Aspiring to the Immortal Path

The Void Whale’s corpse silently drifted in the void.

As a beast of the void, most of its body wasn’t usable for much. The only useful part was its brain stem, which was a rather rare material.

Tang Jie had left after extracting the brain stem, leaving the massive corpse to float about like a continent in the void.

The world on its back had already crumbled, but if given enough time, perhaps some life could be reborn in the middle of all that devastation.

On this day, this shattered world welcomed a guest.

An elegant figure appeared in the distance.

What seemed like millions of kilometers were covered by a few casual steps, and in the blink of an eye, they had reached the Void Whale.

Upon reaching that devastated continent, the visitor seemed abnormally excited. “Three hundred years! After wandering the endless void for three hundred years, I’ve finally run into traces of another, hahahaha!”

They then went over to the wound on the Void Whale and began to inspect it.

“This wound shows clear traces of the Great Dao. It makes sense. How could a Void Whale be so easily killed without the power of a Great Dao? But why is this energy signature so familiar…”

The visitor seemed to immerse themself into their memories before finally shuddering in realization. “Tang Jie!”

With this shout, the visitor’s head of golden hair lit up, lighting up their dazzling face in the darkness.

Immortal Ji Yao!

Fate was like a mischievous child.

After being banished by Tang Jie’s tricks, Immortal Ji Yao had wandered the void for three hundred years, and after so many years of going here and there, the first person whose traces she discovered happened to be Tang Jie.

Through this shocking coincidence, Immortal Ji Yao felt the profound contempt of the Web of Fate.

This was a coincidence, but it was also an inevitability!

Immortal Ji Yao trembled all over as she muttered, “No wonder, no wonder… no wonder when I used everything I had to peer into the future, I saw a clue to leave this place in this region, but I didn’t think this clue would be Tang Jie. So we really are linked by Fate?”

She threw her head back and laughed, and then she began to chase after Tang Jie.

She had no doubt that Tang Jie could take her away from this place. She had already used her Dao of Space to touch the Dao of Time, sacrificing a thousand years of life force to learn the future. Though the clue had been vague, the direction was clear.

It was Tang Jie who had banished her to the void, and it was Tang Jie who was bound to bring her home.

This was all decided by Fate.

——————————————————

Tang Jie ended up waking up three days later.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself on the thirteenth floor of the Spiral Flame—Yuan Tianzhong’s former residence was now his place of recuperation.

Tang Jie closed his eyes, a thousand thoughts running through his mind as he called out, “Attend me.”

A person appeared next to Tang Jie.

Wang Posha.

He got down on one knee. “Master, you’re awake.”

“Mm. How is the situation?”

Wang Posha bowed his head and said, “The thirty-six sects of Flame Yang led by the four major sects have all been subdued. Only a small number of radicals refuse to accept reality and maintain resistance. They’ve currently scattered across the world and are gathering their forces.”

“Is it a big problem?” Tang Jie asked.

“Those people aren’t that strong and don’t pose a great problem. But apparently, there are some secluded old monsters of the Flame Yang Domain who are closely connected to the major sects. These people hadn’t intervened in mortal affairs for a long time, but the Nether Domain invasion forced them out, and many people developed connections with them. Some of them were subsequently asked to help on this matter, and while they won’t pose a threat in the short term, once they come together, they might present a problem.”

“Then what’s your plan?” Tang Jie asked.

“We can’t let them come together,” Wang Posha answered. “These people are very well hidden, and we won’t be able to find them that quickly. Meanwhile, if the people on our side disperse, we can easily be ambushed. Several of our people have already been slain in sneak attacks. Our first priority is to reactivate the teleportation formation and gather reinforcements from the Rosecloud Domain. Only then can we control Flame Yang.”

Tang Jie shook his head. “Posha, your train of thought is still stuck on controlling this domain.”

Wang Posha was taken aback. “Is that wrong?”

“Of course it is.” Tang Jie casually explained, “If I wanted to control this domain, I wouldn’t have negotiated a loan. There are many ways to exploit a place, and using military power to control it is the worst of them. Controlling Flame Yang through force will only make the people hate us. This is different from Blood River. The humans of Blood River had long been suppressed and bullied by the fiends and demons, so when we sought to merge with it, we could use the pretext of delivering freedom to the humans. But this is a human world, so trying to control it by force will only stir resistance.”

Tang Jie paused a moment before continuing. “If the Rosecloud Domain were close, we could rely on our strength there to crush everything. But this is not the case. The teleportation formation has its limits, and using it consumes a great number of resources. And in the end, we aren’t natives of this place. In other words, the Rosecloud Domain’s army here can only be several hundred people, and each loss is significant. This is why the rebels of the Flame Yang Domain dare to oppose us.

“If the war continues, we’ll quickly find ourselves stuck in a situation where we can’t find the location of the rebel army while we’re being constantly attacked by the rebels. Worst of all, even if we control the major sects, rebels will keep popping up. People who are rebels in our view are simply ‘resistance against the invaders’ in their eyes. We can keep killing group after group, but we’ll find that there’s no end to them. The only ones dwindling in number will be us… Our forces will get smaller and smaller, and end up stuck in an inescapable mire.”

Tang Jie gave Wang Posha a detailed account of the predicament the Rosecloud Domain cultivators might face in the Flame Yang Domain.

Wang Posha was flabbergasted. “Will it really be like this? Master?”

“Trust me; that is definitely how it will go,” Tang Jie firmly replied.

“Even if Master is here?”

Tang Jie chuckled. “Perhaps I could suppress them for a time, but I can’t suppress them forever. Most importantly, I can’t always be here. This is also why they dare to resist. They understand that anyone with their mind set on the Great Dao, anyone who could sweep through the cultivators of Flame Yang, would never stay here over the long term. Because…

“There is no progress without rivals!”

No progress without rivals!

This was the shared understanding of almost every Titan.

Why was it that the higher one climbed, the more difficult it became? It wasn’t only because of the cultivation itself, but also because there were fewer opponents of one’s level the higher one went.

Without rivals, there was no existence that could spur one forward, no models to learn from. It was only natural that one’s progress would slow down.

This was why Titans needed to travel.

They traveled the Great Stellar Chiliocosm to broaden their horizons and seek opportunities, but they also sought danger and adversity.

Tang Jie was never going to stay in Flame Yang, and Wang Posha probably wouldn’t either.

So long as he wished to progress, he had to leave and find a new path.

Upon realizing this, Wang Posha understood where his strategy regarding the Flame Yang Domain was wrong.

“Then Master intends to…”

“Let’s negotiate. The Flame Yang Domain belongs to the people of Flame Yang, and they should still govern its affairs,” Tang Jie said. “The people of Rosecloud don’t have this ambition and have no plans of controlling or conquering this land. But… the loan must be repaid, and compensation must be paid for the harm done to us.”

These last words revealed Tang Jie’s true purpose.

The former agreement still needed to be fulfilled, and not only that, the actions of Yuan Tianzhong’s group needed to be paid for.

And according to Tang Jie’s plan, this compensation wouldn’t be just adding to the amount. After all, it was very hard to put to numbers their betrayal. Asking for too much might make others think that he was being too greedy, yet it might also fail to satisfy Tang Jie’s needs. A hundred million spirit coins in compensation sounded huge, but it was nothing compared to the Flame Yang Domain’s overall debt.

Thus, Tang Jie chose to adjust the interest rate. The handsome three percent monthly interest rate would be boosted to ten percent.

Since the Flame Yang Domain wasn’t going to play nice, Tang Jie wouldn’t either. It was time to return to the standard of “send nine and receive thirteen.”

This interest was bound to crush the economy of the Flame Yang Domain.

“They already owed a lot, and now they’ll owe even more,” Wang Posha replied.

“They’ll agree,” Tang Jie said.

Tang Jie wasn’t worried about that.

While the Rosecloud Domain faced numerous difficulties in governing the Flame Yang Domain, the resistance would face ten times the challenges. Perhaps with sufficient resolve, they would run off the “Rosecloud invaders”, but how many of these heroes would live to see the fruits of their efforts?

If possible, everyone wanted to live to enjoy it all, not offer themselves up as martyrs.

“If they don’t agree, then we’ll give them a good beating,” Tang Jie added after some thought. “I have no patience for a long war, but I can play with them for a bit.”

More people meant more opinions. There were always those pains-in-the-neck that felt like they could control everything.

He could use this beating to flex his power, get rid of the troublemakers, and pacify any objections so that he could set up a puppet government—Tang Jie had seen too much of this in his old world.

“Yes!” Wang Posha felt sincere admiration as he accepted the order.