Aspiring to the Immortal Path-Chapter 1008: A Perfect Body

After the Darksoul Crab incident, Tang Jie became much more careful on his hunts.

While Little Three could protect him, Tang Jie had never once accepted this protection. In his view, no matter when or where, he had to nurture a sense of independence and self-reliance, even in the Nether Domain. Moreover, Little Three was like him and essentially a wanted criminal in the Nether Domain. The difference was that while he was food in the eyes of ghosts, Little Three was a natural enemy.

When food appeared, everyone would come together to eat it up, but when a natural enemy appeared, they might all scatter and issue an alarm.

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Thus, to be safe, it was better to not have Little Three follow him often, and without Tang Jie, Little Three could also better conceal himself.

In short, whenever possible, Tang Jie preferred to hunt on his own.

One day, Tang Jie swam out of the original body as usual.

He cautiously concealed his aura before swimming upward.

Today, he wanted to try hunting a Darksoul Crab.

If he could pull it off, he would be able to freely travel and possess a little territory of his own.

After swimming for a while, Tang Jie was on the verge of reaching the surface, This was the area that Darksoul Crabs normally wandered. He carefully approached, looking out for any sign of activity.

All was peaceful.

But Tang Jie quietly waited.

Ghosts had no concept of time. Most of their time was spent floating around on their instincts, with no time spent on resting or on waiting. Thus, when they appeared was something decided by the heavens.

But Tang Jie continued to patiently wait, for he knew a Darksoul Crab would eventually show up.

After some time, there was finally movement.

A gray-black band surged out from below, but despite its appearance, Tang Jie knew that it was a Darksoul Crab.

He stared at the Darksoul Crab, remaining motionless.

As if sensing Tang Jie's gaze, the Darksoul Crab began to shift.

The fog began to condense and extend, forming two large pincers that reached for Tang Jie.

Tang Jie still didn't move, coldly staring at the Darksoul Crab. Just as the pincers were about to reach him, Tang Jie suddenly grunted.

"Hmph!"

This grunt seemed to pierce into the Darksoul Crab like a sharp needle, and the black fog churned as if it had been injured.

Tang Jie's action had seemed simple, but it was actually a soul attack called the Soul-Shaking Spike, which he had learned from that Eternal Life Demon Sovereign. This had been a very impressive attack, and through the Celestial Eye, Tang Jie had basically grasped how it functioned. After some additional analysis, he was able to produce his own version that had around 80% of the original's power, and he gave this to the original body. ᚱÃ𐌽Ο𝐛Ɛs̈

The Soul-Shaking Spike was extremely effective against ghosts, and with one strike, the Darksoul Crab was heavily wounded. But the ghost still charged forward, its tendrils of fog reaching out to him. Tang Jie brought his hands together and pushed forward, transforming the river waters into a protective barrier. There was a steaming sound as the fog began to eat into the barrier.

Ignoring it, Tang Jie used the Soul-Shaking Spike again, over and over. As Tang Jie unleashed sonic attack after sonic attack, the fog churned and roiled, sending the black waters of the river into turmoil.

In the end, it was Tang Jie who had the last laugh. Before the water barrier was completely destroyed, he managed to eliminate the Darksoul Crab.

With its death, a red mote of light appeared.

To his delight, Tang Jie had gotten a ghost essence.

This Darksoul Crab had seemingly existed for long enough that its Life energy had condensed into a ghost essence.

This item was extremely helpful for restoring the energy of his spirit and soul, so Tang Jie immediately grabbed it.

Upon using the ghost essence, he felt himself growing much stronger, around the Nine Revolutions Tier. Tang Jie almost couldn't believe how quickly he was progressing, and he would have thought it a fairytale if he heard about such things in the past.

But here, in the Nether Domain, with the combination of the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture, the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art, and the Parting Classic, he was achieving all these absurd results.

However, for Tang Jie, the greatest advantage of growing stronger was that he no longer needed to care about Darksoul Crabs and could freely travel this river, which was the first step in his journey across the Nether Domain.

Starting from this day, Tang Jie spent every day swimming around the Yan River.

One reason was to hunt ghosts and get stronger, and the other was to cultivate the surrounding energy so as to better conceal himself.

To survive in the Nether Domain, concealing his energy was absolutely necessary. Right now, he was relying on the Yan River, but he would eventually have to leave its confines and venture deeper into the Nether Domain.

Alas, while the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture had methods for concealing energy, the effects were extremely poor. When used against ghosts weaker than him, it could only obscure his energy if they were a hundred feet or more away. If their strengths were equal, then this distance was a thousand feet. If they were stronger, then they would be able to detect him from ten thousand feet away. Of course, those existences that were even higher could simply scan huge areas with their minds, energy concealment methods being essentially nonexistent before them.

This was how Wang Juemie had ended up in such a terrible state.

Tang Jie was skilled at disguise, not concealment, but disguises were of no use against the ghosts of the Nether Domain. Thus, Tang Jie had to think of ways to strengthen his concealment abilities.

The original body wasn't capable of this, so the duty ultimately fell on the avatar.

In the Hall of Divine Conference, Tang Jie summoned Xi Canhen.

When it came to concealment, there were few in the world better than him. While he cultivated the concealment arts of the Basking Moon Sect, he had long ago surpassed them and created his own divine concealment art.

However, when Tang Jie made his request, even Xi Canhen couldn't help but frown.

He said, "It's not that your disciple is unwilling to pass on his techniques. It is just that Master is seeking a method to hide one's vitality that can be learned by a low-level cultivator. Your disciple's Divine Stealth Art relies mainly on using spell arts to conceal ripples of energy, not life signatures. Most human cultivator detection arts do not focus on such things. After all, birds, beasts, insects, and fish are all living creatures, so attempting to detect enemy life signatures would only cause trouble for oneself."

Tang Jie replied, "It's fine. If you give me the method, I can slowly research it myself, and perhaps I can think of some ways to improve it."

"That would be wonderful." Xi Canhen was happy to see the Divine Stealth Art being improved, so he handed it over without hesitation.

Upon receiving it, Tang Jie found that Xi Canhen was correct. While it was a powerful concealment art, it did nothing when it came to concealing vitality. Fortunately, it was not completely useless. After all, the Dao of Concealment was all about reducing one's presence, with one's vitality being part of it. A vitality that was too strong would inevitably be detected by others, and while the Divine Stealth Art did not completely conceal vitality, it did decrease vitality to the level of insects and fish. This was enough to fool humans, and any more was an unnecessary waste of power.

However, in the Nether Domain, any vitality was like a burning candle to ghosts, discovered the moment it appeared, so it had to be completely blocked.

Fortunately, the Divine Stealth Art and the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture each had their strong points, and he just needed to find the right method to combine them.

Tang Jie immediately ordered for the seven sects to bring him all texts concerning life force. With the power of Wisdom, he was able to develop a secret art that could conceal vitality in only seven days. But this art had no connection with the Divine Stealth Art and had to be separately cultivated. Tang Jie called this the Nether Traversal Art, with the meaning being that one could freely traverse the Nether Domain if one learned this art. It was a big claim, but at least one could say that it was much better than whatever he had before. Everything would be fine so long as he didn't run into a Nether Emperor ghost.

Tang Jie gave this art to Xi Canhen as his reward for handing over the Divine Stealth Art, but Xi Canhen was rather sullen. What good was this spell art to him? What use did decreasing one's vitality to nearly nothing have except for tricking ghosts? Of course, he wasn't aware that it really was being used for tricking ghosts.

Putting aside Xi Canhen, once Tang Jie completed the art, the original body received it and began to cultivate it.

The Nether Traversal Art didn't actually drop one's vitality to nothing, simply greatly increasing its concealment so that nobody else could detect it. The stronger the existence, the more likely it was to detect the vitality. Thus, all Tang Jie could do was grow stronger, because the stronger he was, the smaller his chance of being detected.

And to grow stronger, Tang Jie had to leave the Yan River and hunt more worthwhile ghosts.

This was an endless loop, but Tang Jie had no choice but to keep going forward, taking everything step by step.

Ever since he had taken control of the Yan River, he had never stopped thinking about leaving the Yan River and traveling even farther afield.

But the farther he went, the less protection Little Three could offer him and the greater his chances of encountering a powerful ghost, so Tang Jie had to make sure he was well-prepared.

He was constantly cultivating for this purpose.

He was currently on the verge of reaching the Cognitive Creation level.

As a body refiner, he had essentially stopped here with his law cultivation. From that point, he could no longer advance in spell arts, only in physical strength.

Things were different now.

Tang Jie could sense that his spiritual power was growing alongside his physical power.

Yes, the past limit of Cognitive Creation had already been exceeded.

The reason a body refiner's law cultivation was stymied at Cognitive Creation was that the physical body withered away in the Three Witherings, after which the spiritual body was formed.

Body refiners primarily cultivated their physical body, so having the physical body wither away to be replaced by the spiritual was pointless. Rather than going through the Three Witherings, it was better to just strengthen the body.

But the death of Tang Jie's original body had given Tang Jie a new opportunity.

The deceased physical body was akin to the withering process, and the reborn original at the heart was like the reformed spiritual body. The Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art had replaced the Three Withering Tribulations and allowed Tang Jie to go from life to death and from death to life.

Tang Jie had inadvertently overcome an impossible trial for body cultivators.

At this stage in cultivation, a true perfect body had been born!