Tang Jie wasn’t surprised to see that his finger had missed. He smirked and said, “As expected. You’ve recovered your memories, right?”
The Mother Cloud combat puppet remained motionless, simply staring at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie chuckled. “You avoided the Pearl of Life I was going to gift you, so it’s obvious you’ve recovered your senses and know how to identify threats. This Pearl of Life would be a supreme treasure to anything else, but to you, a ghost dwelling in the Soul Refining Pearl, it is the worst poison, which is why you evaded it.”
After a few moments of silence, the puppet finally spoke. “Regaining the senses does not mean recovering memories. I never hid from you before that I had a mind of my own.”
“But if you hadn’t recovered your memories, you wouldn’t have cared about your death. You are a ghost with a physical body. The Pearl of Life will only kill the ethereal part while turning you from a ghost into a true spiritual creature, granting you a whole new life. Only if you had regained your memories and had obsessions would you want to cling to them.”
The puppet was silent once more. Finally, it nodded and said, “I did recover some memories, but not a lot.”
“What kind of memories?”
“Some childhood memories… I like painting… and cultivating,” the puppet replied.
Tang Jie shook his head. “You’re lying.”
“If you had only recovered some unimportant memories, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you choose to act deaf and mute instead?” Tang Jie questioned. “If my guess is right, you probably recovered your memory eighty years ago, right?”
The puppet froze, its red eyes abruptly flashing.
A while later, he finally said, “You knew for that long?”
His voice had become deep and hoarse.
Tang Jie explained, “It wasn’t hard to guess. You haven’t spoken in a long time. Your biggest mistake was not concealing it when your mind first awakened. But it’s hard to blame you. While your mind had awakened, you had yet to recover your memories and bore no hatred toward me. All you had was a desire for power, and you naturally needed to communicate that to me, so there was no way you could hide it. At that time, you had already exposed the fact that you were in the middle of recovering your memories. I’m no fool, so how could I have not noticed this?”
The Mother Cloud combat puppet—no, it was more correct to say “Mei Huaping”—was utterly dumbfounded, and finally, the flames of hatred began to burn in his eyes.
Tang Jie was right on the mark. He truly had fallen silent after awakening his memories, worried that Tang Jie would notice the change in personality.
But just who was Tang Jie? For him to suddenly fall silent as he gradually regained his memories meant that he had either turned dumb or else fully awakened.
He didn’t speak simply because he had no confidence that he could beat Tang Jie.
He understood Tang Jie far too much.
Even several Earth Immortals couldn’t kill Tang Jie, and he now had several Earth Immortals as his subordinates, so how could he possibly rebel? The most likely possibility was that Tang Jie would catch him the moment he rebelled and wipe out his mind, resetting him back to factory default.
The Mother Cloud combat puppet would remain the Mother Cloud combat puppet. All that Tang Jie would lose was some energy.
In these circumstances, he could only wait for the right opportunity to come along. He trusted that, given Tang Jie’s temperament, he would eventually be involved in a fiercer battle, encounter a greater danger, and that would be his moment.
What he hadn’t expected was that Tang Jie wouldn’t let him wait that long, plucking him out of hiding the moment he ascended to Immortal Platform.
Glaring at Tang Jie, Mei Huaping viciously said, “Why? Why did you pretend not to know?”
“Because I was waiting for the right moment,” Tang Jie chuckled. “A revived ghost isn’t something you see every day. I can’t miss out on this kind of chance. The general trend of the world prevented me from studying the Ghost Dao, but now, my situation has changed…”
The reason for this change was very simple: his cultivation level had risen.
Rules were only meant for ordinary citizens, and this law only worked on those low-tier cultivators.
The law banning the study of the Ghost Dao might have worked on the past Tang Jie, but now that he could even defeat Earth Immortals, this law had become completely ineffective.
Who in the Rosecloud Domain could subdue him except Yun Tianlan?
Even in the Vast Wilderness Continent, there were few who could control him.
Flowing Wind was an example of this sort of person. He had used a Ghost Dao secret art toward the end of their battle, but he had unfortunately run into Little Three, who largely neutralized his attack.
Still, Tang Jie had seen the power of the Ghost Dao in that attack.
When one’s cultivation was momentarily unable to rise any higher, lateral development, the study of other schools, was a choice that the vast majority of cultivators would make. The higher one’s cultivation level, the more one understood this principle.
From that moment, Tang Jie slowly started to research the Ghost Dao.
Of course, this study was merely to better understand the principles of the world, and besides that, the Ghost Dao was also intricately connected to the Dao of Reincarnation, which happened to be his weakest Dao.
As Tang Jie studied the Ghost Dao more, his understanding of Reincarnation rose, and his mindset subsequently changed as well.
It was at that time that Mei Huaping awakened his memories.
A ghost would undergo some changes when they awakened their memories. This didn’t refer to their reactions or conduct, but the nature of the ghost itself.
But Tang Jie hadn’t figured out that Mei Huaping had awakened through his understanding of the Ghost Dao. Instead, it was through his abnormal actions. Thus, when he discovered this fact, he immediately realized that his proficiency in the Ghost Dao was sorely lacking.
The power of Wisdom was not enough to make up for it!
Akin to how Tang Jie needed various tricks to deal with strong foes, he needed to observe Mei Huaping’s habits to make up for his weaknesses in the Ghost Dao.
Tang Jie decided that he needed to further his research of the Ghost Dao to improve his comprehension of Reincarnation.
Others studied first and then comprehended, while Tang Jie had done it the opposite way with Reincarnation. He had borrowed the power of the Heavenly Dao Law Wheel to comprehend the Dao of Reincarnation, and only now did he have a real chance to experience it.
As he strengthened his understanding of the Ghost Dao, he also developed a better understanding of Mei Huaping’s condition and understood that this situation was extremely rare.
As he was traveling about Vast Wilderness and collecting various Ghost Dao texts, Tang Jie finally found the most effective way to use an existence like Mei Huaping.
For this method, Tang Jie had waited a whole eighty years.
Gazing at Mei Huaping, Tang Jie said, “Today, that moment has finally come.”
He flicked that Pearl of Life into the puppet’s body, and a terrible shriek came from the puppet, upon which a phantom emerged: Mei Huaping’s soul. Using the Soul Refining Pearl, he truly had managed to revive.
The Dao of Life was the source of life for all things, but it was poison for the ghosts of the Nether Domain. This Pearl of Life contained all of Tang Jie’s Life Dao power, which made it toxic to ghosts. Unable to resist, that ghost was naturally forced out. At the same time, a rumbling came from the puppet as it radiated vitality, signifying that a new life was about to be born.
While it had lost the control of Mei Huaping’s remnant soul, it had gained the Fountain of Life, causing this puppet to finally have a life of its own, becoming a monster in a real sense.
A phantom emerged from Tang Jie’s back—his True God, which seized Mei Huaping’s remnant soul. Mei Huaping shrieked, believing that Tang Jie’s True God was about to devour him, but then Tang Jie said, “Mei Huaping, in the past, you conspired against me, and in return, I refined you into a Ghost Guard. From then on, you fought for me for many years, repaying the debt you owed. Today, I can give you your freedom and a chance to reincarnate, but you must do something for me.”
“What is it?” Mei Huaping’s remnant soul shrieked.
“I need you to carry a sliver of my will and enter the Nether Domain, exploring its depths and its riddles so that I can understand the secrets of Reincarnation!”
“The Divine Wandering Secret Art? You want to use that on me?” Mei Huaping howled, realizing Tang Jie’s goal.
The Divine Wandering Secret Art was to attach a sliver of one’s mind to a wandering soul and take control of this soul so that one could explore the Nether Domain. This was an exploration method developed by the Ghost Dao cultivators so that they didn’t need to put their real bodies at risk. If they failed, all they would lose was a wandering soul and a portion of their Divine Will. Its greatest advantage was to broaden one’s knowledge of the Nether Domain and increase one’s cultivation of the Ghost Dao. In addition, one would learn many of the secrets of life and death, including that most important Dao of Reincarnation.
If Tang Jie wanted to resolve his weakness in the Dao of Reincarnation, exploring the Nether Domain was necessary, and the Divine Wandering Secret Art was a key tool to reach this goal.
This secret art had high requirements for the wandering soul, as ordinary ones were unable to bear a Divine Will. After all, they didn’t even have minds of their own, so how could they hold the mind of another? Only special wandering souls that had mutated into having their own mind could serve as a host to a Divine Will.
But such a wandering soul was not easy to control, and without Mei Huaping’s remnant soul, the Mother Cloud puppet would be much weaker. This was why Tang Jie had waited all this time.
Finally, he could execute his plan. With the Fountain of Life, the puppet no longer needed Mei Huaping’s remnant soul, and Tang Jie, who had become a God, was more able to control a wandering soul.
Realizing this, Mei Huaping shouted, “You have the Hunter Ghost, so why do you need me?”
While Hunter Ghosts weren’t wandering souls, such a ghost could also carry Tang Jie’s will into the Nether. Given Little Three’s loyalty, he wouldn’t betray Tang Jie, so he was a much better option than a mutated wandering soul.
But Tang Jie shook his head. “Little Three is a wanted enemy of the Nether Domain and will be attacked the moment he goes in. I want to explore, not fight, and you think I’ll have fun just watching Little Three fight while being unable to lend a hand? Moreover, I wanted to explore the secret of Reincarnation, but Little Three can’t do that. Only a ghost with a past life can serve my goals.”
“‘Explore the secret of Reincarnation’…” Mei Huaping muttered.
If this was the case, then Tang Jie truly might not be lying and was really giving him a chance to reincarnate. After all, only then could he experience the cycle of Reincarnation and understand its secrets.
Although he still loathed Tang Jie, given that his revenge was hopeless, he seemed to have no better choice.
He nodded. “Fine.”
“Since you agree, open your mind and let my Divine Will in,” Tang Jie said.
While Tang Jie could force his way, it was still better if Mei Huaping was willing.
Mei Huaping’s soul remained motionless as a tendril of gray smoke emerged from the back of Tang Jie’s head and slithered into Mei Huaping. The moment it entered, it split off into countless tiny chains that tightly bound Mei Huaping’s soul.