Through the hole of light, Tang Jie’s group found themselves standing in a field.
The landscape was lush and pleasant to the eye, with wildflowers growing all around. Alas, all of these plants had no spirituality and were here purely for aesthetic purposes.
“What is this? It was so hard to get in here, so I thought that this place would be teeming with natural treasures, but instead, it’s nothing but ordinary grass and flowers. This damn Immortal Emperor was so boring!” Ice Phoenix grumbled.
She was a demon, so she held not even a shred of respect for the Immortal Emperor.
“It’s not like you contributed any of that hard work.” Xu Miaoran rolled her eyes.
While Xu Miaoran had long known about this woman, it was only now that they were officially meeting. This was probably intentional on Tang Jie’s part. Two women together might produce many problems out of nowhere. Things were much easier with Yiyi, who was pure and simple, always listening to her big brother. Xu Miaoran had nothing but trust in Tang Jie, but she had always had her own view on things. She might listen to Tang Jie when it came to other matters, but not this one.
As expected, Ice Phoenix was incensed. “Is that any of your business?”
Xu Miaoran coldly glanced at her and said in disdain, “It was my husband’s work that got us here, so everything here belongs to the two of us. Thus, all treasures here also belong to us. My husband hasn’t said anything yet, so it’s not the place of an outsider like you to sigh.”
Ice Phoenix glared. Although she was a demoness, just being a demon couldn’t solve everything. Besides, Xu Miaoran had come from Horizon Ocean Pavilion, and she had once been hailed as a fiend woman.
Yiyi giggled and grabbed Xu Miaoran’s hand, bringing Ice Phoenix’s plan to recruit reinforcements to an end before it could even begin. She turned to Tutu, who backed away a few steps. Only the combat puppet and Little Three remained motionless, apparently not minding partnering with her.
Ice Phoenix resentfully looked at Tang Jie, who was ignoring this entire quarrel and pensively looking around.
Realizing something, Ice Phoenix asked, “Is there some sort of formation here?”
Tang Jie shook his head. “That’s precisely the problem. I just used the Celestial Eye to look around, but I didn’t find a single formation. It seems like nothing more than an ordinary garden.”
“Is that really possible?” Xu Miaoran said in surprise.
Who would believe that the Celestial Maze Formation had been set up solely to guard an ordinary place?
If not some sort of Dao armament or divine art, there at least had to be some kind of mantra or special medicine. Only this could match the august status of the Immortal Emperor and the multiple layers of defenses.
But Tang Jie saw no formations or mechanisms at all. This was just an ordinary garden, surrounded by empty land, with a large tree in the distance. There was nothing else.
“Could you have missed something?” Xu Miaoran asked.
“Let me try again.” The center of Tang Jie’s forehead lit up as the vertical eye appeared, and a Dao Realm appeared under his feet. With the Dao Realm, the Celestial Eye was at maximum power, and nothing in the world could hide from his eyes.
But even in this state, Tang Jie found nothing.
“This is really strange,” Tang Jie muttered.
He couldn’t understand how this place was so ordinary, not even a spirit plant in sight, and the spiritual energy in the air was pitifully thin.
Suddenly, Yiyi gasped and looked around.
Tang Jie immediately asked, “Yiyi, have you noticed anything?”
Yiyi scratched her head and awkwardly replied, “I just find it strange. Since this place has existed for ten thousand years, why are the plants here only a few decades old?”
“What did you say?” Tang Jie said in shock.
He had been so focused on finding hidden formations that he hadn’t paid attention to the plants.
Now that Yiyi had reminded him, as he looked at the garden again, he found that things really weren’t as they should have been. The grass wasn’t particularly overgrown, nor was that solitary tree in the distance particularly large. Even without Yiyi’s ability to sense the age of plants, he could tell that they hadn’t existed here for that long.
But… this place had clearly existed for more than ten thousand years!
“Time Stop!” Tang Jie blurted out.
This was a supreme Time Dao Art!
Only this kind of Dao Art could leave this land unchanged for ten thousand years.
“What sort of person could use this kind of Dao Art?” Xu Miaoran said in shock.
Tang Jie replied, “I heard from Immortal Ji Yao that Immortal Emperor Yu Cheng was a genius who controlled four Daos: Time, Space, Karma, and Fate. Nobody has ever been able to match his feat. This Time Stop Dao Art must have been cast by him. Only he is powerful enough.”
“It doesn’t sound like a big deal,” Xu Miaoran grumbled. After all, she knew that Tang Jie had comprehended twelve Daos and entered six Daos, and had six Dao Arts. If he kept up this progress, he would eventually control six Daos. In other words, Tang Jie already outmatched Yu Cheng in terms of talent.
Ice Phoenix said, “The problem is: why would he use such a method on this ordinary plot of land?”
“Even Yu Cheng must have had a hard time stopping time for ten thousand years. Since the mighty Immortal Emperor went to such lengths to protect this place, it can’t be ordinary,” Tang Jie concluded. “Let’s look around. The key piece must be somewhere here.”
“But this place looks ordinary no matter where I look,” Tutu said.
His casual complaint made Tang Jie’s eyes light up.
“‘Ordinary no matter where you look’… ‘ordinary no matter where you look’…” Tang Jie muttered. “Yes, if the secret was in a certain location, the Time Stop would only have to work on that place, so why did he use it on this entire area?”
“Husband, are you saying…”
“This space!” Tang Jie firmly declared. “This space is itself the biggest secret. There must be something special about it. We just haven’t noticed it yet.”
He began to walk to the center of the garden.
This time, he didn’t use the Celestial Eye to try and search for some hidden treasure, instead spreading out his Divine Will to fill every corner of this space.
He was confident that if the Immortal Emperor had left behind some supreme treasure here, then what he needed to do wasn’t to search or discover, but simply to feel.
In another plane, countless threads of Divine Will fanned, stabbing into the earth, the sky, the plants, and even the very air.
Tang Jie’s Divine Will divided itself into millions of individual strands so that he could feel everything that there was to feel in this space.
Sure enough, Tang Jie quickly found that there was some slumbering will in this place.
It was hard to describe.
When Tang Jie interacted with this will, he simply felt an ancient and weathered power.
This will was vast and majestic, bursting with wisdom. When Tang Jie touched it, he felt like was transported into the distant past.
He saw a person walking.
This person was covered in golden light that obscured his face, but just looking at him made Tang Jie shiver.
That person walked over fields, through cities, atop mountains, over rivers. It was an unhurried pace, and he did not fly, but strangely, nobody paid him any attention.
Nobody could see him, and nothing could stop him.
Whether mountains or waters lay before him, he simply walked straight ahead, as if nothing else existed.
He walked for a very, very long time, and walked very, very far.
One snowy night, the man reached a cold and desolate field.
Standing in that snow-covered field, he suddenly stopped.
He just stood there and let the snow cover him.
The unmelting snow gradually covered him up, turning him into a snowman.
He stood there in the snow like he was dead.
The snow stopped, but the snowman did not melt away.
The snow turned to ice, and the ice turned to stone.
A statue stood all by its lonesome in that barren field.
Passersby would see this stone statue in the middle of a field and find it strange.
At times, a fool would try to smash up the statue and use the stone for construction, or some person who was all too clever would try to move the statue so they could sell it off, and there were some who thought it was the work of a god, praying to it and burning incense…
But none of these people succeeded.
Those who tried to smash it ended up swinging the hammer onto their own feet. Those who tried to move it tired out two horses to the point of collapse without moving it an inch. And those who prayed to the statue suffered serious illnesses the same night, almost losing their lives.
The stone statue cared for no one and required no one.
Time slowly passed.
Days.
Years.
A hundred years went by in the blink of an eye.
On this day, the stone statue that had slumbered for one hundred years finally began to move.
Large chunks of stone sloughed off like a mud doll was coming to life, and as the stone fell away, the golden man appeared once more.
He laughed and said, “After one hundred years of meditation, I have finally proved my Dao! I didn’t think that the most important enlightenment of my life would come like this. No attempt to hide, and no attempt to protect myself! If those enemies of mine knew what they had missed, they would probably be cursing themselves for the rest of their lives. Hahaha, this is destiny, destiny! When destiny wills it, the Heavenly Dao desires its success. From this day forward, I am Yu Cheng!”
(EN: “desires its success” (欲成) is pronounced the same as Yu Cheng (玉成))
He looked around and sighed. “One hundred years of enlightenment has caused countless Dao Wills to obey my will and merge with this place. No treasure can compare to the boundless Great Dao. This place is where I proved my Dao, so I will leave it behind for those who come after.”
He waved his hand, taking the entire plot of land and the surrounding space with it, making it so that this place never existed in the world.