Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-723

Tang Jie didn't know how many golden grain puppets he had destroyed with his single strike, but the number of golden grains converging on him gave him a good scare.

As those golden grains were absorbed by the Sovereign Blade, it grew noticeably larger.

As Tang Jie had already grown the Sovereign Blade to the size of a proper saber, he had rarely shattered weapons to make it larger as of late. But as he grasped the Sovereign Blade, he suddenly understood something.

He finally knew how damnably stupid he had been.

The Sovereign Blade was far more powerful than Tang Jie had imagined. Since it could transform, it could naturally shrink, just like how his original body could also change forms. And its actual power was linked to its actual size.

Just like with Tang Jie's original body.

Tang Jie's original body could change its form, but his real power was fundamentally linked to his actual form. For example, his real body was that of an eighty-meter giant, and he had the strength of this level. Whether he grew larger or smaller wouldn't change this. Of course, it was easiest to use his full power in his actual form.

The Sovereign Blade was the same, able to transform and to grow stronger the more golden grains it absorbed.

After understanding this, Tang Jie wanted nothing more than to give himself a good slap on the face, cursing himself for being a pig and wasting so many opportunities.

At that moment, he almost wanted to take out the Treasure Cosmos Formation and shatter everything in it.

But in the end, he decided not to. This formation was extremely valuable and difficult to make, so shattering it all was a great waste. Moreover, Tang Jie's understanding of the Dao of Metal was far from reaching the level where he could use the true power of the Sovereign Blade, so keeping the Treasure Cosmos Formation was the better choice.

Tang Jie was still worried about Yiyi's safety, so now that he had eliminated all the puppets in the vicinity, he kept moving forward. But he wasn't done with the puppets of this desert yet, planning to come back and sweep up the remaining essences.

After passing through the desert, Tang Jie arrived in a land of lava.

The lava contained fire monsters with savage natures and fierce attacks.

But none of this was useful against Tang Jie. Not only did he have the counter formation, he also had the Contraflame Mantra and the Pale Cloud firebird.

Tang Jie quickly found the counter formation, and he used the same method against these fire monsters, absorbing their primordial Fire energy.

With this, Tang Jie had found the formations to counter all five kinds of monsters.

Other than the five primordial energies, Tang Jie's greatest harvest was these five formations.

For some reason, Tang Jie felt like there was some connection between them, but no matter what he did, he couldn't combine them.

These formations hadn't been together in the passage either. They had been separated, each existing on their own.

Merging them together would involve reworking them.

Until he got a picture of the entire formation, even Tang Jie couldn't do this, so after several failed attempts, he gave up.

Once he was past the Five Elements forbidden zone, Tang Jie arrived at a wasteland.

The pitch-black earth was clouded by a purple fog that greatly reduced one's field of vision. Even Tang Jie, who had comprehended Insight, could only see a hundred meters out when he focused.

Most astonishing of all was that even Divine Will was affected. His avatar had tried to use Divine Will earlier, and it had been worse than just using his eyes.

His avatar and Yiyi were still advancing through the fog. In other words, he had caught up.

Thus, Tang Jie picked up the pace, not daring to delay.

He didn't go far before he started to see scattered piles of white bones, extending into the distance. Even though he couldn't see very far, from what he could see, there were piles of bones spread out all across this wasteland.

As he walked across these bones, he found that they came in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

Some of them had complicated structures, with seven or eight fingers on one hand. There were also skulls with horns, skulls with three eye holes, and also immense skeletons with leg bones taller than an adult human. Of course, there were also small skeletons that weren't half the size of an adult human. And there were also various fiend bones, with tigers, panthers, bears, lions, turtles, cranes, insects, and anything else one might think of. Of course, there were also human bones. It appeared that some great inter-species battle had taken place here.

The treasures once used in this battle could also be found scattered about, but most of them were decayed to the point of uselessness, and those treasures that had managed to retain some of their power would no longer be the same.

As was his practice, Tang Jie shattered any treasure he found so as to strengthen the Sovereign Blade.

The white bones kept going on and on.

After walking for a while, Tang Jie noticed a figure crouching in the distance.

At first, Tang Jie took it for another pile of bones, but as he got closer, he realized that it was some scarlet creature that was scratching away at a pile of dirt.

That creature seemed to sense Tang Jie's approach and raised its head to look at him. Once Tang Jie got a good look, he found that it was some semi-human creature, not even reaching his waist. It had the face of a baby and a particularly large mouth, squatted on the ground like a small dog. But its expression was particularly savage.

As it spotted Tang Jie, it opened its mouth and threateningly howled, baring its fangs.

This was… a demon?

An image appeared in Tang Jie's mind.

This demon was called a Breeder Baby, and it was so weak that it didn't even get a ranking in Basking Moon Academy's Demon Codex. But it had a rather savage nature and could eat anything, even poison and dirt. It also had powerful reproductive abilities, so they were great in number. Among demons, they weren't even considered cannon fodder, only food.

Tang Jie was stunned to encounter a demon in the bowels of the Verdant Cloud Domain.

In the Great Stellar Chiliocosm, demons weren't like ghosts. Ghosts could be born outside of the Nether Domain, but demons essentially only existed in the Primordial Fog Domain.

While there were so-called demons outside of Primordial Fog, most of them were people who had become demons through cultivating demonic methods. While they were also considered demons and considered the same as the denizens of Primordial Fog, in the end, they were not true demons.

But Breeder Babies were authentic demons of Primordial Fog!

While a real demon would occasionally appear in the Great Stellar Chiliocosm, these were mostly remnants from Primordial Fog's invasion. They had lost the chance to return but had no place to go in the positive plane, so they could only seek out a safe place to silently await the next invasion.

Could it be that this Breeder Baby was one of the leftovers of the invasion?

But Tang Jie quickly rejected this idea.

The last Primordial Fog Calamity was nearly two thousand years ago, and Breeder Babies were far too weak to survive this long.

Could there be some great demon of the Primordial Fog here?

This thought immediately raised Tang Jie's vigilance.

Based on what he had seen so far, only someone of incredible talent and ability, a Titan, could have been behind such a massive formation and the Five Elements forbidden zone. If this was the work of some Archdevil to keep themselves hidden, then continuing to go forward would be suicidal.

Let alone him, even the Fiend Emperors put together would be no use.

Those called Titans were generally at Immortal Platform or above.

The White Tiger Ancestor and Nine Disaster Fiend Monk were true Titans, and a single one of such existences could obliterate the Verdant Cloud Domain. Compared to them, even the Cloud Ancestor of the Basking Moon Sect seemed a little weak.

But back to the main subject, if there was really such a strong demon here, there was no reason for them to not have gone back to the Primordial Fog Domain. Those were existences that couldn't be abandoned.

Unless…

Tang Jie thought of the White Tiger, who had died in battle.

The Four Sacred Beasts were from the Martial Lord's era, and according to Cang Qingfeng, they were frequent guests of the Court of Myriad Domains.

The Four Sacred Beasts shouldn't have been able to survive its annihilation, either dying or going missing.

The Black Tortoise, thanks to its Reincarnation Dao, had been able to pass down its memories, and after countless reincarnations, it had ultimately become Cang Qingfeng, who was probably the genius of some clan at this moment and was probably casting all sorts of curses on a doll of Tang Jie.

The Vermillion Bird's descendant had been imprisoned in the Martial Lord's hidden realm for what was now ten thousand years.

The White Tiger had been better off, its descendants turning into demons, first becoming demon lords of the Primordial Fog, and then running off to die in battle in the positive plane. Its descendants had carried on its will and had returned to the Primordial Fog Domain, though he didn't know how Bao'er was faring right now.

But the most enigmatic Azure Dragon had completely vanished. Perhaps, like the White Tiger, it had gone to the Primordial Fog Domain.

If that was the case, then Tang Jie could put all the clues together into a reasonable explanation.

Firstly, the Azure Dragon or its descendant had been one of the demon lords of Primordial Fog who had come along in the Primordial Fog invasion. The Azure Dragon then came to the Verdant Cloud Domain, where they either died or were severely injured, after which they were sealed by this formation. But the Azure Dragon controlled Fate and wouldn't be willing to die like this, so it borrowed the Dao of Fate to leave a back-up plan, which ultimately resulted in the variable that was Lin Xin.

But there were several problems with this explanation.

1. If the Azure Dragon was a demon lord of Primordial Fog, why had its name never been brought up before?

The Primordial Fog Domain had 99 Demon Lords, all of prestigious status and immense strength, with every human knowing their names. Yet he had never heard about the Azure Dragon.

2. When he broke free of the entanglement of Fate, what did that cry of "traitor" and the appearance of the Azure Dragon phantom mean?

3. Lin Xin. Tang Jie was almost certain that she had some connection to the Azure Dragon, but he had no idea what this relationship entailed. For ten thousand years, the Azure Dragon's status had been a mystery. Why had Lin Xin only appeared now?

Until he cleared up these three points, his theory had no basis.

As he was thinking, the Breeder Baby shrieked and charged at him.

As expected of a savage demon, it hugged Tang Jie's leg and took a bite.

But it might as well have bitten into a steel beam, its teeth instantly shattering.

Grabbing the Breeder Baby, Tang Jie carefully inspected it, muttering, "Demon…"

His gaze turned to that distant pillar.

Perhaps he would find the answer there.