Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-384-30041322

Once a battle began, stopping it was not easy.

The exposure of his private dealings, the questions from Liang and Yu, and the accidental killing of Liang Jun had left Shi Jingzhai consumed by his wrath. Now that he saw that the situation was like this, he suddenly had an idea: Liang Xingbang and Yu Wanniang are both heavily injured, so they're no match for me in terms of strength. Why don't I just kill them?

Kill them and take their wealth for himself!

The moment this idea took root in Shi Jingzhai's mind, it began to rapidly grow.

As his murderous intent swelled, the surge of spiritual energy wtihin his body grew stronger and stronger. With a shake of his hand, he summoned an earth dragon that attacked Liang Xingbang's wind dragon. The earth dragon obliterated the wind dragon and swung its claws at the other two, creating powerful gales with its movements.

"Senior Brother, you…" Yu Wanniang was the first to realize that something was wrong with Shi Jingzhai.

While they had just been acting on emotion at the start, only using ordinary spell arts, Shi Jingzhai was no longer acting on emotion. He was really trying to kill them.

"All of you must die!" Shi Jingzhai laughed. He suddenly tossed out some beans, shouting, "Sow the beans!"

The beans flashed with a special light. When they hit the ground, they immediately drilled into the earth.

"Become soldiers!" Shi Jingzhai roared.

A moment later, countless tiny people emerged, each one the size of a palm. They wore green armor and wielded steel sabers, and they had rather cute appearances. The moment they appeared, they charged at Liang and Yu with a cry, and one of them even lunged at Tang Jie. It was clear that Shi Jingzhai had no plans of letting him go.

Tang Jie was unconcerned, falling back and thrusting out a palm to push back the bean soldier. Most transformed objects like this small soldier had limited strength.

But a moment later, the bean soldier jumped, swiftly dodging Tang Jie's palm blast. Spinning in the air, it shot toward Tang Jie.

Caught off guard, Tang Jie hastily stepped back and chopped at the bean soldier with the Heartbreak Saber.

This attack had mustered up ninety percent of his strength, and while he hadn't used Energy-Blood Simulflow, the strength of the Jewel Body was not something an ordinary person could take. Logically, this attack should have destroyed the bean soldier.

Surprisingly, the bean soldier struck back with its saber. Bang! The bean soldier was sent flying back several dozen meters. It spun end over end before stopping, its head swaying as if it had been dizzied by the clash.

It looked at Tang Jie, clear rage on its face. Pointing at Tang Jie, it babbled as if it had intelligence, leaving Tang Jie dumbfounded.

The bean soldier once more charged at Tang Jie from the air, moving so fast that it left behind a wake. Tang Jie hastily raised his saber to block.

There was a thunderous bang, and in this clash, Tang Jie was pushed back several steps. Although the bean soldier was knocked back again, it simply shook its head in the air as if it was dizzy. It clearly wasn't dead and was still capable of fighting.

Sure enough, it once more shot at Tang Jie like a spinning top.

Those in the sky were stunned by the incredible power in this small bean soldier.

Wei Tianchong blurted out, "This pea is that powerful?"

He was so disconcerted that he had ended up calling a bean a "pea", but nobody was concerned with that at the moment, simply nodding along.

Bei Canghan had a grave expression. "This is no ordinary spell art. Shi Jingzhai probably bought it with his stolen goods that we didn't manage to dig up."

"He didn't use it against Wang Juemie, but he uses it against his own junior disciples. Sure enough, savage to one's own and helpless against outsiders," someone said in disdain.

Bei Canghan rejected the idea. "Not at all. Wang Juemie has an extremely tough body, and while there are many of these bean soldiers, and their attacks are fierce, they're still lacking against Wang Juemie. If they were used against him, he would probably crush them one by one. While this technique is good, it's not invincible. Wang Juemie counters them perfectly."

"He counters most spell arts," another person said.

Everyone's hearts sank at these words. Wang Juemie was far more threatening than these three True Persons that Tang Jie had easily incited against each other, for he was never alone, and he never stopped advancing.

Wei Tianchong didn't seem to care. Curling his lip, he said, "Didn't he still suffer in Tang Jie's hand? Tang Jie was his counter."

These words instantly made everyone relax. Yes, they had their own genius.

Down below, the battle continued.

Hundreds of bean soldiers crazily attacked Liang and Yu like fearless warriors. They jumped through the air, ramming into the pair like spinning tops.

Wind dragons writhed while slender hands trembled as Liang and Yu used their best spell arts. The battle was officially two versus one, but it was somehow Shi Jingzhai that had the upper hand.

Whether it was in terms of degree of injury or newly-obtained secret arts, Shi Jingzhai was stronger than the other two.

As he swung around his sole arm, he seemed to grow stronger and stronger. He shouted, "Junior Brother, Junior Sister, what do you think of my Sowed Bean Soldiers? Children, blood-sucking form!"

Hiss! The hundreds of bean soldiers threw their heads back and hissed, and their faces began to twist and distort. These cute and amusing bean soldiers had suddenly turned savage.

The bean soldier in front of Tang Jie also went through this transformation. Its body grew slightly taller, and its green armor disappeared, to be replaced by numerous scales. Fangs grew from its mouth, and its little arms and legs bulged with muscle, making it appear like some juvenile beast. Tang Jie was stunned and backed away, blurting out, "Holy shit! They have a second form!"

"Kill them!" Shi Jingzhai bellowed.

The transformed bean soldiers charged.

They were a little slower than before, but they seemed more solid as well.

As Tang Jie swung his saber, the bean soldier raised a hand to block. Rather than being knocked away, it held fast as if it was rooted to the ground.

Yes, it really did have roots extending from its feet into the ground.

Tang Jie saw numerous vines sprouting from its feet and tightly holding to the ground, preventing it from being knocked away.

"This is…" Tang Jie was alarmed.

The bean soldier bared its teeth and lunged at Tang Jie.

It swung its saber, and Tang Jie raised his saber to block. To his surprise, the bean soldier threw aside its weapon and grabbed Tang Jie's leg, taking a bite from it.

"Fuck!" Tang Jie cursed.

Fortunately, he hadn't been careless and had activated the Formless Golden Body. The bean soldier's teeth seemed capable of devouring steel, biting away at his skin with a great clatter. In just a few bites, Tang Jie could feel that his Formless Golden Body was on the verge of being broken.

Tang Jie realized that the purpose of the bean soldier's second form was to stick close to the enemy, and the saber was just a diversion. Biting at people like a maddened beast was their unique combat style, and their teeth were astonishingly hard.

Tang Jie was better off, as he was only dealing with one, but Liang and Yu were dealing with a large number and were instantly on the back foot. The hundreds of bean soldiers lunged out, hugging legs, arms, and faces, stabbing with their sabers and biting with their teeth. In the blink of an eye, these two were all green, and blood was constantly leaking out from the mass of green as the two howled in pain.

Yu Wanniang grabbed a bean soldier in each hand and squeezed. She had mustered more than half her strength in this attack, True Essence bursting out. Those two bean soldiers were instantly obliterated, but the remaining bean soldiers howled in rage at the death of their comrades and bit down even harder.

Tang Jie could clearly feel the bean soldier biting on him suddenly getting a little stronger.

Shit, they can also get enraged.

The hand that was just about to crush it to death immediately went stiff. He instead grabbed the bean soldier on the back like it was a crab, letting it flail around in the air but not killing it.

Yu Wanniang was drenched in blood from all the bites she had suffered, and she wailed, "Senior Brother, Senior Brother, hurry and save me!"

Shi Jingzhai laughed. "Your Senior Brother Liang can hardly save himself, let alone you!"

Yu Wanniang ignored him, continuing to frantically yell while crushing bean soldiers. But this only made the bean soldiers more savage. Tang Jie saw that Yu Wanniang was already blind in one eye and had had her nose bitten off. Her beautiful face had been left covered in wounds in a chilling sight.

Yu Wanniang was still shouting, "Senior Brother, save me! Save me!"

Meanwhile, Liang Xingbang was in no state to help. He was entirely relying on the Astral Wind barrier around him to survive. The Astral Wind howled with a metallic clatter, but the bean soldiers continued to fearlessly lunge. And Shi Jingzhai was continuing to sow more bean soldiers to refill their ranks. With each sowing, his face would wince in pain. There was clearly something special about these beans.

Liang Xingbang could still hold on, but Yu Wanniang was about to give out.

She had killed several dozen bean soldiers, but more bean soldiers and Shi Jingzhai's attacks were wearing her down.

She had lost both eyes now, and there wasn't an untouched part of her body. She still wasn't dead and was continuing to mumble as all the bean soldiers gnawed away at her, "Senior Brother, save me…"

Tang Jie frowned. He finally couldn't help but say, "Your senior brother can't save you. He's barely keeping himself safe."

His words entered Yu Wanniang's ears, and she trembled, crying out, "'Keeping himself safe'… You've thrown me away… thrown me away… No…"

Her voice suddenly grew louder, into a piercing shriek.

As she shrieked, her body suddenly erupted with a blinding light.

The light was more blinding than the sun, explosively radiating outward.

"Celestial Heart detonation!?" Shi Jingzhai paled and began to retreat.

He pointed at Yu Wanniang and barked, "Block her!"

He bit on his finger and pointed at the earth. A giant stone wall emerged from the ground.

A moment later, there was a massive boom, and Shi Jingzhai's stone wall was blasted into two pieces. In that dazzling light, countless bean soldiers wailed and died.

The aftershocks swept out, and everything in every direction was basically flattened, with only the area blocked by Shi Jingzhai's stone wall faring somewhat better.

To tell the truth, this Celestial Heart self-detonation was far weaker than Xu Muyang's.

This was partially because Yu Wanniang had been much weaker than Xu Muyang, and partially because Yu Wanniang was exhausted from battle while Xu Muyang had detonated in peak condition, so the effect had naturally been much better. Even so, the level of damage was stunning.

Half of Cloudmouth had been destroyed. Thankfully, the mortals had realized that something bad was going to happen when the battle started and had left long ago, so there were no casualties.

Where Yu Wanniang had been was now a crater with a diameter of twenty-some meters.

Spirit rain fell over the earth, together with strips of cloth, but there was no sign of Yu Wanniang's body.

Tang Jie knew… she no longer existed.

Not far from the crater lay another figure.

Liang Xingbang.

He was still alive, but the explosion had worsened his injuries, and he probably wasn't going to get up again.

Yu Wanniang's self-detonation had killed off all the bean soldiers on his body, but Liang Xingbang no longer had the ability to fight.

He lay there, looking at Shi Jingzhai with fear in his eyes.

He said in a trembling voice, "Don't kill me… Junior Brother… Junior Brother…"

Shi Jingzhai coldly looked at him. "Fourth Sister is already gone, so what's the point in you living on? In any case, your son is already dead, so aren't you afraid of being lonely? You could self-detonate too. I'll give you a chance. You might even injure me."

"Might even injure you"?

How could he possibly injure you?

Tang Jie inwardly grumbled, You're not even going to get within one hundred feet of him, and with his injuries, he wouldn't be able to produce even half the power of Yu Wanniang.

Liang Xingbang looked in despair at Shi Jingzhai. Suddenly, he jumped off the ground. "I'll kill you!"

Two bolts of lightning shot out from his baby hands.

Shi Jingzhai was just about to dodge when Liang Xingbang's eyes released a ray of light.

A Divine Will attack!

This Divine Will attack had concentrated all of Liang Xingbang's strength, but he was already greatly exhausted, and Shi Jingzhai had cultivated a Spirit Will. While this was still lacking compared to a Divine Will, it conferred enough resistance that he didn't die. Even so, this attack instantly made him go cross-eyed, his head seized by a migraine while blood flowed from his nose.

His barrier flickered, and two lightning snakes penetrated through the barrier and into his body.

"Armorbreak Gale Snakes?" Shi Jingzhai cried out in fear. "So you were also…"

Liang Xingbang loudly laughed. "Yes, I was also embezzling! Since I was keeping the goods safe, how could I not take a little for myself? You have to pluck a feather from a passing goose, let alone a fortune like this. But the two of you were too calculating, so no matter how hard I tried, I was only able to get a little. Even so, it was enough for me to have a little back-up plan. What do you think about my Armorbreak Gale Snakes? Not bad, right? Hahahaha!"

Armorbreak Gale Snakes were extremely bizarre existences, somewhere between beasts and objects.

They were originally fiend snakes that lived out in the wilderness. They moved as quickly as lightning and had the Wind attribute. Cultivators captured them and refined them into magic items, creating the special item known as Armorbreak Gale Snakes.

The most terrifying aspect of these items was their ability to ignore all magical barriers and strike at the actual body. As for their power once they had burrowed into the body, that depended on the skill of the refiner.

This object was the bane of cultivators, but alas, it was no good against Wang Juemie. Armorbreak Gale Snakes couldn't penetrate through the defenses of a Dao armament, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to do too much damage to Wang Juemie. This was because he never relied on magic barriers, only on his formidable constitution.

But for Shi Jingzhai, these snakes were horrifying. He immediately felt like ten thousand ants were drilling into his heart.

"Poison?" he yelled. He swiftly took out a pill and swallowed it.

"Yes, venomous Gale Snakes. Shi Jingzhai, even if you have an antidote pill, you'll find it very hard to neutralize the poison of my Gale Snakes. I will wait for you under the Nine Springs!" Once Liang Xingbang said this, his legs flew up, and he dropped dead to the ground. The venomous Gale Snake attack had used up the last of his strength, so he died without any need for Shi Jingzhai to do anything.

As for self-detonation, his spiritual energy did not burst out all at once, and he did not form a large-scale spirit rain. There were simply a few gusts of wind, and his spiritual energy ended up seeping back into the earth in a gentler manner. As for his body, it rapidly began to change, first growing old, and then shriveling up into a desiccated corpse.

This was because he was already old, and now that he had lost his spirituality, his body was returning to its original form.

In comparison, body refiners who fused spirit into their blood would keep their bodies intact even after death, and their spirituality was not easily lost. But this wasn't a good thing, for this meant that one's corpse was more liable to be made into some magic object…

Tang Jie looked at Liang Xingbang's corpse as if he was in a trance. While he was lost in thought, the bean soldier in his hand continued to struggle and jabber… It had become the last survivor.

Tang Jie handed it to Yiyi and then turned to Shi Jingzhai.

Shi Jingzhai was still neutralizing the poison. His face was still twitching as he looked at Liang Xingbang's corpse and laughed, "Dead! Finally, they're all dead! Wonderful! With your deaths, these goods are all mine! Mine!"

He erupted in laughter.

And then he suddenly realized something, his eyes growing wide.

The Celestial Heart explosion had basically flattened Cloudmouth, and those wagons had naturally been destroyed as well, their contents exposed.

Shi Jingzhai hadn't noticed earlier, but he now discovered that only a minority of the contents were Goldite and Icestone Bamboo. Most of it was just rocks.

"Rocks? What's going on?" Shi Jingzhai shrieked.

He rushed over and stomped one of the rocks to pieces, but it was just a rock. There was nothing inside.

There was no disguise. It was a plain rock. The forty-some wagons had mostly been loaded with nothing but rocks. Only the top layer had been the actual goods.

How could that be?

Shi Jingzhai was utterly baffled.

The three of them had personally watched as the goods were loaded and Liang Jun left with them, and only then did they escort the other caravan to meet with Wang Juemie.

Why?

Why had the goods in the wagons gone missing?

He suddenly realized something and began to look around the giant crater.

"Mustard Seed Bag… Where are the Mustard Seed Bags?" he muttered as he looked around.

Even if the Mustard Seed Bags had been destroyed, the goods should have come out.

Finally, he found the Mustard Seed Bags in the crater, but when he opened them up, he froze in shock. "Nothing… How?"

He rushed up to Liang Xingbang and opened up his Mustard Seed Bag, upon which he sighed in relief. Sitting down on the ground, he said, "It's okay… it's okay… Second Brother's is still here. But… where did Fourth Sister's go? And where did the goods in the crates go? Where did they all go!?"

He threw his head back and howled.