Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-713

After leaving the grasslands, Tang Jie drifted aimlessly.

He crossed mountains, forded rivers, forged through forests, and ventured through swamps.

He did not fly, relying on his own two feet to measure the earth. He ended up walking for three years.

In these three years, he walked all about the Verdant Cloud Domain, traveling far and wide. He experienced seven attempted robberies, two landslides, one earthquake, four volcanic eruptions, and 62 attacks from wild animals.

There were both natural and man-made disasters. Tang Jie experienced them all, silently taking it in.

One day, Tang Jie came to a city.

This was a fiend city, and Tang Jie walked in as a human.

Strangely, the fiends treated him like he was empty air, none of them paying any attention to him.

Tang Jie walked the streets of the city.

He saw a decent-looking house and walked inside.

The house was home to a Mind Opening deer fiend couple—the female deer being pregnant—and two human servants.

Tang Jie chose a guest room, tidied it up, and took up residence within it.

Every day, the two human servants would make food for the deer fiends. Although these were yellow deer who had become fiends, they had meat with every meal, both that of ordinary beasts and also that of humans.

But from the time Tang Jie took up residence, the deer fiends found that human meat had lost its flavor.

"How strange. When I ate human meat before, it was absolutely delicious, so why does it taste like candle wax now? No taste at all!" The male deer fiend expressed confusion.

"Maybe you've eaten too much and gotten tired of it. Moreover, humans are hard to catch, and they're so pricey. Isn't it better to not like eating them? What if you ended up liking it so much that you butchered our two servants? It all sounds rather pathetic."

"Wife, your heart seems to be getting softer and softer."

"Perhaps it's because of Yan'er, making me want to accumulate some virtue. Killing too much and shedding too much blood is no good thing," the mother deer said, looking at her belly.

The little deer fiend had yet to be born, but its name had already been decided: Yue Yan.

Standing under a tree, Tang Jie listened in on the couple's conversation as he silently plucked a thread of Fate. Invisible motes of light melted into the fiends, silently altering them.

Compared to the beasts of the grasslands, influencing fiends was much more difficult.

Fate was not omnipotent. The stronger the existence, the more they resisted Fate.

He was only influencing two Mind Opening fiends, but Tang Jie was already feeling immense resistance. He couldn't have the fiends detest human flesh, only make them gradually dislike the taste of it. He couldn't make fiends compassionate, only use their child to plant the seed of love.

One could say that the strong were born defiant of the heavens.

They resisted Fate, refusing its arrangements, transcending the Web of Fate.

They defied the heavens, rising up against the current and breaking free of their shackles.

These shackles were the Web of Fate.

This was another principle Tang Jie had comprehended.

But while the web could be broken, those chaining threads were difficult to shake off.

Even the strongest existence could not prevent the threads of Fate from touching them and influencing them.

Tang Jie couldn't influence an expert yet, but he wanted to try and raise an expert, tangling them in the threads of Fate from the moment they existed.

He had learned this in the Hulunta Grasslands.

Time was the best weapon and could do many things that he couldn't do without it.

Upon thinking this, he sent the light of Fate silently into that mother deer's body.

After doing this, Tang Jie left.

He proceeded toward Fengshan.

He passed through Dongjin Pass and headed deep into its heartland.

He went to the seat of the emperor, the capital of Fengshan.

As the capital of humanity, it was naturally a thriving place.

But Tang Jie didn't care, casually walking its streets.

He came to a small alley, where a boy riding atop a servant came charging out, waving a wooden sword.

At that moment, he felt like he had returned to the first time he met Wei Tianchong.

Compared to Wei Tianchong, this boy was more handsome and had a pair of lovable black eyes.

As he was happily playing, he saw a man appear before him.

He had abruptly appeared out of nowhere.

The boy wasn't afraid, his eyes instead widening in excitement. "Are you an Immortal?"

Tang Jie replied, "I am. What's your name?"

"You're an Immortal, so why don't you know my name?" the boy seriously asked.

Tang Jie smiled. "If that's what you want, then let me have a try."

He placed a finger on the boy's forehead, sending the light of Fate into the boy.

Without drawing back his finger, Tang Jie said, "Your name is Li Yan, and you are the son of the Minister of Appointments."

The boy excitedly said, "You guessed it right!"

"You have a dream to drive out the fiends and restore the glory of my human race," Tang Jie continued.

The boy said in surprise, "What sort of dream is this? I've never had one like that."

The boy was still too young, and such a far-off dream wasn't suitable for him.

"You will," Tang Jie indifferently said.

He took back his finger and said, "You are destined to become a great person in the future."

"Even greater than my father?" the boy asked.

"Even greater than him!" Tang Jie firmly said.

"Oh, wonderful!" the boy shouted. Patting the servant under him, he said, "Big Zhu, did you hear? The Immortal said that I'm going to be a greater person than my father."

"'Immortal'? Where?" The servant called Big Zhu looked around in confusion.

"Isn't he…" The boy raised his head, but Tang Jie was gone.

Westsail City.

The little deer, Yue Yan, was born after two months.

This was a female deer with a pair of large and enchanting eyes. Newborn, it couldn't think or talk like its parents. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a fiend, but an ordinary deer.

But as it grew up, the power of its fiend lineage would gradually awaken, and it would begin to exhibit the power of a fiend. Some of the more powerful fiend lineages could awaken multiple times, like Bao'er's.

For fiends, it was always better for the awakening to happen as early as possible.

Little Yue Yan experienced her first awakening at three years old, and she displayed astonishing fiend power, far greater than usual.

On that day, Westsail City welcomed a rising star of the fiend race.

From three to thirteen, only ten years of time, Yue Yan went all the way from Spirit Sensing to Mind Opening.

When this little deer that had yet to reach adulthood called out to her father and mother in her crisp and melodious voice, all of Westsail City was thrown into an uproar.

Westsail City was under the rule of the Aurora Fiend Emperor, and its lord was the White Night Fiend King, a trusted aide of Aurora.

The day Yue Yan attained Mind Opening, White Night summoned her and took her in as his adopted daughter, and the little deer fiend officially became a fiend princess.

At the same time, in Fengshan, the humans had their rising star called Li Yan.

Unlike Yue Yan, Li Yan didn't have a smooth path. From his clan to school, Li Yan had to deal with all sorts of plots and conspiracies. His mother passed away early, his stepmother was a venomous schemer, his brothers were arrogant and conniving, his schoolmates bullied him… Li Yan basically experienced every pain a single human could suffer, as if the entire world was opposed to him.

But every time, Li Yan was able to turn danger into fortune, gaining blessings from disaster.

His strength rapidly grew.

At the age of twelve, Li Yan entered Fengshan's largest cultivator academy, the Luanshan Academy.

(TN: The feng and luan are both phoenix-like birds in Chinese mythology, so Fengshan and Luanshan can be considered variations of "Phoenix Mountain".)

There, he cultivated while also studying human history. Once he learned about humanity's glorious past and its tragic present, he made his Great Aspiration: to drive out the fiends and restore the glory of humanity!

Li Yan had already forgotten his childhood encounter, forgotten the words of that prophecy. He simply persisted on his path, never realizing that the Web of Fate entangling him was constantly controlling him and influencing him.

Tang Jie was very busy.

He was rushing between two places, looking after both Yue Yan and Li Yan.

The influence of the Web of Fate was constantly being assimilated and assaulted by the greater Web of Fate of the outside world, only able to affect the moment and not a lifetime. Thus, Tang Jie needed to constantly fix and adjust it.

Unlike his previous web, which had covered all of the Hulunta Grasslands, Tang Jie focused only on the two points of Li Yan and Yue Yan. All of the threads of Fate were targeted only on these two.

Like a novelist, Tang Jie used his own method to write on these two youths the path he hoped they would take. Their ideals, their progress, everything that happened to them—it was all arranged by Tang Jie.

The scope had shrunk, but the depth was much greater.

The light of Fate extended into the future, and along this line, Tang Jie could even see what could happen to these two youths several years on.

Prophecy!

Yes, this was the ability of a prophet!

The Dao of Fate couldn't see into the future. It arranged the future.

The future was a part of Fate.

Whether it was the Fate Tang Jie had woven or the original Fate of the world, these were all arrangements of the future.

Just like how Tang Jie had woven Li Yan's dream.

When a person could weave Fate, could influence Fate, they gained the power to control the future.

In this aspect, prophecy was simply the linear development of the Dao of Fate along the axis of time.

Of course, Tang Jie was still far from being able to do this.

He could only see into the future to a limited extent, could only influence a person's ideals, could only control the Fate of someone weak like Li Yan.

But ultimately, they would become strong.

At that time, would they be able to break free of the Fate Tang Jie had woven for them?