Over the past 1800 years, out of more than a thousand students every year, only around ten were able to enter the sect. It was simply the truth that the Basking Moon Sect could randomly choose anyone and end up with a sea of talents. Nine-cycle people were less than dogs, and never had a master insisted on taking a disciple.
But Nan Baicheng did not dare to say such things, only keeping these words in the depths of his heart.
Yan Changfeng seemed to think that this wasn’t enough, saying, “Go, then, and tell him that if he’s willing to become my disciple, I will pass onto him the Nine Coronal Transformations and the Mind Parting Heart Anchor Art.”
“What?” These words truly left Nan Baicheng dumbfounded.
Wind Devil Island.
In a small pavilion on the shore of the island, Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran sat across from each other, but they said nothing. They simply looked out at the ocean as the waves went in and out.
Two maids, Hong Yuan and Xiaon Tao, stood on the side. They looked at each other and suddenly laughed.
“What are you giggling about?” Xu Miaoran said, rolling her eyes at the pair.
Hong Yuan replied, “Young Miss, if you think it inconvenient for us to be here, you can just tell us. There’s no need to just sit there and glare!”
Xu Miaoran went red in the face, and she grabbed a cup and threw it Hong Yuan, but the maid giggled as she dodged.
Tang Jie smiled and said, “Sister Hong Yuan is truly understanding of others. Since that is the case, Tang Jie thanks you.”
Hong Yuan hadn’t expected him to so smoothly climb up the ladder offered, and she couldn’t help but glare. “You…”
Xian Tao pulled on her and said, “Oh my, I almost forgot that we still have some work to do. The two of you, please remain seated. Hong Yuan and I will be gone and back in a jiffy.”
She pulled Hong Yuan away. Hong Yuan fumed as she tried to pull her hand away, “What are we acting for?”
But Xian Tao kept a firm grip and dragged her away.
As they watched the two of them leave, Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran laughed.
Xu Miaoran said, “Those two stubborn girls have no respect for their seniors and no mind for manners. Young Master, please do not laugh at me for this.”
“These people are true to their hearts, so why should I laugh about it?” Tang Jie replied. After some thought, he added, “I have to thank you for your help on this matter.”
Xu Miaoran saw him changing the subject to the mission with barely a word and rolled her eyes. “After I got your letter, I thought that paper crane would become a memento that you wouldn’t use. I didn’t expect you to use it on your young master.”
“That’s because I knew that we would get the chance to meet again once this matter was concluded.” Tang Jie grinned.
“Then how can you be so certain that I will give you another long-distance message talisman?” Xu Miaoran asked. “Maybe I’ve used them all up.”
“Given how frequently you use them, you must be far away from using all of them, yes? You might even give me a few more this time so that I don’t have to waste so much time sending letters. I even have to pay out a few spirit coins in bribes every time I send one,” Tang Jie said, holding out his hand.
Xu Miaoran couldn’t help but chuckle at how thick-skinned he was. “You really were born in the year of the monkey, climbing up anything you can get a handhold on, but there’s nothing!”
She slapped Tang Jie’s hand down.
But as his hand dropped, he flipped it over and grabbed her hand. As their hands clasped, he could just feel how gentle, soft, and comfortable it was.
Xu Miaoran froze, and the two of them stared at each other.
Xu Miaoran’s face turned red, and she pulled her hand away and softly muttered, “Rude.”
“It’s just that I saw a fairy’s visage and found it hard to control myself,” Tang Jie said with a grin.
Upon coming to this world, he had devoted himself to the Immortal path, thinking every day about how to improve, how to break through, and how to deal with powerful opponents. It was only at times like these when he didn’t need to think about anything, only smile and laugh, that he felt truly relaxed. And when it came to wooing a woman, how many people could compare to him, someone who had come from a much more open and unconventional world?
Xu Miaoran’s face reddened again as he teased. She glared at him and said, “What a slick tongue, but I wonder how many people you’ve said the same thing to.”
“Not a single soul,” Tang Jie firmly replied. He even added, “Do you need me to swear a Heart Demon Aspiration?”
He spoke his first sentence solemnly, but the second wasn’t serious at all, amusing Xu Miaoran to no end.
But after some thought, she decided that this wasn’t proper. Placing a hand on her waist, she said, “That’s not for certain. That Su Xinyue also looks like quite the beauty to me. You stopped her from advancing, but in the end, she even helped you out of her own will. It looks to me like she might have some feelings for you. Do you need me to be a matchmaker?”
“Sure,” Tang Jie replied.
Xu Miaoran’s face instantly darkened.
Tang Jie added, “But she helped my young master, so it looks to me like she was impressed by my young master’s heroic figure. My young master has thin skin and is in dire need of a service like this.”
Xu Miaoran couldn’t stop herself from laughing, but she quickly stiffened her face and said, “Him? Who would like a piggy guy like him?”
“Hey, don’t be like that! Even fatties have their pride!” Tang Jie shot back.
“True—servant students also have their pride!”
“Just pride? Look at your servant students, practically riding on their young lady’s back already.”
“You…”
“I…”
The two of them continued to tease each other, the shore resounding with their laughter.
Xian Tao and Hong Yuan watched them out of the corner of their eyes, Hong Yuan’s eyes twinkling. “Wow, it seems like the young miss really has taken a liking to this guy. I’ve never seen her as happy as this.”
“There’s no guarantee of that. The book says that making a woman laugh for you isn’t a big deal. The real indicator is if she cries for you.”
Hong Yuan was curious. “What book is that?”
Xian Tao’s face reddened as she whispered into Hong Yuan’s ear. Hong Yuan was aghast. “Oh my! You read books like that? I definitely have to tell the master and young lady.”
“Shut your mouth, stubborn girl.”
In a corner of the island, a pair of maids began to quarrel.
The sky began to darken, clouds covering the sky.
In the distance, Wei Tianchong called out to Tang Jie. Above Wind Devil Island, the Immortal ship was taking to the skies, signaling to all students that it was time to go back.
“You have to go,” Xu Miaoran casually said.
“Mm, I have to go,” Tang Jie replied.
“Who knows how long it will be until we can meet again,” Xu Miaoran sighed.
“There will be another chance. Didn’t we say last time that it would be hard to meet again, and didn’t we still end up meeting again?”
“But it’s because this girl came from afar to see you,” Xu Miaoran said, kicking him.
Tang Jie chuckled and held out his hand again.
Xu Miaoran knew what he meant, and she lightly blushed as she took out a stack of paper cranes from her bag and placed them in his hand. “They’re all here. You don’t need to be too conservative with them. Just tell me when you’ve used them all… I’ll send you some more.”
As she said this, her blush crept all the way to the base of her ears.
Tang Jie smiled and nodded.
Xu Miaoran’s heart trembled at his smile, and she pushed him and said, “Hurry and go already, or they’ll leave you behind.”
“Then I can just stay here,” Tang Jie said.
Embarrassed, Xu Miaoran pushed him several more times. “Go! Go!”
Tang Jie reluctantly walked away.
He didn’t get very far before he heard Xu Miaoran shout, “And stay away from that Su Xinyue!”
“Understood!” Tang Jie loudly replied.
The two of them exchanged one last glance before Tang Jie turned and left.
“In other words, besides the power of the Prison of Mortal Coil weakening, you were also able to get out because of the help of the little fox?”
In the Meditation Garden, Tang Jie sat in a stone chair in the garden pavilion, a cup of hot tea in his hand.
With the Wind Devil Island mission over, so was the struggle of the True Inheritance.
As Nan Baicheng had to go to Sunwatch Peak to report, the disciple ceremony would not take place immediately, and all the students went back to the academy together.
As they returned to their normal routine, Tang Jie and Wei Tianchong finally had some time to talk about their experiences in the mission. As for Xu Miaoran, Tang Jie didn’t hide it from Wei Tianchong, which drew Wei Tianchong’s envy and praise for his good fortune. At this time, he was now talking about himself.
“Yes. If it hadn’t taught me a secret spell of the Five Gods Faith, I would have never been able to get out of the prison that quickly.” Wei Tianchong was squatting outside the pavilion, feeding the fox a bowl of meat as he affectionately said, “Come on, sweetie. I made this myself, you know.”
“Oh? What secret spell?” He wasn’t at all surprised that the little fox was humanized. When he had been testing its strength, he had already realized that it wasn’t like other fiend beasts. It was just that he hadn’t expected its intelligence to be fully unlocked, making it capable of human speech.
“Blackwater Soul Possession.”
“Blackwater Soul Possession?” Tang Jie was given a scare when he heard this, jumping to his feet. “One of the five secret divine connections of the Five Gods Faith?”
The Five Gods Faith was so named because the religion had five famous unique arts that were extremely mysterious and profound. The Blackwater Soul Possession was one of these.
The most mysterious thing about this art was that the cultivator could attach a sliver of their will to a designated object and thus control it.
This sounded no different from ordinary control spells, but the difference was that ordinary control spells consumed spiritual energy, and they were restricted by distance, number, and level. For example, when it came to controlling puppets, Wei Tianchong could control two at most at his current strength, and these puppets couldn’t be at a very high grade and couldn’t be very far away. He also needed to constantly use spiritual energy.
Blackwater Soul Possession had none of these problems. It truly attached a sliver of the cultivator’s will to the object, allowing the cultivator to control it as an extension of the body. It was said that at the divine connection level, one could control tens of thousands of objects from a thousand kilometers away, even control them into using spell arts. It was undoubtedly a top-class puppet control spell art.
In the Prison of Mortal Coil, Wei Tianchong had used the Blackwater Soul Possession to display his puppet’s divine might and finally break out.
“Tang Jie, what do you think? If you want it, I can teach you,” Wei Tianchong smugly said.
But Tang Jie shook his head. “No need. While secret divine arts are good, only diligent study and training can lead to success. The Basking Moon Sect is the dazzling orthodox lineage, and I barely have the energy to learn all of its spell arts. I probably don’t have the time and energy to learn the secret arts of the Five Gods Faith as well.”
He wasn’t being humble here. He had an imprint of more than a hundred secret spell arts from the Divine Firmament Sword Classic, but he only had a grasp on four, with most of them being purely for display. The Blackwater Soul Possession was undoubtedly a wondrous spell art, but he didn’t care about it too much.
“Why do you sound so much like the little fox?” Wei Tianchong sighed.
Tang Jie chuckled. “There are no invincible secret arts in the world, only invincible cultivators.”
Wei Tianchong and the little fox were both taken aback by these words, looking at him in a daze. They clearly hadn’t expected something so profound to come from his mouth.
But Tang Jie was simply reusing the line about there being no invincible players from his past life. However, in this world, this was a unique understanding that no ordinary student could comprehend. Even the eyes of the little fox flashed for a moment.
After speaking once in the Prison of Mortal Coil, it had not spoken again no matter how Wei Tianchong tried to cajole it, but now, it said, “What if it was the Celestial Treasure Supreme Heart Mantra?”
“The Celestial Treasure Supreme Heart Mantra?” Tang Jie was shaken.
This mantra was no spell art, but the foundational art of the Five Gods Faith, comparable to the Basking Moon Sect’s Violet Jade Mantra.
Spell arts were the surface while principles were the root.
The sects of the world all had different understandings of the Heavenly Dao, and so they had created countless spell arts.
When it came to spell arts, the 19 Star Sword was an art for killing, as was the Windcleaver. It really didn’t matter which kind one knew. What mattered were the different Daos embodied in each spell art.
Most of the secret arts of the Basking Moon Sect had the same guiding principle, the vast majority arising from the Violet Jade Mantra.
As for the Five Gods Faith, their secret arts had their roots in the Celestial Treasure Supreme Heart Mantra.
It seemed like the little fox was going to pass on this mantra to Tang Jie, and he couldn’t help but gasp.
This was the foundational treasure of the Five Gods Faith!
