Aspiring to the Immortal Path

The cultivators were gone, but Tang Jie was still in a stand-off with the Wailing Baby.

Split-Second Youth was powerful, but the fiend was also formidable, its cultivation one level higher than his. Thus, the Time power needed to hold it was quite significant.

Once all the cultivators were gone, Tang Jie immediately called back his Time power.

Finally free, the Wailing Baby continued to grab at Tang Jie, but it found nothing there. Tang Jie had already retreated back to Xu Miaoran's side.

It then found that its earlier prey, including the prey that it had stomped half to death, had now all disappeared.

Furious, it let out a sharp wail.

And with this terrifying cry, the fiend began to chase after Tang Jie.

Tang Jie didn't even try to fight it, letting out Tutu and pulling Xu Miaoran onto the rabbit. "Go!"

Tutu looked back, saw that giant fiend, and immediately ran for its life, not even needing Tang Jie's prompting.

But Tang Jie didn't let it do so, saying, "Slow down and try to maintain a set distance between you and that fiend."

His eyes flashed with divine light, and the clouds above began to rumble with lightning. A few moments later, the Nine Heavens Calamity Blades began to descend.

In terms of pure power, Tang Jie naturally had stronger moves. The Ten Extinctions Blade, the Skyrend Swordfall, and the Combat Emperor Catalog were all more lethal. However, rather than those powerful Dao Arts and Divine Connections, it was these middle-tier Divine Connections that had the best balance of strength and power consumption.

The Nine Heavens Calamity Blade had long since fallen into the middle of the pack among Tang Jie's moves, but it had several advantages that made it optimal for the current circumstances. One was that it used the power of the world, and when thoughtcasting, it placed the least burden on his body and would let him last the longest. Secondly, while it wasn't particularly suited for one-on-one situations, each blade was still very powerful. If he were facing some cultivator skilled in evasion, the effect would be subpar, but the Wailing Baby disdained evasion and defense, its immense life force leading it to never fear any kind of attack. This allowed the Nine Heavens Calamity Blade to maximize its power. The third factor was that it had a long enough range that he could use it from a safe distance and slowly exhaust this terrifying fiend to death.

Tang Jie had come up with this plan the moment he encountered the Wailing Baby. If food was the Wailing Baby's first weakness, speed was its second.

Tang Jie exploited this weakness.

Lightning blades rained down from the sky, barraging the Wailing Baby. As Tang Jie expected, the Wailing Baby couldn't be bothered to dodge or defend.

Like the spell arts of the other cultivators, the lightning blades struck the fiend to seemingly no effect.

Only Tang Jie, who had activated his Realm of Insight, could tell that the fiend's immense life force was rapidly healing any damage it sustained, the speed of recovery even outpacing the rate at which damage was dealt. This was why it seemed like the attacks were having no effect.

The Wailing Baby had the life force taken from all the food it had just consumed, but so long as it didn't have enough food, this store of life force would run out eventually, no matter how much there was.

Thus, Tang Jie was in no rush, continuing to send down the Nine Heavens Calamity Blades while having Tutu find an empty place in the grasslands where they could fly in circles.

Wave after wave of blades rained down on the fiend, slowly grinding it down.

The Wailing Baby wasn't content to just be Tang Jie's punching bag. Seeing that it couldn't catch up, it wailed and began to suck at the air.

A powerful wind kicked up, intent on bringing all of the world into the fiend's stomach.

Tang Jie was clearly far out of range of its suction, but he suddenly found himself uncontrollably being drawn toward the Wailing Baby along with Tutu.

An alarmed Tang Jie found himself getting closer and closer to the fiend's maw, upon which he shouted, "Stop!"

Law Speaking made the Wailing Baby freeze, and the suction from its open mouth instantly dropped in power.

Tang Jie instantly regained his freedom. Mounting Tutu, he had it run off while unleashing another Split-Second Youth.

The Wailing Baby was frozen in place.

By the time the Wailing Baby's flow of time was restored, Tang Jie and the rabbit had gotten far out of its reach.

It could use this powerful vortex whenever it wanted, so once it saw that Tang Jie had gotten away, it started chasing him again. Meanwhile, Tang Jie took the opportunity to recover his Dao power.

By the time he had just about recovered, the Wailing Baby had seemingly done the same, once more opening its mouth and sucking Tang Jie toward it like a black hole.

As before, Tang Jie used Law Speaking and Split-Second Youth to escape.

The two sides continued their chase, punctuated with these more hair-raising moments.

Initially, Tutu yelped whenever it felt itself being pulled on, but it eventually got used to it. Whenever it saw that the fiend was about to start sucking again, it simply stopped running and let itself be drawn toward the fiend. Just when it seemed like it was about to fall into the fiend's mouth, it would break free and keep running. Xu Miaoran also got used to it, so much so that she even conversed with Tang Jie while they were being pulled toward the fiend's mouth.

This battle went on for three days and three nights.

After three days of chasing, both sides couldn't be more familiar with each other's methods, and the tempo of the chase had been engraved in their bodies.

The Wailing Baby would open its mouth, upon which Tang Jie's party would stop. Once they flew close, the Wailing Baby would stop on its own without Tang Jie needing to use Law Speaking. The Split-Second Youth, however, was required.

This cycle couldn't be kept up forever. In the process, some cultivators would pass through, becoming surprise factors that broke the equilibrium.

At those times, both sides would become extremely active.

The Wailing Baby needed food to recover life force, so Tang Jie needed to sever the Wailing Baby's supply.

The two went all out for their respective goals, and it was only at those times that Tang Jie revealed his true power.

Law Speaking, the Infinite Palace, Split-Second Youth, Skyrend Swordfall, the Ten Extinctions Blade, and even the Combat Emperor Catalog were used in these fierce fights, making the world quake and obscuring the sky.

But in these fights, Tang Jie always came out the winner.

Because if he couldn't save someone, he could just kill them.

After three days, with so much of its life force spent, the Wailing Baby was no longer so arrogant.

Initially, Tang Jie's attacks couldn't even break its skin, but then wounds had started to appear, and now, they were healing more and more slowly.

Its recovery abilities remained formidable, even on par with the body refiner Tang Jie, but as time went on, they continued to drop.

The Wailing Baby gradually realized that it was in a bad spot. After chasing for another half a day, it finally stopped pursuing Tang Jie.

But while it wanted to escape, Tang Jie had no plans on letting it go, ordering Tutu to turn around and give chase.

Tang Jie was like a piece of chewed-up bubblegum, inedible and clingy, and no matter what the fiend did, it couldn't drive Tang Jie off. All it could do was helplessly rage.

But Tang Jie actually wasn't in much of a better state. Three days of casting had left him running on empty. However, humans, unlike fiends, had medicines they could use to recover, and besides, he had Xu Miaoran helping him. She didn't attack, but whenever Tang Jie was running low on power, she would transfer him energy. Without it, not even Tang Jie would have been able to keep up a barrage for three days straight.

This wasn't to say that cultivators couldn't endure three days of battle. If circumstances permitted, they could even go an entire year without a problem.

But this sort of endless bombardment was extremely rare, like trying to run a marathon at sprinting speeds, the higher rate of energy usage greatly reducing one's ability to remain in that state.

After one day, the fiend was even weaker, and its recovery abilities fell once more. Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran were also both out of energy and relying on medicines to keep going. Tutu, meanwhile, was panting from exhaustion, wanting nothing more than to fall over and sleep.

But while the Wailing Baby still stood, nobody could relax.

At this point in the battle, both power reserves and perseverance were being sorely tested. Everyone was struggling to hold on and see who could last to the end.

On the fifth day, the Wailing Baby's situation was getting worse and worse.

Its enormous body was covered in terrifying wounds, and even its giant belly had shriveled up.

Tang Jie's graceful steps had grown heavy, and he struggled to move his legs. The lightning of the Nine Heavens Calamity Blades grew dim, and their blades no longer descended with such force and vigor. If the Heavenly Tribulation had been this pathetic, cultivators would be laughing so hard that they couldn't stand.

On the sixth day, the Wailing Baby and Tang Jie were both scraping the bottom of their respective barrels.

The fiend's wounds were no longer recovering, but Tutu could no longer move.

The two sides stared at each other, panting for breath.

The Wailing Baby's gaze remained vicious, as if it was saying, I can't kill you, but you can't kill me.

As Tang Jie gazed at that gigantic being, he smiled and said, "It's about time."

With a wave of his hand, a puppet appeared.

The Mother Cloud combat puppet!

The Wailing Baby despaired when it felt the aura exuded by the puppet.

It knew that it was finished.

In truth, it was not truly at its limit. As a fiend of High Antiquity, it still had some intelligence. Just now, it had been pretending so as to lure Tang Jie into coming over and slay him in a single strike. But Tang Jie was too cautious, even keeping a back-up plan like this. And as a puppet wasn't a living creature, it couldn't convert it into life force.

With no hope, the Wailing Baby let out a roar of indignation. Meanwhile, points of starlight began to light up on the puppet's body…

The Wailing Baby was finally dead.

It had taken six days of arduous battle.

This was the toughest battle Tang Jie had taken part in since entering Violet Palace, and he had only won because he had more people on his side. Although he still had some tricks up his sleeve, it wasn't incorrect to say that he had gone all out.

The fiend had just been that powerful.

The Wailing Baby was a true peak Divine Division existence, an exotic beast that had entered the Dao and lived for ten thousand years.

Only Tang Jie had the patience and the abilities to exhaust it to death. Anyone else trying it would have been exhausted to death themselves.

Now that he had gained victory, it was time to reap the rewards.

The Wailing Baby was an exotic beast, a peak Divine Division fiend that had entered the Dao of Life, so its corpse was extremely valuable.

Tang Jie produced the Imperial Sky Stamp and aimed it at the corpse, upon which a vast torrent of life force began to surge toward the stamp.

This was the power of the Imperial Sky Stamp, absorbing the life force of a fiend to make it one's own.

Tang Jie had been able to enter Deification in 150 years thanks to this stamp. It wasn't very useful in battle, but it was immensely useful in cultivation. And given the pedigree and age of the Wailing Baby, its life force was extremely refined and pure, better than one hundred ordinary Divine Division fiends put together.

The Imperial Sky Stamp began to let out a brilliant light, and the four-clawed golden dragon on the stamp began to move among the clouds, exuding Immortal energy.

Despite Tang Jie owning the Imperial Sky Stamp for so many years, he had never seen this sort of reaction from it.

He stared at the stamp in dumbfounded shock.

After a long while, he finally blurted out, "Immortal energy!"

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