The first thing he saw was a giant stone platform, floating in the air.
Beneath it was an abyss from which a deep blue flame rose: the Blueheart Flame.
This flame was much stronger than the ember Tang Jie had seen before. With one glance, Tang Jie felt like he had been scorched, his heart almost being seared through his chest.
Five chains made from Mother Cloud Essence Metal were suspended from the ceiling, giving off an eerie twinkle in the light of the blue flames. Upon closer inspection, he found that the chains were covered in countless characters that circled around in mysterious patterns—Dao Runes!
The chains reached all the way to the stone platform, where they shackled the head and four limbs of the person lying atop the platform, rendering them immobile. Under that person was a hole which opened up to the abyss. The endless blue flames from the abyss surged into this hole, where they were compressed by a formation within the hole until they became like lava, which then emerged from the hole to wash over that person.
It turned out the Blueheart Flame was being used to deal with the person on the stone platform. Not only was this person being roasted by Blueheart lava, they were additionally shackled by Dao Rune chains and suppressed by an Immortal formation. The human cultivators had set up terrifying defenses against this person.
Tang Jie couldn’t make out the face of the person on the stone platform.
Tang Jie flew up until he was level with the person, whom he found to be a scholarly man apparently asleep. As the blue flames seethed around him, he could occasionally see a hint of greenish-blue flit across his face. This was a sign that the Blueheart Flame was burning him from within, a sign that while the surface was calm, his insides were in chaos. But he was sleeping!
Tang Jie could sense that the man really was asleep.
With his original body dead, he had become much weaker. While he could still stomp the average Earth Immortal, he had no chance of defeating a True Immortal. Of course, even in his fused form, he still might not have been able to beat a True Immortal, but at least he could put up a fight. Right now, he had to be extremely careful if he encountered anyone above his tier.
This was why Tang Jie was being very careful around this person.
He sensed that this person’s real cultivation level wasn’t at Earth Immortal, but True Immortal. It was just that he had been imprisoned and tormented by the flames for so long that his strength had fallen to the Earth Immortal level. Thus, even if his current cultivation was at Earth Immortal, he still represented a significant threat, and Tang Jie couldn’t predict what would happen if such an existence were freed.
Thus, Tang Jie hesitated for a moment before making up his mind.
He softly coughed.
This soft sound caused the slumbering man to slowly open his eyes.
Flames danced in his deep blue eyes.
When Tang Jie saw those eyes, his heart leaped, and he realized that he had erred.
This man wasn’t a human!
To be more precise, he wasn’t a human in the usually understood sense.
In the Great Stellar Chiliocosm, while the intelligent races could be sorted into humans, fiends, sprites, and demons, there were a few rare human-like species that were not human, like the giants of Gigantes. These were collectively referred to as the Varia.
This man belonged to one of the Varia races. His race had features similar to those of regular humans, but they all had blue eyes that danced with fire, which was why they were called the Blue Eyes Race.
It was no wonder this man had been locked up underground!
Precisely because he wasn’t a human, he couldn’t entirely be trusted, and so the human cultivators didn’t dare to let him out. For them, this True Immortal who had fallen to the Earth Immortal tier was a double-edged sword, only to be used in the most dire of emergencies. As a result, he had become the trump card of the human front line.
Tang Jie was confident that if this man were released, it would shake the entire Blood River Domain.
The Blue Eyes cultivator looked at Tang Jie, his eyes glowing. “Who are you?”
There was a buzz to his raspy voice, and tongues of flame emerged from his mouth when he spoke, showing that his insides were still burning.
Tang Jie smiled. “The one who will grant you freedom.”
To his surprise, the Blue Eyes cultivator looked at him in contempt. “Another one trying to make me their servant. Chen Tianguan and Guang Yuan couldn’t do it, so how could a new Earth Immortal like you do so?”
Tang Jie had interacted with the Blood River Domain long enough to understand its situation, and he knew that Chen Tianguan and Guang Yuan were two human Earth Immortals of Blood River, the supporting pillars of humanity. Chen Tianguan had died long ago, leaving only Guang Yuan, and it was precisely his death that had set off an age of human weakness.
That this Blue Eyes cultivator would bring him up meant that he had been sealed here for at least three thousand years.
Tang Jie pursed his lips and said, “Chen Tianguan and Guang Yuan aren’t even worth mentioning compared to me.”
For him, there was nothing amazing about subduing an Earth Immortal. Weren’t the Azure Dragon, Lithos Dragon, Flame Celestial Sovereign, and Vermillion Bird all Earth Immortals? Even the Mother Cloud combat puppet had the strength of an Earth Immortal. With five subordinates of Earth Immortal caliber under him, Tang Jie naturally wouldn’t care too much about such a thing.
The Blue Eyes cultivator trembled in shock. “You’re… you’re not with them?”
Tang Jie casually replied, “Did I ever say that I was with them? I came here purely by coincidence. I found out that the Blueheart Flame could be found here, so I came to gather some, not expecting to run into all this.”
He intentionally said all this so that the man would think that his opportunity had finally come.
Sure enough, the eyes of the Blue Eyes cultivator erupted, and he laughed, “Good, good! I, Jin Tianya, have waited three thousand, eight hundred years for this moment. Child, speak: what do you want? If you are willing to release me, this old man can owe you a favor, which is bound to pay off richly in the future.”
(Jin Tianya, 尽天涯, can mean “To the end of the other side of the world”, “To the end of the horizon”)
In his view, his promise was extremely valuable. In the past, there had been countless people who had desired such a promise but failed to get it, and if he hadn’t been tormented for 3800 years, he wouldn’t have been willing to give it.
But Tang Jie had no idea who he was and replied, “As an Earth Immortal, I wander the myriad domains. I happen to just be passing through, so we might not ever meet again. Rather than promises of future reward, I prefer to settle accounts here and now. If you have some reward that can satisfy me, I don’t mind helping you out. If you don’t, then I have no intention of offending the people of this domain.”
Jin Tianya was startled by these words, and then he thought it over and found the argument reasonable. While this person was an Earth Immortal, he was all alone, so there was no way he would offend all the human cultivators of the Blood River Domain for free, particularly because there were veteran Earth Immortals among the humans. Meanwhile, this man had only recently become an Earth Immortal, and with his no-doubt-mediocre strength, there was no way he would take any risks.
His excitement cooled, and he asked, “What do you want?”
“That depends on what you have,” Tang Jie replied.
Of course, his real goal here was to release this man, ruining humanity’s trump card and forcing them to seek help from the Rosecloud Domain, thus giving the Rosecloud Domain a righteous cause for its invasion.
This didn’t mean that he couldn’t extort the man a little.
This Jin Tianya was still a True Immortal, albeit weakened, so he had to have something good. Not only could he get something he might need, he could also hide his real goal.
Jin Tianya bitterly chuckled. “You can see the state I’m in. When I entered this domain, I was planning something big, but I ended up falling for the pernicious plot of the three races and ended up under their control. All of my treasures were seized while I was locked up here to be tormented daily by the Blueheart Flame. What could I possibly have to give you?”
“That’s your problem,” Tang Jie indifferently said.
The more uncaring he acted, the more generous Jin Tianya would be.
Jin Tianya could only ask, “Sir, are you interested in arts?”
Since he had no possessions and was unwilling to sell himself into slavery, he could only barter with his cultivation knowledge.
Tang Jie answered, “That would depend on the arts themselves.”
Jin Tianya said, “I have a combat art, the Starlight Battle Mantra. Once you cultivate it, you will be able to shake the stars and outshine the sun and moon, doubling your combat power.”
“If it only doubles my combat power, that’s not too useful to me.”
The Skyrend Swordfall and Ten Extinctions Blade could both increase his power by ten times, and with such peerless Dao Arts, what did he care for some Starlight Battle Mantra? It had to be said, though, that doubling one’s combat power would be extremely valuable in the eyes of others.
Jin Tianya then offered, “I have the Blue Eyes Secret Art, able to see through illusions and darkness.”
Tang Jie replied, “I happen to have a similar art. Moreover, the Blue Eyes Secret Art is connected to your race. Even if I learn it, it wouldn’t be very useful and could serve only as a reference.”
Helpless, Jin Tianya clenched his teeth and said, “I have the World Descender Mantra, the legacy of a Gold Immortal. It is a mantra that leads to the heavens, and you can cultivate it all the way to Gold Immortal.”
Tang Jie’s eyes flashed. “A Gold Immortal’s legacy, ‘the World Descender Mantra’?”
The future prospects of a person’s cultivation career normally depended on three things: one’s legacy, one’s environment, and one’s self.
“One’s self” referred to one’s talent, efforts, and luck, which were self-explanatory.
The problem of environment had been mentioned before. As for legacy, that was even simpler.
Arts were left behind by one’s seniors. If the one who created the art was only at Violet Palace, then there was no hope of a smooth road to Earth Immortal cultivating this art, unless someone who came later built upon this art to create something better.
This was why having an Immortal Platform ancestor didn’t just represent the peak combat strength, but also the maximum level of a sect’s legacy.
As the Basking Moon Sect’s ancestor, the Water Moon Celestial Sovereign, had ascended to become an Immortal, the arts he had left behind could be cultivated until Earth Immortal. Thus, those who came later, so long as they met the grade in other aspects, could cultivate to Earth Immortal, but only this far.
To become a True Immortal, Yun Tianlan had to seek out new arts to perfect and improve his path of ascension. In this phase, he no longer relied on legacy to ascend, but on his own research, which was exactly what made his path so difficult. The other sect ancestors of the Rosecloud Domain faced the same challenges.
If Tang Jie hadn’t concentrated the fortune of the world on Yun Tianlan, and if Yun Tianlan hadn’t been able to discuss the Dao with the Azure Dragon or consult with Immortal Ji Yao, the path to True Immortal would have been even more difficult.
Even then, Yun Tianlan had only brought the Basking Moon Sect’s legacy to the True Immortal level. To reach Gold Immortal or higher, he would once more have to rely on himself.
This meant even greater effort and even more excruciating challenges, unless he was lucky enough to come across a Gold Immortal legacy.
Tang Jie hadn’t expected that his habitual attempts at extortion would uncover information concerning a Gold Immortal’s legacy.