Aspiring to the Immortal Path

“AAAAGH!” A devil wailed as he was pulverized by Tang Jie’s palm.

Even though he instantly revived, that endless sea of terrifying power swept over him again, annihilating him in the space of a second…

At this moment, the demon territory was awash in demonic energy.

But to the shock of all the demons, Tang Jie seemed to grow more and more fearless the more he fought, despite being surrounded.

That giant hand clenched into a fist and punched out, obliterating another devil, and then with another punch, he unleashed a blast of energy like a radiant sun, pushing back three devils. He then turned around and let out a torrent of energy that blocked the attacks of ten-some devils. There were no Divine Connections used here, only his prodigious will and immense strength.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

With another four punches, he knocked back three Demon Lords and blew up a devil, causing black demonic energy to fill the skies.

Just when Tang Jie was about to attack again, he sensed danger and abruptly punched out behind him without even looking.

The blast from the punch vanished without a sound, and a darkness crept out and began to devour Tang Jie’s arm. A savage face formed from the black fog, Libido howling in anger, “You’ve had enough fun!”

To be more precise, this was his first time truly taking action. With this move, Tang Jie’s right arm was immersed in endless darkness that rendered it immobile. A chewing sound could be heard from the darkness, as if something was gnawing away at it.

Tang Jie shook his arm, and power flowed through it, but this time, he could not banish the darkness. Even though he was empowered by core energy, Libido was still an Archdemon Lord, and the darkness clung onto his arm, the chewing intensifying. The surge of energy Tang Jie had sent in had become food for the demon in the darkness, and it even shrieked:

“Delicious, delicious! More, more!”

The sound grew noisier, indicating that there was more than one.

The devils charged in again.

Of the several dozen devils, the strongest were the three Lesser Demon Lords.

One had four pairs of arms, eight eyes, a head with two horns, and a towering physique. His name was Logi.

One was like a dark gale, ethereal and difficult to catch. His name was Windfang.

One was a lionheaded being with three wings growing from his back and a giant maw that could devour all life. His name was Wano.

These three Lesser Demon Lords were all at the True Immortal level. While they weren’t as terrifying as Libido, their strength was still extraordinary.

With one of Tang Jie’s arms bound, the three Demon Lords pounced.

Logi flailed his eight arms, each one like a heaven-bearing pillar descending—Celestial Iron Arms!

Windfang spat out a sinister dark gale infused with the Great Dao. This was a gate to darkness opened by the Dao of Destruction: the Oblivion Gale!

Wano opened his mouth wide and spat out thousands of demons, each one a savage existence around the Transformation level. There were tens of thousands of them, all of them skilled at combination attacks—the Unstoppable Legion!

Such was the grandeur of the three Lesser Demon Lords that they outshone all the other devils. A devil excitedly crowed:

“Die! Die!”

They all looked forward to seeing Tang Jie in agony.

Tang Jie sneered. “You want to kill me with just this? You’re still far from it. Oh well, let me show you what it means to experience true terror. My perfect body, reveal your power!”

As he roared, a cracking sound came from his body.

The complete power of the perfect body was unleashed, physical strength fusing with Immortal power at the molecular level. Although it was only a part, the energy unleashed was explosive. But this was not enough, as Tang Jie produced a miniature black hole.

This black hole was only the size of his palm at first, but it grew larger and larger, emitting a soul-shaking terror as it rotated.

“What is this?”

A devil cried out in alarm.

The black hole in his hand grew larger and larger, soon reaching his chest.

The Celestial Iron Arms arrived, striking the black hole in front of Tang Jie’s chest. The black hole twisted and churned, and the eight arms exploded in a cloud of blood as Logi cried out in pain. This blood rained down on the Yellow Court World, creating a sea of pollution and decay on its soil.

The Oblivion Gale blew, leaving silence in its wake. But Tang Jie simply pushed the black hole forward, and the gale disappeared into its depths. Windfang froze for a moment, and then he let out a shriek as his ethereal body blew apart and then came back together.

While Logi and Windfang had been defeated in a somewhat incomprehensible way, Wano lost in a much simpler fashion.

The black hole in Tang Jie’s hand rapidly expanded, devouring all in its path, and that Unstoppable Legion charged straight in, to be ground to death by the black hole before they could even do anything.

“My babies!” Wano cried out in grief.

He was the only Lesser Demon Lord to be uninjured, but he had paid the gravest price. These tens of thousands of demons had taken much effort to raise. Each one he had swallowed and nurtured with his own blood, but now, they had been chewed up into tiny bits.

Even the devils were touched by the black hole. Those who reacted quickly were able to instantly travel hundreds of kilometers within the Yellow Court World, but those who reacted too slowly were ground to bits and then revived from nothingness.

With one strike, ten-some of the twenty-some devils had been slain. The remainder had barely managed to escape its range, but they had paid an immense price to do so.

The expanding black hole also threatened Demon Lord Libido.

Though reluctant, Libido released Tang Jie’s arm with an angry grunt and instantly teleported away.

Just what was this terrifying move?

The demons were stunned.

This was the special black hole created in the unique circumstances of the Heavenly Tribulation Tang Jie had experienced after his battle with the Rootless Tree Ancestor. After four hundred years, he had developed it into a supreme Immortal Art.

This was the first Immortal Art that Tang Jie had created. The power of the lightning tribulation having imbued it with a world-destroying might, he called it the World Devourer.

Its power exceeded that of many Dao Arts.

This wasn’t to say that the World Devourer transcended Dao Arts. Rather, it was due to the fundamental difference between Immortal Arts, Dao Arts, and Divine Connections.

Dao Arts had the Great Dao as their core. Their greatest strength was their priority, their absoluteness. They could be considered an external cheat, able to exist independently but more frequently attached to something else to be put to use. In the battle against the Void Whale, Yu Cheng had used the Great Daos to support his Immortal Arts and display a prodigious power.

Divine Connections and spell arts used spiritual energy as their primary source of power, and all manifestations were created from spiritual energy. Thus, they had a logic to them, and there existed no Divine Connection or spell art that did not have some rational underlying principle. Dao Arts could be unreasonable, for they were cheats, existing to break the rules. But breaking the rules didn’t mean that one was the strongest, and Dao Arts were not valued based on their sheer might. Among the Dao armaments, there were many that were powerful despite lacking any combat ability, like the Eternity Sarcophagus, the Imperial Sky Stamp, the Treasure Paradise, and Divine Genesis.

Immortal Arts used Immortal energy as their core. Immortal energy was not a natural product of the world, but something artificially created by Immortals through the condensing of spiritual energy. Thus, Immortal Arts relied entirely on the self to use. Thus, while Immortal Arts were thousands of times stronger than Divine Connections, they also cost thousands of times more than Divine Connections. An Immortal could cast several dozen Divine Connections in a single breath, but this was not at all the case for Immortal Arts. The World Devourer had consumed 5% of Tang Jie’s Immortal energy reserves.

His attack having worked, Tang Jie drew back his right arm. In this time, his right arm had been devoured down to the bone, and, most shockingly of all, Tang Jie had not realized this until now.

“As expected of the Insidious Demon Lord,” Tang Jie muttered.

Demon Lord Libido was known among the Archdemon Lords as the Insidious Demon Lord, which referred to his sinister and treacherous methods.

Tang Jie had seemed so powerful before not because all those devils together were no match for him, but because Libido had not been using his full power that entire time. The Insidious Demon Lord enjoyed furtively striking with moves so powerful that one wouldn’t even know how one was killed.

Tang Jie’s right arm was a good example. A few moments of being restrained had caused half of it to be gnawed down to almost nothing.

Libido chuckled. “Mm, delicious! Such dense energy! It was only part of your arm, but it increased my cultivation by an entire percentage! If I can eat you up entirely, I might be able to reach completion and perhaps even ascend into Gold Immortal! Hahaha! You really are a treasure bag! No one has ever caused me to grow stronger by so much! Wonderful, wonderful!”

As the darkness retreated, the chewing sound grew even louder.

Tang Jie looked at his arm and found that he couldn’t regrow the parts of his arm that Libido had eaten, that they had been permanently consumed. In other words, if Libido ate him all up, he would die a true death instead of reviving as Immortals normally would.

This was not the power of Destruction, but another kind of terrifying power. When his arm was devoured, the regenerative ability of the arm was devoured with it, which was why Libido was able to grow so much stronger.

Tang Jie calmly said, “Part of my arm to heavily injure all those Demon Lords and devils is very worth it to me. Let’s consider it a draw.”

But he was thinking to himself, I manifested the Yellow Court World, used core energy to empower myself, unleashed the power of my perfect body, and even used my strongest move, but this was only a tie! These devils really are powerful. Outnumbered like this, it’s going to be very difficult for me to win!