Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-854

"'One horse'?" Xu Miaoran looked at Tang Jie in confusion.

Tang Jie didn't explain, pulling on Xu Miaoran and saying, "Come on. Let's get out of here so we don't provoke that horse."

He hastily flew away.

Xu Miaoran had never seen Tang Jie so cautious before, which indicated to her that this horse was nothing to be messed with, so she followed.

After flying for a while, Tang Jie finally stopped and said, "That was close. I didn't think we would run into a High Antiquity exotic beast of the Void Returning Level here."

"'Void Returning'?" Xu Miaoran yelped in shock. Didn't that mean that this had been a great fiend of the Immortal Platform Realm?

It was no wonder Tang Jie had been in such a hurry to leave.

"If not, how could it have so easily killed two Violet Palace cultivators?" Tang Jie said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

The Court of Myriad Domains really was rife with dangers. It was even possible to just randomly run into a Void Returning great fiend.

But after thinking about it, he realized that this wasn't anything strange. Any fiend that could live for more than ten thousand years would have reached this level.

In the cultivation world, being old was essentially saying that one was strong.

After avoiding the Heavenly Horse, the two continued forward. They ran into several more incidents, but they mostly managed to avoid them without trouble.

The real things to be careful about were other cultivators.

Tang Jie had run into cultivators several times who had seen that they were separated from a group, and tried to murder them for their treasures. There was one time where Tang Jie had killed them instead, and another two times where the other party had been strong enough that Tang Jie had chosen to run rather than risk a fight.

This was a complex environment with pernicious humans, vicious fiend beasts, and bizarre traps and formations, all of them coming together to make the Court of Myriad Domains a most treacherous place.

After passing through a sea of fire, they suddenly spotted clouds churning in the distance, spiritual energy erupting into the air. There was clearly someone fighting over there.

Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran looked at each other and then flew over.

As they drew closer, they saw that a group of cultivators was fighting a single fiend.

These cultivators were mostly at Infant Tending and Deification, and their leader was at Soul Projection, so they seemed to be some small alliance of wandering cultivators. As this was the outer edge of the court, it was these small alliances that were the most common. The stronger ones had already headed deeper in.

The fiend they were fighting was a deformed giant with an oversized head and enormous belly. Its entire body was green, and it was plopped on the ground and eating something. Next to it was a small mountain of white bones, and in its hand was a particularly large bone that belonged to some fiend.

The cultivators circled around it, bombarding it with spell arts and Divine Connections, but the fiend seemed completely unaware, engrossed in its meal.

Once it was done eating, it reached out its hand, and somehow, it managed to seize a cultivator. It threw the cultivator into its mouth and began to chew.

That cultivator in its mouth howled and tried to fight back, spiritual energy erupting from the fiend's mouth, but the fiend kept chewing as if nothing had happened. It seemed to regard this cultivator as some gourmet delicacy, even moaning in contentment.

Cultivators had formidable life forces and would not easily die, but this only meant that he had to endure even greater pain in the fiend's mouth. As the fiend gnawed him to pieces, he was reborn again, and then he was gnawed apart once more. The fiend kept on eating, apparently in love with this endless source of food such that it didn't instantly gobble the cultivator up, instead waiting for him to regrow. But no matter how strong this cultivator was, there was a limit to his ability to regrow, and once that cultivator had his head bitten off, he shuddered and finally stopped moving.

The fiend sighed and then swallowed up the cultivator entirely, after which it grabbed another cultivator and started the process over.

Seeing that this fiend was unkillable and the cultivators it caught were essentially dead, the cultivators finally lost their nerve and began to retreat.

The fiend let out a wail like a baby and then opened its mouth wide. A vortex formed in its mouth, so powerful that it began to pull all of them toward it. The cultivators panicked, and after combining their powers, they barely managed to fight back against the pull, but escaping was no longer possible.

The fiend began to pluck them from the air.

This time, rather than eat them, it threw the cultivators onto the ground and jumped on them until they were so mangled that they couldn't move anymore.

Xu Miaoran had never seen such a crude and barbaric fighting style before.

Cultivators had always fought primarily with flashy spells. If one didn't consider their lethality, it would have been a gorgeous sight to witness.

But these beasts of the court were far more straightforward. The Void Returning Heavenly Horse had charged into its opponents, while this fiend ate and stomped, yet these moves were extremely effective, and the cultivators were powerless against them.

"Is this also a Void Returning fiend?" Xu Miaoran asked Tang Jie.

Tang Jie shook his head. "No, it's not."

Whew, Xu Miaoran sighed in relief.

It was fine so long as it wasn't at Void Returning.

At Tang Jie's current level of strength, he could easily deal with fiends beneath Void Returning.

Tang Jie coolly added, "But it's an exotic beast that has entered the Dao, the Wailing Baby."

Exotic beasts were special beasts born from the essence of the world, protected by Fate.

To explain it simply, unique fiends with special attributes were usually called exotic beasts.

For example, the Four Sacred Beasts were considered exotic beasts. They were ranked as some of the most powerful exotic beasts, so they were given the appellation of "Sacred". In essence, however, they were still exotic beasts that had become fiends.

Exotic beasts that had become fiends would be even stronger than usual, essentially invincible among their peers and sometimes able to challenge those above their level.

As for exotic beasts that entered the Dao, those were even more incredible.

Humans could enter Daos, and so could fiends.

Starting from Transformation, fiends could comprehend the Dao like humans, and some fiends who had cultivated for a long time and possessed profound wisdom could easily comprehend the Dao as easily as humans.

And exotic beasts, which started off from a stronger foundation, were even more terrifying after entering the Dao.

"This Wailing Baby is exceptionally talented. Its name comes from how it wails like a baby. When it was at Transformation, it had comprehended the Dao of Life. It developed a gluttonous nature, able to extract immense power and life force from what it eats. For this reason, so long as there's food around, it could be said to be unkillable," Tang Jie explained. "It once terrified the world, slaying countless beings with its power. Later on, the Vast Ocean Divine Lord of the Court of Myriad Domains came down and imprisoned the Wailing Baby within the court's jail. It seems that this fiend managed to escape after the court was shattered. After ten thousand years of cultivation, while it has yet to reach Void Returning, it's clearly at peak Divine Division. This coupled with the endless recovery granted to it by the Dao of Life means that it's just as scary as a Void Returning fiend."

Xu Miaoran was alarmed. "Then shouldn't we hurry and go?"

Tang Jie shook his head. "There's no need to run. The Wailing Baby is strong, but it's not fast. So long as you're not in the range of its mouth's suction, it can't catch you. If you can find its weakness, you might even be able to kill it."

"You can kill it?" Xu Miaoran said in surprise. "Didn't you say it was unkillable?"

"Nothing in the world is truly unkillable, just like how there's no such thing as a perfect spell," Tang Jie said with a chuckle. "So long as you can find its weakness, you can kill it, and for this thing, food is its weakness."

"Alas, it has plenty of food right now," Xu Miaoran sighed.

In the distance, those cultivators were still being attacked by the Wailing Baby, and each one of them had thousands of years of cultivation. This was a huge source of nutrition for this fiend, and so much of this sort of food at once was like a human cultivator getting their hands on a big batch of thousand-year plants.

The Wailing Baby had spent its entire life eating, and it got stronger just by eating. The reason it hadn't broken through in the last ten thousand years was that there was too little to eat in the court. Fortunately, the cultivators coming in had let it reach peak Divine Division. Perhaps this time, it would break into Void Returning. Thus, it excitedly bellowed, but despite the joy it was feeling, it sounded like a keening banshee.

"So we have to save them," Tang Jie answered.

Unlike other fiends, the Wailing Baby was stronger the more people were around, so one had to fight it with a small number of people. People hadn't known this and ended up attacking in large groups, which just meant that they all died together. But Tang Jie knew, so he understood that his first priority was to save those cultivators.

After saying this, Tang Jie charged at the Wailing Baby.

The cultivators were despairing from their imminent deaths at the hands of the Wailing Baby when they spotted Tang Jie flying over. Hope bloomed in their hearts as they shouted, "Daoist Brother, save me!"

But as he got closer, they saw that he was only a Deification cultivator, and they despaired once more.

All these Violet Palace experts, even a Soul Projection cultivator, had been no match for this fiend, so what could a single Deification cultivator do?

The Wailing Baby, meanwhile, let out a weeping wail of excitement on seeing another cultivator coming, and it reached out.

This simple grab was imbued with the laws of the world, seeming to enclose the heavens and earth. Attempting to escape this was as futile as trying to escape the heavens and earth.

It was no wonder those cultivators had failed to escape, for this grab was infused with a Dao Will.

It was a Dao Will that had a life of its own.

Tang Jie didn't know why this was the case, for there was nothing about this ability of the Wailing Baby in his memories.

In other words, either there was a gap in his memories or this fiend had gained this ability in the last ten thousand years.

Tang Jie didn't know which was the answer, nor did he care.

As the Wailing Baby grabbed, he pointed a finger at it.

An ancient and majestic energy emerged from his finger, a power that was seemingly transported from High Antiquity, and even the provoked fiend froze for a few moments.

And then it found that its world had changed.

Everything had suddenly gotten much faster.

That approaching cultivator, all the meat right next to its mouth—all of it changed.

Split-Second Youth!

This was the Dao Art that could control the flow of Time that Tang Jie had gained upon entering the Dao. He called it Split-Second Youth, for it could make one's youth go by in a split second.

While the Wailing Baby was caught in this split second, the cultivators flew away.

"Hurry and go! I can't last for long!" Tang Jie called out after pointing his finger.

The cultivators saw that this powerful fiend was now just frozen there like a fool.

No, it was actually still moving, but it was moving like a snail, every movement hundreds of times slower. The clawed hand was still reaching for Tang Jie, but it was just moving incredibly slowly, so slowly that it seemed unreal.

Tang Jie's call stirred everyone from their stupor, and they hastily flew away.

Without the fiend stopping them, they were finally able to escape.

When they turned to Tang Jie, they saw that he was still facing the Wailing Baby, showing no intention of escaping. Everyone thought that he was trying to fight the Wailing Baby to cover their retreat. Moved, they developed the impression that this person had used some secret art to hold down this fiend, but this fiend was so powerful that the man had rendered himself powerless to escape.

In this place where everyone was looking to backstab each other, this man was willing to sacrifice himself for everyone else, as if he was a manifestation of justice, a representative of all that was good and light in the world.

Filled with gratitude, they bowed to Tang Jie and said, "Savior, if you are able to survive today, then this one will definitely repay you with my life."

Since this person probably wasn't going to survive anyway and these would all be empty promises, everyone freely made grand oaths and heroic vows, which also helped to keep their consciences clear.

After making their promises, they flew off.

The court was a big place, so it was time to go back to searching for treasure.