Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-667

The shattering of the Nether Gate had made the Blackwater River disappear, and together with it disappeared the fiend snakes living in the river.

The area where the lake had once been was now occupied by the Mother Cloud combat puppet.

At the bottom of this depression, the four-meter-tall metal giant sat cross-legged, occasionally expelling clouds of red mist.

The ghost guard still needed some time to complete its advancement.

In this time, other than his usual cultivation, Tang Jie primarily played around with Yiyi and Little Three, improving their relationship. Occasionally, he would also ride Tutu up to the surface to take a look. The death of 18 fiend kings and the collapse of the Inkcloud Abyss had set off an uproar among the fiends. Some of the fiends weren't content with this outcome and came over to inspect the area, but Tang Jie killed them all.

The Inkcloud Abyss region became a death zone. Humans wouldn't come, and any fiends that came would die. Even if a Fiend Emperor came, with the Astral Winds above him, Tang Jie had no need to fear them.

Today, seeing that there was nothing to do, Tang Jie took out a Withering Yin Vine and began to study it. These plants were born with spatial powers, and it was said that studying them for a long period of time could help one comprehend the Dao of Space.

But as Tang Jie inspected this withered vine, he didn't feel anything special. Although the roots were covered in spatial ripples, as if they were deeply rooted in space, and they exuded a mysterious feeling akin to the Space Crystal, no matter how Tang Jie probed it, he couldn't resonate with the vine. In fact, he was repulsed every single time.

This feeling was completely different from other spatial treasures Tang Jie had interacted with, as if it was in a category of its own.

It was a strange feeling, one that Tang Jie had experienced only in the Verdant Cloud Domain. Yet it had nothing to do with the Verdant Cloud Domain, but with the Fate Standard in his body.

What exactly was Fate? How did one use it, and what could it be used for?

These were very complex questions, and to be honest, Tang Jie still didn't have an answer to them. But ever since he had obtained the Fate Standard, he had gained a special sense.

It was a kind of intuition, inexplicable and unexplainable, yet ever so trustworthy.

This intuition was completely contrary to the logic and principles that Tang Jie had once believed in, for there was no logic behind it, no rational analysis, no elegant strands of deductions weaving into an argument. There was just a feeling, a result that skipped all the steps in between.

It was for this reason that Tang Jie initially rejected it.

He didn't believe in this intuition, or even think that it existed. He just felt like it was a misconception, a coincidence, and he took no action on the answers it gave him.

But in the following years, this intuition proved itself, and Tang Jie gradually began to realize that it was no misconception or coincidence.

Tang Jie's understanding of the Heavenly Dao and his understanding of this world's luck all came from this intuition. But he had no grasp on when this feeling came over him.

If the Dao of Truth was the culmination of logical deduction, the representative of inevitability, the Dao of Fate was the exact opposite. It was far too random, difficult to grasp and fathom. It was the representative of chance.

Perhaps for this reason, the Dao of Fate was considered the most enigmatic and incomprehensible Dao.

No one liked something made up from countless chances and coincidences, for such a thing was uncontrollable. Thus, even though Tang Jie had the Fate Standard, he rarely tried to use it.

Because Fate wasn't meant to be comprehended.

This feeling had emerged again today, and it was working on the Withering Yin Vine, giving Tang Jie a very forthright answer: "This item is not suitable for you."

Without this feeling, Tang Jie might have tried and failed many more times before finally confirming it. But now, thanks to this feeling, he could skip to the end.

Was this the power of Fate?

Tang Jie pondered the thought. He had grown more lucky, and his luck had gotten him the answer he needed, allowing him to avoid the wrong path. Was this what it meant to simulate the heavens and peer into the future?

Perhaps it was only the nascent form. When the Dao of Fate was cultivated to a certain extent, it could evolve into some prophesying power, or perhaps some luck-boosting power.

Any one of the Twelve Great Daos cultivated until the very end would get one to some ultimate Dao Art.

The Ten Extinctions Blade was a Dao Art, but it was of the crudest kind.

Currently, Fate had given him an answer: the Withering Yin Vine wasn't right for him.

Thus, after playing around with it for a bit, Tang Jie stopped wasting his time.

As he was putting it away, Little Three suddenly strode over while eating a ghost. Upon seeing the Withering Yin Vine, its eyes lit up, and it rushed over and began to jabber at Tang Jie while pointing at the vine.

"You want it?" Tang Jie said in surprise.

Little Three vigorously nodded, an impatient look on its face.

"I didn't think you ate veggies." After some thought, Tang Jie gave it the vine. After all, Fate had already told him that the vine would have no effect on him, so he might as well give it to Little Three and see if it could use it.

The little ghost took the vine, but rather than eating it, it began to inhale those ripples that lingered around the vine.

The misty ripples flashed and then vanished into Little Three's body.

Through the Celestial Eye, Tang Jie saw that a sliver of spatial power had gone into Little Three's body.

As expected!

Only ghosts could use items from the Nether Domain.

It was no wonder Fate said that he couldn't use it.

And Little Three needed it not because it was a vegetarian, but because the vine had the Space attribute.

After consuming that Titan's hand and inheriting its spatial power, Little Three needed anything that could increase its Space power. If it hadn't received a spatial talent, it might have had no interest in the vine.

This also made Tang Jie recognize his mistaken understanding. While Little Three's ghost-devouring ability had priority, it seemed to have overcome this restriction when it came to choice of food.

Little Three quickly sucked up the Withering Yin Vine's Space power, and the vine began to wither. Without the roots planted in space, the vine had no water to draw on.

In comparison, Little Three seemed unchanged.

Tang Jie wanted to test it out, so he grabbed it and said, "Let me see your abilities."

Little Three understood and used its spatial shift to escape Tang Jie's grip.

This time, it appeared two hundred feet away from Tang Jie.

The first time Tang Jie had captured it, while the little guy had been able to use the spatial shift several dozen times, the distance had been extremely short, so Tang Jie could capture it again without even moving. After eating those ghosts with Space power, it had grown stronger, but it was only able to jump ten feet. Now, after eating the vine, it was able to jump two hundred feet.

"Continue!" Tang Jie shot over to grab it.

Little Three thought that Tang Jie was playing with it, so it jumped away, and the two began to replay the game of tag from before.

This time, however, they played for much longer, and it was only after more than a hundred jumps that Little Three began to feel a little tired. Even then, it hardened up and lasted for fifty-some more jumps. Tang Jie couldn't help but be amazed by the Space power of the Withering Yin Vine.

In truth, it wasn't just because it was powerful. Even more important was the purity of the Withering Yin Vine's Space power.

The power obtained from devouring ghosts involved a process of separating the wheat from the chaff. In this process, rather than quantity, what was important was how to preserve the purity. Little Three had been lucky enough to get the hand of a Nether Domain Titan to start off with, but this meant that it had even higher requirements for purity, or else it would be completely wasting its high starting point.

The purity of the vine's Space power was exactly what Little Three needed, which was why it had made so much progress.

Seeing how useful the vine was for Little Three, Tang Jie decided to give all the vines except what he needed for the extreme long-distance teleportation formation to Little Three. "It's all yours."

Little Three almost fainted from delight.

For the next few days, Little Three became an omnivore, and it was truly voracious, feasting on ghosts and sucking vines every day. These were happy days, and its relationship with Tang Jie improved so much that it would occasionally jump on his shoulder and play with him.

Alas, happy days were always short ones.

A day would come when all the ghosts and vines were eaten up.

Today, the day had finally come.

Tang Jie felt helpless as he looked at Little Three, who was tearing up.

After all, he had no means of producing more ghosts for Little Three.

The hungry Little Three quickly became listless. Although ghosts wouldn't die from hunger, this desire for power left Little Three in torment—a human who had lived in luxury would find it very difficult to live the life of the impoverished, and the same was true for ghosts.

Moreover, Little Three could sense that it was about to break through.

This sensation of being only a step away haunted the little ghost, but despite racking its mind, it had found no solution.

Tang Jie and Yiyi did their best to soothe it, but every day, the little ghost would look up at the sky and dream of going out to get food.

It had to be said that Little Three was lucky.

Ghosts that evolved through devouring actually all had rather savage natures. In a long-gone era, they had rampaged through the Nether Domain, throwing it into chaos. In the end, a Nether Domain Titan had taken action, annihilating more than half of them.

These ghosts ran off to the mortal world, but rather than learning their lesson, they became even more vicious. To gain more power, they began to kill people to create ghosts. As new ghosts were weak in power, just one or two couldn't satisfy their massive appetites, so they used quantity to make up for quality. This meant that this sort of ghost would often paint the land red with blood to eat its fill, becoming infamous throughout the land.

In that era, they had a name: Hunter Ghosts.

For these reasons, they were welcome in neither the Nether Domain nor the mortal world, and this time, they provoked the Titans of the mortal world, who almost made the Hunter Ghosts extinct.

Eons had passed since then, so long that Little Three had no idea of the history of its kind. And spending time with Tang Jie and Yiyi had ground away at its savage nature. It didn't know of the murderous history of the Hunter Ghosts, and in the Inkcloud Abyss, there was nothing to tempt it, and it had even managed to pass through its first growing period in the safest way possible. All this served to greatly increase its resistance to such temptations.

Little Three's first obstacle to entering the mortal world had been silently overcome.

Even so, sometimes, that primal desire would be triggered, and Little Three would sorrowfully look upward.

Tonight was particularly quiet.

The combat puppet was still digesting the power of the Soul Refining Pearl, Tang Jie was meditating, and Yiyi and Tutu were sleeping on the side.

The little Hunter Ghost was very bored, so it jumped around using its spatial ability. Its teleportation ability was extremely powerful, so if it wanted to run, Tang Jie wouldn't have been able to stop it.

Little Three blinked about the space, but in the middle of playing, it suddenly sensed a strange ripple of energy nearby.

For Little Three, who had inherited the power of a Nether Domain Titan and turned its spatial power into its natural ability, this energy was very familiar.

It was a spatial ripple.

Behind this ripple was an extremely weak spatial barrier.

So weak…

That it could pass right through!

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Author's Note: Sorry, something was wrong with my head. I completely forgot about the Pale Cloud Flame bird. That's a monster, so I'm noting the correction here.