Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Unlike the Sovereign Blade, the Myriad Yin Yang Furnace was a divine treasure that he had personally invented.

It brought together Tang Jie’s understanding of formations and the Great Daos, as well as countless other divine treasures.

While it wasn’t a Dao armament, it was far more powerful than an ordinary divine treasure. As Tang Jie had forged it, it was mentally linked to him, so Tang Jie found it the easiest to use.

The Sovereign Blade was the Great Dao weapon that the Martial Lord had left for him, a manifestation of the apex of the Weapon Dao. The Myriad Yin Yang Furnace lacked its power, but it could be considered Tang Jie’s personal divine weapon, able to grow along with him.

Thus, when this treasure was used, it didn’t mean that Tang Jie’s attacks had gotten stronger, but that he had far more options available to him, making him even more difficult to deal with.

This current development was a typical example. Tang Jie was using the Myriad Yin Yang Furnace to shoot the Eternal Flame at the tree ancestor’s roots.

The Sovereign Blade could only carry the Eternal Flame whereas the Myriad Yin Yang Furnace could use it as a weapon, aiming it where it wanted.

The Eternal Flame was an inextinguishable flame, and no matter how someone contaminated by it tried to remove it, it would reemerge from within, once more setting them ablaze. Thus, while the Eternal Flame was of average strength, its “clinginess” made it feared by countless cultivators.

But now, Tang Jie had turned this terrifying flame into a weapon.

That was fine, since he could just generate more!

Tang Jie forced out all the flame in his body, sending it through the Myriad Yin Yang Furnace to the roots of the Rootless Tree Ancestor. This both dealt immense damage to the Rootless Tree Ancestor and lessened the pain Tang Jie was suffering.

The Rootless Tree Ancestor desperately severed its roots in order to avoid being burned, all the while yelling, “Ice Dragon, you bastard, bastard, bastard!”

Yes, it currently loathed the old dragon of the North Sea. Not only had it backed out of working together to get the Divine Spring, it had even been killed by a human in its lair. And death wasn’t even enough, for that human had come with the Eternal Flame to attack it!

This was its bane!

But no matter how the Rootless Tree Ancestor raged and cursed, there was no changing the reality that it had lost control over the situation.

On the surface, Yun Tianlan was doing all he could to hold it down, forcing it to use more than half of its strength against him.

Underground, Tang Jie was desperately chopping away at its roots.

Each severed root decreased the amount of energy it could absorb from the domain’s core, which made it weaker.

Although it still had the majority of its roots, which could allow it to fight these humans for an entire year without losing, if its situation worsened, its outputs would quickly surpass its inputs.

In that situation, the Rootless Tree Ancestor would be helpless against these human cultivators.

The Rootless Tree Ancestor couldn’t help but get nervous.

As it hardened its resolve, its roots down below suddenly began to sprout tumors.

While these tumors weren’t large, they appeared so abruptly that Tang Jie was immediately on his guard, suspecting that this was another trick from the tree ancestor.

The tumors grew larger and larger, until they suddenly fell from the roots and flew toward Tang Jie.

Sensing danger, Tang Jie immediately had the Myriad Yin Yang Furnace fire on the tumors, upon which a power began to surge out of them.

Boom!

An explosion ripped through the air, and Tang Jie felt like he had been caught up in a spatial storm.

The flows of energy tore through the surroundings, obliterating both soil and air down into their most fundamental particles.

Tang Jie realized to his dismay that this was the energy of the planet’s core, compressed by the Rootless Tree Ancestor to its maximum. It was extremely wasteful, but it was also extremely powerful.

Just one tumor exploding had Tang Jie feeling immensely threatened.

Still more of them were flying at Tang Jie, each one suffused with a certain tree’s hatred and anger.

Tang Jie knew that this was bad. As expected, cultivator wars were never simple, and the trump card of the Divine Spring Domain was even stronger and more frightening than that of the Blood River Domain. The simple use of the planet’s energy alone was enough to make one despair. The Blood River Domain was half of the original Rosecloud Domain, so its core was incomplete and difficult to use, and only when it had merged back into one could the core finally reform. But this was not the case for the Divine Spring Domain, and this allowed the peak existences of this place to even better use their home court advantage to counterattack.

Tang Jie didn’t dare to take on these attacks containing core energy and had to constantly dodge. While doing so, he continued to hack away at the roots, but his efficiency was greatly lowered. In a flash, the speed of Tang Jie’s hacking ended up being equal to the Rootless Tree Ancestor’s regeneration.

The Rootless Tree Ancestor grunted, “How long can you last?”

This sort of all-out effort from Tang Jie was bound to last only a short while, and the Rootless Tree Ancestor was certain that Tang Jie would run out of strength.

Tang Jie shot back, “And just how are you any better off? You’re not a Gold Immortal, not the master of this domain, and you don’t have the acknowledgment of this domain’s will. You can only use its core energy because of your special talent as a tree. But I’m sure that this state must put an immense burden on you as well, right?”

“Human, you understand quite a lot. But even if I’m not a Gold Immortal or Domain Lord, it’s still enough to kill you!” the Rootless Tree Ancestor bellowed, more tree tumors flying out to kill Tang Jie.

Humans only began to learn about domain cores after becoming True Immortals. Cultivators before then simply didn’t have the right to know about such things, or even understand what they were. But even after one became a True Immortal, one still wouldn’t be able to use the domain’s core energy.

One became undying at Earth Immortal, able to create arts with a thought at True Immortal, and finally, at Boundless Gold Immortal, one could use a domain’s core.

Only at Gold Immortal could one freely extract energy from the domain core and fight with it. This was a concept beyond traditional knowledge, almost nonexistent below Immortal Platform, and Tang Jie had never known about it before.

Even Yun Tianlan hadn’t known.

This was because the Basking Moon Sect’s maximum level was True Immortal.

Tang Jie knew of this entirely because of Yu Cheng.

When his avatar and Yu Cheng came to possess the same body, Yu Cheng had gained the Dao Wills of the Twelve Great Daos while Tang Jie had gained a lot of higher-level knowledge, which included the difference between Boundless Gold Immortals and Supreme True Immortals, knowledge of domain cores. Tang Jie had passed this knowledge to Yun Tianlan.

At that moment, Yun Tianlan saw a little hope for Boundless Gold Immortal, and he became even more determined to set off on the path of the stars.

Only a larger domain would have more core energy, and only strengthening the domain could get one the acknowledgment of the domain.

The Rootless Tree Ancestor was no Gold Immortal, nor was it the Domain Lord. As Tang Jie had said, it was able to use the domain core entirely because it was a tree. This allowed it to use the domain core while only at True Immortal, but it could only use it at an extremely low level, which manifested in these compressed energy bullets it was firing at Tang Jie.

A Gold Immortal would have been able to use core energy in a much more skilled and powerful way.

But even that was enough to make it unrivaled, the combined forces of Tang Jie, Yun Tianlan, Mu Ziyang, and the whale shark Fiend God unable to take these attacks.

Thus, both sides were trying to outlast each other.

Suddenly, a howl came from the distance.

And then Yiyi flew onto the battlefield.

She giggled, “So fun! I want to play too!”

With a wave of her hand, she sowed numerous seeds, which quickly began to suck up nutrients and grow.

This didn’t seem like a big deal, but the tree was pulling nutrients from the earth. In this way, Yiyi was stealing nutrients from the tree ancestor, tantamount to raiding the enemy’s supply lines in the middle of battle.

The Rootless Tree Ancestor was shocked and infuriated. “Fairy Green Rose, you also submitted to the humans?”

Yiyi had gotten a name for herself in her ten years in the Divine Spring Domain, and this old tree knew it.

Yiyi chuckled. “I came from Rosecloud, so I never submitted in the first place. Take this!”

The green roses transformed into savage plants that began to bite at the roots.

The roots struck back, shattering the green roses, but the green roses still managed to damage a large number of roots.

Yiyi knew her strength, so she didn’t recklessly approach and remained at a distance, using her green roses to take nutrients and attack the roots like a small team constantly inflicting losses on the enemy rear.

Not long after Yiyi joined the battle, Xu Miaoran arrived on the scene. Standing with Yiyi, she waved her hand, upon which a delicate hand appeared near the Rootless Tree Ancestor and easily tore off a large chunk of roots. Just when the Rootless Tree Ancestor was about to strike back, the hand disappeared. With Limitless, Xu Miaoran could attack her enemy without getting close.

If she were alone, the Rootless Tree Ancestor naturally had many ways to deal with this, but it first had to deal with Yun Tianlan and Tang Jie. Xu Miaoran’s attacks were like mosquito bites, unable to deal much damage yet constantly buzzing around. But too many mosquito bites was enough to make anyone go mad.

And then another person appeared.

In a flash, they appeared next to the tree and tore through some roots, and when the Rootless Tree Ancestor moved to attack, they had disappeared, the roots flailing only at an afterimage. A second later, the attacker appeared elsewhere.

It was Tang Chuan.

Tang Chuan also had a powerful spatial talent that let him travel in and out of the Nether, so he could appear and attack whatever he wanted without fear of the Rootless Tree Ancestor’s attacks. And the roots he attacked would be contaminated by Death energy and were much harder to regenerate.

These guerilla attacks also made Tang Chuan rather dangerous. But just when Tang Chuan was blinking around, he suddenly sensed a great danger, and a powerful pull rendered him immobile as a large root whipped around to strike him. When it seemed like Tang Chuan was about to be pulverized, a cloud shielded him, Yun Tianlan intervening just in time.

The pull on Tang Chuan disappeared, and he was able to flee into the void. When he next appeared, it was outside the Rootless Tree Ancestor’s attack range, his face ghastly pale, and he attacked much more cautiously.

Even though the Rootless Tree Ancestor had chastened Tang Chuan with that move, the situation was still getting worse and worse.

More and more enemies were gathering, placing unprecedented pressure on it.

It knew that it had no choice but to use everything it had.