Then, within Hu Changqi's field of vision, a phantom appeared before the headless corpse, both hands shooting out in an instant.
One hand stripped the storage ring straight off its finger, while the other pierced the oncoming headless corpse's dantian like a blade.
The man's movements flowed like drifting clouds and running water, everything as natural as though he had rehearsed it a thousand times.
What Hu Changqi saw was a balding old man in gray, holding a nascent soul in his hand. Bewilderment still lingered on the nascent soul's face, but the light of life had already faded from its eyes.
Everything had happened too quickly. Even at the moment of death, the nascent soul's awareness remained caught in his earlier thoughts.
Then Hu Changqi sank into darkness...
Li Yan looked at the nascent soul whose forehead a Demon-Sealing Nail had pierced in an instant. Magical power surged through his hand. Bang! The nascent soul, identical in appearance to Hu Changqi, dissipated without feeling any pain.
Then Li Yan vanished again in an instant.
In the distance, the masked man in red still stood frozen in place. The figure behind him seemed to overlap with another for a fleeting moment, yet it also seemed as though nothing had happened.
Anyone watching from afar would never have believed that the old man in gray behind the masked man in red had actually left, casually killed a nascent soul middle stage cultivator, and returned.
After surviving a calamity of life and death, Li Yan had gained a deeper understanding of the laws of heaven and earth. He had become far more fluid in drawing upon those unfathomable powers.
He no longer felt the estrangement and unfamiliarity he had experienced when manipulating those laws upon first entering the nascent soul late stage.