Chapter 277: Mantra Domain

An hour later, in the territory of the Crimson Dawn Peak.

A streak of azure light flew onto a plain that was riddled with scattered rocks, then faded to reveal Han Li.

This place was actually once a scenic valley, but while cultivating the Reversal True Axis a over a century ago, Han Li had inadvertently toppled all of the mountains on either side of the valley, thereby completely filling the valley to create this rocky plain.

Han Li was hovering in mid-air with a solemn look on his face, and there was a burst of peculiar fluctuations emanating from his body.

Right at this moment, a burst of golden light suddenly appeared in his eyes, and he released his vast spiritual sense to encompass the entire surrounding area in a radius of dozens of kilometers.

A circle of extremely tiny runes then appeared within his pupils, spelling out the mantra that he had heard from the portly monk, but not in its entirety. Instead, it was only three and a half sentences of the mantra.

These three and a half sentences were depicted in the form of runes, but not displayed in the order in which they had been uttered by the monk. One of the sentences had been completely scattered before having all of its characters rearranged, seemingly in a completely haphazard fashion.

It seemed that the meaning of the mantra wasn't all that important. Instead, what was important were these characters, which innately contained some type of special power. After studying them extensively, Han Li had been successfully able to integrate them with his tremendous spiritual sense to develop a unique ability that he named the Mantra Domain.

"Let there be wind," Han Li declared.

The complexion of the entire plain was instantly altered as dense dark clouds came drifting in out of nowhere to obscure the formerly bright and clear sky. As a result of the converging clouds, the entire sky instantly darkened.

A gust of fierce wind blew past, sweeping the snow on the plain into the heavens, and a vast expanse of yellow sand was also swept up by the wind, while huge rocks began to roll and tumble over the ground, crashing against one another to produce a string of resounding booms.

"Let there be lightning," Han Li called out, and the dark clouds in the sky were swept up into a frenzy to form a massive vortex.

Bursts of rumbling were ringing out incessantly deep within the vortex alongside flashes of blue lightning.

All of a sudden, a pillar of blue lightning that was as thick as a water vat came crashing down from the heavens before striking the ground, instantly causing the giant rocks down below to explode into a massive cloud of dust and rock shards.

Immediately thereafter, more pillars of lightning came raining down incessantly from the heavens amid rumbling thunderclaps, severely ravaging the entire plain.

The earth was charred black and littered with countless rock fragments, while arcs of blue lightning danced over its surface, and there was an acrid charred odor wafting through the air.

"Let heaven and earth be turned on their heads!" Han Li commanded, and the world around him instantly complied.

A burst of indescribably formidable power was unfurled, encompassing the entire surrounding area.

Han Li felt a blue flash before his eyes, and he was struck by a rush of dizziness. By the time he was able to see clearly again, he discovered a vast expanse of dark clouds that was rumbling incessantly with thunder beneath his feet.

He then looked up to find that a vast expanse of earth that stretched as far as the eyes could see in all directions had appeared above his head.

Up close, he could see countless scattered rocks, as well as a layer of dust that enshrouded the surface of the ground, while in the distance were a series of upside-down mountains that resembled enormous stalactites, the closest of which was none other than his Crimson Dawn Peak.

However, what was quite interesting was that despite the fact that everything had been flipped upside-down, none of it was displaying any signs of falling, not even the layer of dust that was hanging over the entire surface of the earth.

Han Li looked around for a long while before a smile appeared on his face, and he gently clapped his hands together, upon which heaven and earth were instantly restored to their correct configuration, and all of the dust, dark clouds, lightning, wind, and scattered rocks instantly vanished.

The entire area returned to normal in the blink of an eye, and it was as if nothing had ever happened.

The circle of runes in Han Li's eyes had also vanished, and his pupils had returned to their normal state.

That worked even better than I expected. Looks like I now have another trump card against formidable enemies in the future.

At its core, this Mantra Domain ability was actually just an extremely powerful illusory technique, but it didn't require any array or cultivation art to unleash.

All he had to do was spread his spiritual sense over an area around him, and he would be able to manipulate the entire area in any way that he saw fit, creating an illusion that he could trap his opponent in.

As long as his opponent didn't possess superior spiritual sense or any special treasures capable of counteracting illusions, they would inevitably be disrupted by this ability, but to varying extents.

If Han Li were facing an opponent of a similar level to himself, then this Mantra Domain could very well catch them completely off guard, and they would only have to reveal the slightest of openings for their defeat to be sealed.

Around 15 minutes later, Han Li returned to his cave abode.

Inside his secret chamber, he sat down with his legs crossed with a purple jade board sitting on his lap. There was a floral design that was comprised of countless extremely thin patterns engraved onto the surface of the jade board, presenting a beautiful sight to behold.

This was the jade board that he had found in Ping Yaozi's purple jade box, and he had been unable to bypass the spiritual sense restriction on it, so he had left it up to this point.

He had chosen to bring it out again on this day as all of the Time Dao Runes on his Mantra Treasured Axis had already recovered, so he was able to use his Eye of Truth again.

With all 108 Time Dao Runes activated, the Eye of Truth was currently already over 10 times more effective than his Brightsight Spirit Eyes when it came to seeing through illusions and restrictions.

Han Li made a hand seal with both hands, and his Mantra Treasured Axis appeared behind him amid a flash of golden light.

He then began to chant an incantation, and the Eye of Truth at the center of the Mantra Treasured Axis slowly opened before projecting a beam of golden light onto the purple jade board.

The floral design on the jade board also flashed with golden light before releasing a series of golden runes to obstruct the beam of light projected by the Eye of Truth.

However, the beam of light was able to bypass the runes with ease before shining down upon the jade board.

Instead of seeing the jade board with his eyes, he began to view it through his Eye of Truth.

Golden light was rippling like water on the surface of the board, and the flower design was hovering above the rippling light.

However, Han Li was able to completely disregard it to see what was under the layer of rippling golden light.

It was like he was seeing through a golden river straight to the riverbed, where there was a fine layer of golden sand, upon which was a passage of golden seal text.

Han Li swept his gaze over the passage of text, and a hint of elation instantly welled up in his heart.

Just as he anticipated, the passage of golden text was none other than a recipe for a dao pill!

His heart was brimming with excitement, but his elation began to fade a little as he looked at all of the extremely unfamiliar ingredient names listed on the recipe. It was most likely going to be an extremely difficult task to gather all of these ingredients.

The main ingredient for the recipe, Lightning Pond Golden Elixir, was an extremely rare natural treasure, and there was only a chance for it to arise in the body of a Lightning Devouring Beast that was over 100,000 years of age after devouring a vast amount of Nine Heavens True Lightning.

It was also exactly because of this that this Lightning Pond Golden Elixir contained traces of lightning law powers.

It was no longer just a matter of time for spirit ingredients of this caliber to emerge. Instead, there were many more factors that had to align, and obtaining such ingredients was almost entirely a matter of luck.

However, Han Li had already anticipated that this would be the case, so he wasn't all that disheartened. Instead, this only bolstered his confidence in just how incredible the dao pill was going to be if he could successfully refine it.

He read through the list of ingredients, then turned his attention to the refinement method listed below, memorizing everything that he read. As he reached the final passage of text, a surprised look appeared on his face.

The passage read: "When it comes to the refinement of the dao pill, the supplementary ingredients form the foundation, determining the grade of the pill, while the primary ingredient serves as the catalyst, determining the attribute of the pill. As long as the foundation remains the same, the grade of the pill won't change, but the attribute of the pill hinges entirely on the primary ingredient used..."

An enlightened look appeared on Han Li's face upon seeing this.

This passage of text was telling him that in all dao pill recipes, the supplementary ingredients could remain the same, but the attribute of the pill could be altered depending on the primary ingredient used.

In other words, if he were to replace the Lightning Pond Golden Elixir in the recipe with heavy water, which contained water law powers, then he would be able to refine a water-attribute dao pill. while a time-attribute dao pill would arise if he used a crystal manifested by the Heaven Controlling Vial as the primary ingredient.

However, the second half of that passage also stated that ingredient compatibility was an important factor to consider in pill refinement, so if one were to use a different primary ingredient, they would still be able to refine a dao pill, but the chances of success could vary drastically.

However, Han Li wasn't too fazed by this. He had been trying to glean the laws of time through the Mantra Treasured Axis, but hadn't been able to make any progress. Hence, it was already enough for him to know that this pill recipe could allow him to refine a time-attribute dao pill.

He suppressed the elation in his heart as he withdrew his Mantra Treasured Axis into his body, then stowed the jade board away as well before flipping a hand over to produce his Transient Guild mask, which he promptly put on.

All of the spirit medicines listed on the pill recipe were extremely difficult to find, and he wasn't going to be able to gather everything in a short time. Hence, he decided to conduct a search through the Transient Guild first, and if he could find some of the required ingredients, that would naturally be ideal, but if not, then he would just have to release some missions to search for them.

At this point, he had already spent virtually all of his spirit stones, and he did have some Immortal Origin Stones left, but not a whole lot, either. Hence, he didn't have very high requirements for the spirit medicines. As long as the species was correct, he was willing to purchase even seeds.

A burst of azure light was projected from the mask, forming a massive array plate on the wall, and Han Li immediately focused his gaze on the exchange column...

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Several days later, several new spirit medicines had appeared in the spirit medicine garden in Han Li's cave abode. Most of them were seedlings that were no more than 10 years of age, while the two exceptions were seeds that were still yet to germinate.