Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-659

The flames in the sky were still burning.

The wails of the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor were getting softer and softer, until they finally disappeared.

Looking at the ashes left behind by the Deicide Flame, Tang Jie sighed.

The disadvantages of using the Deicide Flame against an enemy were that it was difficult to control and that it was so powerful that it didn't even leave behind a body.

The corpse of a Fiend Emperor was gone, just like that.

Although Tang Jie had wanted to use gentler methods to take down the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor, his opponent was just too strong, and the ability to cast arts with a thought made it so that Tang Jie couldn't hold back. It would be terrible if his desire for spoils meant that the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor managed to escape.

After one last glance at the ashes, Tang Jie prepared to leave.

Suddenly, an icy voice rang out all around him.

"Want to leave? You really think that you killed this emperor?"

The icy voice made Tang Jie's blood run cold.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor!

He wasn't dead yet.

Tang Jie hastily turned around and saw the ash behind him floating into the air, taking the shape of a human.

A vague figure appeared in the air, none other than that of the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor. It flew into the ash, and then countless rays of starlight came from the heavens, converging upon the ash. As the starlight surged in, the ash human began to become an actual human.

"No! This isn't possible!" Tang Jie cried out.

Tang Jie had always been the one to make others say these words, but today, he finally had the fortune to say them himself.

"What exactly is impossible about it?" The reforming Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor looked at Tang Jie. "Do you not know that entering Violet Palace makes one an existence with two lives?"

"The soul life?" Tang Jie's pupils constricted.

Violet Palace was the substantialization process of the soul. Among Daoists, this process had another name: the Primal Infant, to cultivate the Primal Soul and manifest it as an infant. Its physical form was the physical form of the soul. This was why the first phase of Violet Palace was called the Infant Tending Period, the Infant Tender tending to the Primal Infant.

When the Primal Infant was fully formed, a cultivator would essentially have two lives. One was the physical life, called the body life or the boat life, for the person who traversed the sea of bitterness used their body as a boat. But even though the physical body became just a boat after one formed the Primal Infant, it could not be so easily tossed aside. The second life was the Primal Infant life, called the soul life or the origin life. It was considered the root of a cultivator. Even if the physical body were destroyed, so long as the Primal Infant remained, one could remain temporarily in the world. "Possession" began from this phase. Before then, the person who had tended to a Primal Infant didn't have the right to Possession. But Possession was extremely dangerous, and a Primal Infant at Infant Tending was extremely weak. Attempting Possession was almost always suicidal.

For a cultivator, to lose the body life was to lose one's boat and be forced to struggle and plead for aid in the sea of bitterness. And if the origin life were lost, one might die on the spot in serious cases or be rendered an idiot in light cases, acting purely on instinct like a wild beast.

This was the difference between the two of them.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor was at Divine Division, so he naturally had an origin life.

But hearing these words from the Fiend Emperor, Tang Jie shook his head. "This isn't possible. The Deicide Flame burns all, even souls. Even if you have an origin life, you shouldn't have been able to escape the Deicide Flame, let alone the fact that I've never heard of an origin life being able to reforge the body."

The origin life's function was to extend the Divine Will to link with the world so that one could cast arts with a single thought, but it was not the foundation of life. That was the body life.

The origin life alone could not reforge the body, or else Violet Palace Titans wouldn't need to attempt Possession after they lost their physical bodies.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor chuckled. "It's all thanks to this emperor's Deathless Heaven Pearl!"

Anger and hatred flashed in his silver eyes.

The Deathless Heaven Pearl was a divine tool he had forged using his own pellet as the base. It had the power of immortality and recreation, but it could only be used once. This was why he was after the Umbra Cactus Flower. While this flower wasn't very useful to a Violet Palace physical body, if it were refined and merged with his pellet, he could use the Deathless Heaven Pearl multiple times.

But to his surprise, before he even got the flower, Tang Jie took one of his lives, forcing him to use this pearl that he had spent one thousand years refining. How could he not be pained by this?

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor now loathed Tang Jie so much that he wanted to drink his blood, gnaw on his flesh, and pulverize his bones!

Although Tang Jie didn't know that the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor had used his pellet as the basis for whatever this tool was, he could tell from the savage and furious appearance of the Fiend Emperor that this wasn't a divine item that could repeatedly revive him.

This knowledge made Tang Jie much more composed. "In other words, I have to kill you one more time to completely finish the job."

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor smiled in anger. "Such audacity! If you have the ability, then do your best! This emperor would like to see what you have that can kill me one more time!"

He glared, and his silver eyes erupted with light, torrents of spiritual energy rushing toward Tang Jie.

There were no spell arts or transformations. The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor chose to harness the most basic spiritual power of the world, gathering it into a great sea and sending it over in a mighty wave.

He wanted to use this method to crush Tang Jie to death!

Tang Jie immediately flew into the sky. He had just used the Devil Crushing Fist and didn't have the power to fight for the moment, so fleeing was the far better option. He streaked upward, flying faster and faster, faster than he had ever flown before.

The spiritual torrents were hot on his heels. The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor gazed up at the sky, his eyes flashing with the flames of hatred as he whispered, "You can't run!"

Where his eyes pointed, winds stirred and clouds roiled.

Lightning leaped to and fro as gales displayed the power of nature, and mighty deluges appeared within the clouds. These storms seemed ordinary, but they represented the supreme might of a Fiend Emperor, even a single drop of water being able to pierce through metal. When a gale swept over a mountain, the top of the mountain would be obliterated.

The fury of a Fiend Emperor turned the skies into a living hell, the terrifying storms manifesting the rage in those silver eyes, radiating lethality and murderous intent.

Without even turning around, Tang Jie threw out the Mother Cloud combat puppet.

The Mother Cloud puppet had been called back by Tang Jie to recover after its battle with the fiend kings, and he hadn't even used it in the last attack against the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor, as there was no way of working its attacks into the Dao of Time. But now, he was finally using it again.

The moment the Mother Cloud puppet appeared, its body erupted with starlight, and an enchanting galaxy appeared around it. Each formation line was brimming with spiritual energy, each formation operating at maximum power. Even against the seven fiend kings, the puppet had not activated all 108 formations at once, but now, it was unleashing all of its power without inhibition.

The galaxy spread out to deal with the storms that raged across the world.

Wherever the starlight shone, the winds died and the rain ceased.

The starlight even reached toward the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor's location.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor's eyes flashed with lightning. "Arrogant!"

The Thousand Hands appeared behind him, forming a sphere in front of him and pushing it forward.

This sphere was like a black hole, sucking in the galaxy the combat puppet had created such that its starlight could not reach the Fiend Emperor. Just like that, the puppet's strongest attack was undone.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor snorted, and a bolt of lightning lanced out of the heavens.

But rather than disappearing, the lightning congealed into a giant spear and stabbed at the puppet.

Lightning danced over the puppet's body, creating explosive flashes all across it. At least six of the formations were paralyzed, rendered unusable until they were repaired. This lightning spear was actually meant for directly damaging formations.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor flew into the air to pursue Tang Jie.

As he flew up, the Mother Cloud puppet's legs flashed with starlight, and it lunged at the Fiend Emperor.

"Out of the way!"

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor roared, his Thousand Hands opening and striking at the puppet.

The puppet fearlessly charged in. It had no fear of death, and so long as it had energy, it would fight to the very end. In the Yin Yang Cycle Formation, the two High Antiquity crystal cores shone. To stop the Fiend Emperor's attack, the puppet was using all of its power, no longer planning for a protracted battle. The ghost guard's eyes flashed with dazzling starlight, and ghostly energy coiled around a metal arm as it stabbed toward the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor.

The Nether Ghost Claw!

Swoosh.

There was a light rush of air, and the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor grunted in pain. Looking down, he saw that an arm had penetrated through his Thousand Hands defense and into the right side of his abdomen.

A puppet had injured him!

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor's face darkened.

He raised his head and howled. "Awoooo!"

This was a howl of extreme anger and hatred, and a black tide rushed out of his body, smashing into the Mother Cloud puppet. The flash of shattering formations erupted from the puppet's body, and then it was knocked away like a pebble being caught up in an explosion, instantly disappearing into the distance.

After knocking away the puppet, the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor looked up, but there was no sign of Tang Jie. But he was in no rush, spreading out his Divine Will. Tang Jie's figure immediately appeared in his Sea of Cognition, but it seemed like he was still flying upward with no regard for what was going on behind him.

"There is no path up in the heavens! I'd like to see where you're thinking of going!" the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor grunted, and gave chase.

He was much faster than Tang Jie, and he rapidly closed the distance. But he saw that Tang Jie continued to fly upward, drawing closer and closer to the Astral Winds.

The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor was startled and realized that something wasn't right.

It now seemed like Tang Jie's apparently frantic escape had actually been planned.

Although the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor hadn't interacted with Tang Jie for very long, he could already tell that this guy had a decisive and cunning personality, as had been proved by his use of the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor's arrogance to slay him with the Nine Extinctions Blade. He was now heedlessly flying upward, most likely with the intent to protect himself in the Astral Winds.

Considering that he was a body cultivator, the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor understood what was happening. His body was probably tough enough to last for a while within the Astral Winds, and the Astral Winds were too powerful for Divine Will to penetrate. He just needed to enter the Astral Winds, fly away through the Astral Winds for a while, and then leave them, which was enough to escape the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor's pursuit.

After understanding this and seeing that Tang Jie was about to enter the Astral Wind layer, the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor roared, "You just stay right there for this emperor!"

The clouds shifted, transforming into a giant hand that reached for Tang Jie.

"Trying to stop me? It's not that easy!" Tang Jie smiled, and he instantly turned into more than a hundred of himself with the Duplication spell.

He hadn't been able to use it earlier because he had used up all his energy, but thanks to some medicine he had taken in his flight, he had regained enough power to use it.

The hundred Tang Jies spread out. The hand slammed down, destroying several dozen of them, but even more Tang Jies continued to fly upward. The Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor looked around, but he wasn't able to identify the real Tang Jie, so he could only watch as Tang Jie vanished into the Astral Winds.

"You can't escape!" the Silver Eyes Fiend Emperor bellowed with murderous intent on his face.

He assumed his original form: an enormous centipede more than a thousand feet long. Coiling in the air, it let out a shriek and then flew into the Astral Winds.