Aspiring to the Immortal Path

The Heavenly Dao Tower had seven floors in all, each floor being a subspace.

When Tang Jie reached the second floor, he found himself in a wasteland covered in corpses. These corpses came in all shapes and sizes, but all of them without exception had extremely strong physical bodies. In the Great Stellar Chiliocosm, they would have been considered unkillable body cultivators, and even if there were queues of people lining up to kill them, they could have won through sheer exhaustion. But all of them were now lying lifeless on the ground.

Tang Jie looked around, identified which direction Yu Cheng and the others had gone in, and gave chase. But he didn’t make it far before he was forced to stop.

He gravely looked around.

This seemingly calm subspace was brimming with killing intent.

Everything here, from the grass to the dirt, had become a terrifying existence that could threaten Tang Jie.

A formation!

Yu Cheng hadn’t forgotten to lay down obstacles behind him as he made his way up the tower.

But there was no way a formation he laid down in haste could be this powerful.

Indeed, there was also the Heavenly Dao of this world!

It had used Yu Cheng’s formation as a medium for its power.

Tang Jie chuckled in scorn. “This is far from enough to deal with me.”

He fired off a blast from his finger at an empty spot in the air, and then the entire world changed. That dangerous pressure and somber killing intent instantly disappeared, and Tang Jie took a step forward, as gently as the passing breeze.

But a moment later, a new formation appeared, forcing him to stop and undo it.

Tang Jie quickly stopped smiling.

Yes, Yu Cheng’s arrangements and the interference of the Heavenly Dao wouldn’t be able to stop him, but they were slowing him down so much that there was no way he could catch up.

But there was no better solution than to go step by step, unless he wanted to push through by force, which meant that by the time he got to Yu Cheng, he would be covered in wounds, perhaps even teetering on the brink of death.

Tang Jie undid countless traps and formations to finally reach the entrance to the third floor.

On the third floor, there were once more plenty of corpses, a clear sign that Yu Cheng’s group had gotten through, and it seemed like it had been without many losses. But the deceased guardians were mostly Earth-Immortal-level in strength. Given their strength, they shouldn’t have been so easy to get past, so how had Yu Cheng’s group done it so easily?

A possibility occurred to Tang Jie.

As he pondered, he continued forward, with various dangers popping up to impede him.

Because of the Heavenly Dao’s interference, the entire world seemed to be against him. Just when Tang Jie was getting annoyed, he was suddenly inspired and rushed forward, coincidentally avoiding a seal and passing through in a swifter fashion.

This was…

Tang Jie was startled, and then another wave of inspiration hit him, directly pointing out a trap in front of him.

Without even looking, Tang Jie thrust out a finger, and the trap was undone before he reached it, allowing Tang Jie to breeze on through.

One inspiration came after another, guiding him and greatly increasing the speed at which he undid the traps.

Tang Jie suddenly thought of the Heavenly Dao Law Wheel.

Yes, the Stellar Heavenly Dao was guiding him!

He was not fighting alone!

Tang Jie’s pace accelerated thanks to the Stellar Heavenly Dao.

He quickly passed through the third floor and entered the fourth floor’s subspace.

There were True-Immortal-level guards here.

But now, they were all dead.

Yet amid the pile of corpses, Tang Jie saw the body of a devil. The corpse had taken a palm blow to the back, which was still radiating intense Destruction energy.

An Immortal had attacked him.

“They finally started fighting again?” Tang Jie muttered.

Yu Cheng and Nine Disaster could never be good friends. They had only not fought earlier because they were looking for a better opportunity later. After reaching the fourth floor, the two sides finally started going at it, but based on the situation, it seemed that Yu Cheng’s side had the upper hand.

Four cultivators had fallen here, all of them belonging to the side of Nine Disaster and Three Sages. The power of Yu Cheng’s Dao Unity Realm had played a role here, but the Heavenly Dao had probably played an even greater role—the Tower Heavenly Dao was currently helping Yu Cheng’s side break through their restrictions and regain their original strength.

Clearly, Nine Disaster’s side hadn’t gotten the same benefit, which had resulted in a major loss for the demons.

But they had been able to escape in time. There were traces of the Space Dao in the air, a sign that Wang Yao and Immortal Ji Yao had used the Dao of Space to assist in the getaway—thankfully, Daos were not affected much in this dimension.

Tang Jie followed the bodies, the scars of battle, and the lingering energy of Divine Connections, all the while undoing the various obstacles in his way. At the same time, a vision of Wang Yao’s group being chased by Yu Cheng appeared before him.

He “saw” that Yu Cheng’s group was rapidly recovering its strength, but it wasn’t immediate. There was still something suppressing them.

This was most likely the Stellar Heavenly Dao’s pressure.

But this was the Tower Heavenly Dao’s world, which gave it the home court advantage. Thus,Yu Cheng’s group was growing stronger, having presently reached the True Immortal level.

“They’re still getting stronger, and they should already be at the middle level of True Immortal. Damn it; it’s too fast. Stellar Heavenly Dao, what are you doing?” Tang Jie cursed as he put his head down and sprinted forward. Countless scenes appeared before him, all of them showing Wang Yao’s group being chased. Fortunately, the Dao of Space was the best for escaping, which meant that they were able to stay ahead of Yu Cheng and reach the fifth floor.

Yes, they were fleeing upward.

The situation on the fifth floor was clearly different. The corpses here were scattered rather than concentrated.

Tang Jie continued to “see”. On this floor, Wang Yao and Immortal Ji Yao’s group continued to flee. They charged right toward those Gold-Immortal-level guards, but those guards ignored them, going straight for Yu Cheng’s group.

At this point, Wang Yao and Nine Disaster’s side had essentially joined forces with the tower guardians.

Thus, a Gold-Immortal-level battle played out on the fifth floor, the aftershocks affecting the entirety of the subspace, leaving devastation and ruin.

The losses rose, but most of them were still on Wang Yao’s side.

Yu Cheng was just too powerful!

Having already regained his peak strength, he activated his Dao Unity Realm and slaughtered his foes.

With the support of the Tower Heavenly Dao, he was basically invincible. One devil or cultivator fell after another, and by the end, only the likes of Gold Immortals such as Wang Yao, Nine Disaster, Three Sages and so on were alive. As for the court and Buddha Kingdom, they had only lost two True Immortals in exchange.

Wang Yao’s group was forced to retreat to the sixth floor.

When Tang Jie reached the entrance to the sixth floor, he saw that a devil chief was still barely alive.

When the devil saw Tang Jie, hope appeared in his eyes, and he squeezed out, “Save… save me…”

Tang Jie stomped on his chest.

Plush.

The devil chief died.

He entered the sixth floor.

Upon reaching the sixth floor, he saw bursts of resplendent light in the distance.

This was the clashing of Divine Connections and spell arts.

“Finally caught up,” Tang Jie sighed in relief.

Far in the distance, Yu Cheng and the Western Heaven Buddha Ancestor were battling with Nine Disaster and some others. Other than Nine Disaster and Wang Yao, there were four other existences. One of them was a massive dragon, its head alone the size of a mountain, its body giving off a prismatic glow. One was a bronze puppet that gave off a metallic sheen. Despite its simple attacks and appearance, even Yu Cheng seemed wary of its strikes. One was a giant coffin which was open a hair. Occasionally, a black puff of smoke would surge out of the crack and slam into the Buddha Ancestor’s sacred aura, neither side able to come out ahead. The last was a man seated on a mountain. He did not attack, keeping his head bowed such that his face could not be seen, but the power he exuded was the greatest.

These four existences were the last guardians of the tower.

“Dragon Ancestor, you were once my subordinate, so why do you now oppose me?” Yu Cheng rumbled, the blinding light of Dao Unity erupting from his body. The Dao Unity Realm was not compatible with the tower’s Dao, so it shouldn’t have been as easy to use as Tang Jie’s Heavenly Dao Realm, so one could say that the Tower Heavenly Dao was once more letting Yu Cheng cheat.

For the sake of a new epoch, the Tower Heavenly Dao no longer cared about what it had to do.

“Raaa!” The dragon simply roared and lashed out with earth-sundering claws and heaven-incinerating flames.

“It no longer has a mind and is simply a walking corpse,” the Sage Mother said, pity in her eyes.

The Dragon Ancestor had also been one of the Four Sages of the court, but it had vanished after the Martial Lord shattered the court. Many people thought it had died, never imagining that it would be here, a corpse under the Heavenly Dao’s control, meant to stop anyone trying to get to the top floor. Even as a walking corpse, it was no weaker, even having advanced to Saint Immortal, each of its strikes presenting a major problem.

“Nether God Yin Corpse, what about you? Have you also lost your mind and become a walking corpse?” Yu Cheng asked.

A voice so cold that it could even freeze Divine Souls came from the coffin. “Your Majesty Immortal Emperor, it has been ten thousand years since our last meeting, but all has been well.”

Yu Cheng threw his head back and laughed. “I thought that the supreme sovereign of the Nether Domain had also lost their mind and become a dog for the Heavenly Dao, but it seems you still have sense. So why are you here rather than lording over the Nether Domain?”

The coffin’s icy voice said, “You are the Immortal Emperor of the positive plane, so why did you forsake all of its glories and enter the cycle of reincarnation, and why are you here?”

“I have come here to surpass, not to become a dog!” Yu Cheng barked.

“We just have different paths,” Nether God Yin Corpse sighed, and fell silent.

Yu Cheng cast his gaze to the puppet and grunted, “The Starbreaker Dao Puppet, a supreme treasure.”

This puppet was not a human, but the ultimate Dao puppet, etched with Dao Runes and refined using a small domain as the price. In terms of strength, it was about as strong as a Saint Immortal.

“The Dragon Ancestor, Nether God Yin Corpse, and a Starbreaker Dao Puppet—not bad, not bad. So who is the last one? Why don’t you let me see your face?”

The man seated on the mountain finally raised his head.

The Immortals of the court instantly paled.

Yu Cheng and the Sage Mother cried out:

“It’s you!?”