Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-557

The trade talks went very smoothly.

As Tang Jie was now Ling Xiao's disciple, and because the Basking Moon Sect had also been very tolerant with regards to Tang Jie's ownership of the Martial Lord's hidden realm, Tang Jie decided to return the favor and let the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion have some equity.

As for the actual form of this equity: on the Rosecloud Domain side, the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion would be responsible for all the additional funds, and they were also responsible for the selling and buying of goods. Finally, the Space Crystal was retained by Tang Jie, on the excuse of being needed to set up the teleportation formation, and officially "used up". And in terms of function, the Space Crystal truly was the best material for a teleportation formation.

As investors, the two sects got half of the Rosecloud Domain profit. Meanwhile, Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran took all of the profit from the Blood River Domain side.

With the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion putting in money and Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran providing the channel, the trade between two domains was established.

For Tang Jie, the greatest advantage wasn't just the solving of his capital problems, but also the tying of two major sects to his side. The bonds of profit were always the firmest, and this relationship ensured that the Basking Moon Sect would always be his strongest backer, and it would also save him the criticism of taking everything for himself.

For the same reason, he had now entered the eyes of the upper echelons of Horizon Ocean Pavilion. Everyone knew that this deal would have had nothing to do with Horizon Ocean Pavilion if not for Xu Miaoran.

Now that Tang Jie had been taken as a disciple of Ling Xiao, his status was on par with Xu Miaoran's, so Xu Guanghua tacitly accepted their relationship.

Originally, the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion wanted to send some experts over to the Blood River Domain to "help Tang Jie maintain his foundation on the other side", but Tang Jie had tactfully refused. In the future, he might be able to accept the people from the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion stepping into the Blood River Domain, but not now.

To ensure safety, Tang Jie made another two teleportation formations to link up the Spirit Mountains so that he didn't need to go through Nadir Hill to access them. Unless Godhead Palace suddenly went crazy and activated its Heaven-Earth Lock Formation to cut off space again, Tang Jie would be able to freely travel in and out of Nadir Hill.

Three days later, Tang Jie took the first batch of goods into the teleportation formation, and through two more teleportations, he brought them into the Blood River Domain.

Two hours later, these goods appeared on the counter of Warm Heart Market. The payment of more than ten million blackstone coins emptied Warm Heart Market of funds, along with a large number of its goods.

Another two hours later, the goods from Warm Heart Market were teleported to the Rosecloud Domain, where they were divided into two shipments and sent to the Basking Moon Sect and Horizon Ocean Pavilion.

In the space of only four short hours, a transaction worth more than ten million was complete, and Tang Jie easily made millions in profit.

If it weren't for the fact that both sides needed time to digest these goods, Tang Jie could make several trips a day and make tens of millions in profit.

This number was big enough to even scare True Lords.

But it was the inevitable result of a monopoly.

Going between the Blood River Domain and the Rosecloud Domain was no easy task, and even Immortal Platform Titans could only expend great quantities of energy to travel between them, and their costs were clearly greater than those of a teleportation formation. As for establishing a teleportation formation between two domains, it had been done before, just not to the Blood River Domain. But it had already been proved that establishing a teleportation formation between two domains had greater starting costs and greater maintenance costs over other methods, so the profits from this were limited.

Once Tang Jie brought the Rosecloud Domain's goods to the Blood River Domain again, rather than selling all of the goods, he bought a store and hired workers, officially opening the Rosecloud Store.

He had already decided to let Xian Tao and Hong Yuan run the store.

These two maids had been through life and death with Xu Miaoran, and though their strength was limited, they had long ago proved their loyalty and reliability. Xian Tao was mature and composed, making her perfect for managing the store. Hong Yuan had a more temperamental personality, but she was clever and sharp, so she was responsible for delivering the goods, freeing Tang Jie from having to do it himself.

Although it was a store, it still mostly dealt in wholesale, working with big customers. Rather than Tang Jie going personally to Warm Heart Market to hawk goods, the wholesale transactions would be held in the store instead.

In order to ensure the outgoing rate of the goods, Tang Jie would always bring in different goods each time. This meant that his profits would have highs and lows, but it also meant that the goods were bought much more quickly. This was especially true at the start, so that Tang Jie was making up to five trips a day, the value of the transactions almost hitting one hundred million.

This was a rather frightening number, and even the City of Freedom wasn't able to consume so many goods all at once.

The Rosecloud Domain was somewhat better. While it lacked a supermassive marketplace like the City of Freedom, the tentacles of the two major sects reached everywhere. They couldn't sell everything through one area, but through their numerous subordinates, they could deliver the countless goods to wherever they wanted.

This allowed them to consume all the goods with the strength of an entire domain.

As for Tang Jie, the ability of the Blood River to consume was limited by the ability of the City of Freedom to consume, so after that crazy spree at the start, the Blood River Domain's rate of consumption fell such that only one trip was needed per day, and this even became one trip every three days later on. And because of the wartime state the Blood River Domain was in, Tang Jie found it difficult to sell to the entire domain.

With the Rosecloud Domain's seemingly limitless ability to consume, the two major sects seemed to be able to eat up whatever Tang Jie brought from the Blood River Domain, and the teleportation formation ended up becoming the limiting bottleneck. This meant that even when the two sects took their half of the profits, Tang Jie still ended up making a little more profit from the Rosecloud Domain than from the Blood River Domain.

Monopolizing a market led to astonishing profit.

In less than twenty days, Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran accumulated more than twenty million spirit coins.

Tens of thousands of spirit jades neatly piled up could dazzle the eyes, make one's breath stop, and make one's head feel dizzy.

Even Xu Miaoran, who was from a True Lord family, had never seen this many spirit coins.

Of course, this was because anyone with this much money would have already converted them into cultivation resources.

A Violet Palace True Lord might have tens of millions in treasures, but it would be very difficult for them to take out tens of millions in coins.

But this was only ten-some days of revenue for Tang Jie.

This thought made Xu Miaoran feel dizzy.

Looking at all the spirit jades, Xu Miaoran commented, "If you converted all this money into resources, you could take medicine every day and not run out, right?"

One couldn't endlessly consume medicines. According to Xu Miaoran's calculation, with more than one million in income every day, even if she treated spirit medicines as meals, she still wouldn't be able to use up all this money, and she was momentarily dumbfounded.

Since ancient times, making money had always been more difficult than spending money, but today, Xu Miaoran found that the opposite could also be true.

Tang Jie chuckled. "Silly girl, there's no end to the Immortal path, so how could there be such a thing as resources that never run out? For the Parting Classic's body refining, ten million spirit coins is just a single bath."

Ten million spirit coins was just a single bath!

Xu Miaoran was rendered utterly speechless.

How extravagant did a bath have to be to cost ten million spirit coins?

But that was the Parting Classic, saving time by spending resources, and it had no limit, always "the more, the merrier"!

The original body cultivated the Parting Classic, and it had always been restrained by resources. Even in the hidden realm, it was constrained by this.

The resources in that valley were protected by the firebird, and they also favored quality over quantity.

For this reason, even if the firebird let him pick as he pleased, Tang Jie wouldn't be willing to use them up—ten-thousand-year-old spirit plants weren't easy to find.

Each one had its unique value, and using them up in a bath was just too much of a waste.

Thus, the original body's cultivation had been restrained, and though it had entered the middle tier of the Diamond Body, it had yet to reach the peak.

With this money, resources were no longer a problem.

Of course, Tang Jie didn't plan to spend it all on himself.

Xu Miaoran, Yiyi, Xian Tao, Hong Yuan, and even Tutu rapidly grew stronger.

As Tang Jie's power swelled, the people around him weren't able to keep up. Tang Jie didn't want them to fall too far behind, so he naturally needed to give them a boost.

Especially Yiyi.

Twenty years ago in the battle of the Beast Garden, Yiyi had reached the peak of Mind Opening, but she had still not broken through that threshold and entered Transformation.

Sprites had a difficult time reaching Transformation, and without outside help, they could easily spend more than a hundred years at this threshold.

And the Transformation pills necessary to help sprites break through this threshold were both expensive and hard to find.

Tutu was facing the same situation.

As a rabbit fiend who had fallen from Divine Division, it had long ago reached the peak of Mind Opening, but it also found it hard to push through the threshold. According to Tutu, only at Transformation would the innate strength of the rabbit fiend be unleashed and it could become truly useful.

Tutu hadn't explained what this innate strength was, and Tang Jie didn't know, but based on how vague it had been, Tang Jie knew that it didn't refer to battle. Moreover, it didn't seem very passionate about entering Transformation, so Tang Jie had paid it no mind.

But everything was bound to be different now.

With money, all problems ceased being problems.

Everyone had to get stronger: Tang Jie, Xu Miaoran, Xian Tao, Hong Yuan, Yiyi, and also Tutu. Even if it didn't want to get stronger, it would have to get stronger, even if it was just to see what this "innate strength" was.

Money allowed one to be willful.

Tang Jie made some rough calculations on how much he needed to spend.

First were the Transformation pills. These were difficult to buy, as very few people made medicines for sprites, and medicines meant for the charge at Transformation weren't cheap. Thus, if he really had no other options, he would have to have Xu Miaoran make them. Of course, Transformation pills were such a high-class medicine that he couldn't hope that Xu Miaoran would succeed with one try.

But messing up was fine, since he had money. They could just treat it as a learning experience.

Tang Jie had already decided that he would let Xu Miaoran refine any medicines they needed, spending money to raise up a pill refiner. Someone of Xu Miaoran's talent paired with no-limits education was bound to achieve extraordinary things.

Besides that, Xu Miaoran also needed to get stronger. She was at Cognitive Creation and had yet to enter the Three Witherings. Normally, the Three Withering Tribulations took thirty years, and Tang Jie naturally wouldn't accept such a long period. Fortunately, there were resources that could be used to cover this gap.

Thus, Tang Jie planned to send Xu Miaoran back to Horizon Ocean Pavilion and have her go through the Three Witherings in the paradise of Horizon Ocean Pavilion, the Near Immortal Pavilion. Contribution points were no problem. The inter-domain trade was itself a contribution, and Xu Miaoran was a True Lord's daughter, so she could easily get the right to enter the pavilion. Money could be used to make up the rest of the time. The six major sects all had a policy of exchanging donations for contribution points, but the exchange rate was poor, so few people did this. But Tang Jie had money, so he naturally didn't care. Not only did he want to use money to trade for points, he also used money to buy all the spirit medicines he could.

Back when Tang Jie had gone through the Three Withering Tribulations in the Water Moon Paradise, it had taken him nearly one hundred days.

Xu Miaoran's situation meant that she would undoubtedly get through the process faster than he had. Once she was through the Three Witherings, he would buy a Five Energies Sovereign Essence Pill to help her reach Celestial Heart.

In addition, the avatar needed money for formation diagrams. After all, the avatar still needed to adventure in the Treasure Paradise. While Tang Jie had already prepared ten-some formation diagrams, his limited resources meant that they were of average strength. Truly powerful formation diagrams, like a complete Treasure Cosmos Formation, were something beyond his power. But as his wealth grew, he could finally try for some of the more powerful ones.

To be honest, business was going so smoothly and money coming in so quickly that he was rich enough to sleep on a bed of Immortal medicines, never having to worry about resources again. In comparison, the Treasure Paradise was nothing. From a certain perspective, nothing in the Treasure Paradise could match what he could make on his own.

But Tang Jie still had to go.

The first reason was that the Celestial Flame Pagoda had played a huge part in his being able to get this far. He had already promised the Western Heavenly King that he would go, and he had spent the money of the Celestial Flame Pagoda to get many resources. Even if he tried to pay back the money and leave, the Western Heavenly King wouldn't let him go.

The second reason was that there were some things that money couldn't buy. Money could buy art relics and divine treasures, but not Dao armaments, ten-thousand-year spiritual objects, Immortal pills, or divine medicines. There were always some things that money just wasn't enough for. One of these was the Evercycle Rising Dragon Pill that Cang Qingfeng sought.

The third reason was that he was very interested in the Treasure Paradise, and his powerful sense of adventure wouldn't let him miss out on this experience.

Last of all, Xian Tao and Hong Yuan also needed to get stronger, or else they wouldn't be able to manage things on their own. But he didn't need to spend too much on this.

When Tang Jie had bought the Five Energies Sovereign Essence Pill at auction, it had cost him 2.5 million spirit coins. As for two Transformation pills, if Xu Miaoran was going to refine them, two million would be on the low side, and if things went poorly, those two pills alone would cost him ten million.

The Near Immortal Pavilion would require Xu Miaoran to buy lots of time and lots of medicines to push through the Three Witherings, so he would need at least two or three million, and the Five Energies Sovereign Essence Pill was another two or three million on top of that.

Formation diagrams were their own bottomless hole, as Tang Jie wanted some truly powerful lethal formations, each one commanding an astronomical price.

After making these calculations, Tang Jie found that the twenty million he had on hand wasn't enough.

Xu Miaoran asked, "What do we do?"

Tang Jie replied, "We'll just wait a few more days."

The two of them looked at each other and burst out laughing.

―――――――――――――

Forty days later.

The City of Freedom, the Heaven Manor Mountains.

In his cave estate, Tang Jie's original body sat in the middle of a custom-made giant bathtub the size of a pool. The medicinal liquid filling the bath was more like a paste, so concentrated the medicinal power was.

After accumulating wealth for several dozen days, Tang Jie had finally begun his long-awaited body refining. Before this, Xu Miaoran had already gone back to the Rosecloud Domain to go through the Three Withering Tribulations in the Near Immortal Pavilion.

Yiyi and Tutu had also begun their breakthroughs. With price being no object, it was only a matter of time for Young Lady Xu to refine Transformation pills.

Outside the bath, one duplicate was adding water while another fed firewood.

The blazing flames under the bath dissolved the medicinal liquid, and through the Parting Classic, the medicinal power flowed into Tang Jie's body.

Tang Jie didn't even remember how many baths he had taken so far.

Unlike before, the herbal bath this time was particularly thick, and a massive amount of medicinal power was surging into Tang Jie's body, rushing into every corner of his body. Tang Jie's body greedily absorbed it all, as if every cell was a mouth that converted the medicinal power into pure energy and fused it with the body.

Tang Jie gasped for air as if there were a flame burning in his body, and the air he exhaled condensed into a thick silvery mist. This was a spiritual mist, a condensation of spiritual energy that was a step below spirit rain. It was excess energy created by the body's conversion process, but it was precious energy nevertheless.

Yes.

Body refining essentially refined the body into a treasure, and at the end of cultivation, the body was a natural treasure in and of itself.

But this sort of natural treasure had gone through great effort to attain this title.

As the medicinal power worked, the tone of Tang Jie's skin darkened, and the faint metal luster began to shine and sparkle as if someone had sprinkled gold dust all over him.

This was how the Diamond Body received its name. At greater attainment, the entire body would shine like a diamond and be as tough as one.

But just being as tough as a diamond wasn't good enough. One also needed tremendous strength.

Initially, Tang Jie was still seated in the center of the "bathing pool", but as his body grew in size, it gradually filled up the entire bathing pool, and a giant began to fill up the confines of the cave estate.

This was an inevitable result of body refining. No matter how one compressed the strength, a restrained body would not be able to contain such terrifying strength, so it needed to grow larger.

In this aspect, the giant Tang Jie was Tang Jie's true form, the shrunk-down Tang Jie simply a fake. Moreover, shrinking down also shrank his strength. It was only at his actual size that he could show his true power.

Tang Jie's true form had been around ten meters tall, but as he cultivated, his body began to grow even larger.

11 meters, 12 meters, 13 meters…

Tang Jie's body grew until it finally stopped at fifteen meters.

A 15-meter-tall golden giant sat cross-legged in that giant bathtub, packing it to the brim.

The medicinal paste was still giving off bubbles, and as the concentration dwindled, the aroma began to dissipate.

Tang Jie let out a long breath and concluded his cultivation session.

In this session, he had increased his strength by at least 60%. 50% came from the boost in strength that came with his larger body, and 10% came from the toughness of his body.

Condensing strength was always harder than expansion. If Tang Jie wished to reach greater attainment in the Diamond Body, he needed to become a 100-meter-tall giant.

100 meters was the standard for peak Diamond Body.

Body refining divisions were the same as those of law cultivators, signifying a power gap of five times.

Peak Diamond Body was a 100-meter-tall giant, middle-tier was only 20 meters, and the basic tier was only 4 meters.

But law cultivators were different in that they only needed to achieve five times the power in comprehensive strength, so there was no unreachable gap between tiers. If an outstanding low-tier cultivator ran into a weak high-tier cultivator, they could make up or even exceed this gap.

Tang Jie, Wang Juemie, Na Shan, Shui Yao, Hei Yan, and Qing Lian could take down high-tier weaklings like they were toys, and against the strong high-tier experts, Tang Jie and Wang Juemie still had some hope of winning.

But the Diamond Body's fivefold gap was only in reference to size. In terms of strength, the difference was far greater than five times.

This was exactly why the Parting Classic's body refining became more and more difficult the further one went, and also became more powerful. It was here where it began to truly pull away from law cultivators.

With the cultivation over, Tang Jie rose to leave the bath, but after putting only a little strength into his foot, he ended up breaching the floor of the bath made of Skyarrow Wood. Skyarrow Wood was an extremely tough kind of lumber that was often used to make bows and arrows. But just a light step from Tang Jie was enough to punch a hole through it.

The foot punched through the bath and landed on the flames, and though the flames blazed away at his skin, Tang Jie only felt a little warm.

He looked down at the flames underfoot and then stood up.

Thud!

The cave estate shuddered as stones came raining down from above.

In standing up, Tang Jie had rammed into the ceiling and made a large hole. Tang Jie had no choice but to bend his body, but he overbalanced and lost his footing. He instinctively reached out an arm to steady himself against the wall of the cave, but he instead ended up tearing off a large chunk of the stone wall.

Having completely lost his balance, Tang Jie toppled over.

"Shit, this is the terrible thing about the Parting Classic. I gain strength too quickly, so it's hard to adapt to it." Tang Jie scratched his head and sat back up. Slowly, his body shrank down to the size of an ordinary human.

He slowly stood up, put on some clothes from his Mustard Seed Bag, and walked out of the cave.

It was already light outside.

It turned out that he had unprecedentedly used an entire night cultivating.

Since he was stronger, it was time to take care of some things.

Slightly raising his head, he muttered, "He Chong, I'm coming!"