Aspiring to the Immortal Path

“So some of them still managed to escape in the end?”

Out in the void, Yun Tianlan gazed into the distance and sighed.

By arriving a little late, he had ultimately been unable to keep all the fiends here, much to his regret. But there was nothing to be done. Besides killing the fiends, he had to protect the domain.

The Divine Spring fiends were all vicious sorts who threatened the common people the moment the situation turned sour. It was only Yun Tianlan with his supreme Divine Will that could safeguard the people, which had delayed him. When the hole was punched through the illusion formation, the fiends had rushed through. Other than the clam Fiend God, many other fiend Titans had escaped through it, including one other Fiend God and seven or eight high-level Fiend Emperors. Although the number of fiends was almost irrelevant compared to the number that had been left behind, Yun Tianlan and Tang Jie were more concerned about the information leak this represented.

Once those fiends returned, the remaining fiends of the Divine Spring Domain would no longer underestimate them, and they would have to fight a battle to the death.

“A pity, but it’s no big deal. From now on, the Divine Spring Domain is no longer stronger than us,” Tang Jie said as he flew over.

The Divine Spring Domain had suffered heavy losses from this campaign and no longer had an advantage against the Rosecloud Domain. In terms of Titans, Rosecloud even had a small advantage.

Yun Tianlan still frowned. “Don’t forget: they still have two True Immortals.”

“One and a half,” Tang Jie casually replied.

Yun Tianlan turned to Tang Jie. “Even half of one isn’t easy to deal with. Do you have any ideas?”

Tang Jie shook his head. “After taking such a big loss, the Divine Spring Domain will be as cautious as possible, and fooling them again will be basically impossible. But a battle between two armies has never relied solely on schemes. If we can’t weaken the enemy… we can at least strengthen ourselves.”

Yun Tianlan chuckled. “Indeed. All these fiends brought all that spiritual energy and resources, enough to strengthen our cultivators. But this is a long-term plan, while converting all those resources into combat power in the short term is not easy.”

Tang Jie indifferently said, “Others might not be able to do it, but I can.”

Yun Tianlan’s eyes lit up.

He gazed into the distance for a long while before sighing, “The Martial Lord… was a true God!”

The lava lake!

Tang Jie had returned.

It was here that the Basking Moon Sect had gathered together all its strength to help him attain the Immortal Spirit Body.

He had returned so that he could ascend to an even higher level.

Before, law cultivation had been law cultivation and body cultivation had been body cultivation, each with its own cultivation system. But now, Tang Jie had the perfect body that merged law and body. This made it so that he needed more resources to advance, but it also meant he got more out of the resources.

The battle with the fiends had not only killed many of the upper echelons of the Divine Spring Domain, altering the balance of power; it had also brought Tang Jie many resources. He personally had the corpses of ten-some high-level Fiend Emperors on hand.

As high-level Fiend Emperors, each was a powerful existence that had cultivated for thousands of years. A single corpse fallen into the mortal world would be enough to form a monument that countless cultivators go crazy for and kill each other over. Ten-some of these fiend corpses could be ten-some secret lands, but now, they were all being tossed into the lava lake, the Earth Fire melting them down so that Tang Jie could absorb them.

Yun Tianlan felt like this wasn’t enough, and took out the bodies of the several Fiend Gods he had killed as well.

Ten Fiend Gods had come for this invasion, and eight of them had been killed. Of these, the Basking Moon Sect had custody over four of the corpses, in addition having the bodies of forty-some Fiend Emperors.

While these resources belonged to the entire sect, Yun Tianlan still decided to specially give Tang Jie one Fiend God and numerous Fiend Emperors.

Tang Jie sat quietly in the center of the lake, and as he breathed in and out, the lava around him seethed.

Having released his true form, he transformed into a mighty giant, though when compared to last time, he was actually a little smaller. The aura, however, was clearly different.

In the past, Tang Jie’s original body exuded a domineering aura of power, savagery, and courage.

While this aura was still domineering and savage, it also had a sense of majesty and profundity. In the past, Tang Jie was steel and iron, but now, he was a tall mountain, a vast ocean.

This was all thanks to the perfect body, the fusion of physical and spiritual, the hard and the nimble, the brave and the flexible, the tough and the majestic!

As the lava melted down the fiend corpses into their most fundamental energies, Tang Jie used the Parting Classic to absorb them into the depths of his body, where they were merged and accumulated.

Tang Jie’s cultivation level began to rapidly climb.

As he no longer had to deal with bottlenecks, he soon entered Soul Projection.

But he didn’t stop there. Even though this sort of conversion process resulted in a lot of wasted energy, all these corpses were enough to push Tang Jie to even greater heights.

In the lava lake, Tang Jie continued to absorb the converted spiritual energy of those Fiend Emperors, and his cultivation climbed all the way to the peak of Soul Projection.

Here, Tang Jie’s advancement finally stopped.

Reaching Immortal Platform was no easy task. This was an evolution in one’s form of existence, and even with his past experience, he still needed time to accumulate and hone, to perfect himself.

This didn’t mean that he stopped cultivating.

Once he reached this step, he tried to absorb energy still, compressing it and storing it deep within his body where it could undergo further consolidation.

This sounded somewhat absurd, and in truth, he was walking a path that had never been walked before. Once he obtained the perfect body, his path became his alone. With no one to open the path for him, he had to find it all on his own.

In this process, Tang Jie could sense that his powers were fusing on an even deeper level.

It was like a chemical reaction.

The most basic fusion had occurred before Tang Jie had entered the Nether Domain, which was when his original body and avatar became one. This was the most primitive fusion, only surface-level, lacking that strong chemical reaction. Even then, Tang Jie had been able to pull off the miracle of Soul Transformation defeating Violet Palace.

Later on, when the original body died and was reborn, becoming perfect, the physical strength and spiritual power fused on the cellular level, which produced a completely different effect.

But Tang Jie was confident that there could be an even greater fusion, which would produce its own heaven-shaking evolution.

Moreover, this evolution was best done before Immortal Platform, for Immortal Platform was itself an evolution and could affect his perfect fusion.

This was why Tang Jie was constantly trying new things.

Normally, this sort of experimentation would take many an age.

But Tang Jie didn’t have that much time, nor did he need it.

…Because he had the Heavenly Dao Realm.

In this realm, his will was all. It could be used to kill, and it could be used to make himself stronger.

It was just that Tang Jie had never tried using the Heavenly Dao Realm for cultivation before. However, as he grew more familiar with it, he was able to use it for more and more things.

As for cultivation, Tang Jie could simply set the simplest rules for the Heavenly Dao Realm, which would greatly prolong its time limit. Even so, Tang Jie used the Heavenly Dao Realm for no more than one second per instance.

In this one second, Tang Jie would use the realm to comprehend his body and compress and refine his energy.

Each time he used it brought the punishment of the Heavenly Dao a little closer, but it also deepened his understanding of his own body.

This brand-new path was brimming with dangers, and Tang Jie had no idea what he might find at the end, but he knew that if he succeeded, he would reap an unimaginably vast harvest.

Tang Jie was willing to sacrifice everything for this.

Tang Jie compressed all of his energy into his body, packing all of his physical and spiritual power together so that they could interact and merge.

At first, every merger was a failure.

Sometimes, explosions erupted within his body.

This was his body breaking apart from the overload. While each energy explosion was small, they dealt devastating damage to him. With every passing moment, blood would erupt from a part of his body, and then the wound would rapidly heal.

Blood and magma mixed together into a deep red.

Tang Jie had no idea how many times he failed.

He felt like each failure brought him closer to the deeper fusion he dreamed of, but he still couldn’t see the end. At times, it seemed like there was no end to this path.

And effort didn’t bring only success. It also sometimes brought disaster.

Today, as Tang Jie was once again attempting that deeper fusion, he suddenly felt an ill foreboding.

He raised his head in shock, his Divine Will piercing through the lava to reach the skies.

Thunderclouds were gathering.

The second Heavenly Tribulation was imminent!