Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Seeing the Gigantes King fall silent, Tang Jie chortled and then sighed. “Since the Gigantes King still refuses to confess your secrets, forgive me for not dying for the sake of your people. It is still better for my Rosecloud cultivators to depart. Retreat!”

While the Rosecloud cultivator army had initially been reluctant to leave, when they saw the reaction of the Gigantes King, they all grew furious. We took on such heavy losses for the sake of your people, yet you still refuse to be honest with us! There’s truly no need to keep fighting for this sort of person.

The rate of their withdrawal sped up.

They even took everything that they had brought back with them.

Army Anchor City, which had taken so many days to build, was rapidly being dismantled. All the resources that could be refined and restored were extracted, ensuring that only a pile of scrap was left.

Void Shuttles crisscrossed the sky as the Rosecloud Domain’s army retreated. Meanwhile, the Immortal army of the Court of Myriad Domains had arrived.

This army was clad in silver and equipped with art relics, riding in on auspicious clouds with countless rumbling chariots.

The general leading them had a face as red as a date and was an Immortal Tang Jie had met once before.

The Bejeweled Star Lord.

Gazing at the demons in the distance, the Bejeweled Star Lord shouted, “Nine Disaster, now that the Immortal Emperor has returned, you should hurry up and submit to the court!”

“‘Court’?” Nine Disaster suddenly burst out into a cold laugh. “All you’ve done is build a palace and you dare call yourself a royal court, acting as an agent of the heavens? Nothing more than a pack of monkeys frolicking in the skies.”

“Impudent!” With an angry glare, the Bejeweled Star Lord took out an item, the Spiritsever Starbreak Halo.

Tang Jie had seen this item once in the Jewel Palace, but it had been taken by another cultivator. Now, it had returned to the hands of its original owner, and it went without saying what had happened to its former owner.

The Bejeweled Star Lord threw out the halo, which expanded and began to blast through everything in its path, both physical and spiritual.

Nine Disaster did nothing, but one of his Demon Lords flew out. This was Demon Lord Warflame, an infamous devil of the Primordial Fog. He reached out for the Starbreak Halo, and as it fell into his grip, his hand erupted with sparks. But Warflame refused to let go, and the Starbreak Halo was powerless to escape.

Warflame laughed, “A good treasure, able to shake my Vajra Demon Body. But it’s still a little lacking. Refine!”

A demonic flame wrapped around the halo.

The Primordial Fog demons were well known for corrupting minds, and some powerful Demon Lords could even go as far as to corrupt treasures, turning divine weapons into demonic ones.

Warflame was such an expert, and he attempted to refine the Starbreak Halo.

The Bejeweled Star Lord seemed unworried, simply throwing out another item, a gleaming silver spear. As it flew toward Warflame, it transformed into a roaring dragon.

Warflame laughed and raised his left hand, sucking up the spear and sending out another stream of demonic flame to refine it.

Just like that, the two of them entered a duel.

In wars, duels were a common practice. When the commanders of opposing sides fought, the winner could boost the morale of their own forces.

Everyone simply watched as the two fought.

The Bejeweled Star Lord swiftly took out a hammer, which he swung at Warflame.

Warflame threw his head back and howled, upon which a flame transformed into a hand and seized the hammer. “Give me more!”

As befit his name, the Bejeweled Star Lord proceeded to take out more than a dozen more treasures, all of them divine treasures with unique and powerful abilities. But Warflame was truly a worthy opponent, holding off all these treasures on his own, even having the spare energy to refine these treasures with his flames while shouting for more.

Unperturbed, the Bejeweled Star Lord took out a black bow.

Other than its apparent age, it was an unremarkable object.

The Bejeweled Star Lord nocked a black arrow on its bowstring and took aim.

Just when Warflame was about to take it on with a laugh, the bow gleamed. It wasn’t a particularly striking light, but there was an enigmatic air to it, the profundity of a Dao Rune.

Nine Disaster paled. “Don’t take it!”

At the same time, the arrow left the string, bypassing the distance between the two combatants and instantly appearing next to Warflame, who instinctively tried to block it. But the black arrow punched through his hand and burrowed into his chest, where it exploded and left a gaping hole.

Warflame stumbled with a cry.

But the disaster had only just begun. As the arrow exploded, so did the divine treasures he was refining.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Even a True Immortal like Warflame couldn’t take the simultaneous detonations of four divine treasures, and he was blown to bits. His soul remained and tried to remold his body, but at that moment, several more divine treasures exploded. The time had been precisely chosen to be at a crucial point in the rebuilding of his body, so this time, even Warflame’s soul was injured. Not only that, during the second wave of explosions, the Bejeweled Star Lord thrust out a finger, sending a bolt of dark energy at Warflame’s soul.

The Soul Butchering Finger!

It was an attack specifically targeted at the Divine Soul.

Without the protection of his demonic body and still injured from the explosions, Warflame had a very real chance of dying on the spot.

But at this moment, time seemed to freeze. The dark bolt of energy stopped mid-air, and even the shockwaves from the explosions and the reforming soul were frozen.

A second later, time was restored to its normal course, but the Soul Butchering Finger flew through empty air where Warflame’s soul had been.

In the distance, Warflame reformed his body, his face uglier than that of a corpse. He bowed to Wang Yao. “Fiend Sovereign, thank you for saving my life.”

White Tiger Wang Yao was the leader of all the fiends of the Primordial Fog Domain, so he was known among the demons as the Fiend Sovereign.

Without his Timestop, Warflame would have died to the Bejeweled Star Lord’s various tricks.

In truth, it wasn’t too hard to defend against, but Warflame had gotten too cocky. The Bejeweled Star Lord had also displayed an astonishing resolve, willing to detonate so many divine treasures without a second thought.

What they didn’t know was that the Bejeweled Star Lord had actually picked up this technique from Tang Jie. Back in the Immortal Emperor’s tomb, Tang Jie had detonated divine treasures to kill an Earth Immortal. It was just that he had only been at Soul Projection and hadn’t been personally strong enough, so he had needed many more divine treasures to kill a single Earth Immortal. But the Bejeweled Star Lord was a True Immortal and had far greater control than the Tang Jie of back then, so he had needed fewer than ten divine treasures and a single strike to almost kill Warflame.

Alas, while it was a beautiful combo, since it hadn’t succeeded, it could only be considered a waste.

The Bejeweled Star Lord grunted, “Still let you get away.”

Warflame was furious and was about to go again when another devil said, “Let me.”

This was a Demon Lord under Wang Yao, manifesting his original form—a rainbow peacock—as he flew toward the Bejeweled Star Lord.

The Bejeweled Star Lord called back his remaining divine treasures and returned to using only the Starbreak Halo.

While Warflame’s strength had played some factor in his ability to catch the Starbreak Halo, it was mostly because the Bejeweled Star Lord had been holding back. The Bejeweled Star Lord had his name not merely because he had so many treasures, but because he cultivated the Myriad Origins Art that allowed him to maximize the power of any treasure in his hands.

As the Starbreak Halo hurtled toward the peacock, it let out a rumble like thunder, at least twice as powerful as before.

The peacock Demon Lord flapped its wings, unleashing a wave of rainbow light.

Upon entering this light, the Starbreak Halo began to plummet.

The Bejeweled Star Lord was alarmed, for this was no ploy of his. He could sense that the Starbreak Halo was no longer under his control. Meanwhile, the peacock was summoning more rainbow light to assail the Bejeweled Star Lord.

He knew this was trouble, throwing out another treasure, the Jadebone Heart Nail.

But the nail also began to plummet upon striking the rainbow light.

Tang Jie could see that this rainbow light was almost identical to the rainbow divine light used by the Aurora Fiend Emperor of the Verdant Cloud Domain, though on a completely different power level. The Aurora Fiend Emperor had probably been a descendant of this peacock Demon Lord.

While the Bejeweled Star Lord’s Myriad Origins Art let him refine and control all treasures, the peacock Demon Lord’s rainbow light could make all treasures fall. The two could be considered opposites of each other.

The peacock Demon Lord clearly countered the Bejeweled Star Lord, who found that none of his treasures could stop the approaching rainbow. As that divine light surged toward him, the Bejeweled Star Lord finally had no choice but to take out that ancient bow. Finally, there was one treasure that the light didn’t make fall, but the bow was a weapon meant for attacking, so it could do little to stop that flood of light.

The Bejeweled Star Lord’s body erupted with light as he summoned his Heavenly Silkworm Battle Robe, Armor of Thorns, Cloudsky Boots, and Crown of Fortune, but all of them were stripped of their radiance by the rainbow and made to plummet to the ground, and the light crashed into the Bejeweled Star Lord, bathing him in an inescapable flame.

At the same time, the flame also appeared on the peacock Demon Lord.

With a cry, the peacock swiftly called back the rainbow, upon which the flames disappeared from both it and the Bejeweled Star Lord.

“The Twin Karma Lotus?” Nine Disaster called out.

“Xi Linglong pays respects to Grandmaster Nine Disaster.” The Sage Mother of the West gracefully appeared before the demons with a smile.