light barrier immediately shattered as if it were a piece of chinaware, following which the surrounding area blurred, and Han Li suddenly found himself on a path in a lush forest.

The trees around him were around 70 to 80 feet tall, and at first glance, they seemed to be no different from normal trees, but upon closer inspection, Han Li discovered that there was a series of twisted faces with their eyes tightly shut etched onto the surfaces of these trees.

There were faces of all types of descriptions, but all of them wore blissful expressions as if they were experiencing pleasant slumbers.

Han Li’s eyes narrowed slightly upon seeing this, and right at this moment, an intoxicating floral scent suddenly wafted toward him from the other end of the path.

With his enormous spiritual sense, the aroma resulted in nothing more than slight mental discomfort following inhalation.

A faint smile appeared on Han Li’s face, and he knew that he was situated in some type of profound restriction. He immediately began to advance along the path, but after taking no more than 20 steps, the faces on all of the trees on either side of him suddenly opened their eyes in unison.

Inky-black threads of light then shot forth from those eyes, every single one of which was extremely sharp and giving off peculiar energy fluctuations.

In response to this, Han Li simply conjured up a grey light barrier that shielded him from all sides.

The oncoming light threads struck the light barrier like a torrential storm, only to instantly vanish into the light barrier without a trace.

All the while, Han Li was still continuing onward in an unhurried manner without pause.

His actions seemed to have provoked the faces on the trees, one of them let loose a shrill cry, upon which all of the faces adopted furious expressions.

They opened their mouths to release extremely pungent bursts of green flames, transforming the path into a sea of fire.

A faint smile appeared on Han Li’s face, and he continued onward without pause, while the green flames were also absorbed by the grey light barrier.

Furthermore, countless grey translucent threads were erupting out of the grey light barrier, and every single thread struck one of the faces on the trees with unerring accuracy.

The faces would then let loose anguished cries before vanishing from the trees.

In the instant that all of the faces on a tree disappeared, the tree itself would wither away and become completely devoid of vitality.

After walking for over 1,000 feet, Han Li finally made his way out of the forest, where he discovered a colorful flower garden.

A series of round flower pots were sitting on a lush lawn, and inside the pots were planted floral trees, each of which was around 10 feet tall, but there was only a single huge flower growing on each tree.

These flowers all differed in color and shape, but they were currently all at full bloom.

This was where the intoxicating floral scent was coming from.

Han Li swept his spiritual sense over the giant flowers, upon which his expression changed slightly, but he continued onward.

Right as he was walking past a certain flower pot, the giant flowers nearby suddenly transformed into menacing ghostly heads before cackling as they pounced directly toward Han Li.

"Hmph, how insolent!" Han Li harrumphed coldly as he rubbed his hands together before raising them on either side of himself.

Two thick bolts of golden lightning immediately sprang forth, transforming into lightning wyrms several thousand feet in length before pouncing toward the entire flower garden.

The ghostly heads nearby were instantly reduced to nothingness upon coming into contact with the lightning wyrms, while the giant flowers that were further away also transformed into ghostly heads before fleeing in all directions right before the golden lighting reached them.

Thus, the scenic and tranquil flower garden suddenly became a devilish realm that was filled with swirling devilish Qi.

However, these devilish beings naturally weren’t going to actually be able to escape from Han Li’s Divine Devilbane Lightning.

The two lightning wyrms immediately exploded at Han Li’s behest, sending countless arcs of lightning erupting in all directions to form two golden nets that enshrouded the entire flower garden beneath them.

All of the ghostly heads were eradicated by the lightning nest with no exceptions, and even the devilish Qi in the air was rapidly fading in the face of the golden lightning.

At this point, Han Li had already casually emerged from the flower garden and arrived at a small reddish-black lake.

......

"There seems to be no end to these things, and they refuse to give up! Brother Xiao, if you can’t think of a way to deal with them, then I’m going to capture all of them!" Mistress Wan Hua said with an enraged expression.

Currently, she was situated in a desert-like environment with Daoist Qing Ping and Xiao Ming.

One large earthy yellow puppet after another was constantly erupting out of the sand around them, wielding different types of weapons as they unleashed fierce attacks toward the trio without any regard for their own safety.

Even though these attacks posed no threat to the three Grand Ascension Stage beings, and the puppets could be easily destroyed, it seemed there was an infinite supply of these puppets that would never be exhausted.

After entering this area, the three of them had already destroyed more than 100,000 of these puppets, but their numbers hadn’t been reduced in the slightest.

In order to conserve magic power, the three of them weren’t even attacking anymore, and were simply passively defending themselves with protective treasures.

"Calm down, Fellow Daoist Wan Hua; I’m close to tracking down the core of this formation. Even if you capture all of these puppets, more will appear to take their place. Besides, these aren’t actual puppets; they’re sand dolls created by the power of this formation. As soon as we leave this place, these puppets will immediately crumble away, so there’s no point in capturing them," Xiao Ming replied as he searched for something while holding a shimmering white jade formation plate.

Mistress Wan Hua was ecstatic to hear that the formation core was close to being tracked down, and she chuckled, "I’m just worried that the centrum of the restrictions in the Heavenly Cauldron Palace would fall into someone else’s hands if we get delayed here for too long."

"Rest assured, with Fellow Daoist Qing Ping’s guidance, we’re already taking the shortest route to the centrum of the Heavenly Cauldron Palace. All we have to do is pass through three palace clusters to reach there, so there’s no way anyone else will get there before us," Xiao Ming replied in a confident manner.

"I certainly hope so, but I think it would be best not to grow complacent. After all, that human from the Tian Yuan Continent possesses unfathomable powers; perhaps he has some special method to break through the restrictions here. If we can reach the centrum earlier, then we should do so at all costs," Mistress Wan Hua insisted.

"Fellow Daoist Wan Hua is right. Brother Xiao, I also think it would be best to reach the center of the Heavenly Cauldron Palace as soon as possible, even if doing so would result in some expenditure of power," Daoist Qing Ping agreed.

Xiao Ming’s brows furrowed slightly upon hearing this, but he nodded in response in the end. "Alright, in that case, I’ll use some brute-force methods to find the location of the formation core."

Immediately thereafter, he made a hand seal, and the projection of a Nine-eyed Blood Toad instantly appeared behind him amid a flash of crimson light.

At the same time, his body swelled drastically to over 100 feet in size, and his aura also became significantly more formidable.

"Go!" Xiao Ming let loose a low cry as he flipped a hand over to produce a formation plate, then opened his mouth to release several balls of energy into the treasure.

The formation plate immediately began to release countless white runes amid a loud buzzing sound, and the runes formed a small light formation, which released a thick pillar of light that struck a certain point in space in a flash.

That section of space immediately began to tremor and warp, but it then quickly returned to normal.

"That’s not it; I’ll try the next place," Xiao Ming said as he pointed a finger toward the light formation.

The light formation immediately swiveled around to target another direction at his behest.

Another thick pillar of white light was then released in that direction, and on this occasion, the space there tremored violently before a giant silver rune that was around the size of a house emerged amid a burst of spatial fluctuations.

"We’re in luck!" Xiao Ming said with a smile, then injected his magic power into the giant toad projection behind himself.

The projection slowly opened its nine golden eyes, directing its gaze toward the massive silver rune.

A resounding boom rang out as a thin shimmering golden thread erupted out of each eye, piercing through the silver rune in a flash before slicing it into pieces.