Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-826

Boom!

Three figures emerged from a burst of coruscating light.

Tang Jie exhaled. "We're finally here."

Every spatial teleportation over extreme distances was a torture. The only blessing was that if one had comprehended the Dao of Space, one could experience the power of Space in the teleportation process and increase one's understanding of the Dao of Space, which meant that one did not have to suffer in vain.

Tang Jie looked around and found that they were in a large hall.

The hall was made of stone bricks, a simple and majestic structure that radiated age. The vast quantities of dust indicated that no one had been here in a very long time.

A complete teleportation formation had been carved onto the floor.

This teleportation formation was very different from the ones Tang Jie knew, with some formation lines and nodes emerging from a completely different line of thought. Tang Jie was familiar with some of them, and when he spotted them, he couldn't help but cry out, "A High Antiquity teleportation formation!"

Yes, this set of coordinates had been provided by Immortal Ji Yao. A place she knew about naturally had to be linked to High Antiquity.

In other words, this hall had been around for ten thousand years.

Despite its age, the structure of the hall was intact. Standing in the middle of it, he could feel an immense will filling this space, a powerful will that made him tremble.

Tang Jie was better off, but Yiyi and Ice Phoenix clearly couldn't stand it.

Yiyi paled. "What a powerful energy!"

"Mm." Tang Jie nodded. "This should be the will of a High Antiquity Titan, which protected this place for ten thousand years."

A will left from ten thousand years ago could be so powerful? Yiyi spat out her tongue and said in awe, "Who could be this formidable?"

Ice Phoenix snorted. "You need to ask? Since it was Master who pointed this place out, this will naturally had to be left behind by Master."

But Tang Jie shook her head. "It's not her energy."

He had interacted with Immortal Ji Yao a lot and had developed a keen understanding of her energy.

Ice Phoenix was unconvinced. "Perhaps it was before my master achieved sainthood."

Those who fell to become demons didn't call it such. They instead phrased it as attaining enlightenment and achieving sainthood.

Tang Jie shook his head again. "That's not it either. The Iceheart Lotus Lady had a proud and cold personality, but look at this hall. It is spacious and majestic, clearly the work of a male cultivator."

No matter how stubborn Ice Phoenix was, she couldn't say that her master before achieving sainthood acted like a man, so she could only grunt and ignore him.

Yiyi widened her eyes. "Could it have been left by the Martial Lord?"

Tang Jie shook his head again. "The Martial Lord's Dao emphasizes battle, so if he had left behind this building, it would have been brimming with murderous energy. While this hall is grand and lofty, it doesn't smell of killing and battle, so it shouldn't have been him. It should have been left behind by some other great figure of the Court of Myriad Domains."

"'The Court of Myriad Domains'?" Yiyi's eyes gleamed. "Could this be the estate of some bigshot from the court?"

Tang Jie nodded. "This is possible."

Immortal Ji Yao had been imprisoned in the demon cave for ten thousand years and had basically known nothing about the outside world. Thus, when searching for teleportation points, she would have sought out a reliable one that would have survived ten thousand years. A secret estate some powerful figure had set aside for cultivating was definitely the best choice, and given her former status, she could easily have known about such places.

"Regardless of what sort of place it is, we'll find out once we go out there," Tang Jie said.

The three of them walked out of the hall.

What greeted them outside the hall was a gray fog.

The fog was so dense that one could stick out one's hand and lose sight of it, and the wailing of ghosts could be made out within it.

"Nether Fog," Yiyi whispered.

Yiyi had gained much experience in her years at the Basking Moon Sect, so she immediately recognized this as a kind of miasma. This miasma was highly poisonous, and prolonged exposure would turn one into ooze. Not only that, the soul would turn into a ghost that would wander the miasma, seeking out victims to devour. Thus, it was called Nether Fog.

Tang Jie was startled to find such a frightening fog waiting for them right outside the hall.

This sort of ghost fog was so powerful that even Violet Palace experts would have a hard time dealing with it.

Fortunately, it couldn't do much to him. With a wave of his hand, he covered Yiyi and Ice Phoenix in a barrier to keep out the fog. As for him, not even mentioning his Immortal Spirit Body that was immune to most evils, his Deification cultivation alone was enough to fend off this fog.

The Celestial Eye in his forehead opened, and he peered through the fog and looked around.

It turned out that this was an estate of immense size, and there were many buildings around them, though they had seemingly been abandoned for a long time. Nether Fog permeated the area, various savage ghosts lurking within.

Perhaps sensing that a living person had appeared in this estate, the ghosts began to howl and converge on Tang Jie's position.

Tang Jie snorted. "Evil ghosts and spirits, begone from my sight!"

He spoke these eight words through Law Speaking, and his words became edicts, turning into eight golden lights that had the ghosts wailing.

These ghosts were not completely mindless, so when they saw that this was no easy prey, they began to withdraw. But some of the more fearless ghosts continued to charge at Tang Jie, who simply called out, "Little Three."

Little Three appeared on his shoulder, sitting on it like a monkey. Upon seeing all those ghosts, he excitedly yelled and rushed in.

Nether Fog had no effect on ghosts, and Little Three moved in it like a fish in water. In a flash, he had reached a ghost and grabbed it. The innate aura of a Hunter Ghost, that bane of all ghosts, had that ghost trembling in fear. But then Little Three cast the ghost aside. Clearly, this was not the kind of ghost he was looking for.

"Kill them if you're not eating them," Tang Jie said.

When Little Three heard this, he flew up to that falling ghost and flew straight through it. A moment later, that ghost dissipated in a puff of black smoke.

This stunned all the other ghosts, and they began to frantically retreat.

Little Three doggedly gave chase, hunting them down one by one. He was in no rush, treating this like playtime and having a grand old time.

Meanwhile, Tang Jie took Yiyi and Ice Phoenix to the other end of the estate to see if they could find an exit.

Whoever had established this estate, it was certainly a large one. Tang Jie had passed numerous halls, but he had yet to find an exit, though he did manage to find various treasures within these halls.

But these treasures, while good, held little attraction to Tang Jie. He shattered most of them into golden grains, keeping a few of the more decent ones to put in the Treasure Cosmos Formation as a replacement for some of the weaker art relics.

There were also some medicines, though most of them had lost their effects from age.

After walking for more than half a day, Tang Jie finally emerged from the foggy region and arrived at a garden.

Tang Jie rejoiced upon seeing the garden.

Numerous spirit plants grew here, all of them ten thousand years old. While they weren't as rare as those in the Martial Lord's hidden realm, they were completely on par when it came to age.

Tang Jie hadn't thought that he would get his hands on another hidden realm. It was like a fortune falling from the heavens.

This was perhaps the easiest fortune he had ever come across, for which he had to thank Immortal Ji Yao. If not for her, he would never have been able to teleport right into the estate of a High Antiquity bigshot.

After ten thousand years, what had once been valuable had become worthless and what had been worthless had now become treasures. This garden was much more valuable than all the treasures in the estate so far—at least for Tang Jie.

Tang Jie entered the garden.

Eighteen statues stood in the garden. The moment Tang Jie entered, they all turned to him.

"Puppets? Interesting," Tang Jie smiled.

Tang Jie had seen such High Antiquity puppets before in the Myriad Court fragment, but those puppets had all been in the form of animals. He hadn't expected to run into human-shaped ones.

One of the puppets suddenly rushed at him.

Tang Jie simply said, "Yiyi."

Yiyi let out the Mother Cloud combat puppet.

The two puppets crashed together, and while the Mother Cloud combat puppet's punch pushed back the attacking puppet, the Mother Cloud puppet was also forced back half a step by the impact.

"As expected, Soul Transformation level," Tang Jie muttered.

These eighteen puppets were clearly all Soul Transformation combat puppets, though they were still a little weaker than the Mother Cloud combat puppet.

This disparity wasn't in the formations, but in the superb quality of the materials Tang Jie had invested.

Mother Cloud Essence Metal, the ghost guard core, and then High Antiquity crystal cores! Each one was a valuable treasure.

Still, Tang Jie's eyes were gleaming as he looked at the eighteen Soul Transformation puppets.

Even if the materials weren't on the same level as his Mother Cloud combat puppet, given that they had been made into Soul Transformation puppets, they had to be on the higher end of quality. If he could collect them all and then study the formations, he might be able to boost the Mother Cloud puppet's strength to another level, perhaps even the Violet Palace level.

Although this wasn't very useful for Tang Jie, it was extremely important for protecting Yiyi.

After that puppet had been pushed back, it didn't charge in again, instead retreating to the side.

Realizing something, Tang Jie reached out and took a ten-thousand-year spirit plant from the garden.

As expected, the puppets didn't move.

When Tang Jie moved to take a second, the puppet charged again, and this time, it brought a friend.

Tang Jie still did nothing, continuing to have the Mother Cloud combat puppet fight.

The Mother Cloud puppet was unafraid of a one-versus-two, its formations lighting up with starlight. Energy surged as it punched out, pushing back the two puppets. If one looked closely, one would see that a crimson light was mixed in with the starlight. This was the ghost guard's own power, fusing with the formation to double its power.

In its early stages, the Mother Cloud combat puppet had only been at the most basic phase of Soul Transformation, but after several hundred years of accumulation and consolidation, it now stood at the peak, proudly looking down on its peers.

After being pushed back, the two puppets stepped aside.

Tang Jie took a second and third plant without reaction.

But when he wanted to take a fourth, three of the eighteen puppets mobilized.

"I see now. I can only take one plant for each one I defeat? And one more is added for each level of challenge?" Tang Jie chuckled. "That's too troublesome. All of you should just come together."

He waved his sleeve, unleashing a Water Cloud Sleeve at the puppets.

He had inherited this from Ling Xiao, and while he had yet to reach the unstoppable power of Ling Xiao, it was more than what those eighteen Soul Transformation puppets could handle.

Bang! Bang! In a few rounds, Tang Jie had taken them down.

As expected, the eighteen puppets stopped attacking, all of them retreating and leaving the garden completely in Tang Jie's hands.

Tang Jie was just about to take all the flowers when he let out a gasp of surprise. Frowning, he stared at one of the flowers in the garden.