Seven days of flight due west of the wasteland was a massive city.
The city was made of black stone and surrounded by black energy. There were also heads appearing here and there on the walls, showing savage and pained expressions and letting out pained shrieks that would make anyone’s blood run cold.
In the middle of the walls was a giant ghost head of fearsome appearance, its eyes flashing with green light, and just the sight of it alone was enough to make one’s soul tremble. Its open mouth was the gate into the city, and countless ghosts went in and out through it.
These ghosts were clearly of a much higher level than those lonesome ghosts of the wasteland. Not only was the weakest among them already at Mortal Shedding, they were also intelligent. Some ghosts would even come riding horses or carriages, with a host of guards and servants, just as it was in the mortal plane.
The city gate was also guarded by armored ghost soldiers that carried weapons, though they were mostly rusted and seemingly of little use. Even so, they appeared rather intimidating before the ghost head gate, occasionally shouting, “Hurry up! No loitering!”
This kind of Nether Domain language was actually rather similar to human language, but it was transmitted through the soul instead. For mortals, it would seem like someone was speaking right into their mind, which would instill fear in them.
As two ghost guards were berating the ghosts entering the city, another ghost came flying out of the distance.
The two ghost soldiers spotted it and immediately got down on their knees. “Hail, General Maraji.”
It was the Yaksha that had attempted to capture Tang Jie.
The ghost crowds within the city all bowed to the passing Yaksha, who passed through them all the way until he reached a certain estate. In front of the estate stood two long-tongued ghosts, who bowed and said, “Hail, Young Lord.”
Maraji waved his hand. “Scram! Don’t get in the way!”
He charged into the estate.
“Maraji, what’s got you in a temper today?” Another Yaksha flew out of the estate and intercepted Maraji.
Maraji gruffly replied, “Maraju, I don’t even want to talk about it. Seven days ago, when I was returning from patrol, I smelled a human. I thought that I had found someone who had inadvertently entered the land of the dead, but it ended up being a mistake, so I got happy for nothing. Of course I’m feeling sour about it.”
The eyes of the Yaksha called Maraju twinkled. “Oh? There was such a thing? Could a human really have entered and you let him escape?”
Maraji glared at him. “If there was really someone, he wouldn’t have escaped. I must have just been mistaken.”
He left.
Maraju muttered to himself, “Given Maraji’s nose, he shouldn’t have made a mistake so easily. Perhaps a human really has entered our realm. If there really is a human, and if they managed to hide from Maraji, they might still be nearby.”
He suddenly barked, “Come here.”
A ball of white smoke floated over and lowered itself before Maraju. A ghastly pale face of a woman appeared in the smoke.
This ghost was called an Infant Seed. It was formed from evil energies and was extremely hard to deal with.
Maraju ordered, “Go to this place, seven days from here, and investigate closely for any traces of a living human.”
The Infant Seed opened its mouth in silent recognition of this order and floated away.
——————————————
In the Yan River, Tang Jie meditated on the original body’s giant heart.
His breathing was steady and slow, and if one looked closer, one would notice that the heart rose and fell in sync with his breathing. As he breathed, tendrils of blood energy arose from the inside of that immense body and entered Tang Jie. As he inhaled and exhaled, the blood energy would go in and out like little red snakes, but with each cycle, they grew smaller and smaller. 𝔯àŊꝋĘⱾ
Once they were completely gone, Tang Jie’s body was as red as a cooked lobster, and this complexion took a long time to disappear.
And one would find that Tang Jie’s cultivation had also grown significantly.
If daily cultivation were compared to climbing a mountain, each day another step up, then Tang Jie had just climbed a hundred steps in a single day.
Of course, this was mostly because Tang Jie was absorbing energy that was originally his. It was like getting an infusion of blood that one had donated oneself, with no side effects whatsoever.
But the original body’s power would be consumed eventually, and while Tang Jie was doing his best to stop it, the process of Returned Remnants was not something one person alone could stop. He could only slow it down and weaken it. Thus, the original body was losing part of its power every day, and Tang Jie could do nothing about it except work harder to grow stronger so that he could absorb its power more quickly.
To grow stronger faster, he needed more ghosts, more Life energy!
With this thought, Tang Jie stood up and finally decided to go and hunt resentful souls. After that last encounter, Tang Jie had not dared to go there again to avoid running into Yakshas. But his greed and desire for power urged him to take another risk. Of course, the most important reason was that he had grown stronger, and he was confident that he could exchange blows with a resentful soul without leaking his life signature.
Upon leaving the Yan River, Tang Jie headed for the wasteland.
As he was stronger, his actions were much more bold and direct. He barged into the darkness, only stopping when he heard howling, and as expected, a resentful soul charged out of the darkness.
Tang Jie raised his hands and formed an energy sword on his finger, thrusting it forward. The resentful soul shrieked and then merged with the fog, appearing behind him and reaching for the back of his head.
But Tang Jie was familiar with this move, and the moment the resentful soul disappeared, Tang Jie formed a hand sign, and a sun wheel appeared on his back. As the resentful soul touched it, sunlight erupted, melting away the resentful soul, immune to its struggle and howls.
After easily slaying the resentful soul and absorbing its Life energy, Tang Jie pressed forward, and he quickly took down several more resentful souls in the same fashion. Occasionally, he would encounter several at once, but so long as there were three or less, Tang Jie would fight them. With his current level of strength, he was confident he could handle three, though if there were more, he would have to retreat.
Resentful souls had far more Life energy than wandering souls, and Tang Jie found himself getting immersed into a tempo of killing and circulating the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture. But perhaps because all the killing had enraged the resentful souls, Tang Jie quickly found himself in an awkward situation.
More and more resentful souls were gathering, and they had gone from being out on their own to groups of two to three, and then three to five, and then a dozen at once.
Tang Jie knew that the resentful souls had realized what was going on. While their intelligence was low, it wasn’t like they couldn’t think at all. They had sensed that something was hunting them down, though Tang Jie’s concealment art prevented them from detecting him. Thus, they gathered in groups as a form of self-protection.
Tang Jie knew that today’s battle would have to end here, so he chose to go back.
As he was leaving, he suddenly smelled a strange fragrance.
As this scent entered his nostrils, his vision suddenly blurred, and he found himself no longer in the Nether Domain, but in a wondrous garden full of rare spiritual plants. His avatar was standing beside him, and together, they attained a Great Dao Body and achieved grandiose feats.
It was the dream of every man, and Tang Jie was momentarily enchanted.
But as his mind cleared, he realized that he had entered an illusion.
He bit his tongue, but this failed to wake him up. Remaining calm, Tang Jie used the Four-Nine True Words, shouting, “Ghosts and devils, be banished and expelled!”
The scene before Tang Jie evaporated, and Tang Jie found himself back in the Nether Domain, a resentful soul reaching for his neck. Tang Jie immediately put up a barrier and then killed the resentful soul in the simplest way he could, his forehead caked with sweat.
This wasn’t to say that this illusion had been extremely formidable. True illusions could enchant a person and entrap them, and they were much harder to break. However, in these illusions, one could often spend as many years as one wanted in it and find out that only a second had passed outside. But in this illusion, time flowed at its normal rate. This didn’t mean much on its own, but if there were a few savage ghosts around, it immediately became very scary.
If Tang Jie had been a little late in breaking out, that resentful soul would have touched his neck, and at his current strength, this would have left him dead or crippled—resentful souls were quite simple to kill, but it was also easy to be killed by them. They were a typical example of a glass cannon.
If his guess was right, this illusion was the work of that fragrance.
Was there such a fragrance that could create this kind of illusion? Tang Jie began to go over all he knew about the Nether Domain. Besides cultivation arts, the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture was also a travel guide to the Nether Domain. While he couldn’t say that it contained all knowledge of the Nether Domain, there was enough information that one wouldn’t be going in blind.
Fortunately, there were records of this aroma.
“Soul Bewitching Grass?” Tang Jie’s eyes lit up.
Though the Nether Domain was a wasteland, that was only when compared to the mortal plane. It didn’t mean that it was entirely devoid of resources. The Soul Bewitching Grass was one of these extremely rare and valuable resources. As its name suggested, it had the natural ability to affect the Divine Soul and create illusions, which possessed the rare attribute of proceeding in real time. The Soul Bewitching Incense which used this grass as the main ingredient could be considered the perfect treasure for killing those above one’s level. Anyone who smelled it would fall into the illusion, and since the illusion was in real time, even a second of delay could mean eternal death.
Thus, the Soul Bewitching Incense could be considered an extremely troublesome treasure. Fortunately, its main ingredient was very rare, even in the Nether Domain. It was said that it only bloomed once every one hundred years, and only for three days, during which its cloying fragrance could pull those nearby into illusions and also draw ghosts to protect it. It had to be gathered the moment it was found, or else one would have to wait another one hundred years.
Tang Jie didn’t know how long this Soul Bewitching Grass had been blooming, but he knew that he probably wouldn’t get another chance.
Realizing this, he clenched his teeth, contacted Little Three to come over and help him, and then he held his breath and advanced.