Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-475

The battle was finally over.

Scarlet Brow was dead.

He hadn't died at Tang Jie's hands, but had been devoured by numerous bean soldiers that had returned from the sky.

Perhaps because he had been fooled by Scarlet Brow's diversion, the bean king was enraged, activating "bloodlust" mode. A crimson aura spread out, greatly boosting the power of his soldiers so that they devoured this True Person alive.

As for those two cultivators who had fled, they had ultimately been slain by Yiyi and the others. But while Yiyi had brought back an intact corpse, those bean beasts had only brought back a few scraps of bone.

After this fierce battle, the bean soldiers had suffered some losses, with the bean beasts suffering the most due to their close-combat nature. There were now only two hundred of the three hundred bean beasts left.

As for the bean soldiers, there had been 150 cavalry, 100 bodyguards, and 5 generals. What remained were only 80 cavalry, 70 bodyguards, and 4 generals. The general who had died was the one who had wielded twin scimitars.

The bean king waved his hand, and the remaining soldiers and beasts assumed formation, standing on two sides of the king.

Worth noting was that the formation was completely different from before.

To the left of the king were 80 horsemen, 160 bean beasts, and the 2 generals who had been promoted from leveled soldiers.

To the right of the king were the remaining 70 bodyguards, the first 2 generals, and a small number of bean soldiers and bean beasts. Tang Jie couldn't tell the difference between the two sides.

The king ignored those on the left. He looked at the army on the right, at the two generals and the mounted soldiers. He was no longer so brimming with energy, and he now seemed very helpless and reluctant.

He waved his hand at them like a king waving at his subordinates.

Thus, the black-armored general, the white-armored general, the golden-armored guards, and the mighty beasts all prostrated, somber looks of resolve on their faces.

Tang Jie and Yiyi realized what was happening and sighed.

They watched as the king waved his hand.

There was a light gust of wind.

The two generals and seventy bodyguards dissolved into dust.

They didn't turn back into beans. Their immense power had come from drawing on their life force. The moment this state ended was the moment of their annihilation.

The few bean soldiers turned back into beans, but Tang Jie noticed that these beans were devoid of energy, clearly already dead.

As this army disappeared, the king and the army on the left all bowed to the disappearing force.

At this time, the forces on the left turned back into beans.

Tang Jie walked over and picked up a bean. He found that there was still some energy inside, indicating that the beans weren't dead yet and could be used in the future.

"So it really is like that," Tang Jie muttered. He now had a rough idea of the usage of this king.

The soldiers created by the king could recover if they were given enough time and care.

Of course, the price of recovery was that they didn't receive as much of a boost to their strength.

But this type of soldier could improve in battle. When they leveled up and were promoted to generals, they would not die.

For this reason, whether it was generals or bodyguards, they all needed to be selected from leveled soldiers. As there had been no leveled soldiers at the start, the bean king had been forced to compel promotions, which resulted in their deaths.

Besides that, using up all of one's energy in battle would also lead to death. This was the case with the few bean soldiers on the right. They hadn't died because they had overdrawn their power for promotion, but because they had used up all their energy in battle. This also meant that they had left behind "corpses".

The beans on the left also started to show differences.

The beans of the soldiers who had leveled up had a glow around them, while the beans that hadn't leveled up were much dimmer. The light of the two promoted general beans was particularly bright. This meant that when they were used in the future, they would probably still be generals.

This was an army that could grow!

Looking back at the bean king, he saw that it had also returned to being a blood bean, but it now gave off a faint aura.

It seemed like he had also gotten stronger.

Tang Jie looked at the bean's remaining energy and found that there was still quite a lot left.

Tang Jie gathered up all the beans and handed them to Yiyi. "Take good care of them."

"Mm." Yiyi nodded, solemnly putting the beans away. The battle just now had amply proved their value, and Yiyi would naturally cherish them.

Tang Jie muttered, "The third flaw is that the energy limits the time they can battle for. It seems like they can currently battle for an hour, so I suspect that the maximum time is two hours. They lack the ability to fight long battles, but as they can grow, the problem should resolve itself with time. Moreover, having them fight in waves can also temporarily solve the problem."

Even though the bean soldiers were very flawed, their strength had still opened the eyes of Tang Jie and Yiyi. For this battle, Tang Jie had used seven hundred beans, and he had ultimately gotten around half of them back. For this cost, he had defeated one Celestial Heart and four Cognitive Creation cultivators. The strength of these beans had Tang Jie deeply shaken.

This meant that if he had enough beans, he could take on multiple True Persons.

Tang Jie felt a sense of power and boldness welling up within him.

After collecting the wealth of the deceased, Tang Jie said, "Let's go and see what's happening over there."

He pointed in the direction the wolf pack had left.

There was something suspicious about that wolf pack, and Tang Jie had to go and see what was going on.

Following the trail of the wolf pack, he ventured deeper and deeper into the forest. Eventually, they arrived at a mountainous region, where the traces of the wolf pack disappeared.

This area was no longer part of the Zephyr Mountains, but of the mountain region next to it. Tang Jie hadn't expected those wolves to run this far. He looked around and said, "They should be nearby."

The vertical eye on his forehead opened and scanned the area, and a few moments later, Tang Jie found a cave nearby.

Tang Jie walked toward the cave.

The cave extended very deep, and the farther he went, the darker it became.

As he was walking, suddenly, there was a light from the sky. It turned out that he had reached the end of the cave.

When he emerged from the cave, he found himself in a valley.

It was an extremely beautiful valley, but the truly shocking thing was that a large number of fiends had gathered in the valley. Various kinds of birds flew in the sky, and tens of thousands of beasts packed the ground. These fiends had gathered in the valley as humans would gather to chat, and the entire valley was awash with noise.

Tang Jie was scared out of his wits by the immense number of fiends, but he still reacted quickly, immediately fleeing back into the cave. Otherwise, if he were found by all those fiends, there was really no saying what might happen to him.

Such a vast number, even of low-level fiends, was enough to drown him to death. Moreover, with that brief glimpse he had gotten, Tang Jie had seen several dozen Transformation fiends.

After falling back, Tang Jie had Yiyi take Shi Jingzhai and withdraw. Only then did he begin to cautiously look out.

It was very noisy in the valley, all sorts of sounds mixing together, peppered with the occasional bestial roar. Amidst these voices, Tang Jie could vaguely hear words like "Why aren't they here yet?" and "Wait a little longer."

Who were they waiting for?

Tang Jie slightly frowned.

So many fiends wouldn't have gathered for nothing. They had to be plotting something.

The fiend beasts of the Zephyr Mountains had been treated as livestock, constantly hunted by the Basking Moon Sect. Consequently, it was strange for them to conspire and resist. In the history of the Basking Moon Sect, the fiends had joined together and tried to rebel before.

But these uprisings had been nothing more than fresh meat delivered right to the doorstep of the Basking Moon Sect. It was said that each incident would have the Basking Moon Sect disciples enjoying a sumptuous feast of fiends. Even a former sect master had once said, "A fiend uprising is a result of there being too many fiends, which means that we've been protecting and nurturing the fiends very well. Since the harvest is ripe, it's time to bring it in."

This was the Basking Moon Sect's view on the matter.

This was the domineering aura of the Basking Moon Sect. In the face of absolute strength, all resistance was futile.

For this reason, a fiend uprising was both a major incident and one to celebrate, but it certainly wasn't a threat.

The only problem was that the last fiend uprising had occurred a little more than two hundred years ago. The fiends shouldn't have reached the number where they were capable of a fight.

Could it be that the Basking Moon Sect's disciples had been overly merciful in the last few decades, causing there to be more fiends than anticipated?

Tang Jie was somewhat uncertain about what was going on.

So that he could investigate the matter, Tang Jie had Yiyi retreat from the cave. This cave was one of the passages the fiends used to go in and out of the valley, so there was no guarantee that no other fiends would come through.

Putting on that stone canvas that could block Divine Will and then activating a concealment spell, Tang Jie carefully made his way into the valley.

Inside the valley, Tang Jie was able to get a clearer view of the situation.

There were at least thirty thousand fiends in the valley, and the lowest was at the lower grade of Mind Opening. This wasn't strange, as only Mind Opening fiends could communicate.

But fiends had savage and unruly natures, and there was also conflict between species, so they weren't a united whole.

For this reason, getting fiends to join together wasn't an easy task. For tens of thousands of fiends to gather here—leopards next to goats, alligators next to wildebeests, none of them fighting—the organizer had to be extremely capable.

There were several dozen passages like the one Tang Jie had taken leading into the valley, and fiends would occasionally come in through them.

Tang Jie carefully counted the Transformation great fiends and found that there were around sixty of them.

This number wasn't even enough to give the Basking Moon Sect an itch.

But this proved that the fiend numbers truly hadn't reached the peak yet, which meant that someone had intentionally gathered them.

Suddenly, the fiends grew restless.

A voice resounded, "They're here! They're here!"

Tang Jie saw a person in a black robe appearing above the valley.

Tang Jie's eyes narrowed.

This black-robed person had appeared so abruptly that Tang Jie didn't even know how he had appeared.

Someone who could avoid Tang Jie's Celestial Eye had to at least be a Heart Demon True Person skilled in spatial movement. If they weren't skilled in spatial movement, then they would need to be at Soul Transformation.

But Tang Jie could see that while this person had an impressive aura, he lacked the innate majesty of truly mighty cultivators.

Tang Jie had seen many high-tier cultivators on his journey here. Unless the other party intentionally adjusted their aura, Tang Jie would be able to easily assess a person's cultivation realm through their aura.

The black-robed person's cultivation was clearly limited. Tang Jie could sense that his cultivation level was higher than his, but not by much. However, the method by which he had appeared was so bizarre that he became suspicious.

The black-robed man raised his hands and shouted, "Silence!"

The valley instantly fell quiet, though there were some stubborn fiends that refused to stop talking.

Fiends weren't humans, and though they had intelligence, they were like teenagers in many aspects, having very little respect for things like rules. If it weren't for the fact that the black-robed man represented a formidable power, they wouldn't have cared in the slightest about him.

It was only after the black-robed man shouted "Silence" three times that the valley calmed down.

The black-robed man was furious. "A pack of know-nothings! With such boors, how can we accomplish anything great?"

"'Anything great'?" A Transformation monkey fiend sneered. "If sending ourselves to our deaths in the Zephyr Mountains is what you mean by 'anything great', then it doesn't matter if we hear what you have to say, since we'll be sending ourselves to our death regardless."

"Exactly. Little fiends like us trying to go against the Basking Moon Sect? Nothing more than a delusion!" A great din rose up from the fiends.

"That's right. If it wasn't for our Divine Division seniors, no one would care about a brat like you."

'Divine Division'?

Tang Jie was stunned by these words.

So Divine Division fiends really had come to stir up trouble?

The previous fiend uprisings had all been led by Divine Division great fiends. Without Divine Division fiends to fight against Violet Palace cultivators, how could Transformation fiends dare to leave the Zephyr Mountains? It was an absolute joke!

And there needed to be several Divine Division fiends for things to actually work.

The fiends had failed multiple times essentially because their Divine Division powers were inferior to the Basking Moon Sect.

"The problem is that even if we do have the Divine Division seniors, we have too few in the lower ranks this time," another fiend added. "With only thirty Transformation fiends, how exactly are we going to deal with the Basking Moon Sect?"

The black-robed man grunted, "Idiots! You can't deal with the Basking Moon Sect, but what about one of their halls?"

"A hall?" The fiends once more began to chatter.

"Yes, a hall! We can destroy hall after hall, and even if we can't destroy the Basking Moon Sect, we can at least destroy a part of it. The Basking Moon Sect has eighteen halls, and destroying one will weaken them. It was also make them know that we fiends are not easy to deal with!"

There was another great turmoil among the fiends.

Although these fiends had gained intelligence, intelligence was something that needed to be nurtured. Lacking education, these fiends were like adults who had never read books before. Paired with their violent natures, they became extremely easy to manipulate.

A strategy to "remove the wings" gradually took form. As for the price that needed to be paid for success, the fiends didn't even think about it.

The grand fiend conference went on for six hours, and the ultimate decision was this: attack the Basking Moon Sect.

As for which hall of the Basking Moon Sect to attack, the black-robed man decided to make the decision on the spot so that the news couldn't leak.

From the perspective of humans, this fiend conference was so chaotic that it was undoubtedly a failed one.

But from a strategic perspective, while taking six hours to make a decision was rather inefficient, at least they had successfully decided on a goal, with tens of thousands of fiends on the verge of rebellion.

From Tang Jie's perspective, this information wasn't that valuable. The Basking Moon Sect had never cared about fiend attacks. The protective formation alone was enough to give these idiotic fiends a headache. There was no possibility of launching a sneak attack on the Basking Moon Sect.

But outside of that, Tang Jie felt like there was another layer of conspiracy here.

For some reason, he found the matter suspicious.

As he looked at that black-robed man giving an impassioned speech, his eyes turned grave.

He began to withdraw through the cave.