Aspiring to the Immortal Path

The original body's will vanished after a brief moment.

Even so, Tang Jie had still sensed it, and it made him sigh in relief.

Any life was at its most fragile in its seedling stage. Fortunately, the original body had been shepherded through this trial by Little Three. While this was only the first step on a road of a thousand miles, it was the most important step and worth celebrating.

With all his business settled, Tang Jie left the Soaring Immortal Mountains.

He found a pretty little place in human territory to settle down, after which he began to research the World Descender Mantra given to him by Jin Tianya.

This mantra was authored by a Gold Immortal called Reverend Heaven-Forsaken.

As the legacy of a Gold Immortal, it differentiated itself the most in that it particularly strengthened the Divine Soul. At its peak, the Divine Soul could leave the body and wander the heavens, completely giving up the physical body to become a True God.

This was much stronger than the True God in the Immortal Platform sense, completely forgoing the Immortal Body and being able to use Divine Connections with only the soul. It could also possess others and create thousands of avatars. This was why it was called the World Descender Mantra, for the one who successfully cultivated this art would be a True God descending upon the world, able to freely possess whoever they wanted.

But this was not without its flaws. First of all, cultivating this art required constantly absorbing the energy of the physical body. Cultivators originally cultivated the body as the Immortal Body and the soul as the God, cultivating both. But the World Descender Mantra meant giving up on the Immortal Body and cultivating only the God, essentially walking the path of the soul cultivator, the exact opposite of the body cultivator. This meant that Tang Jie would have to sacrifice a lot, even the Dao Runes etched into his body. While the Great Dao was said to be formless and was concerned only for the mindset, Dao power had form, and Dao Runes had their wills. To use a Dao Art, one still had to bring form to the formless. To completely give up on the physical body would affect his Dao power. Fortunately, the one who had left behind the World Descender Mantra was also a Godhead, proficient in the Great Daos, so he had created a method of establishing the Daos as a True God, but it was rather troublesome.

In addition, this art was extremely dangerous. Gathering all of one's energy on the True God involved a major shift in one's form of existence. Shifts meant risk, which was why the World Descender Mantra was extremely difficult to cultivate. The last person to cultivate it, Chen Tianguan, had died in this process.

After some thought, Tang Jie decided to still learn it.

After all, the World Descender Mantra had many advantages. The first was that it meant he didn't have to worry about a mantra again until he reached Gold Immortal, saving him a lot of time that would have been wasted searching. In the path of cultivation, the person who could move faster had more opportunities, being able to go farther and higher. The second was that it made him more powerful. The soul cultivator concentrated all power on the Godhood, which directly made Divine Connections more powerful. The True God of a soul cultivator could unleash Divine Connections much more powerful than those of an ordinary law cultivator. This alone made them superior to countless other cultivators.

As a price, the Immortal Body would weaken, but so long as the Primal Divinity was not extinguished, the True God would exist eternally, surviving even the utter destruction of the Immortal Body. Moreover, his original body was a body cultivator, and the two in combination would create an effect where one plus one was greater than two.

Finally, deep down, Tang Jie felt like something wasn't right.

He had been harboring this ill foreboding for some time, and while Tang Jie had failed to track it down, one event after another had reinforced it. The Azure Dragon, the Lithos Dragon, Wind Holder, the Bejeweled Star Lord, the mysterious destruction of the Court of Myriad Domains, the strange encounters in the Immortal tomb, the revival of numerous hibernating individuals, that mysterious figure he had seen in his reincarnations, the bizarre event that had taken place during his ascension to Soul Projection (which Xu Miaoran had told him about), the Fate Candle that should have been extinguished in his battle with Flowing Wind…

All of this was warning Tang Jie to reluctantly admit that there was some secret hiding on his body.

Even his absurd comprehension abilities, especially of the Twelve Great Daos, were connected to this secret!

Even if he didn't want to admit it, he knew that it would catch up to him eventually.

This was why Tang Jie was seeking an opportunity to escape all this.

He saw this opportunity in the World Descender Mantra.

The Lithos Dragon, Wind Holder, and Bejeweled Star Lord had all hidden their physical bodies, and what they had controlled were physical bodies. This meant that when he cultivated the World Descender Mantra, weakening his Immortal Body, while he might not necessarily be able to escape his Fate, he would at least have a better chance.

Thus, no matter how difficult, Tang Jie had to cultivate the World Descender Mantra.

Tang Jie spent every day cultivating this mantra, converting his Immortal Body's power to his Divine Soul, nurturing his Godhood and strengthening his Primal Divinity.

Of course, Tang Jie didn't close himself off from the world. After all, his main mission was to probe the Blood River Domain, so while cultivating, he also created physical avatars to travel around and gather information.

Tang Jie quickly got the information he wanted.

As he had expected, the deaths of Old Donkey He and Li Xiao and the severe wounding of the Blood Queen at Thousand Autumns City, along with the loss of several hundred cultivators of the Hemos hunting squad, had infuriated the Hemos.

Rather than a simple border conflict, it had evolved into a war, and it was one where the weaker side had won. It would be very strange if the Hemos accepted this outcome.

Thus, the Bloodfiend Alliance soon began to marshal its forces for an invasion.

The humans fell into panic, criticizing the Red Leaf Alliance for "stirring up conflict" while sending out messages saying that the incident was a misunderstanding and that they hoped that the Hemos would stay their hand for the sake of both races, even offering to pay compensation. At the same time, they urgently contacted the Demon Gate, hoping to make this a two-versus-one, promising numerous rewards and talking up how the teeth would be exposed to the chill once the lips were gone.

One could say that this string of responses wasn't lacking. The weaker side had to be shameless sometimes, but it was better than being wiped out. If they had continued with this effort, the matter might really have been settled.

But the incident at the Soaring Immortal Mountains ended any hope the human cultivators had for peace.

Jin Tianya's escape directly led to two things. The first was that the human alliance lost an important intimidation tool. The second was that Jin Tianya, restricted by his oath, didn't go to the humans, instead starting a massacre in fiend territory.

The day after leaving the Soaring Immortal Mountains, Jin Tianya appeared in the large fiend city of Hehuan and used a supreme Divine Connection to unleash utter mayhem. The cultivators in charge of protecting the city were all slaughtered before they could even activate the defensive formation, and the entire city was obliterated with no survivors. Jin Tianya continued on his way, massacring twenty-seven cities in the span of three days and stunning the entire Blood River Domain.

After three days, the fiend Immortal Reverend Evil Cloud personally began to search for Jin Tianya, forcing him to retreat and restoring some peace to the fiends.

But defending against an Immortal was very challenging.

Jin Tianya knew that he was all on his own, so he focused on sneak attacks, appearing across fiend territory and massacring a city every day, and their lands soon resounded with wailing and weeping.

All of this was Jin Tianya's handiwork.

The fiends naturally couldn't accept peace in such a situation.

Since Jin Tianya was out and was only targeting the fiends, the humans must have come to an agreement with him and let him out on purpose. Xu Miaoran and the others were also instigating conflicts in other border cities, and when the fiends put it all together, the objective of the humans became "obvious".

Once the fiends thought that they understood, they naturally stopped listening to the humans and sent their armies against the humans. Even the Lord of the Blood River created an avatar to join in, and a majestic cultivator war erupted.

By the time Tang Jie had started cultivating, the fiends and humans were already fighting.

The humans naturally couldn't match the strength of the fiends. If the fiends didn't also have to deal with Jin Tianya, and if the humans didn't have the terrain advantage, they might have lost in the early stages of the war.

Even so, the humans were under immense pressure, so they sought help from the Demon Gate.

For the Demon Gate, the obliteration of the humans naturally didn't favor them, so they intended to help. After all, this was how things had been for many years.

But just when they were about to intervene, Jin Tianya ran over to demon cultivator territory and started killing, destroying 12 cities in one day. His ferocity was appalling, even more demonic than the demons.

The demon cultivators were furious.

Demons were an impulsive and irrational race, whether they were naturally born or had become demons through cultivation. Their minds didn't work properly, so they were always the ones causing trouble rather than the other way around. It was already very difficult to make them understand the concept of mutual survival, and if they had been able to understand the concept that a minor lack of restraint could ruin the greater strategy, they wouldn't be demons.

After that incident, the humans could no longer place their hopes on the Demon Gate.

On the contrary, the situation became even worse.

The Demon Gate had its own kind of wisdom.

They were no longer helping the humans, but it also seemed inappropriate to just watch the fiends devour the humans. Wasn't that giving them the opportunity to dominate the world?

Well, there was only one option.

They might as well join the fiends in attacking the humans.

Since they weren't helping the humans in their resistance, they might as well snatch some food from the mouths of the fiends.

This was how Demon Gate cultivators thought, simply and practically.

Just like that, the Demon Gate joined the battle, but as enemies, not friends.

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