After fleeing a hundred li in a single burst using his Lightning Escape, Han Li paused briefly to reorient himself, then switched to the blood-colored cloak, transforming into a streak of blood light that tore through the sky.
When he had covered another thousand li, he spotted a Mulan civilian convoy of tens of thousands moving below and, struck by a thought, came to a halt.
During his time at the Falling Cloud Sect, he had chatted with the silver-haired elder about the battles between the Mulan masters and the cultivators of Tiannan.
He knew that while ordinary Mulan people couldn't practice spirit arts, the Mulan masters would still organize sizable groups of young civilians into makeshift tribes during each offensive. Taking advantage of moments when the Tiannan cultivators were too preoccupied to respond, these tribes would rush in to seize the spirit stone mines and raw material deposits of Tiannan. That way, even if the Mulan masters eventually returned defeated, they wouldn't come back empty-handed.
Naturally, this brand of banditry made the Nine Nations Alliance furious. But they simply couldn't spare the attention to deal with it.
After all, if they sent too few cultivators to garrison those locations, a high-ranking Mulan master could wipe them all out in one stroke. Send too many, and it would weaken their forces on the main front.
The only viable option was to wait until the Mulan masters had seized these mines and resource sites, then send cultivators to recapture them while conveniently wiping out the Mulan civilians.
Unfortunately, the Mulan people couldn't have cared less about the deaths of ordinary civilians. Once one batch was eliminated, they would immediately organize another. They were simply trading human lives for precious resources. And they would periodically lay ambushes, inflicting heavy casualties on the cultivators sent to reclaim the mines.
After losing so many cultivators in this manner, the Nine Nations Alliance simply turned a blind eye. In such a short time, no matter how frantically the Mulan people mined, they couldn't extract all that many spirit stones and resources. And as long as the main army of masters was repelled on the front lines, these Mulan civilians would obediently withdraw on their own.
This particular convoy had plenty of carts, ox carts, and horse carriages, all headed toward Tiannan. The people within were mostly young men and women — clearly a small, makeshift tribe assembled for the purpose of seizing Tiannan's resources.
Han Li hovered above the convoy and swept it with his powerful spiritual sense in a single pass. Inside, he found only one Foundation Establishment–stage and three Qi Condensation–stage masters — none who could pose any threat to him.
After a moment's thought, Han Li formed a hand seal, and his figure vanished from the sky. In the next instant, he silently appeared inside a battered, leather-canopied cart among the Mulan convoy, packed with tattered cowhides and mining tools like hoes.
With a casual wave of his hand, Han Li cleared a small space in the center of the cart and sat down cross-legged, perfectly at ease.
He had thought it through carefully. Right now, every Mulan master was mobilized. If a cultivator like him traveled openly toward Tiannan, he would very likely run into trouble on the road.
With his cultivation level, he had nothing to fear unless he ran into the very top echelon of the Mulan masters. But even so, he couldn't handle being vastly outnumbered.
Even back then, their group of seven or eight Nascent Soul cultivators had to sneak around just to retrieve the treasure!
Besides the Mulan masters, he now also needed to avoid Wang Tiangu and the others, lest they lose their heads and decide to hunt him down to silence him.
Hiding among this civilian convoy — the pace was certainly slow, but after two or three days, he would safely pass beyond the Mulan grasslands.
No one would pay any attention to a mere civilian caravan. Even if a Mulan master happened to inspect it, with his current powers, unless it was a late-stage Nascent Soul master, they wouldn't be able to detect his presence.
Once he entered the wilderness and left the sphere of Mulan influence, he could return to Tiannan on his own.
He sat quietly inside the cart, and the conversation of several Mulan people outside reached his ears with perfect clarity.
The Mulan language was naturally somewhat different from the speech of the Yan people of Tiannan, but before setting out, Han Li had already studied it through relevant jade slips.
With his formidable spiritual sense, he had absorbed the basics in just a day or two of study. As a result, he could understand the conversations outside quite well.
Most of their talk centered on how many spirit stone resources they might seize on this trip to Tiannan, and whether they might catch the eye of those "Supreme Masters" and get a chance to rise above the common lot.
In their words, these ordinary Mulan people brimmed with reverence and awe for the masters — something that bordered on faith itself.
As if dying for these masters were, to an ordinary Mulan person, an extraordinary honor.
Hearing this, Han Li sighed silently to himself, then with a casual sweep of his hand, a layer of pale green light sealed the entire interior of the cart off from the outside.