With a snap of Tang Jie’s fingers, the giant hand disappeared and Wind Holder screamed. The Immortal energy radiating from his body instantly vanished, and he collapsed onto the body of the Lithos Dragon.
Not only that, he held his head and bellowed as if he was in immense pain.
A mighty True Immortal had instantly been turned into a mess! The Lithos Dragon was so alarmed that he started shaking. Just when he was about to run, Tang Jie glanced at him, which made him freeze. As a mount, he was used to communication through glances, and he no longer dared to move.
Wind Holder rolled around on the back of the Lithos Dragon, and after a while, the pain began to subside. He then sat up and angrily glared at Tang Jie. “What did you do to me?”
He had already discovered that if he attempted to use Immortal energy, he would feel a pain that made him long for death. Immortal energy became like scalding oil that was poured through his veins, tormenting him as it destroyed his meridians and flesh. Although it didn’t do real damage, the pain alone made even death seem more tempting. And this pain also left him unable to use his Immortal energy.
Only when he stopped circulating Immortal energy did this pain gradually fade.
He was only able to sit up and talk because he had stopped circulating energy.
Tang Jie looked at Wind Holder and casually replied, “‘What did I do’? Do you not recognize this method from High Antiquity?”
Wind Holder was taken aback, and after he recalled his experience, a name came to mind, and he gasped. “The Immortal Shackling Stamp!?”
The Immortal Shackling Stamp was a frightening binding art in the era of the court. Once this art was successfully applied, unless one had a counter Immortal Art or Dao Art, it would be impossible to undo. Wind Holder was merely a member of the lower middle class of the court, so he had no idea how to undo it. If this was really the art he knew of, he was in big trouble.
Tang Jie clapped his hands. “Correct! It is indeed the Immortal Shackling Stamp.”
“How could that be!?” Wind Holder roared.
While the Immortal Shackling Stamp was powerful, unless one was willing or utterly powerless to resist, it was impossible for it to be successfully applied. How could Tang Jie have placed it on him?
“Oh, I did it while I was burying you,” Tang Jie casually remarked.
Now that Wind Holder was restrained, the Azure Dragon and the others came through the spatial passage.
The Azure Dragon chuckled, “No wonder you wanted the Immortal Shackling Stamp from me. So it was for this guy!”
The Azure Dragon had found that request strange at the time, for the stamp only worked on the physical body, not the Divine Soul, and the Azure Dragon’s power was mostly in his soul. There were far better sealing methods Tang Jie could have picked.
But now he understood.
Tang Jie wanted the Stamp to deal with Wind Holder, who had been an empty shell at the time without the ability to defend himself. Applying the Immortal Shackling Stamp to this kind of body was just too easy. Meanwhile, attempting to seal his soul might have alarmed Wind Holder and resulted in failure.
Wind Holder could barely believe his ears.
For Tang Jie to have applied the Immortal Shackling Stamp then, had he already realized the problem?
“You knew that I wasn’t dead?” he anxiously asked.
“I was just suspicious,” Tang Jie replied. “I couldn’t be sure, so I applied the Immortal Shackling Stamp to be safe.”
“Why? I don’t understand. Why would you be suspicious?” Wind Holder shouted.
He could not accept nor could he understand this. What sort of weirdo would enter a cave, find someone’s remains, and then suspect that this person wasn’t actually dead?
Someone coming across treasure should have been over the moon with happiness, not fiddling with a dead man’s body!
Tang Jie sighed. “You can only blame your rotten luck. I’ve already experienced this once.”
Tang Jie’s explanation revealed to Wind Holder that Tang Jie’s suspicion wasn’t because of his bad acting, but because there were already several other cases. The Azure Dragon was one, the Bejeweled Star Lord was another, and the Lithos Dragon could be considered half of one—when Tang Jie was returning to the Basking Moon Sect, he hadn’t been able to find the previous three sects in the area, nor could he find Yuan Chenfei, but there had been rumors of a dragon.
Almost all of the High Antiquity Immortals Tang Jie had encountered had been reborn. How could Tang Jie not find this strange?
“In addition… it’s not all their fault. As a dead man, you truly failed to play the part. To be honest, my greatest source of suspicion was still a result of your error,” Tang Jie finished.
“Nonsense! Under the effects of the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art, I entered hibernation for ten thousand years, concealing all of my Immortal energy and having my physical body die a true death. What error was there?” Wind Holder retorted.
Tang Jie smirked. “You said you didn’t make an error, so let me ask you: who was the owner of this estate?”
“Reverend Five Origins. Don’t you already know that?”
“And what sort of person was Reverend Five Origins?”
Wind Holder was baffled by Tang Jie’s line of questioning.
Tang Jie answered his own question. “The number one formation master of the Court of Myriad Domains, the richest Immortal of the court, and also the most eccentric. Nobody knew where his estate was, and nobody was able to enjoy its riches. So what should be the state of an estate he left behind?”
Wind Holder shuddered.
Tang Jie answered, “It should be full of treasure!”
With a buzz, Wind Holder finally realized where he had gone wrong.
Tang Jie shouted, “But look at the shabby estate you left behind! What did you leave? A book on the Five Elements, very important and valuable, but for its contents, not its costs! A jade mirror, also very nice, but that’s because of the formation outside! And finally a Mustard Seed Bag, but what’s inside? Immortal Stones, materials, pills, and three divine treasures! The richest Immortal of the Court of Myriad Domains who even had the Bejeweled Star Lord as his client, a man who could just throw out the Eternity Sarcophagus, only left behind this shit? And you have the nerve to say that this was Five Origins’ home and this was all he had left?”
Wind Holder limply sat down.
Tang Jie snorted in disdain. “Your greatest error was to pretend to be Five Origins while being so petty that you were unwilling to take out his real fortune. When I learned that you weren’t Five Origins from the Azure Dragon, I started to have doubts. Based on the arrangements here, you were clearly the only person in ten thousand years to enter the hidden estate, but if you were really dead, why did you leave behind only this much? If I hadn’t been through the Bejeweled Star Lord and the Azure Dragon already, I might not have been able to come upon the answer. But after those incidents, I could only think of one answer: you weren’t actually dead. Precisely because you weren’t dead, you didn’t want to take out everything you owned. You had to take out what you had to, like the jade mirror, things that you added in to just fill the bag, like the Immortal Stones, and finally, to give it a more refined air, you put in the book. This would seem like a rich harvest to the receiver, but from the perspective of the gifter, it’s barely anything.”
Wind Holder sighed. “This old man was too greedy, and my reluctance to give up on these earthly things clued you in to the truth.”
Just as Tang Jie had expected, when Wind Holder first entered the Five Origins Estate, he obtained the fortune left behind by the reverend. Yet his true goal wasn’t these Dao armaments, but a special item in Reverend Five Origins’ collection. This was the only item that could let him take the final step of the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art and successfully break through.
To stop anyone else who came in from destroying his physical body, he left out those treasures.
Unexpectedly, nobody came in for ten thousand years, until Tang Jie’s group finally came in.
By this time, Wind Holder had already met the conditions to awaken, so when Tang Jie came in, Wind Holder was in the middle of waking up. But as he had just woken up, he needed time for his physical body to recover, so he remained in hibernation.
This should have been a smart choice. After all, if the recovery process were interrupted, he could have ended up like the Azure Dragon, his body and soul separated.
Alas, Wind Holder was brought down by his pettiness. The treasures he had left behind might have satisfied someone else, with an ordinary sect happily running off without a second thought.
But Tang Jie was already on his guard from his past experiences, so he had implanted the Immortal Shackling Stamp when burying Wind Holder’s body. This was, to put it mildly, unfortunate for Wind Holder. His soul had just returned and was still rousing itself, not even knowing what was going on outside, so Tang Jie applied the Stamp without the slightest resistance.
Tang Jie’s habit of preparing for worst-case scenarios had finally borne fruit, and a mighty True Immortal had been restrained.
Wind Holder had no arguments left.
He said to Tang Jie, “I am willing to give everything in the Five Origins Estate to you so long as you spare my life.”
Tang Jie casually answered, “You don’t need to. I know where it all is.”
Wind Holder was shaken. “You can’t possibly know!”
Tang Jie ignored him and looked at the Lithos Dragon. “You’ve seen what’s happened. I have a few questions I want to ask you. If you answer me well, I can let you live.”
“Immortal Elder, this little dragon will answer any question you have,” the Lithos Dragon replied.
This guy was ten thousand years older than Tang Jie, yet he was calling him “Immortal Elder”. So long as he could survive, he was even willing to be Tang Jie’s grandson.
Tang Jie asked, “Previously, you were sleeping in the body of a young man called Yuan Chenfei, yes?”
“Precisely.”
Tang Jie nodded. “Slumbering for ten thousand years, achieving destruction followed by creation, is a very creative idea, but even creation can’t conjure up Immortal energy out of thin air, right? It’s not reasonable to suddenly achieve such immense cultivation. So where did this power when awakening come from? And don’t tell me it was provided by that Yuan Chenfei.”
Wind Holder paled. “Don’t tell him!”
The Lithos Dragon ignored that order—he was being very polite by not throwing Wind Holder off his back. “Immortal Elder, while the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art speaks of destruction followed by creation, what is destroyed and created is the self, not Immortal energy. There is no need to go through that process for Immortal energy.”
Tang Jie nodded. Whether it was spiritual energy or Immortal energy, they were both kinds of energy. Cultivators cultivated their ability to control energy, and all advancement was accomplished by controlling the energy of one’s body to grow stronger.
The Lithos Dragon continued, “For this reason, when using the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art, one must first take their Divine Palace, shatter the fabric of space, and then store one’s Immortal energy within the Divine Palace. When the time is ripe and the True God manifests, it can extract the Immortal energy and reforge the Immortal body.”
“Just like the ascension to Immortal Platform?”
“Correct!” the Lithos Dragon confirmed.
The awakening from ten thousand years of hibernation involved reforging the Immortal body, which was generally similar to the ascension to Immortal Platform. For cultivators who had become Immortals long ago, it was no difficult task.
As for the Divine Palace the Lithos Dragon spoke of, it was precisely the internal dimension that every cultivator had upon reaching a certain level. But this dimension was rather small and was usually only used to store more important things. For example, Tang Jie had stored the teleportation formation back to Rosecloud in his.
The Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art expanded the Divine Palace and then concealed it in the fabric of space. The Divine Soul had a mysterious connection to the Divine Palace that would not be severed. With the most valuable Immortal energy stored away, when the cultivator awoke, they could summon the Divine Palace and use the stored energy to reforge their body.
This answer also told Tang Jie where Wind Holder had stored the treasure.
It was undoubtedly in his Divine Palace.
Anyone who used the Fake Sky, False Sun Immortal Art had a Divine Palace so huge that there was no need for a Mustard Seed Bag.
Tang Jie said, “In other words, if I kill you, there’ll be a big explosion of loot. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!”