Once it was decided to split up, Tang Jie bid farewell to Ling Xiao and the others. He originally intended to keep Xu Miaoran at his side, but Xu Miaoran insisted on going off on her own. Realizing that she wasn’t strong enough to keep up with Tang Jie and understanding that she wouldn’t be very useful at his side, she decided to go off on her own, giving her more opportunities to use her own strength and wit.
Tang Jie understood this and ultimately let her go.
Xu Miaoran left, as did Yiyi.
This brother and sister had almost never been separated before, but today, Yiyi wanted to do as Xu Miaoran had done and do something on her own, no longer being like Tang Jie’s shadow.
Everyone had to grow up and whether it was early or late, they ultimately had to go off on their own road.
Tang Jie was feeling this very deeply at this moment.
The Azure Dragon, Lithos Dragon, and Vermillion Bird also left on their own missions, ultimately leaving him with just the Mother Cloud combat puppet and the Flame Celestial Sovereign.
Once everyone was gone, Tang Jie said to the Flame Celestial Sovereign, “I left you here because I have another mission for you, which I’m sure you can guess.”
The Flame Celestial Sovereign sighed. “You want me to go back to the Celestial Flame Pagoda and oversee things?”
The Celestial Flame Pagoda wasn’t within one of the seven regions and was its own faction, but in the end, it still belonged to the Blood River Domain. If a cultivator war began, the domain was bound to internally unite, including the Celestial Flame Pagoda, which made it an excellent spy.
This was the mission Tang Jie had given to the Flame Celestial Sovereign.
The Flame Celestial Sovereign established a communication method with Tang Jie and then headed to the Celestial Flame Pagoda.
After doing all this, Tang Jie turned and flew in the direction of the human heartland.
It wasn’t long before he reached a vast plain, a cold and desolate place without a single inhabitant for miles around. Strangely, despite the soil being rather fertile, no crops were planted here.
As he continued flying, he finally saw a small village. It was extremely small, with only several dozen inhabitants, most of whom were old. When they saw Tang Jie, they immediately started to run. Tang Jie was forced to use a spell art to awe them, making them kowtow to him, so that he could communicate with them.
Tang Jie learned from them that this place was called the Cloudsea Plains, and it was located on the outermost rim of human territory. To the east was the first stronghold of the humans, the Skywater Pass. As for where Tang Jie had come from, it was the intersection of the seven regions, the most chaotic place where bandits occasionally roamed and raided from. This was why the region was so uninhabited and why those villagers had been so terrified.
Tang Jie couldn’t help but sigh.
Ordinary people truly had a hard time surviving in a place where humans were weak. Thus, the Rosecloud Domain conquering the Blood River Domain would be a blessing for the humans here.
After leaving some food for the villagers, Tang Jie departed.
After flying for around four hours, Tang Jie spotted two groups of people flying in the distance.
Three people flew at the front, two men and one woman. They didn’t appear old, and they had decent cultivation levels, two being at Cognitive Creation and one at Spirit Ring.
They were being pursued by a group of Hemos cultivators, who, while seething with killing intent, had rather mediocre cultivation levels. The highest among them was only at Spirit Ring. While they didn’t have much advantage in cultivation, they did have greater numbers.
A bystander would have run off long ago, but Tang Jie was here to make trouble, and if it didn’t come to him, he would have to go looking for it. Since these Hemos had shown up in front of him, Tang Jie was happy to go and meet them.
The three spotted Tang Jie coming over and shouted, “Leave! It’s a Hemos hunting squad!”
Tang Jie didn’t know what a Hemos hunting squad was, but the fact that these three could think of someone else’s well-being in their situation gave Tang Jie a very positive impression. He shouted, “Cruel fiends seek the extinction of humanity! Any human cultivator has a duty to punish them!”
He unleashed a howling gale at the Hemos cultivators.
He was currently acting as a Celestial Heart cultivator, so the power of this attack wasn’t strong. However, it was enough to completely overwhelm them, at the level of a Heart Demon cultivator. This wasn’t something those ten-some Hemos cultivators could handle.
But as the gale approached, the Hemos cultivators roared and raised their hands. A crimson cloud formed from their concentrated powers and blocked his attack.
“Eh?” Tang Jie was astonished.
It wasn’t surprising for the Hemos to have a combination attack. The key here was that it was a rather effective one.
When it came to combination attack formations, there were normally several attributes that were important. The first was the degree of overlapping. In combination attacks, overlapping the energy would consume some of it, and the amount consumed determined the quality of the formation. The ones used by the six major sects of Rosecloud all consumed the minimum amount, or else they wouldn’t be threatening enough. The second aspect was the range and reaction speed, the third was the difficulty to use and power consumption, and the last was the flexibility.
These various factors meant that combination attacks came in all sorts of forms and effects.
The combination attack used by these Hemos cultivators was clearly an extremely profound formation, at least when it came to reaction, consumption, and flexibility. That they possessed this kind of formation meant that they had considerable backing.
Sure enough, the three human cultivators shouted, “Be careful! This Hemos hunting squad has powerful combination attacks!”
These three took Tang Jie for a Heart Demon cultivator and rejoiced, but they also sounded the warning. Although it had come a little late, at least they had good intentions.
Tang Jie chuckled. “I understand.”
He chopped his palm, unleashing a wind blade that shot at the Hemos. These cultivators showed no fear of this “Heart Demon” cultivator, but this time, as the wind blade crashed into the crimson cloud shield, the shield trembled before shattering with a bang.
Everyone was stunned. The wind blade hadn’t seemed that strong, so how had it so easily broken their combination shield?
A Hemos cultivator quickly realized what was going on, shouting, “He knows the weakness of the blood formation!”
Indeed, Tang Jie had struck the critical weakness of the shield. With his eyes, finding the weakness was far too easy. He hadn’t even needed to use his Celestial Eye.
But the Hemos remained calm, their leader shouting, “Count yourself lucky! Let’s go!”
He waved his hand, preparing to retreat.
Tang Jie raised an eyebrow. “After attacking, you think you can just leave? What do you take us humans for?”
Just when he was about to attack, the three humans rushed over and said, “Sir, don’t stop them! Let them leave!”
“Oh? Why?”
Tang Jie turned to them, and one of them replied, “This Hemos hunting squad belongs to a powerful group of border bandits led by a Violet Palace True Lord. This is only one of their teams. If we kill them, it will only bring us more trouble.”
“Is that so? So you mean they can chase you around, but we can’t strike back?” Tang Jie coolly said, glancing at the retreating Hemos cultivators. These Hemos, despite knowing that the enemy was stronger than them, were in no hurry to retreat at all, even carrying a little swagger as they flew off. It was clear that they were not at all worried about this “Heart Demon” cultivator. They probably assumed that ending the hunt was the limit of what humans could do.
The woman among the three humans grumbled, “The humans are weak, so what can we do?”
Tang Jie snorted. “So have the humans been bullied so much that they don’t even have a drop of courage left? If you let yourself be bullied so much, why are you even cultivators?”
These words made the three humans shiver.
Tang Jie lectured, “The Immortal path has countless dangers. Since you have decided to walk this path, you should bravely press forward with no fear of death. If you’re constantly worried about enemies ahead and behind, what exactly will you be able to achieve? Even if cultivators don’t ask for it, there are still heroes among the ordinary folk. If your country is in danger, you should be willing to die for it, not only enjoying its fortune and running when danger comes! A hero in life and a martyr in death! Even ordinary people can understand this, but cultivators don’t! Tragic!”
The three felt ashamed, and their blood began to boil.
Tang Jie continued, “The Hemos push humans too far, so we cultivators should resist with violence, putting our lives on the line to wipe them out!”
These final words were like a wake-up call, and the three humans shouted in unison, “You’re right!”
They charged at the Hemos hunting squad.
While it seemed like Tang Jie had used his passionate words to incite them, in truth, cultivators had honed their minds for many years and were not so easily moved. Tang Jie had actually used a few charming spells when speaking. Of course, he was no expert in this category of spells, but given that he was an Earth Immortal, all he needed was a little push to have these three offering up their lives to him, let alone something as small as this.
The Hemos sneered at the daring of these three, several of them preparing spell arts to obliterate them.
Tang Jie simply smiled and snapped his fingers, upon which the Hemos found that the surrounding spiritual energy became extremely difficult to use.
At the Violet Palace level, one could suppress spiritual energy to a certain extent, making it difficult for one’s opponents to use spiritual energy and cast spells. At Tang Jie’s level, one could target specific individuals with this suppression.
He didn’t go for full suppression, simply weakening the Hemos so that they cast spells several times slower and what they did manage to cast was much weaker. Even their art relics were no longer as powerful.
Meanwhile, the three humans were unaffected, unleashing a storm of attacks that had the Hemos howling in despair.