Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Here was a sky full of dark clouds.

The sky was eternally gray, without a single ray of sunlight or color. The earth stank with the odor of decay, and withered trees emerged from barren soil that was devoid of life.

A thick fog lingered over the ground, originating from the distant Yellow Springs that poured out of the heavens.

It steamed and billowed across the land, bringing gloom and desolation to the whole world.

This was the Nether Domain.

In the lands of the Nether Domain, only ghosts existed.

Various kinds of ghosts.

The most primitive fog ghosts born out of the fog, resentful souls born from concentrated resentment, savage spirits created from the remnant Yin energy left behind after death, and various zombies that still retained their physical bodies, as well as other strange existences that were difficult to categorize, populated this vast world of ghosts.

The Nether Domain was unbelievably large, larger than Vast Wilderness and only smaller than Primordial Fog.

As the afterlife for the myriad domains of the chiliocosm, it was linked to countless worlds. These connections made the Nether Domain a place full of the mysterious and bizarre, far more than one could imagine.

The Yan River was one of the bizarre locations of the Nether Domain.

It was a pitch-black river with no source, having always existed alongside the Nether Domain, its waters emerging from its soil. The waters did not flow, yet they were always splashing and sloshing. A black fog floated over the river, and numerous ghosts floated around in its waters.

Near the bottom of the Yan River, the black river waters were churned up by some mysterious power into a series of vortices.

Occasionally, one could see black ghosts swimming out of these vortices.

Thus would a Yan River ghost be born.

Not every ghost had to appear in the Yellow Springs. The Yellow Springs supported the entire Nether Domain, but the Nether Domain was linked to all the myriad domains of the Stellar Chiliocosm. In this world, many things defied common sense or even existed in contradiction. This land of the unfathomable and incomprehensible had to be avoided by the living and was somewhere the dead found it hard to slumber.

Lower down the Yan River was its black river bottom.

The undercurrent that flowed here was highly corrosive and lethal to any life, and even ghosts were unwilling to go here. Only bone fish and ghost crabs could be found here.

But in this kind of place, a giant of a human body still stubbornly existed.

He was sunken into the river bottom, covered in rotting sands.

The surging undercurrent couldn't scrape away that tough flesh, and the sharp teeth of the bone fish couldn't bite through it. Even the parasitic souls of the ghost crabs couldn't take root here.

The giant corpse lay motionlessly on the river bottom.

There was a terrifying wound on his chest that penetrated entirely through him. An immense energy still lingered over this wound, obliterating any ghost that got close.

A ghost crab approached.

The energy vortex within the wound attracted the ghost crab, but also terrified it so much that it only dared to hover at the edge of the vortex.

Suddenly, a transparent hand reached out of the wound and grabbed the crab. The ghost crab's misty body began to transform in an attempt to escape its clutches, firing off sharp spikes made of condensed black fog.

But the hand was unaffected, pulling it toward the wound.

The vast energy obliterated the ghost crab, leaving only pure soul energy that was drawn into the wound.

Deep within the wound was a shattered heart, and next to the heart sat a transparent ghost.

Sitting next to the heart, it cautiously guided that soul energy in, upon which the shattered heart healed a little.

Then the heart thumped.

Although it was only a single pulse, the immense Life energy unleashed spread out for several dozen feet, killing all bone fish and ghost crabs in the area. Alas, this sort of death provided no benefit to this body, and a soft sigh came from the heart.

The transparent ghost lightly stroked the heart as if saying, No rush, no rush.

The corpse was naturally Tang Jie's original body, and the transparent ghost was Little Three.

Tang Jie's original body truly was dead.

It was utterly devoid of vitality.

The palm of the Boundless Gold Immortal was beyond compare, and even Tang Jie's so-called undying and everlasting original body was slain on the spot.

But his soul survived!

Because of the avatar, the soul of Tang Jie's original body still had somewhere to go, so it was not an absolute death.

But Tang Jie did not call back the soul in the original body.

On the contrary, he had it stay there.

Souls could not take root in the dead, and those that did simply became walking corpses.

Tang Jie had other plans.

The moment his original body died, Tang Jie had used life creation on it.

To be more precise, he had used it on the original body's shattered heart.

The moment he used life creation, a new life was born in Tang Jie's original body.

It was a fragile life, lacking a mind or any ability to fight.

But it was also a seed.

A seed of Life!

Yes, Tang Jie's original body was dead, but Tang Jie had left himself a seed of Life.

The moment the seed of Life was created, the original body's consciousness entered the newborn life and entered a hibernation akin to death.

Tang Jie called this the "Fetal Breath".

The newborn life's development process had to take place in secret.

Thus, he also used a secret art to seal all of the body's energy so that it didn't leak out.

In this way, the seed of life could grow in the original body, drawing nutrients from the original body to create a new one.

It was a good plan, but that Nether Emperor had ruined it by pulling the original body into the Nether Domain. Of course, it was Tang Jie who had been unwilling to hand over the souls of the Wuxing to the Nether Domain first.

This couldn't be blamed on Tang Jie's pettiness. The Wuxing were a species Tang Jie had created and belonged to the Yellow Court World, not to the Great Stellar Chiliocosm. This was an independent system that served as an important reference and field of study for Tang Jie, a way for Tang Jie to comprehend the Great Daos.

If the souls of the Wuxing entered the Nether Domain and went through reincarnation, the system would be merged with the Great Stellar Chiliocosm's system, and his world would lose its independence.

In the future, to obtain greater strength, the Yellow Court World would eventually have to merge, but not now. Thus, Tang Jie could not permit the Nether Domain to take those souls, and he gave up his original body as the price.

Fortunately, the Nether Domain wanted souls, not bodies, and that Nether Emperor had become a God through an ethereal body and had little interest in flesh. It had only pulled in the original body to get revenge, after which it ignored it.

The Nether Domain was the land of the dead, thick with Yin energy and thin with life. Fortunately, the seed of life was growing within the original body and didn't need much from the outside world, so there were few problems on this front.

The real problem was that the original body's will had fallen into hibernation within the seed and could no longer resonate with Tang Jie's will, so Tang Jie didn't know its situation.

All he knew about the original body was through Little Three.

Without a will to guide it, the seed of life could only grow on instinct, which was very slow. Worst of all was that while that Nether Emperor had no interest in flesh, this wasn't the case for every ghost of the Nether Domain.

Most ghosts with physical bodies would be interested in Tang Jie's original body.

Tang Jie needed it to recover faster so that it could deal with any possible threats.

In this time, Little Three was constantly catching ghosts to feed to the original body's will so that it could awaken faster and control the body.

After this sigh, a voice rang out in Little Three's mind: "Three."

"Kee!" Little Three excitedly squeaked like a mouse.

The original body's will had finally awoken.

The original body asked, "What is our current situation?"

Little Three flailed and shouted for a bit.

Through thought transfer, the original body understood what Little Three was talking about.

He felt his own condition and found that he was still in that most primitive seed form, rooted in the heart that had just barely been repaired, neither ghost nor human. Even his will was just barely hanging on, and thinking was a long and exhausting process. As for the connection between him and his avatar, that was simply out of the question. Thankfully, the avatar was able to sense that the original body had awakened.

The original body said, "I can't stay awake for too long. I will soon fall back into hibernation, so you need to keep gathering ghosts to feed to me, which will extend the time I can stay awake."

"Of course, Father. I'll definitely catch more ghost crabs for you," Little Three answered.

The original body replied, "That isn't enough… I need stronger…"

Little Three immediately grimaced. "But I'm a Hunter Ghost. I can't show myself in the Nether Domain."

"Then let them come," Tang Jie said.

"How?"

"Fishing… use my flesh…" The original body's voice began to fade.

In this little while, the original body's will was already beginning to slide back into slumber.

"'Your flesh'?" Little Three was taken aback.

Right, why hadn't he thought of that?

The original body's flesh was very tempting to a certain kind of ghost. It could be considered a natural treasure in some respects and would definitely be excellent bait.

"But what if they're too strong…?" Little Three was a little worried.

He wasn't scared of ghosts that were too powerful, but if they started fighting, there was a risk of being exposed.

"Unsuitable targets… give up… abandon bait."

"But that would waste your flesh."

"Waste if you must. What is lost… can be gotten back… later…" The original body's voice dwindled away into utter silence.

He had once more entered hibernation.