Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-793

The hour was late, but the battle continued unabated.

At this moment, on Godhead Mountain, an arrow carrying all the life force of a peak Soul Transformation cultivator lit up the sky with a world-ending light, drawing the gaze of all experts.

Tang Jie raised his head and saw a golden arrow flying toward him.

At that instant, Tang Jie felt an unprecedented sense of danger. In that very first moment, Tang Jie understood that he could not block this arrow, nor could he afford to let it hit him.

This arrow could kill even Deification experts. He might not have been able to endure it even in his merged form.

This was a terrifying arrow infused with the destructive power of a Great Dao!

There were no Violet Palace experts present in Godhead Palace, so who could have unleashed this sort of attack?

Tang Jie didn't know, nor did he have any time to think about it.

The alarm bells in his mind were blaring at maximum volume, and his survival instincts were operating at maximum capacity.

An indescribable feeling emerged in his mind. In his eyes, nothing existed in the world except that arrow.

Gazing at that arrow, entirely on instinct, Tang Jie seemed to thoroughly comprehend something, and he suddenly shouted.

"Go!"

This cry was like a call of the heavens, awakening the soul of all who heard it.

A small person appeared on his head—his Divine Soul.

The Divine Soul looked at that golden arrow and slightly opened its mouth, upon which that golden arrow suddenly radiated light that formed into a golden ball, which was seemingly a kind of defensive system. However, the arrow also stopped cold in the air.

At the same time, a person shot out from the horizon like a comet: Tang Jie's original body.

He was charging through the air with no regard for what was in front of him, pushing through weapons and spell arts in his bid to get to the formation.

But that golden arrow had only paused for a brief moment.

"Slow!"

Tang Jie shouted again, his face turning ghastly pale and the Divine Soul grimacing in pain.

The arrow slowed down, and Tang Jie swiftly retreated.

He didn't seek to avoid the arrow. This arrow had already locked onto his soul and would seek him out, so it was impossible to avoid. All he wanted was to create some distance to give himself more time and opportunities.

He swiftly retreated while his original body swiftly advanced, hoping to merge before the arrow arrived.

At the ancestral hall, Chu Xitong saw this and shouted, "Stop him!"

Alas, her order couldn't travel as quickly as Tang Jie could move.

Ignoring all attacks, the original body and avatar rapidly moved to converge.

The golden arrow continued to advance.

Tang Jie's mouth once more bellowed:

"Stop!"

The arrow paused once more, as if something was holding it back.

Immediately afterward, Tang Jie threw up blood, and this was no ordinary blood, but his essence blood. Blood also began to gush out from various parts of the Divine Soul. The Divine Soul was the Divine Will manifesting through spiritual energy and had no blood, yet it was somehow bleeding all over.

"This is impossible!" Chu Xitong shouted.

The Cloudsplinter Bow was a Dao armament that unleashed an Arrow of Slaughter. No energy was capable of stopping it.

But Tang Jie had managed to do it.

How could the Four-Nine True Words alone have done it?

But in the sky, Ji Qingfeng had noticed what was off, blurting out, "The power of a Great Dao!"

In Tang Jie's cry, Ji Qingfeng had sensed the power of a Great Dao.

A Dao Art!

This was a Dao Art!

Tang Jie had a third Dao Art?

Ji Qingfeng's mind was overcome with shock.

The three shouts hadn't stopped the golden arrow, and it was still approaching, but its light had greatly dimmed.

But Tang Jie still couldn't block it. He shouted again:

"Fixate!"

He once more threw up blood, and his Divine Soul let out a shout as its arms and legs turned to dust.

The four True Words had greatly diminished the golden arrow's power, but they weren't enough to stop it.

The golden arrow seemed to have a will of its own. As if sensing that an enemy was trying to stop it, it let out a furious shriek and erupted with light, upon which it accelerated once more, hurtling toward Tang Jie's head. At the same time, Tang Jie's original body charged into the formation. He swung the Sovereign Blade, tearing through the golden light, and then rushed at his avatar.

Three parties came together at the same time in a massive explosion, and the resultant smoke that plumed into the air was infused with the power of Great Daos such that even Violet Palace experts couldn't see through it.

"Shit!" Ji Qingfeng winced at the sight.

The excessive scheming of the Seven Absolutions Sect leading to the fall of the Basking Moon Sect's rising Celestial Sovereign would have the Basking Moon Sect looking to settle accounts with them.

Sure enough, Ming Yekong paled, and he cried out, "Tang Jie!"

But there was no response from the smoke.

Everyone stopped fighting, as if somebody had pressed the "pause" button.

Everyone looked down at the site of the explosion, wondering if Tang Jie was still alive.

A few moments later, the smoke dissipated.

All that was left at the location was a bottomless crater, an irreparable hole left in the seemingly impervious Jade-Cleansing Golden Sunset Formation.

The aftershocks of the Cloudsplinter Bow had spilled into the surroundings, and though the Jade-Cleansing Golden Sunset Formation had neutralized most of it, it had still managed to destroy a large number of traps.

One could say that this arrow had led Godhead Palace to destroy a little less than half of its own Jade-Cleansing Golden Sunset Formation.

But if this could kill Tang Jie, it was worth it.

Chu Xitong had accepted this price the moment she gave the order.

But was Tang Jie actually dead?

Nobody knew.

Suddenly.

A hand grabbed onto the edge of the crater, five fingers digging into the steel-like soil, and a man clambered out of the pit.

As he stood up, the flashing golden arrow in his chest became apparent.

It was Tang Jie!

"Tang Jie!" Ming Yekong shouted out in excitement.

"YEAH!" The cultivators of both the Basking Moon Sect and the Seven Absolutions Sect cheered, and Ji Qingfeng sighed in relief.

That was close!

Things had almost become unsalvageable.

Tang Jie looked down at his chest and muttered, "A fine arrow! It almost took my life!"

It truly had almost killed Tang Jie. If he had not stimulated his potential at the last moment and activated a Dao Art, his avatar would have been utterly annihilated.

"How could this be?" Miao Lieyan stared at him in disbelief, pointing a trembling finger at Tang Jie. "What did you do just now?"

Tang Jie glanced back at Miao Lieyan and smiled. "As you saw, it was a Dao Art."

"What sort of Art?"

"It was created by merging the Dao of Truth with my Four-Nine True Words. I call it…" After some thought, Tang Jie said, "'Law Speaking'."

"'Law Speaking'." Miao Lieyan shuddered.

Tang Jie had more than two Dao Arts.

Seeing Miao Lieyan's expression, Tang Jie sighed.

What he left unexplained was that this third Dao Art wasn't actually complete.

After almost two hundred years of cultivation, while he had entered the Dao of Truth, he had yet to reach one hundred Dao Runes, so creating a real Dao Art was still not possible.

He had been able to use it by burning up his Divine Soul and infusing the power of Truth into his Four-Nine True Words, thus temporarily creating the effect of Law Speaking. But as a price, the avatar's Divine Soul had been damaged. While it wasn't as serious as when he had protected Lin Xin, they were still rather serious wounds that would need some time to recover.

Besides his own Divine Soul, he had also been burning up Dao power.

The little bit of Truth power he had gained had been mostly burned up—a tragic loss.

The only positive was that if he could recover, then Law Speaking, unlike the Reflections of Floating Life and the Infinite Palace, could be used when the avatar was alone.

This was good news, for it meant Tang Jie had more flexibility.

Putting aside his sadness, Tang Jie pulled out the golden arrow.

As the golden arrow left his body, it dissolved into motes of golden light and dissipated into the wind, and the wound on Tang Jie's chest began to heal. The power of Slaughter was somewhat similar to the power of the Sovereign Blade, focusing on murder and aggression, able to break through all arts and barriers, emphasizing the process and not the result, so healing from it was relatively easy.

Tang Jie turned and resumed his progress.

Seeing that he was going to leave, Miao Lieyan instinctively threw out his demon flame.

Tang Jie simply shook his head. "It's useless."

He activated the Contraflame Mantra, opening his mouth and swallowing the demon flame.

The Soulblaze Demon Flame could burn up the Divine Soul and was one of the most difficult flames to absorb. Taking it in meant that he would need all of his strength to suppress it, limiting his movement, and Tang Jie prioritized the golden body, so he had chosen not to absorb it. But things were different now, and as the demon flame entered his body, he called out:

"Still!"

The raging demon flame instantly grew quiet, and the Contraflame Mantra wrapped around it and pulled it into Tang Jie's Spirit Sea. The demon flame had been subdued before it had even touched his Divine Soul.

Miao Lieyan had never seen such a mystical art before and was left dumbfounded. Tang Jie said, "Thank you for your flame."

He turned and left.

The other Godhead Palace cultivators wanted to stop him, but they had been left terrified by that shocking scene just now.

It wasn't a fear of death, but the despair of facing the supremely strong.

If even the Cloudsplinter Bow couldn't kill Tang Jie, what could they do?

All the Godhead Palace cultivators dumbly stared at Tang Jie, none of them attempting to stop him. Only the golden winds of the Jade-Cleansing Golden Sunset Formation stubbornly continued to gust away at Tang Jie, attempting in vain to melt him down.

Tang Jie gradually grew annoyed.

The Cloudsplinter Bow had forced him to retreat, reversing much of his progress, and the Godhead manifestation was already beginning to give out.

Glancing up at the Godhead manifestation, Tang Jie grunted. "Fine, I'll keep on disciplining you all until you're satisfied!"

His body erupted with countless rays of multicolored light, which interwove around him into the Infinite Palace.

Controlling the Infinite Palace, Tang Jie charged straight ahead.

This was no longer a casual stroll, but a full sprint, as fast as lightning.

He triggered countless traps along the way, golden bursts of lightning erupting throughout the formation and various insidious spell arts pelting him, but all of them were blocked by the Infinite Palace.

Relying on the formidable defenses of the Infinite Palace, Tang Jie charged his way through like a tank.

All attacks were ineffective on him, all obstructions child's play.

He charged through all the obstacles, charged through the Jade-Cleansing Golden Sunset Formation, charged into Godhead Mountain, charged into Godhead Palace, and charged right up to that golden body he had longed for.

He encountered no opposition the entire way, nobody left to halt his steps.

Just like that, Tang Jie arrived at the ancestral hall.