Aspiring to the Immortal Path -
Chapter 1211: Refining
Year 431 of Heavenly Primacy: After defeating a large number of invading demons, Tang Jie resolutely chose to restart the path of the stars. The Rosecloud Domain resumed its former track, advancing toward distant domains.
Unlike before, with Tang Jie as its guardian god, the Rosecloud Domain chose a different method of movement.
In the past, the domain moved like it was being pulled like a horse carriage, but now, it was like it had installed an engine, and it was making incredible speed.
This was the advantage of being able to communicate with the domain core. Of course, only someone capable of a profound connection like Tang Jie could do this.
Still, Tang Jie wasn’t satisfied.
The cosmos was too big, the void vast and endless. Going from domain to domain could take decades.
In the Rosecloud Domain’s four hundred years of traveling, it had only visited ten-some domains, and this was because many of these domains were concentrated in a single star cluster. Now that the Rosecloud Domain had merged together the entire cluster, it would have to journey farther afield in search of a new cluster.
Tang Jie needed a faster speed.
Rosecloud was currently a hive of activity.
In the days of the Primordial Fog Calamity, darkness had failed to descend, and what had arisen instead was thriving productivity.
Diligent workers could be seen all over the fields, mountains, and rivers.
There were commoners, nobles, officials, and also many cultivators.
Like ants, they dug deep into the earth, creating tens of thousands of tunnels, building a vast and complicated underground world.
But this underground world was not meant for hiding away.
Down in the tunnels, wells, and vast subterranean spaces, they brought in materials, carved formation lines, cast spell arts, applied talismans, and so on and so forth, thus creating numerous small formations, all of which linked together into a massive, domain-spanning formation.
This was a formation that had never before existed, a formation that Tang Jie had designed using his own understanding of domain cores and his knowledge of formations. Its purpose was to refine the Rosecloud Domain so that it could be commanded like an art relic or divine treasure.
This was a bold method that put Tang Jie’s immense power on full display. Refining an entire domain into a treasure could be said to be an unprecedented feat.
Perhaps the only person who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Tang Jie’s ambitions was Immortal Emperor Yu Cheng. While he hadn’t refined an entire domain, the Vast Wilderness World being far too big for that, he had developed his Court of Myriad Domains on the scale of a domain.
One refined the domain into a treasure while the other developed a treasure into a domain, thus reaching the same end result through different methods.
The Rosecloud Domain had already possessed three top-class Immortal formations: the migration formation, the merging formation, and the Eight Ocean Mountains. The migration formation was for moving, the merging formation was for devouring, and the Eight Ocean Mountains was for digesting and sensing. The domain core was the engine for this all, and Tang Jie had designed a formation to combine these Immortal formations into one, like the seals applied to an art relic, thus making the domain easier to control.
Of course, this was a huge long-term project that would not be completed in short order. But in this process, Tang Jie was able to better use the Rosecloud Domain and the core, so the domain was able to move faster and faster…
The black void.
A Ning Beast swiftly pulled a massive domain along, appearing from a distance like a flaming chariot. The Gold Ignis Astral Winds wreathed the chariot, and the Ning Beast was its mighty stallion. A massive colored belt surrounded the domain, and upon closer inspection, one would realize that it was a swarm of flying shuttles that orbited the domain, creating a magnificent river of treasures around the Rosecloud Domain. These were Void Shuttles, which Tang Jie had designed after becoming Domain Lord. They could fly through the void, and because they were protected by the core, they could pass through the Gold Ignis Astral Wind, allowing even low-level cultivators to freely go in and out of the Rosecloud Domain.
But the Void Shuttles, while fast, couldn’t fly for too long, being the sprinters to the marathon runner that was the Rosecloud Domain. Moreover, they could only go in and out of the Rosecloud Domain’s Astral Winds, not those of other domains.
At the very top of the domain, a massive Immortal palace floated above the Astral Wind, like the seat of the “charioteer”.
Two Soul Projection cultivators stood at the top of the palace, in a massive tower. One of them held a jade mirror while the other held a star compass.
“In direction Shenyou, Azimuth 42, there’s a solitary planetoid. The mirror detects signs of a slumbering dragon, suspected to be Metal Element spiritual materials…”
(TN: Shenyou [申酉] denotes a position on the cardinal compass. With “North” corresponding to 0 degrees, East to 90 degrees, South to 180 degrees, and West to 270 degrees, Shen is “slightly northwest” at 240 degrees and You is “West” at 270 degrees. Shenyou refers to their midpoint, at 255 degrees. As this is a 3D coordinate, the azimuth of 42 indicates the horizontal angle from the starting point, which we can assume to be to the top of the tower. In simple terms, the planetoid is slightly to the northwest and above the tower.)
“Dispatch the Starcatcher Squad.”
Numerous Void Shuttles broke off from the “colored belt” and flew off into the distance. Upon arriving at that planetoid, the cultivators disembarked and used art relics to find the designated location and begin their excavation. With thousands of cultivators working at once, the planetoid trembled, its surface rising and falling as if a giant pair of hands was manipulating it. A giant hole was soon dug into the planetoid, and a large ore vein was soon exposed.
“It’s a vein of Dragonflame Ore! This must be the site of a Metal Element dragon’s Returned Remnants, its body transforming into an ore vein buried deep in the earth,” a cultivator excitedly said. “The Domain Lord’s formation needs lots of essence metal. We’re bringing it all back!”
“What are you waiting for? Start digging!” The cultivators began to mine the entirety of the vein. Their Mustard Seed Bags naturally couldn’t hold so much ore, but Tang Jie had his Void Stone, which was linked to the endless void and thus had infinite storage capacity.
Once the ore had all been mined, the cultivators boarded their Void Shuttles and flew back to the Rosecloud Domain.
The Rosecloud Domain passed through countless planetoids like this, and while they might be barren in resources, there would always be a few that had what one needed. At this time, the Void Shuttles would set out like worker ants, bringing whatever resources they could gather back to the nest.
One day, the Rosecloud Domain was flying through the void as usual.
The cultivator holding the star compass said, “In direction Xinwu (281.25 degrees), Azimuth 74, there’s a Void Behemoth.”
The cultivator with the mirror aimed it in the indicated direction. “It’s an Earthsloth that eats dirt and barren planetoids. It doesn’t have much value, so we can ignore it.”
At this moment, a monkey spirit suddenly appeared at the top of the tower: the spirit of this tower, the former spirit of the Starsnatch Pagoda. After being sealed by Yu Cheng, it had remained sealed until Tang Jie achieved Boundless and was able to release it. The moment it appeared, the two cultivators bowed. Although the tower spirit did not have a physical body, it was a treasure of the Basking Moon Sect and deserved respect.
The monkey ignored them and grabbed the mirror. Adjusting the mirror, it revealed a creature with countless eyes trailing behind the Earthsloth.
“Thousand-Eye God Devil!” one of the cultivators shouted.
The void of the Great Stellar Chiliocosm was never truly empty. Besides relatively pacifistic creatures like the Void Whales and Earthsloths, there were also some truly terrifying creatures.
The Thousand-Eye God Devil was one such creature. This being was a creature of High Antiquity, having lived tens of thousands of years. It had been born at the level of Gods and Devils, and it constantly floated through the void, seeking out prey. Many Immortals who relied on their cultivation to traverse the void had died in the jaws of the Thousand-Eye God Devil.
The Thousand-Eye had a crafty personality and had various means of hiding itself. If the monkey spirit hadn’t noticed, those two cultivators would have been fooled.
The two cultivators shouted, “Evade, evade! Avoid that direction!”
But a voice rang out: “Maintain course.”
Tang Jie appeared on the tower.
The two cultivators immediately prostrated. “Domain Lord!”
Tang Jie’s appearance immediately calmed the pair down.
But the cultivator in charge of the mirror still said, “Maintaining course will mean collision with that Thousand-Eye God Devil. This subordinate knows of Domain Lord’s mighty cultivation, but the Thousand-Eye God Devil possesses terrifying strength, and there is also that Earthsloth… Domain Lord, please reconsider!”
Void creatures didn’t share the same cultivation system as humans, so their strengths were hard to evaluate. But one could be certain that all creatures of the void, due to their long lives and enormous bodies, were not to be lightly provoked. Even a non-combat creature like the Void Whale had required all of Tang Jie’s ability to kill, so an existence like the Thousand-Eye God Devil was only more frightening.
It was said that the Thousand-Eye God Devil had once killed a Boundless Gold Immortal.
Whether true or false, the legend’s existence alone made people have second thoughts.
Tang Jie indifferently replied, “The formation requires blood and flesh of a creature of strong vitality. This Thousand-Eye God Devil seems pretty big, so it should be enough.”
The two felt dizzy.
‘Big’?
Yes, in the eyes of humans, the Thousand-Eye God Devil really was big, the size of a small continent, large enough to carry a small planetoid.
But Tang Jie was considering it only from a value perspective?
Meanwhile, Tang Jie stepped forward.
He sauntered out of the Astral Winds, leaving the domain like he was going out for a walk, heading toward that Earthsloth and the Thousand-Eye God Devil behind it.
Thus, the two cultivators saw an eruption of energy in the silent darkness, like a sun going supernova.
The burst of light soon dissipated.
As the two fretted, Tang Jie reappeared.
He was as elegant and graceful as ever, as if nothing had happened.
He said, “Dispatch a squad to bring back the resources. While that God Devil is dead, the energy lingering in its body is still enough to kill low-level cultivators, so don’t send anybody below Violet Palace. Right, remind the people going to be careful to use barriers while extracting resources. If they are exposed, they’ll turn to ash and die.”
The two dumbly nodded as he departed.
"This translation was made by our team, to read more translated novels please visite www.readernovel.net"