For a time, the place once again fell into an eerily unnatural silence, until several breaths had passed.
"You... Senior..."
Mingyu opened her mouth, but after uttering only those three words, she could not continue.
This time, they could clearly sense that when he had acted just now, he had openly used "Phoenix Soaring Heaven," displaying it without the slightest concealment.
Yet that speed had already surpassed anything they could react to. It was a speed only the clan elders and clan chief possessed, so their judgment had been wrong.
The gray-robed old man had first appeared behind them, deliberately revealing a trace of his aura. Mingqi and Mingyu had attacked without hesitation.
But in that instant, he had already arrived before them. He struck each of their shoulders with a palm, and the moment the force of his palm penetrated their bodies, he had vanished.
Li Yan stood in midair, looking at the two women's dazed expressions. His strength had already surpassed theirs. If he were dealing with unfamiliar cultivators, he might have needed to consider more of their possible responses.
He would not have been able to decide on a single method and launch a sudden ambush with certainty. But against the two women before him, Li Yan had effectively seized the initiative.
Li Yan understood certain traits of the Undying Nether Phoenix, so his attacks were more targeted and thus more oppressive.
He was already intimately familiar with how the power born within an Undying Nether Phoenix traveled through its meridians and flesh.
He had long since merged the power produced by the Undying Nether Phoenix blood essence with the power of the Qiongqi Purgatory Art, making his body cultivation even more formidable among those of the same realm.
Once he had confirmed that they truly belonged