Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Chapter 397: Eternal Universe

Another three months went by, during which Tang Jie performed more experiments on the beans, developing a greater understanding of these strange plants.

Firstly, there were not just four kinds of them.

Using the bean seeds, Tang Jie had raised two more kinds of plants. One was a plant with an appearance even fiercer than the carnivorous plant, capable of pulling its roots out of the ground and walking like a fierce plant beast. The other was a plant that exuded a unique odor. This odor was particularly attractive to small animals like mice and rabbits in the vicinity. Once these small animals were lured over, the carnivorous flower and the beast flower would devour them. Worth noting was that the beast flower would place the corpses of these animals on the sharp teeth of the bean king, making it so this short plant was completely covered. It appeared as if a mouse or rabbit was growing out of the ground.

Tang Jie called these plant types “general” and “farmer”.

Thus, the bean seeds had six different forms: king, consort, general, soldier, farmer, and food. Each had their own duty.

Tang Jie tried to raise more consorts to produce more bean seeds, but he was quickly disappointed.

He discovered that bean society was distributed according to its available resources and rank. Only when there was enough of the lower classes could more of the upper class be produced.

Thus, when the lowest-class beans that served as food were few in number, the high-class beans didn’t grow no matter how much Tang Jie tried. As the Carefree House had limited space, he was never able to get a second consort, and he had only a single general. As for the soldier-type carnivorous flowers, he had grown a few, which he gifted to Yiyi for her flower formation, as they were much stronger than green roses.

But this was not a big problem. So long as he weres given enough space, he could quickly raise more of the high-class plants. But for the same reason, Tang Jie worried that he would lose control of these plants. This was particularly true for the food-type beans, which grew at such a fast pace that they might have broken free of the Carefree House if not for the formation protecting it.

Tang Jie quickly realized that this was a plant with a strong sense for organization and reproduction. In truth, he began to suspect that this wasn’t a plant but a special lifeform belonging to another domain.

Fortunately, Shi Jingzhai hadn’t known how to breed more of this lifeform. If he had lost control of them, all of Rosecloud might have faced a calamity.

With this thought in mind, Tang Jie did not dare try to plant these beans outside. He could only wait for the Mountain River State Diagram. Once that diagram was here, he could easily solve many of his problems.

It was now the seventh month since Tang Jie’s return.

Tang Jie had achieved minor attainment in the heart revolution when he finally received that long-awaited news: the Seven Absolutions Sect had agreed to Tang Jie’s trade.

But there were two conditions. The first was that they had to see him use the Mountain River State Diagram, and the second was that he had to take a trip to the Seven Absolutions Sect. Of course, the Seven Absolutions Sect guaranteed that it wouldn’t hurt him and only wanted him as a guest.

The first request was primarily in order to ensure that the Mountain River State Diagram was not being improperly used. Tang Jie had no objection to this. Although he wanted the Mountain River State Diagram for that world within the great formation, he still didn’t have the power to move mountains, nor was he sure about what effects such actions would have on the formation. Thus, he was saving that plan for the future.

As for the second request, it was rather coercive. After some thought, Tang Jie proposed that he would visit the Seven Absolutions Sect within the next twenty years.

For a cultivator, twenty years wasn’t particularly long. After receiving Tang Jie’s reply, Mu Yi quickly sent back word: the Seven Absolutions Sect had agreed.

Once both parties had agreed, it wasn’t long before Mu Yi arrived with the Mountain River State Diagram.

The Mountain River State Diagram was an ordinary-looking blank painting scroll. If not for that faint divine luster on the paper, Tang Jie really would have taken it for an ordinary scroll.

But when the scroll was unrolled, Tang Jie felt like an entire world was opening before him. Even though it was completely empty, he felt like he was staring into the vastness of the universe.

While standing in front of this divine treasure from High Antiquity, Tang Jie felt like he should get on his knees and bow.

Thankfully, he managed to master the impulse and make himself stand upright, though his entire body sweat from the effort.

Mu Yi smiled at this. “You truly are incredible. When I first came before this item, it was hung up in a side hall of my sect. While standing in that hall, I felt like I was standing in an endless void, and my fear was so great that I almost pissed my pants.”

“A divine treasure of High Antiquity, it truly is amazing. Just one glance makes it difficult to withstand its divine might,” Tang Jie sighed. “And this is only a spatial treasure with no combat power. What would a combat divine treasure be like? Right, it seems like you’re able to resist its aura now?”

Mu Yi flipped his wrist, revealing that he was wearing a small jade bracelet. “A Mindsoothe Bracelet, not any particular ability on my part. It can resist some of the aura. Are you interested? Only five hundred thousand. Right, don’t put your hopes on the Basking Moon Sect. This is an exclusive product of my Seven Absolutions Sect.”

Tang Jie rolled his eyes.

This small Mindsoothe Bracelet was a middle-grade art relic. It wouldn’t even sell for fifty thousand, let alone an outrageous five hundred thousand!

But he knew that his expectations had been off. He hadn’t expected the Mountain River State Diagram to be this formidable. Even though it wasn’t a combat treasure, his mind still found it difficult to resist, so he really couldn’t go without the bracelet.

The Seven Absolutions Sect knew how to do business. The price Tang Jie had offered for the Mountain River State Diagram was too low, so they had added on the Mindsoothe Bracelet, and the price was just below the limit of what Tang Jie could bear. Thus, Tang Jie could only bitterly shake his head and accept the deal.

He chose to treat it as an increase in the price of the Mountain River State Diagram.

After getting the Mountain River State Diagram, he now had to prepare the materials for the teleportation formation. As this formation needed to break through domains, it needed numerous materials, and Tang Jie was planning to lay out a fixed teleportation formation that could be used repeatedly. This meant that he actually needed two formations: one in the formation diagram and the other in the Nine Executions Immortal Formation. Thus, he needed double the amount of materials, and the total cost was around two million coins. As for Tang Jie, due to his special situation, he actually needed even more, so he would have to spend basically all of his remaining three million on materials.

To Tang Jie’s surprise, after handing over the Mountain River State Diagram, Mu Yi produced a pile of materials as if by magic. “While there are many kinds of teleportation formations, all of them share the same origin, so some materials are always needed. To save time, my Seven Absolutions Sect has prepared some. Relax; the price will definitely be fair.”

Tang Jie felt deeply speechless as he looked at Mu Yi’s pile of materials.

The price for these materials was naturally not as exorbitant as the Mindsoothe Bracelet’s, but even the most normal price would have some profit margin. The materials Tang Jie needed would be a big business deal for any store, so no matter what store he went to, he was bound to get a discount. But there was no hope of that with the Seven Absolutions Sect.

There was plenty of room to make profit on materials, and 30% was very normal. And with the Seven Absolutions Sect, given their power and ability, 50% profit margin was completely possible. In this deal involving three million in materials, the Seven Absolutions Sect could make at least one million more.

Tang Jie was once more deeply speechless. He said to Mu Yi, “I didn’t think that the Seven Absolutions Sect would have such a talent for business.”

Mu Yi chuckled. “The Seven Absolutions Sect has its origins in commerce, and it was only through a fortuitous encounter that it became a sect. However, it kept many of its habits from its business days, as shameful as it is. But you, Senior Brother, still have 3 million to spend on materials after spending 1.5 million, which means that Senior Brother is much wealthier than I realized. And the materials that you require mean that the hidden realm cannot be in the Rosecloud Domain, so Senior Brother was not deceiving me.”

Five million in profits had been spent away just like that. Now, besides the Seven Demon Soul-Sealing Nails and rare materials like the Cloud Mud, all he had was the money he had saved up from selling off the materials that had made up the Jade Gate Heaven Seal Formation, which was several tens of thousands of spirit coins.

Tang Jie indifferently said, “I said before that I have a common enemy with your Seven Absolutions Sect, so I naturally have no reason to deceive you. You guys just didn’t take me seriously. Actually, you guys want to see me lay down the formation and buy materials not necessarily to make sure I’m not doing anything improper, but to confirm the location of that hidden realm. If I bought few materials, insufficient for a teleportation formation that could break through domains, that would mean that the hidden realm was probably in the Rosecloud Domain, and you could determine its general location from how I was laying out the formation. If you found the hidden realm, then all the good things would naturally be yours, yes?”

Mu Yi laughed. “Ah, Senior Brother, we really can’t hide anything from you. Some of the elders in the sect refused to give up, feeling like there was an extremely high chance that the hidden realm was in Rosecloud, giving us a chance to take it, so they had me test the waters. But now, Senior Brother’s actions have shown that they can put that idea to rest. That being the case, I also don’t need to hide this from Senior Brother.”

He took out a talisman, wrote out a message, and then burned it, turning the message into a plume of smoke. He was clearly telling the Seven Absolutions Sect that Tang Jie had been telling the truth.

Next was taking a chunk of land into the diagram. Tang Jie had already found a place, so the two of them flew out of the academy. They flew for an hour until they arrived at a picturesque location near a mountain range.

There was a cliff here, a waterfall flowing down the side and into a pool at the bottom in a great cloud of mist. The pool was formed from a depression in the middle of a giant boulder, and water overflowed over the sides into a brook that flowed off into the distance. Trees lush with foliage grew on both sides. It was truly a beautiful little place.

There was a rock next to the brook with three words carved into it: Great Broken Stream.

Tang Jie pointed at the waterfall and the boulder beneath it. “What do you think about this place?”

Mu Yi took a look and was immediately rendered speechless.

In terms of area, this place really wasn’t that big, with a diameter of only thirty-some meters. Though it was larger than the Carefree House, Mu Yi and the others had no plans to rigidly hold Tang Jie to his claim of only a piece of land the size of the Carefree House. But they hadn’t expected Tang Jie to be so shameless as to keep his horizontal claims in check but take full advantage of verticality. He had included a piece of the mountain, that cliff, the waterfall, and even the trees on the sides.

Mu Yi snorted, “This Carefree House of yours is quite large.”

Tang Jie laughed. “‘Mountain River State Diagram’! Just from the name, you know that you have to have a mountain and a river to do things properly. If I only managed to get a giant rock inside, why even call it the Mountain River State Diagram? Might as well call it the Heavensent Rock Diagram instead.”

(TN: The actual term used for Heavensent Rock is “飞来石”, which is the name for a famous rock found in the Huangshan mountain range. Its literal translation is “Flew Over Rock”, because the rock appears as if it has flown down from the sky.)

Mu Yi heartily laughed, but when he thought about it, the Seven Absolutions Sect had taken so much money from Tang Jie that it wasn’t a big deal if Tang Jie took an area that was a little larger than agreed on. In the end, he decided to look the other way.

This was Tang Jie’s first time using the Mountain River State Diagram, and with Mu Yi’s guidance, he learned that using the Mountain River State Diagram didn’t require moving the target. It simply required inserting spiritual energy into the diagram.

Mu Yi handed Tang Jie the Mountain River State Diagram and smiled. “Try it out?”

Tang Jie smiled as he took the diagram. He threw it up, where it floated in the air and let out a light that blanketed the area below. As the light shone on the cliff, the waterfall, the boulder, the flowing water, and the trees, they became transparent, leaving Tang Jie confused and amazed.

At the same time, Tang Jie felt his spiritual energy rapidly fading away, and he knew that the Mountain River State Diagram was using his strength to take in this piece of land. He just hadn’t expected it to take so much energy.

And it appeared that this was only because he was taking in a small piece of land. There was no telling what would happen if he tried to take in a vast tract of land. It was no wonder the Seven Absolutions Sect was so relaxed, not at all worried that he might break his promise and take a large chunk of land. He wasn’t even strong enough to do it.

When almost a third of his spiritual energy had been used up, the waterfall illuminated by the Mountain River State Diagram finally disappeared. The area where the missing land had been was now just a black emptiness, with not even the earth beneath being visible.

Tang Jie felt an inexplicable fear in front of this darkness. He could even feel a gust rushing into that black fissure.

But soon, this black fissure began to close.

It got smaller and smaller…

As it shrank, Tang Jie realized that the terrain had completely changed.

The waterfall had completely disappeared. The water on the summit had nowhere to go, so it had simply changed course. The cut-off stream no longer existed, leaving only a dried-up channel that was squeezed out of existence.

The changes to the terrain made it so it seemed like that waterfall had never existed.

“This is…” Tang Jie was dumbstruck.

He had thought about what it would look like when the Mountain River State Diagram shifted a chunk of land away, but he had never expected it to be like this.

“Very strange, right?” Mu Yi saw Tang Jie’s slack-jawed expression and chuckled.

Tang Jie shook his head. “I thought it would leave a pit behind.”

Mu Yi replied, “In reality, it will only leave behind a spatial fissure. Although you only took a part of the land on the surface of this world, the Mountain River State Diagram has essentially wiped away its existence, leaving behind an endless abyss.”

The diagram had finished taking in the land, and once the light had faded, it dropped to the ground.

Mu Yi extended his hand, summoning the diagram. He then unrolled the diagram in front of Tang Jie.

The empty scroll had now become a naturalistic painting. In the painting was a waterfall descending from above into a pool of water, precisely the scene that Tang Jie had seen earlier.

“Then why did the spatial fissure disappear, and all the other surrounding traces?” Tang Jie asked in confusion.

Mu Yi shook his head. “I don’t know either. This is my first time seeing the Mountain River State Diagram being used. Perhaps this is the will of the heavens.”

“‘The will of the heavens’?” Tang Jie was stunned. “You’re saying that the heavens are doing this?”

“I’m just blindly guessing. Maybe the heavens can’t stand this sort of gap, so they use some sort of method that we could never understand to remold the landscape and rebuild the world. Look: after you took that piece of land, the terrain of this entire region changed, yet all of it seems so natural, as if it’s been this way for eons. Someone who had never been here before would never have imagined that this place was once host to a waterfall!”

Tang Jie narrowed his eyes. “If this is the case, then the heavens have still missed out on something.”

His eyes looked nearby, where that stone that read “Great Broken Stream” remained. But half of it had been buried in the soil, and the words were faded as if they had existed for tens of thousands of years.

—————————

After the land was taken, it was time to lay down the formation.

Tang Jie waved his hand, and the Mountain River State Diagram flew into the air. A ray of light shot out, and a waterfall appeared in the air.

Surprisingly, the waterfall was still flowing, the water coming from the sky, landing below, and gathering into a small stream that flowed off into the unknown. It was an endless cycle, as if this area had never been taken into the scroll.

Tang Jie couldn’t help but sigh in praise. “Creating such a miracle, it truly deserves its reputation as a rare divine treasure.”

Mu Yi smiled. “The diagram has done its job. It’s up to you to make the formation work now.”

“Fortunately, I was able to read the Profound Heaven Treatise, so I can make the formation as easily as if the heavens themselves had made it,” Tang Jie said. He took a pile of materials and threw them at the image in the air.

There were all sorts of materials, and when they landed in that picturesque scene, they transformed into various objects.

A handful of red soil landed next to the pool and instantly turned into a large patch of red soil.

A pinch of grass landed in the red soil and instantly transformed into a giant tree.

A flashing scale dropped into the pool and transformed into a fish, and water grass sprouted from the bottom of the boulder.

Dolls made of clay fell into the world within the painting and transformed into birds, beasts, insects, and fish, all of them cavorting around in this world.

More red soil landed around the area, creating more soil and expanding this world.

As the waterfall expanded, it grew more fierce, the currents more rapid, and it began to crash into the pool with a thunderous roar. The stream began to flow like a raging river, and this serene world became brimming with vitality.

Spiritual currents traveled to and fro, creating spiritual gusts that made the creatures of this world larger and more energetic.

More materials entered this world, taking on various forms. Unlike past formations, laying down this formation took a vast amount of resources, and the formation creation process produced all sorts of wondrous sights.

Even Mu Yi had never imagined that one could lay down a formation in this way.

Tang Jie threw in a blade of five-hundred-year-old Jade Grass.

The moment this Jade Grass entered the formation diagram, a gust of spiritual wind turned it into a small bridge that landed on the upper part of the stream, connecting the two shores, causing all the creatures in the painting to grow even more excited.

Tang Jie threw in a grain of dark red blood. When this blood entered the diagram, there was a crack of thunder, and black lightning bolts came down, scattering all the creatures.

Mu Yi was now confused. “What is this?”

Tang Jie replied, “Nether Beast Blood, from the Wandering Palace.”

He had thrown in the Nether Beast Blood he had taken from the Wandering Palace all those years ago. It had taken him several years to find its use. Nether Beasts were Yin beasts, naturally resistant to Yin energy corrosion. This item added to the mix would allow the formation to resist various Yin-type attacks.

As Tang Jie continued to throw in materials, the world in the diagram grew richer with life. It expanded to three times its original size and even played host to the four seasons, which rotated in order as if this was a real world. Through the power of an Immortal, it gradually became fuller and more authentic…

Mu Yi sighed in praise, “All things in nature embodied in the painted world… so it was the Eternal Universe Formation. Using this formation as the backbone for the teleportation formation truly is the most reliable method. I didn’t think that my sect’s Profound Heaven Treatise’s foundational formation would be learned by Brother Tang, and to such a wondrous and beautiful level. And you’ve added so many things, with exquisite implementation that makes everything seem natural. It is no wonder you’re confident that you can make a domain-breaking formation with your Mortal Shedding cultivation.”

The advantage of doing things this way was that the Mountain River State Diagram wouldn’t only have the function of a teleportation formation in the future. It could also be used in combat.

Now that the world in the diagram was complete, along with the teleportation formation within it, Tang Jie thrust his hand at the diagram. The beasts in the world suddenly howled, and the spiritual currents went wild, becoming a storm that even made the waterfall begin flowing in reverse.

This meant that the Eternal Universe Formation had completely activated.

As the waterfall flowed upward, a black cave mouth silently appeared at the base of the cliff.

This was the mouth to the teleportation formation.

“Success!” Mu Yi clapped his hands and shouted.

“Yes, finally succeeded.” Tang Jie waved his hand, and the furious storm subsided, though the cave behind the waterfall remained.

Looking at that cave, Tang Jie picked a pebble off the ground and threw it at the cave. The pebble passed through the waterfall and disappeared into the cave.

Tang Jie casually said, “Through this cave is that hidden realm. Brother Mu, if you want to take it, now is the moment. If you enter that cave, you guys can enter the hidden realm.”

Is it really all right for Tang Jie to do all of this in front of Mu Yi?