In the end, Tang Jie and Little Three killed the remaining Ghost Kings.
Little Three gathered up their essence souls and handed them over to Tang Jie, who refined them and joined them with the rest of the Primal Souls so that he could start laying down the formation.
Fortunately, this area’s isolation from the Nether Domation and all the ghosts that had died here meant that it was thick with Yin energy, and Little Three had also brought many resources with him. Thus, Tang Jie finally had the ability to make a large-scale formation.
As for Flying Swallow, he sealed off her energy, body, and mind, and finished off by placing a black grain into her Sea of Cognition. If this woman tried anything, he could use the black grain to attack her soul directly.
Only after suppressing her in various ways could he finally relax.
Once this was done, Tang Jie took a trip to that paradise in the wall and found that this place was essentially Flying Swallow’s small world. It seemed that after Sovereign Yunhai had sealed her, she had exploited that small shred of affection left in him to have him show a little mercy and give her an opportunity to create her own paradise. So long as she didn’t come out to make trouble, she could peacefully live in this paradise.
Over the millennia, she had developed this place into her own small world. If the ghosts had followed her into this place, they would have been suppressed and divided by the small world while Flying Swallow would be free to act, killing or enslaving the ghosts one by one.
This was a function that came with all small worlds, with Tang Jie’s Yellow Court World being even better. In his own world, he was essentially the Heavenly Dao, able to do almost anything he wanted!
Flying Swallow wasn’t able to do this, but this small paradise would have been enough to completely wipe out the ghosts.
Even so, Tang Jie was very satisfied with this small world.
After all, he needed to use the unique environment here to set up a Corpse Field for Little Three, which was unsuitable for human habitation. This independent space meant he wouldn’t have to set up another space.
Three days later, Tang Jie finally finished the Corpse Field. The space was now thick with corpse energy and the wailing of ghosts.
These were not actual ghosts wailing, merely manifestations of the dense corpse energy that came with the Corpse Field. These manifestations could confuse the human mind, and the unprepared could easily lose their souls and be turned into mindless corpses.
But for ghosts, it was comparable to the Spirit Lake at the summit of the Water Moon Paradise, every breath taking in energy.
Little Three was elated at this Corpse Field and was anxious to go in.
Hunter Ghosts had a tough time cultivating. While devouring ghosts made them stronger, this alone was not enough to get them over their cultivation thresholds. In the past, Tang Jie hadn’t been able to provide the additional requirements, but now that he could, he would naturally work to fulfill Little Three’s needs, particularly since he had relied on Little Three over the past two years.
While Little Three entered the Corpse Field to cultivate, Tang Jie began to seek the secret arts of the Ghost Dao from Flying Swallow.
Tang Jie used to regard this Dao with disdain, but after experiencing the vastness of the Nether Domain for himself, he became more intrigued by its potential. In the early days, he had gotten very far with just a single Ghost Guard. With even better conditions now, wouldn’t he be able to do even more?
Flying Swallow was the successor of a Ghost Shadow Sect. This sect had committed far too much evil in its heyday and long since been exterminated. The person she had inherited her arts from had been the last elder of the Ghost Shadow Sect. The sect had possessed many excellent methods for controlling ghosts, particularly its ultimate art, the Jailing Demon Embryo Classic. When one cultivated this art, one could manifest a Demon Embryo of immense power.
Tang Jie immediately demanded it.
Flying Swallow was unwilling at first, but Tang Jie simply stimulated the black grain in her Sea of Cognition slightly, which immediately subjected Flying Swallow to excruciating pain.
While she was a treacherous scorpion of a woman, her willpower wasn’t very strong, and she soon yielded and began to write out the Jailing Demon Embryo Classic. She tried to fake parts at first, but Tang Jie had an Immortal Platform avatar, and the Dao of Wisdom allowed him to quickly identify anything suspicious. After several rounds of punishment, Flying Swallow finally stopped trying and honestly wrote out the entire classic.
Tang Jie began studying the Jailing Demon Embryo Classic, upon which he found that this was no Ghost Dao secret art, but a divine art from High Antiquity.
High Antiquity was when the positive and negative planes had had their great war. Everyone was desperate for ideas to deal with the demons of Primordial Fog, so there was no lack of divine arts like this that countered ghosts and demons.
The true purpose of this art was to absorb demonic energy and ghost energy to refine a Demon Embryo. In that planar war, the cultivators of the positive plane often ended up in the Primordial Fog or Nether Domains, so everyone had to consider how to survive in such environments.
The Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture was one of these methods, as was the Jailing Demon Embryo.
The Jailing Demon Embryo was the more powerful and majestic, because it turned a disadvantage into an advantage, reversing negative and positive, refining wicked energies into a Demon Embryo in order to grow stronger. The Ghost Shadow Sect primarily refined ghosts, so it regarded this classic as a great treasure.
Alas, they found it difficult to actually refine the Demon Embryo, for it required vast amounts of demonic and ghost energies, which was actually at cross purposes with the ghost-refining ways of the Ghost Shadow Sect. If they used all their ghost energy to refine the Demon Embryo, how would they refine their ghost soldiers?
The Ghost Shadow Sect did everything they could to gather ghost energy, killing people to create ghosts and gathering Putrid Soil in an attempt to create a small Nether Domain in the mortal plane.
This naturally enraged the rulers of the domain, and the Great Sun Sect’s master led several dozen righteous sects in attacking the Ghost Shadow Sect and exterminating it. Only one elder managed to escape with all the resources they had gathered, which included the Putrid Soil.
Tang Jie sighed when he learned what had happened. “The Senior who created this Jailing Demon Embryo Classic was a benevolent person who created this art so that those who fell into the underworld would still be able to fight back against demons and ghosts. Alas, their successors were incompetent, even going so far as to turn the mortal plane into the Nether Domain for the sake of greater power. Is there anything more ridiculous…”
Flying Swallow snorted, “What do you know? People are always trying to kill us followers of the Ghost Dao. If we hadn’t grown stronger, we would long ago have been exterminated by those people who call themselves members of the righteous path.”
She had been under the influence of that elder of the Ghost Shadow Sect for too long, and her mind had been subtly twisted such that she wasn’t even aware of it.
Tang Jie didn’t mind the comment, sneering, “Reversing black and white, mixing right and wrong, and twisting good and evil is what every despicable evildoer does, not realizing that there is no effect without a cause. The Ghost Dao sects are the common enemy of all primarily because of this mindset of yours. Rather than just owning up to the deed, you say that you’re just trying to grow stronger… Hmph, if you have the guts, why not go and cultivate in the Nether Domain? Why try and bring the Nether Domain to the mortal plane? You can isolate yourself from the Nether, but you don’t know how to get there?”
Flying Swallow went red in the face and wanted to argue back, but Tang Jie refused to listen. He put away the Jailing Demon Embryo Classic and said, “This classic suits me, so I’ll take it.”
With this classic, he could now cultivate in the Nether Domain and not have to worry about the lack of spiritual energy.
Thus, he went into the Corpse Field and cultivated together with Little Three.
The Jailing Demon Embryo Art proved to be just as incredible as he expected. The ghost energy was drawn into his body and began to condense itself in the same area as the Celestial Heart Dao Fruit.
Black energy gathered above the Dao Fruit, taking the form of an embryo.
This was the Demon Embryo.
It was only in its nascent form, and much more ghost energy was needed to refine it into a true Demon Embryo.
Tang Jie was in no rush.
Meanwhile, Little Three’s cultivation was reaching its own critical point.
His body was solidifying, his aura growing stronger and stronger.
Tang Jie didn’t know how ghosts cultivated, but he could sense that Little Three was growing more and more majestic, growing closer and closer to the Emperor level.
But he was always missing a little something that prevented him from breaking through that last obstacle, so Tang Jie could only wait.
He was sure that Little Three wouldn’t let him down.
One day, as Tang Jie was cultivating, he found that all of the ghost energy in the room was no longer being drawn toward him, but to another direction.
He immediately followed the flow to the end of the hall, where Little Three was floating in the middle of a powerful vortex.
The vortex was of such ferocity that Little Three was almost completely obscured within it, though his intimidating aura was the same as ever.
Tang Jie knew that Little Three was making the final charge, and he couldn’t help but clench his fist.
As the vortex spun faster and faster, it began to emit a piercing shriek.
The force it generated was so great that Tang Jie could no longer stand. He crashed into the wall and threw up blood.
The injury that made him throw up blood was caused not by the collision, but by the sheer pressure.
Yet there was happiness on Tang Jie’s face. “Success!”
Amidst the shrieking, a figure slowly emerged from the vortex.