(Finally finished typing up this chapter — there'll be another one tonight! In recognition of Wang Yu sitting motionless in front of the computer all day, please support me if you have monthly tickets! After all, 6,000 words a day is no small feat for a newcomer like Wang Yu!)
With a sharp crack, the two high-grade magical artifacts only managed to gouge out two small notches in the tentacles before being knocked cleanly aside, leaving Han Li momentarily stunned.
"Those are incredibly tough! Almost comparable to mid-grade artifacts!" Han Li thought to himself with a stroke of luck. If he hadn't pulled a few tricks, dealing with this giant centipede would have cost him a whole lot more effort.
Seeing that the flying knives and the golden bowl weren't proving particularly effective, Han Li recalled them.
But although the creature had already suffered a fatal wound, its vitality was far too robust — it was still rolling about ceaselessly, showing no signs of keeling over anytime soon. With a frown, Han Li simply flickered past the monster's head at tremendous speed in a single flash, no longer bothering to bother with whether it lived or died, and headed straight back along the cavern passage to the stone hall.
Inside the stone hall, the few stalks of green "Purple Monkey Fruit" were still sitting there undisturbed, which filled Han Li with delight!
He took out several jade boxes of identical size from his storage pouch and laid them on the ground. Then he activated his flying knives, extremely carefully cutting out the "Purple Monkey Fruit" together with the small chunk of purple stone beneath it. The knives carried the whole thing back to him on their flat surface, and he placed it into a jade box and sealed the lid shut with care.
Only after every last herb had been gathered by Han Li and properly stowed away did he finally let out a long, relieved breath, his mind settling completely at ease.
He stretched his limbs, then casually swept his gaze over the stone hall one more time. When he had confirmed that nothing had been left behind, he walked out of the place without any hurry.
When Han Li passed the spot where the giant centipede had been badly wounded, the creature was lying motionless on the ground — thoroughly dead. A large pool of black venomous blood beneath it had filled that stretch of cavern with a nauseating stench that made Han Li's head swim the moment he caught a whiff.
Startled, Han Li realized the poisonous fumes from the blood were seeping into the air. He quickly swallowed some Clear Spirit Powder, and only then did the discomfort fade.
He stopped about seven or eight zhang from the centipede's corpse, then sent his flying knives stabbing into its body seven or eight times. When he saw that the creature truly hadn't stirred a fraction, he finally relaxed and moved closer.
But after just a few steps, Han Li paused, bent down, and pulled a dark short blade from the ground. He wiped the black muck off the edge with two fingers, and the blade immediately gleamed with golden light — it was one of the child blades from the Gold Insect Mother and Child Blades.
It turned out that Han Li had been able to slice open the centipede's belly so easily because, during the time he had disappeared, he had planted all eight of the child blades hilt-first into the ground along the passage, arranging them in a line down the tunnel with their razor-sharp edges jutting above the surface.
Fearing that the golden blades' gleam might alert the monster, Han Li had coated each edge with black muck, making them blend seamlessly into the pitch-black cavern. This way, the creature would never detect them.
So when the giant centipede had hugged the ground in pursuit of Han Li through this stretch of tunnel, these buried golden blades had silently and invisibly ripped open its belly, consigning it to death right there. A poor creature — a top-tier venomous demon beast whose formidable poison arts hadn't even had the chance to show what they could do, ambushed and killed by Han Li before it ever knew what hit it. An utterly unjust death!
Though Han Li still didn't know that the centipede he had killed was a top-tier demon beast, he knew that even if it wasn't quite that, it was certainly among the very best of the mid-tier ones. So he felt deeply satisfied at having dispatched it so easily.
Now he took seven or eight more steps, bending down each time, until he had finally wiped clean and retrieved all the golden blades. Then he turned to leave, but after an involuntary glance at the giant centipede's corpse, he hesitated for a moment before walking back toward it.
The moment he reached the corpse, Han Li used the golden blade in his hand to prod the head, the back, and the tail in turn — not holding back at all. He found that the shell on its back was by far the hardest; even the golden blade could only sink in half an inch with the initial thrust, and he had to apply sustained force to slowly cut into it.
Seeing this, Han Li wasted no more time. He immediately released all eight of the freshly recovered Gold Insect child blades and set to laboriously sawing through the centipede's dorsal shell.
Before long, Han Li had forcefully pried off several pieces of hard shell, each roughly a foot across, and carefully tucked them into his storage pouch. These things could withstand the full-force strike of even a top-grade magical artifact — they were rare treasures. If made into a simple inner armor, they would certainly prove extremely useful.
Truth be told, Han Li would have loved to strip the centipede of every last piece of shell and take it all with him. But doing so would have taken far too much time, and time was the scarcest resource he had right now.
So, with a touch of regret, Han Li left the cavern and immediately set off for the next herb-gathering spot he had already planned out, where some unripe "Heaven Spirit Fruits" ought to be growing as well.
While Han Li pressed on without rest, methodically collecting various immature spiritual herbs according to his plan, fierce clashes were erupting among the elite disciples at several other well-known spots where herbs were maturing. After all, there were only so many places where the ripening of spiritual herbs could be accurately predicted, and collisions between the "top fighters" of the various factions were simply inevitable!