Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-775

Unlike in the Verdant Cloud Domain, whenever a thread of Karma extended toward Tang Jie, he would immediately remove it and attach it to Er Hu, thus escaping the constraints of Fate from the very start.

Er Hu took Tang Jie's place as the Child of Fate, and through Tang Jie's instruction, he constantly adjusted his actions so as to influence these threads.

It was like a puppet on strings, except in the opposite direction.

A puppet's actions were usually controlled by the strings attached to it, but Tang Jie was using the "puppet" that was Er Hu to control the strings and influence Fate.

He transcended the Web of Fate and viewed everything from the perspective of a bystander, and then he used Er Hu to carefully pluck the strings of Fate.

In this way, the Fate of the world was subtly changed.

While these changes were minor at first, they would gradually accumulate like a snowball rolling downhill, getting larger and larger until Tang Jie ultimately got the result that he wanted.

This was also a long-term project. Through his diligent administration, Tang Jie also began to extend his reach wider and wider, even crossing the boundary between cultivator and mortal and stretching his claws toward the affairs of the Sageheart Kingdom.

Although Immortal sects reigned supreme, rarely did they openly intervene in state affairs.

All of Sageheart was thrown into an uproar, with numerous inflexible ministers criticizing Tang Jie for meddling too much in mortal affairs and bringing shame to the title of Celestial Sovereign.

Tang Jie simply replied with scorn, "I have already issued the decree. Your job is to carry it out. If you don't want to carry it out, I don't mind changing to people who are more obedient."

These words immediately calmed the waves of protest.

In truth, the vast majority of Tang Jie's state actions were beneficial to the people. It was just that no matter what sort of positive policy was proposed, it would inevitably end up affecting the profits of some group of people, and some people would even fight them to the death.

It had to be said that reformation from top to bottom had always been extremely difficult. In contrast, the peasantry lighting up the fire of revolution was much simpler, because they would pulverize the old, which naturally made reconstruction simpler.

Tang Jie had no plans on bulldozing everything and rebuilding, but if some people wouldn't listen, then he wouldn't mind doing a little bulldozing just this once.

A hundred and fifty years was enough to set up a political regime ten times.

All he needed was a regime that could obey and execute.

Ling Xiao and the others were perplexed at how proactive Tang Jie was being in meddling with mortal affairs. One couldn't say that he had lost his drive after reaching Violet Palace, for Tang Jie had more drive than anyone else, never playing around at all. But it was also difficult to say that he had some grand plan, for what grand plan involved arguing with mortals every day?

They wanted to talk to him about it, but when they looked at the edicts he issued, they found that they were all sound. Although Ling Xiao and Xiao Biehan didn't put much work into caring for the people, they weren't the sort who would stop other people from doing a good job just because they couldn't. Thus, they decided not to try persuading him from this course of action.

Ling Xiao simply limited himself to saying to Tang Jie in a grave and sincere tone, "Cultivators should place more priority on their pursuit of the Dao," like he was telling an adult to not keep running off to the kindergarten.

Alas, Tang Jie was set on being a kindergarten teacher and refused to change his mind. More and more decrees were issued from Freedom Hall, and the disciples of the sect started to complain that Freedom Hall had seemingly grown more important than the Hall of Divine Conference.

Ling Xiao saw that he was managing everything appropriately and was happy to let him be a free spirit so that he could quietly cultivate. But whenever he thought about the duel with Jewel in one hundred and fifty years, he couldn't help but be worried. Deep down, he made up his mind that if it was really no good, he would protect Tang Jie, even if it meant sacrificing his pride and dignity.

For the Basking Moon Sect, Tang Jie represented the future of the Basking Moon Sect, even the hope of uniting all of Rosecloud.

It was just that while he had the qualities of a Swordholder, he insisted on taking the path of the Sect Master, which left many speechless. For most cultivators, the position of Swordholder was actually more attractive than Sect Master—what could be better than getting to control the God-Conquering Merak Sword and being able to focus on cultivation while still being respected the same as the Sect Master?

Ten years went by in the blink of an eye.

In these ten years, under Tang Jie's tireless administration, the vast Sageheart Kingdom was brought to order, and all the people prospered.

In the eyes of cultivators, such prosperity was a castle built on sand, easily destroyed if not for the protection of cultivators. But until it was destroyed, one couldn't help but admit that the current state of things wasn't bad.

When the common people were happy and safe, even their efficiency rose, and with the constant fine weather, the spirit fields scattered about the country became more productive, and the Basking Moon Sect's revenue rose. Tang Jie issued a decree that every member of the sect would receive a bottle of superior cultivation medicine at the end of the year, causing the entire sect to celebrate.

The entire sect was growing more prosperous by the day.

With this, the objections to Tang Jie dwindled even more.

Everyone had to admit that while they perhaps couldn't understand Tang Jie, he had truly brought prosperity to everyone in both the Basking Moon Sect and the Sageheart Kingdom.

But this wasn't all.

Lands were linked together, and changes within a country would influence neighboring countries.

With Tang Jie's support, the inventions from Sageheart began to spread into the neighboring countries and slowly influence them in the same way, allowing Tang Jie's Web of Fate to spread across the entire Rosecloud Domain.

The gap in living standards and the influence from the Web of Fate started to cause many people in the surrounding countries to flee into Sageheart.

Tang Jie ordered that all people should be accepted no matter how many there were, and they should be helped into becoming people of Sageheart as quickly as possible.

For a prospering country, manpower was one of its most in-demand resources. In the past, this problem was solved through large numbers of births, but now, it was being solved through immigration.

The other kingdoms didn't care too much at first, but they quickly discovered that the lands under their rule were starting to be abandoned, with some areas being as much as 90% vacant.

The poor had fled, leaving acres of land uninhabited and leaving only the rich who didn't work. The entire national structure started to show problems, which stirred up all kinds of unrest.

But these problems would ultimately only make the mortals panic. Cultivators found no problem with it at all.

They had never cared about mortals, just like how people didn't care about the dirt under their feet.

But if all that dirt one day floated away, where would humans stand?

Nobody knew, and nobody understood what sort of major incident Tang Jie was in the middle of concocting.

Everyone could see the common people moving away and their countries growing poorer, but the people who saw it couldn't do anything about it, and those who could didn't care.

Cultivation was more important!

Through Tang Jie's efforts, the gap between Sageheart and the other kingdoms grew larger.

This process went on for twenty years.

In these twenty years, the population of Sageheart doubled while the populations of other countries decreased by varying degrees.

Basking Moon Academy became overflowing with talents. In the past, one class would have on average one Nine Revolutions genius, but now, there were several in each class.

Basking Moon Academy also began to recruit more students, taking in three times the past number every year.

More and more outstanding disciples entered the sect, and the resources grew more and more abundant.

The other sects experienced a decline in talent.

Losing so many mortals meant that they had also lost fresh blood.

Without fresh blood to sustain a sect, its number of cultivators would begin to fall, as well as its overall strength.

This manifested itself in various ways, whether it was roaming abroad or in how the sect handled affairs. In all aspects, they were worse than the Basking Moon Sect.

For example, if the disciples of two sects were exploring a shared region and came upon treasure, the disciples of one sect might only be able to call upon three to five companions, while the Basking Moon Sect's people could call upon ten to dozens.

In the clashes between the lower cultivators, the Basking Moon Sect gradually started to gain an advantage.

An advantage among lower cultivators would eventually become an advantage among middle-level cultivators, and then upper-level cultivators, and even top-level cultivators.

This was an extremely long process. Originally, it might have taken several hundred years, but through Tang Jie's pushing, it became evident in only twenty years.

As the Web of Fate expanded, its influence strengthened, and the changes began to pick up speed.

People quickly found out that what they had discounted at first had suddenly become a behemoth that could influence even those who lived up in the clouds.

And now, that moment had finally come.

The Seven Absolutions Sect, Ethereal Summit.

A blue-robed, middle-aged scholar was gazing up at the skies, calculating something with his fingers.

He muttered, "The stars have shifted, a vortex forming in the sea of Fate. Could it be that the equilibrium that has lasted over Rosecloud for more than two thousand years is finally going to change? But who will fortune favor this time?"

His eyes were filled with confusion.

Although he was an Earth Immortal, he had only a rough understanding of the Dao of Fate. He could not see through its secrets or unravel those tangled threads, so he could only see that the Web of Fate that had been balanced for more than two thousand years was rippling, a vortex forming. But he couldn't see all the connections, nor could he see where the vortex had formed.

But he had a vague sense and turned in the direction of Sageheart. "Could it be there?"

In an unseen dimension, a Web of Fate covered the entire Chiliocosm.

The Rosecloud Domain was in a small square of this web, which tightly enclosed it.

In the last two thousand years, this web had essentially been unchanging.

But now, from this transcendent perspective, one could see that a vortex had appeared on this web.

Like a funnel cloud, it concentrated fortune in a single spot, and wherever this funnel was would be the person beloved by Fate.

If one looked through this funnel of Fate, one would find that it was located over the Zephyr Mountains.

However, it was not aimed at Tang Jie or at Er Hu, but at an old meditating man in a thatched hut behind Starsnatch Peak.

The old man's eyes opened, and he softly sighed, "Gathering the talents of the world and the affection of the common people, granting this body the protection of fortune… This child is growing more and more formidable. There are already signs of a Dao Art."

Unlike the scholar, he knew what Tang Jie was doing.