Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-582

With a howl, the Blood River Lord and the tiger fiend's group charged in the direction of the voice.

But Tang Jie didn't wait for them. Immediately after issuing his challenge, he plunged deeper into the sea of flames.

He still wasn't planning on fighting.

There was actually a lot of prep work needed before a battle. For an excellent commander, excellent preparations directly decided the outcome. In fact, the outcome of a battle was often decided before it even began.

Tang Jie felt the same.

The earlier scouting and escape were all a part of the pre-battle preparations, and the shout just now was also another part. If he had to call this strategy something, it would be "luring the enemy deeper".

Only luring the enemy deeper would make the pressure from the sea of flame consume more than the Blood River Lord could recover. Once he was weakened enough, Tang Jie would strike.

The first to arrive at the cliff was the tiger fiend.

With his four fiend companions, he had pushed through the flames to arrive here. He angrily stared at the cliff and said, "Here! He was just here!"

"That kid must have run in deeper again," the eagle fiend said.

"He can't be going in too deep," the tiger fiend said as he looked around. "This place is already close to the limit. He might be nearby. After him!"

The five fiends continued their pursuit.

The farther in they went, the greater the pressure of the sea of flames became, particularly because the weakest of them was still at the Heart Demon Tier. While they were powerful, they had to endure flames of greater ferocity than Tang Jie. Thankfully, while they were fiends, the Northern Heavenly King had ensured that they had plenty of medicines, including spirit-restoring pills. With these pills, they were barely able to hold on.

The Blood River Lord had no such things, but his recovery ability was more powerful, so his rate of consumption was much slower. After failing to find Tang Jie in the flames, his four avatars split up to search. As their minds were connected, the Blood River Lord wasn't concerned that one of his avatars might be attacked. In fact, he hoped for it.

Meanwhile, Tang Jie continued deeper in.

As the flames grew stronger, the barrier consumed more and more energy, and he went from having to use one pill per hour to two pills, and then three pills…

He also began to come across more and more treasure.

Tang Jie found that the ground was littered with fire crystals.

They were just sitting around, waiting for someone to pick them up. Over the eons, countless representatives had entered the Treasure Paradise, but basically none of them had been able to enter the depths of Holy Fire Valley.

Tang Jie was very close to the core region now.

Tang Jie picked out the crystals from the lava, and then he turned his head and shouted, "I'm over here!"

He continued forward.

Besides fire crystals, Tang Jie also occasionally came across other treasures. These treasures were all Fire-type art relics. Lying in Holy Fire Valley, they were tempered by the flames and unharmed by them. And as he went in deeper, the grade of these art relics also increased.

When Tang Jie had been in the outer edge of Holy Fire Valley, the few treasures he came across had been low-grade art relics. But after passing the cliff, he had not seen a single art relic below the upper grade. And in this part close to the core region, he found that the art relics were all ultimate-grade, their power on par with his ten art relic swords.

Tang Jie put all these treasures into the Treasure Cosmos Formation to make it stronger.

Farther in was the core region of Holy Fire Valley.

Tang Jie saw a white flame dancing in the center there.

For some reason, even he felt an inexplicable fear upon seeing that flame and was reluctant to approach it.

Tang Jie speculated that this was the fire essence bled by the Flame Celestial Sovereign when he had been injured—in other words, the Pale Cloud Flame. The Pale Cloud Flame was one of the divine flames of the world, and Tang Jie knew that his barrier wasn't enough to resist this flame, so he had to stop.

Tang Jie began to circle around the core, constantly changing his position, both to avoid the Blood River Lord and also to search for treasure. At the same time, he constantly called out to his pursuers, provoking them into continuing to chase him.

In this contest of endurance, the first to leave the valley was the loser.

Of course, Tang Jie didn't think that anyone would be dumb enough to endure until death. But he was sure that his repeated challenges would make it so that nobody would concede until the very last moment.

This situation persisted for three days.

Relying on his solid foundation and numerous pills, Tang Jie was able to travel across most of Holy Fire Valley. Other than the core region, he went basically everywhere, and in exchange, he obtained numerous fire crystals and hundreds of Fire-type art relics.

In these three days, Tang Jie had eaten spirit-restoring pills like they were jellybeans, at least one hundred of them, such was the ferocity of the flames. But the terrifying sea of flames was also a harsh burden for the Blood River Lord and the fiends.

Yet Tang Jie could sense that they still hadn't reached their limit.

Neither the fiend party nor the Blood River Lord had reached their limit! These people were so strong that Tang Jie couldn't help but sigh in admiration.

Tang Jie didn't plan to keep waiting.

The Hall of Three Immortals would open in another few days, which was when the real treasures of the Treasure Paradise appeared. Na Shan and the others were probably already waiting, so he needed to quickly handle matters here and meet up with them.

Tang Jie's face gradually shifted in the middle of the dancing flames, eventually assuming the form of the Blood River Lord.

If not for the mental link, even the Blood River Lord himself might have mistaken him for one of his avatars.

After turning into the Blood River Lord, Tang Jie chuckled and rushed off.

He was headed in the direction of the tiger fiend's group. In these three days of moving around the area, they had seemingly gotten their hands on a few treasures, and Tang Jie hadn't been willing to approach them. This time, however, the situation was different.

As he flew over, he saw the fiends seated in meditation, which was a way of hastening recovery when one lacked medicine. From this, it could be seen that the three days in the sea of fire had been a great burden on them.

But the more this was the case, the more unwilling they were to give up, and this obsession drove them to keep going.

Tang Jie came charging in, silently approaching the fastest of the fiends, the eagle, using the flames as a cover. Just as he got close to the eagle fiend's back, the tiger fiend suddenly opened his eyes as if he had sensed something, just in time to see Tang Jie. He paled and shouted, "Old Eagle, watch out!"

A moment later, Tang Jie's jade-white finger thrust at the eagle fiend's back.

The finger pierced through the barrier as if it wasn't there, and then the entire barrier shattered in a burst of rainbow light.

The furious flames instantly devoured the eagle fiend.

The eagle fiend had never imagined he would suffer like this, and he howled in the flames, trying to endure the pain of the flames and put up another barrier. But Tang Jie was ruthless, and just when the barrier was about to be put up, he thrust out a palm, dispersing the barrier. The eagle fiend yowled in pain and tried again, but Tang Jie once more intervened.

Tang Jie interrupted the eagle fiend three times in a row, and without a barrier, the eagle fiend was burned up by the flames. The flames of Holy Fire Valley were so vicious that this little time he had been undefended by a barrier had left him badly charred, all his feathers having burnt away. He wasn't far off from being a roast eagle.

"Bastard!" The tiger fiend bellowed in fury.

Just when Tang Jie was about to stop the eagle fiend a fourth time, the tiger fiend charged in and punched.

A white tiger phantom appeared and charged at Tang Jie with a roar.

In the last three days, the tiger fiend's group had actually encountered the Blood River Lord. But they had sensed each other's strength and had refrained from fighting.

But to their surprise, the Blood River Lord had really made a move, and with one strike, he had heavily wounded the eagle fiend.

Enraged, the tiger fiend attacked without mercy.

Tang Jie thrust out a hand, and a bloody light rushed out of his body—the Flesh Millstone. But this time, the Flesh Millstone didn't grind his opponents to death, instead defending him, the waves of blood forming a giant hand that caught the tiger fiend's fury-driven fist.

Meanwhile, the snake, boar, and rat fiends attacked.

A white snake phantom made to coil around Tang Jie while the boar fiend turned into a massive boar that opened its mouth to bite down on Tang Jie.

The rat fiend was most sneaky, chittering as it created countless illusory rats that attacked Tang Jie.

With all four fiends attacking, Tang Jie snorted and said, "Count yourselves lucky. I was planning to use you guys as compensation since I couldn't catch that brat, but it seems you have some skill. Forget it…"

He retreated.

"Trying to leave!?" the tiger fiend roared. He punched out another tiger phantom at Tang Jie. "You stay right there!"

"If this old man wants to leave, who can stop me?" Tang Jie nonchalantly said. His figure blinked through the sea of flames and soon vanished.

The flames limited vision and made pursuit difficult. The tiger fiend hadn't expected him to just come and leave at the drop of a hat, and he quickly lost Tang Jie. Enraged, he shouted, "Bastard, I won't forgive you!"

The tiger fiend was a very temperamental person, or else he wouldn't have rashly charged into the valley.

In his anger, he recklessly charged into the depths of the sea of fire.

He wanted to find the Blood River Lord and tear that treacherous bastard apart.

The other four fiends followed. While the eagle fiend had been severely wounded, fiends had astonishing recovery abilities, and he had also used a vitality pill gifted by the Northern Heavenly King. The five fiends set out, ready to battle to the death with the Blood River Lord.

Of course, they had no idea that the real person who had ambushed them actually wasn't that far away.

Through the Celestial Eye, Tang Jie could see much more than the five fiends could. He saw the direction the five fiends were headed in and smiled. "That's the spirit. If you had caught on and started fighting each other earlier, I wouldn't have needed to do this."