Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Tang Jie was utterly dumbfounded by the revelation from Heavenly Maiden Qingyang.

He had always believed that the hidden realm had been left behind by the Martial Lord, as did almost everyone else in the Rosecloud Domain.

All of sudden, the Martial Lord’s hidden realm had become the Pearl Lady’s hidden realm, and it made Tang Jie feel like his world had been turned upside-down.

But now that he thought about it, it made sense.

Nothing in the hidden realm had said that it belonged to the Martial Lord.

Tang Jie had believed that it had been left by the Martial Lord simply because of the arts left there—and those truly were the Martial Lord’s arts, yet they had been left behind by the Pearl Lady!

Gazing into Heavenly Maiden Qingyang’s eyes, Tang Jie didn’t know what to say.

He was a Titan of a generation, but after running into the person who had changed his Fate, he was still caught off guard.

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang could see that he felt awkward, so she grabbed his hand and smiled. “I was simply taking a disciple in place of my husband, so you don’t need to mind it. Moreover, that place was also where I lived a blissful life with my husband, so calling it the Martial Lord’s hidden realm isn’t wrong either.”

“‘A blissful life’?” Tang Jie realized what this meant. “Could it be…”

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang nodded. “Yes, later on, I ran into him. We were together there living our happiest life for one hundred years.”

“Then why did you split up? Why did Master come to fight the court?”

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang’s eyes teared up once more.

She fell back into her memories. “I next encountered Jiuyang three hundred years after I had fled the court. I was wandering the sea of stars back then, hunting down Starlight Butterflies, when I saw him walking toward me out of the distance…”

She happily smiled. “He had a thick beard and was wearing tattered beast hide, like some barbarian walking out of the wilds. But his eyes were as bright as ever. I was so excited that I almost fainted, grabbing him and refusing to let go as I cried and laughed. I even refused to sleep because I thought that it was all a dream, that he would be gone when I woke up.”

“How did he manage to find you?” Tang Jie asked.

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang replied, “We were husband and wife, and we planted Soul Guides in each other. With this art present, we would be able to find each other wherever we were.”

“Then how did he manage to escape?” Tang Jie asked.

Escaping the Primordial Fog Domain in only three hundred years meant that the Martial Lord hadn’t taken advantage of the Primordial Fog Calamity. Entering the positive plane outside of the Primordial Fog Calamity was no easy feat, unless one was proficient in the Dao of Space like the White Tiger. But from what Tang Jie knew of the Martial Lord, he didn’t possess this kind of power.

Qingyang shook her head. “I don’t know either. He remained silent on what happened in the Primordial Fog Domain, never telling me what went on there. Only through a few conversations did I sense that he had been through something incredible there that had had an immense influence on him.”

“‘An immense influence’?”

Qingyang nodded. “He had grown stronger. In the past, he was no match for me or Ji Yao, but when he returned, I could sense that he had become extremely strong. Curious, I wondered how strong he was, if he was any match for me. But Jiuyang knew that I was stubborn and didn’t like to lose, so he refused to fight me. Whenever I forced him, he would go through the motions and then concede. But his clumsy acting only made me angrier.”

Tang Jie thought, You got even angrier after he pretended to lose? You’ve really got a feisty personality, and it would probably be even worse if you really won. This Nine Heavens Pearl Lady seemed gentle, but she also had her willful side.

But now that he thought about it, perhaps the Martial Lord liked this sort of woman.

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang went on with her story, unaware of what Tang Jie was thinking. “Unable to force his hand, I grew a little anxious. One day, my temper got to me, and I used the Phoenix Oblivion Art, one of my strongest moves. If Jiuyang had been at his past level of strength, he was bound to be heavily injured. The moment I made the attack, I regretted it. But to my surprise, he let my palm strike him, acting as if he was completely unaffected.”

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang shook her head. “At the time, while I had yet to enter Boundless, the Phoenix Oblivion Art was not an attack any ordinary person could block. Even a Boundless Gold Immortal would throw up a few mouthfuls of blood, expending some of their Immortal energy. So when he took it like it was nothing, I was stunned. I asked him how he had become this strong, but he refused to tell me. I asked him to teach me, but he also refused. He simply said that there was an immense price behind this power, that he was walking a path for which nobody knew the consequences. Thus, he could not teach me, because he feared that it would destroy me. But if he could, he was willing to pass on to me the Weapon Lord Mantra and the Pangu True Classic.”

“‘The Weapon Lord Mantra’? ‘Pangu True Classic’?”

“Yes! Jiuyang believed that besides comprehending the Dao, entering the Dao, and controlling the Dao, there was also another realm: the Dao Lord. A Dao Lord was someone that truly controlled the laws of the Great Dao, and because they mastered a Great Dao, there could only be one lord for every Dao. Jiuyang chose the Weapon Dao. He believed that by gathering the essences of the Great Dao within weapons, he could make an emperor of weapons, which he called the Sovereign Blade. Once the Sovereign Blade was cultivated to a certain level, it could be the Lord of the Weapon Dao. Thus, the true name of the Weapon Mantra is actually the Weapon Lord Mantra, which is his true title. As for the Pangu True Classic, it is the real name of the Parting Classic that you cultivate. Jiuyang later made some modifications and changed its name to the Parting Classic.”

Tang Jie was enlightened.

The title of Martial Lord actually meant that he was the Lord of the Weapon Dao?

Tang Jie finally understood a little of the Martial Lord’s ambitions and daring.

“Alas, I let him down,” Heavenly Maiden Qingyang sorrowfully said. “Jiuyang had his idea of the Sovereign Blade before I even knew him, and he had been working to make it all this time. But back then, he hadn’t even been able to shatter weapons with Dao power, let alone gather golden grains for the Sovereign Blade. So I treated his offer to teach me the Weapon Lord Mantra with disdain, thinking that he was trying to conceal the truth behind his strength. As for the Pangu True Classic… hmph, making a woman practice body refining arts? Only a musclehead like him could think of it!”

Heavenly Maiden Qingyang’s face flashed with remorse. “I threw a tantrum and argued with him.”

Not every fairytale had a beautiful ending.

The story between the Nine Heavens Pearl Lady and the Martial Lord sounded like a couple who had been through many trials before finally retiring to a little garden.

How beautiful it would be if the story had ended there!

But in reality, for those in the story, it always had to keep going.

Immortal Ji Yao, Yu Cheng, and many other Immortals served as obstacles to their love, and the husband and wife had been able to work together to overcome these trials. But afterward, without external problems to unify them, internal problems that seemed unremarkable became new trials.

This was what had happened to the Martial Lord and the Pearl Lady.

Perhaps life in that isolated paradise was too peaceful, but after they were free from their outside enemies, the Pearl Lady suddenly became rather willful. She was extremely unhappy that the Martial Lord refused to tell her the secret of his sudden rise in power. It had to be understood that every cultivator had an immense desire to grow stronger. The Martial Lord was appearing to be selfish, so it was understandable that she didn’t like it.

Thus, she refused the Weapon Lord Mantra and Pangu True Classic.

Only much later did she learn what she had given up.

She turned to Tang Jie and said, “Let me look at your Sovereign Blade.”

Tang Jie took out the Sovereign Blade.

The Sovereign Blade was currently the size of a mountain. Since the last battle, Tang Jie had realized that the Sovereign Blade was far from reaching the end of its development, so he took every opportunity to nurture it. Its ten-thousand-foot true form now exuded a supreme might, though of course, he had presented it in its condensed form to Qingyang. Even then, it was still possible to sense the terrifying energy that had been compacted to the limit.

Qingyang stroked the Sovereign Blade and muttered, “Weapon Lord… Weapon Lord… Jiuyang, you really succeeded in becoming the Lord of the Weapon Dao, passing on the Dao through an art.”

Tang Jie had realized long ago that the Sovereign Blade was a method of passing down a Dao through an art.

It now appeared that one needed to be the Lord of a Dao in order to perform this feat.

This was the highest level one could attain in a Dao. If one knew this, one could understand how the Martial Lord could shatter all weapons in a single shout in his battle with the Court of Myriad Domains.

Because he was the Lord of the Weapon Dao!

And it was because he was the Lord of the Weapon Dao that he could pass down the Weapon Dao in the form of the Weapon Lord Mantra.

The Martial Lord had wanted to pass it to Qingyang, but she had refused.

Tang Jie didn’t know why the Martial Lord hadn’t insisted that she learn it, but he guessed that this was the restriction of the inheritance. Because the Weapon Lord Mantra was passing on the Dao, it could not be passed on to those who rejected it. And for whatever reason, he could not say this.

The Daos normally could not be transmitted, and breaking this limit was no easy task, and perhaps the secret behind it could not be shared!

In short, the Pearl Lady gave up on this inheritance because of her own willfulness, and the Martial Lord could do nothing about it. He could only leave the legacy here for someone else.

Qingyang continued, “After that incident, I became unhappy with Jiuyang, thinking that he wasn’t passing on the secret to me because he was trying to keep me down. I liked winning and was always thinking of ways to grow stronger, so that year, which was my hundredth year with Jiuyang there, I did something extremely selfish and willful… I argued with him, and after arguing with him, I ran out, leaving the paradise that we had resided in for one hundred years. At the time, I just wanted to go out for a stroll, to clear my mind, but…”

Tears of regret flowed from her eyes.

“I was captured by the Court of Myriad Domains.”