The surprising discovery originated from Tang Jie’s statue clones.
At first, Tang Jie used these clones purely for their convenience. Through Reflections of Floating Life, Tang Jie could swiftly handle problems in a certain location and thus alter the atmosphere of the entire world in the shortest amount of time, allowing him to enter a more harmonious state. A direct result of this was that people worshiped the statues, the number of All Life Temples far exceeding those of the typical Immortal.
Every day, large quantities of incense would carry the thoughts and prayers of his believers to him. While Tang Jie didn’t think much of this at first, he gradually realized something about them.
Each thread of will conveyed by the incense had a sliver of Fate power attached to it.
This power was so faint that even someone as proficient in the Dao of Fate as Tang Jie only discovered it by sheer coincidence. At the time, he had been in the Heaven–Man Union state when he had a sudden feeling and entered the Fate state, whereupon he found that there were many more threads of Fate tangled around him. He didn’t find this strange at first, as saving so many people inevitably led to a lot of Karma with mortals. This was one of the flaws of changing the world in order to baptize oneself and was what made the entire experience so difficult. However, Tang Jie was proficient in Fate, so he wasn’t afraid of this. Just when he was about to sever all of this mortal Karma, a ray of light shot out of the distance.
This light existed only on the plane of the Web of Fate, was invisible to his physical eyes and also to the eyes of cultivators. Only those proficient in Fate could see it.
It was like an arrow, shooting straight at Tang Jie, but just when it was about to hit him, the Web of Fate blocked it. At that moment, Tang Jie found that the mortal Karma that tangled his body erupted with light to prevent the intrusion of the arrow. As a result, a large swath of the Web of Fate snapped apart while that arrow of light also disappeared.
At the same time, the numerous mortals worshiping at the various All Life Temples had the strange sensation that their belief in the All Life Divine Lord had grown fainter, and their zeal that made them entrust their Fates to him also grew fainter. This was the inevitable result of the Karma being severed. But so long as the statues within the All Life temples continued to display their power, the people would continue to pray to them, and the threads of Fate would reappear.
Tang Jie was alarmed by that abrupt attack, and he immediately realized that this was a Fate attack that had thankfully been blocked by the Web of Fate. All of that mortal Karma was a burden that hindered his transcendence, but it was also his strongest layer of protection in the mortal world, making him immune to any attempt to search for him through Fate.
It was also this attack that made Tang Jie realize the great power hidden within that Karma.
Thus, Tang Jie began to research it, and as he began to develop ways of using this Fate power, his progress in the Dao of Fate soared.
Fate was the most enigmatic of the Daos, and the power of Fate the most difficult to grow. But through this discovery, Tang Jie was able to greatly accelerate the growth of his Fate power, and it wasn’t long before he entered this Dao.
In this aspect, the power of belief really did exist. It was another name for Fate power, though it was difficult to discover and too difficult to use.
Incidentally discovering a way to absorb Fate power while cultivating the Heaven–Man Union was definitely a pleasant surprise.
And it wasn’t the only one.
As the number of clones grew, so did the region which Tang Jie could achieve union with.
Although one could merge the soul with the world at the Violet Palace Realm, using it to achieve thought casting, this clearly didn’t refer to the entire world, only to the range of one’s Divine Will.
All the spiritual energy of the world up to the limit of the Divine Will was theirs to command, which was what made Violet Palace cultivators so scary. After all, the Divine Will of a Violet Palace cultivator could cover a vast range, meaning a huge amount of usable spiritual energy.
The region of Heaven–Man Union was normally the same as this region, unless one had a clone to expand it in place of one’s Divine Will.
With Tang Jie, this concept gained an entirely new meaning.
These were hundreds of Dao Art clones, and even if these clones had only a hundredth of the original’s Divine Will, they could still expand Tang Jie’s range by as much as three times.
And because he had solid foundations and a stronger Divine Will than most, this “three times” could go to “five times”, so his Heaven–Man Union state was very different from normal.
At that moment, he sensed that he was at a very subtle threshold. According to the normal process of attaining Immortal Platform, once one perfected the Heaven–Man Union, one would leap into a new level, which was called “Shattering the Void”. Then, one would be reborn as a Yang God.
But if he expanded his region to five times the expected size, didn’t this mean that he needed five times the power to become a Yang God, that the difficulty would be five times as great?
Five times the difficulty was no joke. Many people had wasted their entire lives at this threshold, and while Tang Jie had solid foundations and had taken the Nine Heavens Luan Grass, he still trembled when thinking about such a challenge.
Should he continue, or pull on the reins before his horse rode over the cliff?
Tang Jie considered this problem for three whole days.
In the end, he compromised.
Three times the normal region.
Tang Jie had made meticulous calculations before arriving at this number. First of all, his Divine Soul was stronger than average, and the most important factor in the charge at Yang God was the strength of the Divine Soul. Secondly, to say that the size of the region would decide the difficulty was a very rough estimate, with the actual difficulty being influenced by various other factors that he could take measures to mitigate. Finally, his proficiency in the Dao of Fate made Tang Jie confident that he could neutralize most dangers, and this would only improve as he accumulated more Fate power.
For this purpose, he began to crazily absorb the incense power provided by the people, refining it into Fate power and strengthening his Heaven–Man Union, thus nurturing his Divine Soul.
One day, as Tang Jie was cultivating, he suddenly raised an eyebrow. “Some troublesome people have come.”
“Is it the Heaven’s Equal Sect and Stellar Net Gate again?” Xu Miaoran asked.
“It should be,” Tang Jie said as he did some calculations. While he had never specifically learned divination, anyone who understood the Dao of Fate was naturally gifted in it, just like how every fish knew how to swim from birth. Those calculations were actually his means of divining through Fate.
“Are we going to fight with them, Big Brother?” Yiyi asked.
“No!” Tang Jie shook his head after some thought. “The moment hasn’t arrived. I can’t fight against them right now, and besides, leaving them and playing hide-and-seek is helpful for understanding Fate… We’ll avoid them for now.”
He stepped out of his cave, and with a wave of his sleeve, he wiped away all signs that someone had lived here, after which he departed.
One day later, a group of people arrived, led by that man called Flowing Wind.
Holding the Overflowing Heaven Mirror, he looked around and said, “He should have been here earlier. Damn; he sensed us beforehand and ran off again.”
The cultivators behind remained silent, unsurprised and annoyed. They had been chasing Tang Jie for many years, and he had escaped from them time and time again.
The good news was that while Tang Jie had destroyed most of his traces, a cultivator of the Stellar Net Gate was still able to extract the approximate time and direction he had left from the surrounding plants and air.
“It was only one day! We’re getting closer and closer!” a cultivator said.
Flowing Wind stroked the mirror.
They were able to make this much progress mostly thanks to the Overflowing Heaven Mirror. He had performed divinations with it countless times, and while he was never able to get Tang Jie’s exact location, they were slowly narrowing the range. By now, they had already guessed that Hong Qianli was a fake name. After they gave up on this piece of information, the mirror had become much more accurate.
The first arrow of Fate that had been aimed straight at Tang Jie was a result of the first divination they had made after discarding the name. If not for all those entangling threads of Fate, Tang Jie would have already been discovered.
The good news energized everyone.
“Alas, we’ll have to wait another month to use it again,” Mou Siming sighed.
“It’s fine. Our divinations will eventually find him. This man has already killed so many members of our sects. We can’t let him go!” Flowing Wind snarled.