Tang Jie swayed, and then he weakly collapsed to the ground.
In front of him was a sea of blood.
Blood drenched his body, making it seem like he had bathed in it, and even his hair had twisted together in clumps. Blood dripped from the tips onto his chest, where five long claw wounds had almost dissected him.
His face and body were peppered with holes left by the beaks of the Thunderbirds. With their lightning attacks rendered ineffective, the Thunderbirds had used the most primitive method to fight against Tang Jie: their beaks to peck and bite and their claws to scratch. Even with Tang Jie’s formidable constitution, these frenzied attacks had managed to brutalize his entire body.
But in the end, he had won.
Not far from him, the Thunderbird King was collapsed in a pool of blood.
Although it was already dead, it was still staring at Tang Jie as if it was saying, “What grudge did we have between us? Why did you so desperately want to wipe us out?”
But this was the cultivation world.
The apex of cultivators had been established on a foundation made of countless deaths!
Panting for breath, Tang Jie used his saber as a crutch as he struggled to his feet.
He first plucked the plumes from the heads of all the Thunderbirds, and then he whistled, upon which the little tiger came rushing over.
But unlike before, the little guy didn’t immediately start eating. Instead, he looked in horror at the ground covered in bird corpses and then raised his head to look up at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie said, “It’s all for you to eat. The longer you wait, the more the spiritual power dissipates.”
Wooo… The little tiger sorrowfully moaned and turned to run.
Tang Jie reached out and grabbed him, and despite how he flailed his paws, he couldn’t resist Tang Jie’s strength. He was pushed to the ground and forced to start eating the bird flesh.
Meanwhile, Tang Jie began to dissect the Thunderbirds in search of fiend pellets.
While the battle had been dangerous, it hadn’t been long. Almost all of the killing had been done with the golden thread. He had sought to kill his enemies in one blow precisely so that the Thunderbirds didn’t have time to draw on their fiend pellets.
There were so many Thunderbirds, and ten-some of them were of middle grade. With the addition of the upper-grade Thunderbird King, there had to at least be one or two fiend pellets.
Sure enough, his search turned up four Thunderbird fiend pellets, with three being from middle-grades and one being from a lower-grade.
With the one he had gotten from the Thunderbird King, he had five fiend pellets in all.
Tang Jie held them in his hand as he looked at the little tiger picking at his food. Sighing, he said, “Ah, forget it. After all that I’ve been through, you’re the one benefiting from it all.”
He began to feed the fiend pellets to the little tiger.
The fiend pellets contained the greatest concentration of the Thunderbirds’ spiritual power. If eating all of them still didn’t cause any change in the tiger, then Tang Jie could only accept that he was extremely unlucky.
After eating the fourth fiend pellet, the little tiger’s body finally began to flash with lightning.
It started off very weak, only a little spark traveling along its body, but the light gradually brightened until it formed a massive ball of lightning.
Within this ball of lightning, the little tiger grew larger once more. He was now about the size of an adult tiger, and two wings of flesh began to grow from his back.
Tang Jie was shocked when he saw the wings.
Little Bao’er actually grew wings?
One wing was green and enveloped in green wind, while the other was blue and crackled with lightning. When the two of them intersected, they created a lightning storm that brought the little tiger flying into the air, but his flight appeared to be very unstable.
The flesh wings were still growing, and they eventually grew to more than a meter in length, and the lightning storm also increased in strength. The little tiger’s body eventually stabilized, and he happily growled as he flew around in the sky, moving faster and faster, creating lightning bolts in his wake.
“The Wind God Step…” Tang Jie muttered.
It was still the Wind God Step, but the influence of lightning had made it faster and more vicious, and also more difficult to identify.
Delighted, Tang Jie shouted, “Bao’er, try this!”
He threw out a stone.
The little tiger opened his mouth, and a blade crackling with electricity shot out and struck the rock. The original Galetiger Blade would have only sliced the rock in two, but with the addition of lightning, the rock exploded into debris.
Tang Jie finally sighed in relief. These two spell arts had both mutated, and even the tiger’s form had changed. Even if Xie Fengtang were standing in front of the tiger, he wouldn’t think it had anything to do with the fiend tiger of Tiger Roar Peak.
The little tiger also seemed extremely excited, throwing back his head and roaring.
After eating so much Thunderbird meat and the fiend pellets, the little tiger had risen from lower grade to middle grade, but this roar contained an intimidating force that not even an upper-grade fiend beast could match, causing all the birds in the surroundings to take flight in alarm and the nearby fiend beasts to flee.
Upon hearing this, Tang Jie paled. “Shit!”
Two spell arts had changed, but the tiger roar had not. It had only gotten stronger and more intimidating.
This wasn’t too strange. The Tiger King Roar was an ability that had little to do with the attribute of one’s spiritual energy, only with one’s bloodline and the strength of one’s body. Although it wasn’t like the fiend tiger of Tiger Roar Peak had exclusive rights to the tiger roar, and concluding anything from it alone was too arbitrary, suspicion was unavoidable. But at this point, Tang Jie couldn’t do anything except to try and make it so that the tiger roared as little as possible.
After roaring, the tiger landed back on the ground. The wind died away and the lightning stopped, but the two wings remained exposed. The tiger furled the wings and squatted down, indicating that Tang Jie should get on.
Ecstatic, Tang Jie put away the Thunderbird corpses and got on the tiger. “Let’s go!”
The tiger opened its wings and took to the skies.
This was Tang Jie’s first time in the skies, and he hadn’t expected that it would be because of the little tiger.
Amid turbulent winds, the tiger carried Tang Jie through the air, and as the world opened up around him, he felt a heroic feeling welling up from within.
It was only at this moment that Tang Jie truly experienced what those Titans of the cultivation world felt. Their lives might have been like him in the clouds, looking over the entire world. This was not something that some hick from a small town could understand.
But this heroic sensation quickly faded. It was still not time for him to think too far ahead.
The tiger flew around Thunderbird Cliff, where several chicks were still calling out. With their parents gone, they were bound to find it very difficult to live in such a dangerous place.
Tang Jie’s heart trembled, and he couldn’t help but regret killing all of this place’s Thunderbirds.
After some thought, he had the tiger fly him to the cliff, and he caught all the little chicks. “Since I killed your parents, I’ll find you new ones. Let’s see if anyone is willing to raise you.”
After taking some thunderspirit grass seeds, he planned to leave, but at this moment, Yiyi’s voice resounded in his mind. “Big Brother!”
“What happened?”
“We’ve met with Big Sister Liu and Big Sister Ping’s group. Big Brother Cai wants to go with them, but the stupid pig wants to wait for you, and wanted me to ask you when you would come over.”
“He didn’t ask you in front of anyone else, did he? You can’t let anyone else know about Heart Consonance.”
“No. Nobody else besides the stupid monkey knows.”
“The stupid monkey” referred to Shi Meng. In Yiyi’s eyes, they were just a stupid pig and a stupid monkey.
“That’s good.” Tang Jie thought it over and asked, ” How many people does Liu Hongyan’s group have?”
“Fourteen. They’ve grouped up to try and get the red lotus.”
In this period of time, numerous battles had taken place in the Floral Forest, but just as Tang Jie had predicted, the students had no chance against the dangerous floral forest and the Frost Fairy. After repeated failures, the various students who were after the True Inheritor spot finally started to work together.
But it was for this reason that Tang Jie was in no rush. He pondered the problem and said, “Tell the young master that you can’t get in touch with me, so he should go with Liu Hongyan’s group for now.”
“Understood.”
He had just cleared out Thunderbird Cliff and reaped a rich harvest. This was the best time to improve himself, so how could he just let the opportunity go?
Having Wei Tianchong go with Liu Hongyan would be like putting a spy in the group. Through Yiyi, Tang Jie could have up-to-date information on the situation on the battlefield. So long as it wasn’t the day of the decisive battle, he was in no rush to hurry over and could look around and strengthen himself as much as possible.
Only Tang Jie was capable of doing this.
After giving his orders to Yiyi, Tang Jie went off to look for a suitable target.
With the little tiger serving as his legs, Tang Jie was able to get around much faster, and he soon came upon a forested area awash with flowers.
As he was admiring it, he heard someone shout, “Look! Someone’s flying up there!”
Tang Jie turned in the direction of the voice and saw a group of students to the west, curiously looking at him.
It wasn’t strange to see someone flying, as many students in Basking Moon Academy could fly. What was rare was to see someone flying on a tiger.
As the students pointed, clearly curious as to who could be so capable, Tang Jie had an idea. He patted Bao’er on the neck, ordering him to descend.
The students saw that Tang Jie was descending and immediately put up their guard. They had evidently suffered a lot in their time in the valley. But their actions were a relief to Tang Jie.
The people who truly wanted to hurt you would act friendly rather than put up their guard. These students were clearly not that kind of murderous scoundrels.
Tang Jie stopped ten-some meters away from the group. One of the students got a clear look at him and shouted, “It’s Tang Jie!”
Tang Jie recognized an acquaintance in the crowd: Li Huanian.
Li Huanian was a year higher than Tang Jie, but he had been suppressing his cultivation. Back then, he had kept at the Spirit Spring Tier so that he could vie with his underclassmen for resources. He was one of Tang Jie’s old foes and had even defeated him several times.
But that was only early on. Li Huanian had long ago been left in Tang Jie’s dust.
Upon seeing Li Huanian, Tang Jie chuckled. “So it was Senior Brother Li. Senior Brother Li, good day. Why are all of you still here? I thought that everyone would have gone off to the Ice Cave by now.”
Li Huanian laughed. “The Ice Cave is packed with people, and there are fights happening there every day. I gave up on the True Inheritor fight ages ago, so I’m just trying to use this chance to get as much stuff as possible. That’s why I’ve partnered up with a few schoolmates to look around. I thought that you weren’t giving up on the True Inheritor opportunity, so what’s this? Have you also given up on the struggle and chosen to look around for actual benefits?”
In the end, there would only be one True Inheritor. In the face of the enormous competitive pressure, many students would consider giving up on that puny chance and seek to make their fortunes in the Valley of No Return. Li Huanian was only one of them.
Tang Jie replied, “Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I’ve given up. I was just delayed by some matters.”
Li Huanian looked at the tiger he was seated on and asked, “Is it because of this tiger? Seeing how this tiger had the power of wind and lightning as it flew and it can also fly, it must be incredibly powerful, at least at the middle grade, yes? To get the service of a middle-grade fiend beast, Brother Tang has profited from this trip to the Valley of No Return no matter what else happens. Truly formidable!”
Tang Jie chuckled. “It wasn’t entirely because of it. I’ve spent the last few days at Thunderbird Cliff and managed to get a few nice things.”
Tang Jie took out some Thunderbird plumes.