Aspiring to the Immortal Path

The battle over the Gigantes Domain was still going on.

Queen Sinflower and the North Sea Divine Lord were basically a match made in heaven if one wanted to stall for time, able to fight until the heavens themselves grew old.

Immortal and demonic arts flew here and there, obliterating everything in their path and leaving only an empty void.

Two figures stood in that emptiness, one black and one blue, both of them surrounded by a mighty ocean. Each clash would send up enormous waves that would sweep away anything in the surrounding area.

The magnitude of their clashes was so great that the spectators had no choice but to keep retreating until more than half of the Gigantes Domain had been ceded to these two Titans as their stage.

But while this battle was of epic proportions, even the most incredible of battles would cease to be exciting after it had gone on for several dozen days. The spectators grew numb to the spectacle, and terrifying power ceased to hold any terror. Some of them even began to run commentary.

“Oh, what a pity! He was a little too slow, letting Queen Sinflower escape. If that blow had struck true, that devil would have been a pretty sight.”

“What do you understand? When Titans exchange blows, you can’t measure their performance based on singular exchanges,” another person immediately replied with scorn.

“You’re no better, your observations still restricted to their moves. Titans no longer consider themselves with moves. What matters to them are momentum, form, and will.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, one of those people who still care about momentum. In this everchanging world, the Great Dao always takes precedence.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Great Daos are not so easily comprehended, and there are even Gold Immortals who have failed to comprehend a Dao Art. Don’t you know that the higher you go, the more difficult it is to comprehend Great Daos?”

“That isn’t a certainty. Didn’t that Venerable Miaoyuan only comprehend a Dao after ascending to True Immortal?”

“That was just good luck, and they still ended up being beaten up by that ghost Demon Lord.”

“That ghost Demon Lord didn’t come out much better, with half of its body blown up.”

The arguments went back and forth.

Naturally, most of their opinions were wrong, and the occasional correct one was drowned in the sea of errors.

But this wasn’t important. What was important was that the eyes of the cultivators had been opened by witnessing this protracted battle of True Immortals, even their mindsets growing stronger. This sort of experience wouldn’t immediately make them stronger, but it raised their potential and gave them a clear vision of their future and a direction to advance, which was of great help to their cultivation.

Of course, discussing Titans in this way was extremely audacious. Many of the Immortals among both the humans and the demons were at the level of speak-not, think-not, which was all the more effective at such a close distance. Hearing all this commentary concerning them, particularly no small share of criticism, had them furious.

That ghost Demon Lord, hearing all of this slander against himself, furiously glared at the Rosecloud Domain cultivators.

This single glance was suffused with boundless power.

In another domain, the angry glare of a True Immortal was enough to create rivers of blood.

But in the Rosecloud Domain, all it drew was scoffs.

A hand came down, slapping the ghost Demon Lord and sending him tumbling over.

“Tang Jie!” The ghost Demon Lord angrily glared up at the sky.

“You dare attack my people? You aren’t my son, so I have no need to watch myself around you,” Tang Jie coolly said. “Moreover, if you dare to address me with such disrespect again, I’ll have your life, and not even your master will be able to save you!”

His words were simple but brooked no objection, and the ghost Demon Lord was cowed into silence.

As Tang Jie drew back his hand, Xu Miaoran said, “It’s just a ghost Demon Lord. There was no need for you to personally intervene.”

Tang Jie shook his head. “That’s exactly why I had to intervene.”

After a momentary surprise, Xu Miaoran said in realization, “He did it on purpose?”

Tang Jie nodded. “To dare provoke me with a greater foe present, it should be because Nine Disaster can’t relax and wanted to test me and see if the Rosecloud Domain was hiding some kind of power.”

Ghost Demon Lords were known for their unfathomable attacks that were difficult to defend against, and the attack had been aimed at a low-level cultivator in the crowd with such abruptness that even a True Immortal might not have been able to stop it in time. If the Rosecloud Domain had some other hidden force and Tang Jie was too aloof to intervene personally, this hidden force might have been forced out.

But Tang Jie had immediately noticed how suspicious this attack was and intercepted the ghost Demon Lord.

“This Nine Disaster is really too cautious,” Xu Miaoran muttered.

“But it also implies something else.”

“What?”

“Ice Phoenix is probably going to get here soon.”

Although the Court of Myriad Domains and the two Demon Sovereigns were both stalling, this didn’t mean that they had all agreed to operate on the same schedule.

This time, the Primordial Fog had brought reinforcements faster than the court.

“So quickly?” Xu Miaoran frowned.

Finding a path from Confusionem to the Gigantes Domain was no easy task, and Ice Phoenix wasn’t so capable as to accomplish it in several dozen days.

Tang Jie indifferently replied, “If Immortal Ji Yao was involved, then it’s not surprising at all.”

“‘Immortal Ji Yao’?” Xu Miaoran was shaken by this name.

She was also joining this war?

“When are they getting here?” Xu Miaoran asked.

After some thought, Tang Jie replied, “The moment the Primordial Fog demons begin their general assault is when the reinforcements from God Phoenix Palace arrive.”

“If that’s the case, the Immortal Emperor is in danger!”

Tang Jie couldn’t help but laugh. “A mere yellow oriole trying to eat an elephant…”

Tang Jie’s voice abruptly turned cold. “Simply suicidal.”

On the battlefield, the drums thundered ever more loudly as if to announce the coming storm.

__________________________________________________

As Tang Zixi got up from the floor, she felt like her body had fallen apart.

With her cultivation, she had not felt such fragility in a long time.

But this wasn’t even the worst of it. As she rose, she instinctively circulated her energy to inspect herself, upon which she tragically learned that the backlash had thrown her Time Dao power into a turbulent state, on the verge of going berserk.

The powers of the Great Daos were created from the laws of the world, so they rarely did this. This state meant that she was currently in a very complicated situation.

Tang Zixi tried to use her Time power, but when she tried to use only a tiny bit, a great flood of berserk power rampaged, trying to rip her from the present and send her to some other moment in time, causing Tang Zixi to stop in alarm.

It was fortunate that her cautious personality had caused her to start small, but only that little bit required her a long time to finally calm down.

Her Time Dao power had been rendered useless for the moment.

Sighing, Tang Zixi wondered when it would recover, or even if it would recover.

The Dao of Time was her foundation, and now that it had been crippled, Tang Zixi felt downcast.

Who could have expected investigating a Buddhist text to result in this?

Now that she thought about it, it was rather strange. Reversing Time and influencing the past was normally effective only over brief spans of time. It should have been theoretically impossible to influence something from ten thousand years ago.

Let alone ten thousand years, anyone who could use the Dao of Time to influence something one year ago would be invincible.

Tang Zixi, who had entered the Dao of Time, could only influence something that had happened several hours ago, and that was with using all her strength, after which she would need half a year to recover.

In normal battles, Tang Zixi kept track in seconds.

“So strange,” Tang Zixi muttered.

“Sister, are you okay?” Pureheart said as he moved to help Tang Zixi up.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Tang Zixi answered.

While it seemed like quite some time had passed, Tang Zixi knew that only an instant had passed in reality. In Pureheart’s view, it probably just seemed like she had used the Dao Will of Time to restore the text and then abruptly staggered. So she said, “I just expended a little too much when using the Dao Will of Time to restore the book.”

Tang Zixi waved the book in her hand as she spoke.

And then she froze.

She saw that the book in her hand was glowing.

Upon closer inspection, it was apparent that the light was from various Time Dao Runes.

A Dao armament!

Tang Zixi would have shouted if Pureheart hadn’t been right next to her.

This “Inquiries to the Buddha” had been imprinted with the Great Dao and become a Dao armament!

How could that be?

It had to be understood that Dao armaments were not humans. As inanimate objects, they couldn’t comprehend or transform, so power could only be impressed onto them by force. Thus, any Dao armament required a divine treasure as its base so that it could take the brand of a Great Dao without being destroyed. Even then, many divine treasures had been destroyed because they hadn’t met the grade and broke under the weight of the Great Dao.

This Buddhist text had just been an ordinary book, so how could it bear the Dao of Time?

And it was clear from the complexity of the Dao Runes that it had been imbued with a great deal of Dao power and was a high-tier Dao armament.

Tang Zixi was stunned.

Before her shock could dissipate, Pureheart casually said, “Using a little Dao Will of Time was able to completely exhaust the Time Dao power of someone who entered the Dao? Sister Zixi, don’t you find that explanation too unreasonable? Or does Sister think that a little monk like Pureheart is that easy to fool?”

“What?” Tang Zixi was flabbergasted. This wasn’t how Pureheart usually spoke.

She turned and saw Pureheart starting to chuckle.

In the light of the book, his face began to distort, and his aura also began to turn sinister and cold.

And then his body began to grow and swell, as if some monster was threatening to burst out of its shell.

“A demon?” Tang Zixi stepped back, her face darkening.

That novice Pureheart was a demon in hiding?

As Pureheart’s power grew greater and greater, his face became one that Tang Zixi was familiar with.

The Nine Disaster Fiend Monk!