Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Plush!

The sword pierced through Yuan Tianzhong’s body, carrying him through the air and nailing him to the Spiral Flame.

He was still alive. As a Soul Projection cultivator, he could project his Divine Soul. Even when his Violet Palace was broken and his Divine Soul divided, he could still survive.

But it was a very strained form of survival.

He couldn’t even link his Divine Will to the world.

He helplessly gazed at the golden sword that nailed him to the tower, not understanding how he had been unable to evade it despite using nine top-class movement techniques, unable to trick it despite using twelve different confusion arts, and unable to stop it despite using thirty-three defensive barriers.

It had sliced through Yuan Tianzhong’s defenses and treasures like it was slicing through tofu and easily pinned him to the tower. And it was still exuding a formidable power that ground away at his life force.

He could even sense that this weapon was using its own power to do this, not ordered or empowered by anyone else, but that had been enough to easily slay a Soul Projection True Lord.

“This… is a… real… divine weapon…” Yuan Tianzhong sighed, glancing one more time at the distant battlefield before expiring.

Yes, a massacre!

A one-sided massacre.

Tang Jie was massacring the cultivators arrayed against him.

The Heavenly Dao Realm made numbers irrelevant.

Tang Jie didn’t even need to do anything. He just needed to charge up to a nearby cultivator, and then his will would cause that cultivator to drop all resistance and simply explode.

But in most circumstances, he would save energy, only using the realm to strip the enemy of their barriers and then sending out a punch to finish things.

He shot in and out like a bolt of lightning, slaying cultivators like they were ants. Meanwhile, the attacks of his enemies simply vanished the moment they entered the range of his Heavenly Dao Realm.

Nobody could injure him.

It only took five seconds!

In five brief seconds, Tang Jie killed all the Violet Palace cultivators, as well as some of the more threatening Soul Transformation cultivators. Only then did he end the Heavenly Dao Realm.

This sight horrified the remaining cultivators.

“You aren’t human! Aren’t human!”

The cultivators backed away as they cried out.

They had never before experienced such a horrifying slaughter.

Those were all top-class cultivators, Violet Palace and Soul Transformation cultivators! How had they all been slain as easily as one would chop melons?

Five seconds!

This wasn’t even enough time for two dueling Titans to show their supreme techniques, but in that time, twenty Violet Palace True Lords and five elite Soul Transformation True Persons had all died.

They hadn’t even had time to take out their trump cards.

Some of them had spent hundreds of years, if not millennia, training their secret arts, but they had all departed without even a chance to use them.

He wasn’t even injured!

This…

Their confidence crumbled en masse, and none of them had the courage to even raise a hand against Tang Jie.

Tang Jie didn’t give chase. He used this moment to inspect himself, even subtly creasing his brow.

The hatred of the Heavenly Dao had once more reached a threshold.

The hatred of the Heavenly Dao didn’t depend on only how much time the realm was active for. The key was how much power was used in that time.

While Tang Jie had only activated the realm for five seconds, in those five seconds, he had absorbed attacks, stripped barriers, and even teleported short distances. All of this served as intensive use of the Heavenly Dao Realm, which drew immense jealousy and instantly brought the Heavenly Dao’s hatred to the breaking point.

“Just a little more and I’ll have to face the Heavenly Tribulation,” Tang Jie muttered.

If his miscalculations had resulted in the arrival of the Heavenly Tribulation, then he would have had to face down the attacks of the cultivators and the Heavenly Tribulation simultaneously, which would have been a real problem.

Tang Jie had thought that he still had some buffer left, but it turned out that he had actually miscalculated and almost killed himself.

Regardless, this invincible feeling… was truly refreshing!

Chuckling, Tang Jie turned to the cultivators.

There were no Violet Palace cultivators among them, but so many Soul Transformation and Heart Demon True Persons still represented a significant force.

Yet they were nothing in Tang Jie’s eyes.

He waved his hand and summoned the Sovereign Blade back to him. “Today, everyone here must die!”

“Don’t!” the cultivators cried out in unison.

But Tang Jie showed no mercy.

He could not allow the secret of the Heavenly Dao Realm to get out.

He had been able to kill so many Violet Palace True Lords not only because of the Heavenly Dao Realm, but because they didn’t know the details of the Heavenly Dao Realm. If they had known they just needed to keep their distance, there was no way Tang Jie would have been able to kill so many in such a short time with the limited range of his realm.

Thus, he had to keep it a secret to ensure that he got the maximum value out of it.

These cultivators weren’t fools. Some of them could clearly tell that the current Tang Jie was different from the one from a few moments ago.

One of them shouted, “He can’t keep using that technique of his, and it has a distance limitation!”

Another mustered up his courage and attacked, and this time, the attack didn’t disappear, instead being stopped by Tang Jie’s barrier.

The other cultivators were all elated, one of them shouting, “Let’s take him down!”

“Really?” Tang Jie smirked. “You have to have the right to fight me first.”

He threw out the Sovereign Blade, which transformed into thousands of swords that shot at the cultivators.

Cultivators at Violet Palace or above would be rather difficult to kill in a single move with swords like these, but Celestial Heart cultivators were no problem at all.

The swords punched through the bodies of the cultivators, tearing apart their souls and drenching Great Sun City in blood.

Several hundred cultivators were slain by the Sovereign Blade, their corpses piling up in front of the gate.

It wasn’t as shocking as Tang Jie killing twenty Violet Palace True Lords in five seconds, but these hundreds of cultivators were slain in an even more spectacular and gruesome manner.

The instant slaughter of all of these peak cultivators had the residents of the city reeling in shock.

Tang Jie drew back his sword and thrust out a palm.

The palm created a shockwave that knocked all the bystanders unconscious. They were alive, but when they woke up, they would no longer remember what had happened.

Even if someone used a supreme art to recall these memories, it would still be no good, for what Tang Jie needed to cover up wasn’t the slaughter, but the method of slaughter. The more detailed the memory, the more difficult it was to recover. People would only know that a battle happened, not how it had played out.

And if there were another explanation for what had happened…

Whoosh!

Several dozen figures shot out of the distance.

They were led by Wang Posha, Cai Junyang, Wei Tianchong, and Qi Shaoming.

The Rosecloud cultivators at Anyuan Peak had finally noticed the battle at Great Sun City and rushed over.

As he arrived, Wei Tianchong bellowed, “Who dares to touch my brother? They have to get through me first!”

But all they were greeted by was the site of a massacre.

Nobody was standing except for Tang Jie.

Shocked, Wei Tianchong stammered, “Wha– what’s going on?”

Tang Jie looked up at him and smiled. “You only come over now? The fight’s already over.”

“It’s… over? What about Yuan Tianzhong?” Xi Canhen asked.

“Over there.” Tang Jie pointed at the corpse nailed to the distant tower.

“Then Chang Xiran?” Qi Shaoming asked.

“There.” Tang Jie pointed at a bisected corpse.

“What about Fairy Hong Luan?” Cai Junyang asked.

“And Meng Qihong?” Meng Shixue added.

Tang Jie chuckled and made a gesture of being reduced to ashes.

The Rosecloud cultivators exchanged looks of disbelief.

Wang Posha looked at all the corpses on the ground and asked, “Master… did you kill all the people here?”

Tang Jie indifferently replied, “They wanted to kill me, so I invited them to die first. It just so happens that the Nether Domain is a bit empty lately and needed to be repopulated.”

Everyone swallowed.

This naturally wasn’t their real concern, but the fact that Tang Jie had done this all on his own.

Qi Shaoming asked, “Tang Jie, has your original body attained Immortal Platform?”

Tang Jie shook his head. “Only Deification.”

This was enough to leave everyone dumbfounded.

A Deification cultivator had killed so many cultivators? Did he take them for fools?

Yet with the reality displayed before, they had nothing to say.

Tang Jie said, “But I don’t want too many people to know about this battle, so when you talk about it in the future, it was all of us who fought together and won.”

Cai Junyang began to take a count. “24 Violet Palace, 36 peak Soul Transformation, 124 ordinary Soul Transformation, and around a hundred peak Heart Demon cultivators. Even all of us put together wouldn’t be able to win.”

It was laughable.

Even if they lied and added in the Rosecloud Domain cultivators, the Flame Yang side still had such a great advantage that the lie wasn’t at all convincing.

Yet the truth was even more absurd!

Tang Jie coolly said, “The Flame Yang Domain chose to return kindness with hostility, and we Rosecloud Domain cultivators joined together and fought bravely, eventually moving the heavens, which aided us in battle and created a miracle… This will be enough.”

“……”

That was it?

Everyone was speechless.

Wei Tianchong asked, “So where is the aid from the heavens?”

Tang Jie smiled. “Right here.”

He activated and then deactivated the Heavenly Dao Realm.

Thunderclouds immediately gathered, their might and majesty engulfing the skies of the Flame Yang Domain.

In this sea of clouds, a giant golden bolt of lightning was gathering power.

This golden spear of light exuded a suffocating aura of death.

As everyone stared at it in wide-eyed shock, the golden lightning bolt fell toward Tang Jie.

“Nobody interfere!” Tang Jie barked as he flew up to meet it.

He didn’t use the Heavenly Dao Realm, for this would only further enrage the Heavenly Dao, but he mustered up all the energy he had, both physical and spiritual, down to the molecular level, bringing it all together into a single punch.

This punch was a consolidation of his will and spirit, a manifestation of his wildest side.

The blast from his fist rocketed upward like an ascending dragon crashing into the golden lightning bolt in a brilliant explosion.

A stray lightning bolt crashed into the distant Spiral Flame, and its defensive formation instantly groaned from overload before finally shattering.

Most of the lightning bolt tore through the fist blast and fell on Tang Jie.

“AAAAAHH!!” Tang Jie let out a primal roar, his body exuding a blinding light as he released all the power in his cells.

As the lightning crashed down, its golden light flickered and flashed.

Tang Jie floated in the air as he endured the blast, blood seeping out of his pores and creating a grisly crimson contrast with the golden lightning.

“Master!” Xi Canhen shouted.

He wanted to go to Tang Jie’s aid, but Wang Posha pulled him back.

“This is Master’s tribulation. Nobody can help him endure it.”

Startled, Xi Canhen looked back up at the sky.

The golden lightning was still there, pouring its boundless power down onto the one below.

But as Tang Jie held on, the lightning gradually began to run out of power.

The thundercloud began to scatter, and the lightning bolt thinned.

Finally, the golden light blinked out of existence.

“Finally… gone.” Everyone exhaled in relief.

Tang Jie’s body fell from the sky.

“Master!” Wang Posha swiftly ran up and caught him.

Tang Jie was charred black, and his breathing was weak.

But he was still alive!

It was all fine as long as he was alive. Wang Posha sighed in relief.

Tang Jie slowly opened his eyes.

“History is always written by the victors. Remember: it wasn’t me receiving a Heavenly Tribulation, but the Flame Yang Domain losing its way and offending the heavens, causing its wrath to descend in the form of lightning to punish sinners… Did you get all that?”

“Yes, Master. Please be at ease. In this battle, we received aid from the heavens!” Wang Posha firmly replied.

Only then did Tang Jie allow himself to fall unconscious.