Having made up his mind, Han Li silently rode his flying artifact away from the peak.
Later, those cultivators at the Qi Refining stage who had spoken with Han Li were surprised to find that the so-called "senior" expert was nowhere to be seen when the White Pool gathering actually began.
Han Li first made a trip to the Heavenly Star Sect's market square, where he purchased all the materials on his list needed to repair the ancient teleportation array. Only then did he set off toward the Yue Kingdom.
This time, Han Li did not enter the Yue Kingdom through the usual route. Instead, he took a wide detour and sneaked in through an extremely remote section of the border between the Yuanwu Kingdom and the Yue Kingdom.
The Yue Kingdom was now firmly under the control of the Demonic Path, and he had no intention of being hunted down the moment he set foot in hostile territory.
Han Li didn't know it, but his extra caution had once again helped him unwittingly avoid a crisis.
At present, the Demonic Path had dispatched considerable numbers of personnel to patrol most of the Yue Kingdom's borders day and night. If Han Li had rashly returned via his original route, he would never have escaped their surveillance. A desperate chase through battle would have been almost unavoidable!
Now safely inside the Yue Kingdom, Han Li deliberately chose sparsely populated areas to travel through, and managed to reach the vicinity of the spirit stone mine where the ancient teleportation array was located without any incidents.
The mine, of course, had already fallen into the hands of the Demonic Path.
From a distance, Han Li stealthily observed and spotted cultivators wearing green-and-white robes. Judging by the jade-green ghost head and the pink peach blossom emblems on their sleeve hems, they were disciples of the Ghost Spirit Sect and the Joyful Union Sect.
Having identified which Demonic Path faction occupied the mine, Han Li quietly withdrew and located the concealed underground entrance nearby, then slipped inside.
He easily found the cave that had been sealed off that day, and after using his artifact to shatter the pile of rubble, he once again laid eyes on the damaged ancient teleportation array.
Seeing that the array was still intact, Han Li felt a small measure of relief.
Over the following days, Han Li first used a newly acquired Illusory Transformation formation flag set to completely conceal the hidden entrance through an illusion. Then, he used the modified "Inverted Five Elements Array" formation flags and disks to set up a grand protective formation around the cave housing the ancient teleportation array.
This way, even if Demonic Path cultivators discovered him, he would have enough time to escape at leisure.
With his worries out of the way, Han Li began the repair of the teleportation array.
As the jade slip had made abundantly clear, repairing an ancient teleportation array was an extraordinarily precise undertaking. Even the slightest deviation in an unassuming rune pattern could cause the entire array to malfunction, so Han Li's repair process was incredibly slow.
A full seven days passed, and the array was only slightly more than half repaired. At that point, a major problem arose — the materials he had purchased beforehand had been completely exhausted.
Seeing this, Han Li was somewhat dumbfounded!
It turned out that although he had bought more repair materials than what the list called for, he had given no thought to the possibility of errors during the repair process that would cause materials to be wasted.
On top of that, he was no professional artifact refiner or formation master.
As a result, his inadequate skills meant that over half of the materials had been botched during the repair and wasted for nothing. Naturally, this left him short.
Han Li sighed softly. It looked like he would have to make a trip outside.
However, he recalled that a few days' travel east of the spirit stone mine, there was a small market square operated by a certain immortal cultivation family.
Though it wasn't large, materials like iron mother ore and crystal jade should be available there. After all, the core of the teleportation array wasn't damaged — what he needed were just ordinary materials.
His only concern was whether, with the cultivation world in such chaos, this particular market square still existed at all. He didn't want to risk the journey only to find the market long gone.
After deliberating, Han Li waited until nightfall and then used the cover of darkness to leave the underground cave, riding his flying artifact straight toward the market square.
He had already made up his mind. If the market square was truly gone, he could always make another trip back to the Yuanwu Kingdom's market square. There was no way he was going to leave the ancient teleportation array only half-repaired.
But as a precaution, Han Li planned to travel by night and find a place to rest and hide during the day.
That way, he could minimize the danger as much as possible.
So under the pitch-black night sky, Han Li flew eastward the entire night. It was only when dawn began to lighten the horizon that he started searching for a place to settle.
But just as he was scanning the terrain below, his expression suddenly shifted. He snapped his head around and fixed his gaze intently in a certain direction.
He vaguely sensed that someone was hurtling toward this location at tremendous speed — and it didn't seem to be just one person.
Without a moment's hesitation, Han Li pressed down with his foot on the Divine Wind Boat, angling sharply downward. In the blink of an eye, he vanished into the night.