Once the Green Hill Sect disciples were gone, Tang Jie opened the jade box.
As the Soul Refining Pearl reappeared, the winds howled, and shrieking came from all around as if something was wailing. Twisted faces appeared—the faces of those fiends that had been slain in battle.
As they were freshly slain, their souls had yet to dissipate. The Soul Refining Pearl seized this chance to absorb them all, and in a flash, ten-some fiend souls had been taken into the pearl.
Tang Jie did not perform soul congealing again. The essence of the Softscent Jade had not been completely used up, but Tang Jie decided that he would first try out soul refining, as he didn’t know how to use the product of soul congealing.
Demonic fires blazed within the pearl, and a mist billowed. The fiend souls miserably howled, and even Tang Jie couldn’t help but tremble in fear.
This Soul Refining Pearl truly lived up to its infamy. It not only refined the soul, but the human mind!
It had to be understood that the suffering inflicted by the refining of souls did immense psychological damage. Spending too long immersed in this sort of sensation would gradually pervert the mind, turning it bloodthirsty, cruel, and even insane.
Yet this Soul Refining Pearl was also an excellent item with many uses. With it, rapid growth was no longer just a dream.
But Tang Jie quickly reminded himself that this pearl couldn’t be used unless absolutely necessary, and it certainly could not be relied on.
As he pondered this, Yiyi said, “They’re going to be here soon!”
“Understood.” Tang Jie put away the jade box and ran toward the slope.
He hadn’t run for long when he saw a black fiend wind in the distance.
The fiend wind was like a giant tornado, toppling trees and stirring up debris wherever it went. It stopped at the site of the battle, and the tornado’s revolutions began to slow. Once it stopped, countless fiend beasts flew out of the vortex like a rain of dumplings. More than a hundred fiends had arrived on the scene, a menagerie of jackals, wolves, tigers, panthers, insects, and birds.
They furiously howled toward the heavens and stirred up a great clamor.
“So noisy! Everyone, shut it!” A thunderous roar exploded in the ears of the fiends.
The one who had roared was a golden lion fiend with savage teeth and a raised head. It held a mace in its hand and wore chainmail, cutting a rather majestic figure.
Three other fiends stood next to the lion fiend.
One was as stocky as a mountain, with a face as black as the bottom of a pot, eyes like copper bells, and two horns sprouting from its head: a black bull fiend. Another had bird claws like iron hooks and a pair of red wings growing from its back: a red eagle fiend. The third had a long mouth and sallow face, darting eyes, and sharp claws: a gray wolf fiend.
The lion’s roar was like thunder, dizzying most of the fiends, and they did not dare to shout any longer.
The lion fiend looked around at the scattered fiend corpses. “What reckless humans are making a mess this time? Gray Wolf, see who it was!”
The gray wolf fiend came forward and took in a deep breath, and white mist flowed into its nostrils. After a moment, it said, “Six humans, one at Mortal Shedding. Five of them ran off while one is still in the area.”
They didn’t seem like anyone impressive, so the lion, eagle, and bull all sighed in relief.
After reaching Mind Opening, these fiends all came to value their lives and did not lightly contend with cultivators. Before attacking, they would always try to understand the situation. When they heard that these humans weren’t strong, they felt like they could relax.
“But Lynx is dead,” Gray Wolf added.
“That idiot—it never knew what was good for it and purely relied on brawn over brains. It must have gotten careless and been ambushed,” the lion fiend roared. “If it’s dead, it’s dead. Let’s find that human first and kill them to compensate for its life!”
The eagle fiend opened its wings and took to the skies. It made a small circle in the air and soon spotted running human figures down below. Rather than chasing, it landed and said, “Vice King, the humans went off in two directions: one to the western slope and the rest to the eastern face.”
The lion fiend said, “What are you waiting for? Red Eagle, go after that lone human. The rest of you, come with me to catch the group with more people. We’ll peel off their flesh and cook them into a stew!”
The lion fiend waved its hand, and the fiend wind stirred, sweeping up all the fiends and taking them toward the fleeing Green Hill Sect disciples. Only that eagle fiend once more took to the skies in pursuit of Tang Jie.
Tang Jie was still running to the western slope. He wasn’t running very fast—his pace was practically a stroll. He seemed more like a tourist than someone fleeing for his life.
In his mind, Yiyi’s voice rang out. “Oh no! Oh no! Those fiends have split up into two groups. One group is going after Sister Luo Yin and the others while only one fiend is going after you. Big Brother, you have to save them!”
“‘Save them’? With what?” Tang Jie continued to casually jog forward, his tone indifferent.
Yiyi was startled by these words. “Big Brother, you can’t save them? How can that be?”
Tang Jie replied, “In the end, I’m only at Spirit Lake Tier. Winning against a single Mind Opening fiend isn’t easy, let alone one middle-grade and three lower-grades, together with more than a hundred Spirit Sensing beasts. Just how am I going to save them?”
Yiyi was rendered speechless. Only now did she realize that this group of fiends was truly beyond Tang Jie’s power to handle. She had neglected this fact and asked Tang Jie to save the others perhaps because nothing had been able to trouble Tang Jie for quite some time now. She had unconsciously taken Tang Jie to be an omnipotent person and instinctively disregarded the difference in strength. It was only when Tang Jie had mentioned it that she finally realized. “Then… what do we do?”
Stopping, Tang Jie looked up at the sky.
The red eagle was flying over.
As he looked at the red eagle, Tang Jie said, “The only method right now is to use this opportunity to cut off their wings, using a strategy of ‘divide and conquer’. If I kill one, then Fragrant Store Cave will have only two generals left.”
“But that means that Sister Luo Yin and the others will be in danger!” Yiyi shouted. She had gotten acquainted with Luo Yin and the others, and she had liked Luo Yin the most, so she was very concerned about her safety.
Tang Jie was unmoved. “People eat fiends and fiends eat people. So long as they don’t fight to the death and allow themselves to be captured, they still have some hope of survival. If that happens, then I’ll naturally save them. Of course, if they choose to fight to the end, there’s nothing I can do.”
Yiyi suddenly had a thought that she couldn’t keep down.
She said in a trembling voice, “Big Brother, you knew things would turn out like this, right? You let them be bait so that they would split up the fiends.”
Tang Jie said nothing.
In the air, the red eagle fiend was descending and getting closer and closer.
Tang Jie looked at the eagle and muttered, “Yes, I knew. But this wasn’t my plan, only a possibility that I saw… It’s not that strange if you think about it, Yiyi. One side has five people and one side has only one. Do those fiends have any reason to not chase after the side with more people? From the moment we chose to escape separately, it was decided that the pursuers would split up. Thus, I didn’t use them as bait. I just didn’t stop them from becoming bait.”
“Then why didn’t you warn them?”
“And then what?” Tang Jie asked.
Yiyi froze. Tang Jie said, “Let them join me in fighting together? They’re too weak, so weak that they wouldn’t be able to help me handle even one decent opponent. And once a melee starts, I won’t have the ability to protect them.”
Yiyi said nothing.
Tang Jie continued, “Yiyi, once you can see how things are trending, many things stop being complicated. But people are too lazy to use their brains, or maybe they just don’t want to see it. The problem with the Green Hill Sect is that it’s just too weak, yet they insisted on coming to a place they shouldn’t have. No matter what I do, it will be very difficult to save them. In these circumstances, all I can do is make it so that their deaths are somewhat worthwhile… I won’t randomly turn other people into sacrifices, but if someone is going to die, I don’t mind using their deaths to my advantage.”
In the end, Yiyi was still young, so when she heard this callous argument, she said, “But Big Brother, you just saved them! Are you really going to watch them die? They’re not bad people!”
“And what about it?” Tang Jie coldly replied. “Yiyi, this is exactly what I’m trying to teach you. Good or evil isn’t the basis of survival. Your fists are. I know that you like them, but if you don’t have the ability to protect them, then you should first learn how to not like them!”
Tang Jie made his move.
He pulled out his saber.
As he pulled out the Heartbreak Saber, he pointed its edge at the sky, and a dazzling wave of light shot out.
This was precisely when the eagle fiend had chosen to dive. Before it had even reached the ground, it saw a dazzling saber light and shrieked. Its wings opened as it tried to protect itself.
A moment later, there was a bloody explosion. Red feathers scattered into the air, and the eagle fiend screeched as it went from a dive into a simple fall, crashing into a nearby large tree. It clearly hadn’t expected to suffer such a severe wound. When it looked at itself, it found that one of its wings was sagging and difficult to raise, and it became shocked and furious. It had tempered these wings to the toughness of iron, yet a single human had dealt them such a heavy blow. This was simply unprecedented! It shouted, “Accursed human! You dare to hurt me! Me…”
It lowered its head and bit at one of the feathers on its breast.
This feather was extremely special. It was all white and at the very center of its breast.
The eagle fiend tossed the feather out and shrilly said, “My precious, kill him!”
The white eagle feather turned into a white arrow in midair and shot toward Tang Jie.
Tang Jie’s face turned serious. “A lifelink eagle feather!”
When a fiend reached Mind Opening, it could refine various parts of its body into weapons, which was the fiend equivalent of art manifestation. Through transformation, these body parts would be imbued with great power, and the more extreme ones would even refine them into lifelink items, which were akin to fiend pellets in nature.
When a lifelink item was destroyed, the fiend would suffer severe damage.
The eagle was clearly a Mind Opening fiend who had refined this lifelink eagle feather. It had been injured by Tang Jie from the very outset, causing it to be so enraged that it had immediately used its trump card.
The eagle feather arrow shot out, leaving behind a long afterimage as it took aim at Tang Jie’s heart.
Tang Jie did not dare to be careless and swung the Heartbreak Saber at full force.
The Windcleaver!
The saber struck the arrow, but the arrow erupted with light and threw back the Heartbreak Saber.
But at the same time, Tang Jie let go of his saber and backed away, his left hand reaching for the arrow.
There was a drone of wind. As Tang Jie grabbed the arrow, it exploded with golden light, forcing back Tang Jie’s hand, and continued to shoot toward him.
Tang Jie’s body rippled with water, flashed with gold, and erupted with bloody light.
He had simultaneously activated the Aquagel Shroud, Formless Golden Body, and the Blood Refining Spirit spell.
There was an ugly screech as the arrow penetrated through the Aquagel Shroud and stabbed into his chest. It was like a drill biting into metal, bravely advancing about a centimeter before stopping.
Blood spurted out of Tang Jie’s body, the arrow head having inserted itself into Tang Jie’s body.
This sight left both Tang Jie and the red eagle flabbergasted.
The red eagle was shocked by the ferocity of Tang Jie’s defense while Tang Jie was shocked at the sharpness of the lifelink eagle feather.
This was actually the first time an attack had been able to break through his defenses and deal so much damage to him. If he hadn’t unleashed all his defenses, the arrow would have run right through him.
Thankfully, he had barely managed to hold it off.
He grabbed the feather and fiercely swung his saber at the eagle fiend.
The eagle fiend saw that its best attack had failed and knew that its opponent was formidable, so it tried to take to the skies. The eagle fiend was probably the most difficult to deal with of the four fiend generals. Putting aside its sharp attacks, it could fly. So long as it could fly, even cultivators that could fly on swords could not match its agility, and besides, flying swords consumed spiritual power.
It had not done this earlier mostly because it had underestimated Tang Jie. But now that it saw how formidable Tang Jie was, it immediately took flight.
But as it was rising, a figure flew out and rammed into it: the little tiger.
This attack took it by surprise, and the eagle fiend trembled all over as the little tiger raised a paw and swiped.
“Aaagh!” the eagle fiend bitterly shrieked. It raised its claw and struck back, thrusting at the little tiger’s chest as the tiger swiped at it. With its lower-grade Mind Opening strength, it managed to punch five deep holes in the little tiger’s body and then thrust out its other claw.
But the little tiger was quite tough. Rather than trying to dodge, he opened his mouth and unleashed a lightning blade.
“Seeking death!” the eagle fiend roared. Its feathers bristled, shining like countless blades in the moonlight.
Tang Jie saw that this wasn’t good and shouted, “Bao’er, dodge!”
The golden thread flew out of his hand, right at the red eagle’s head.
But they were in the air, and Tang Jie had ultimately been too slow.
The eagle fiend closed its wings, stabbing the feathers into the little tiger.
This was the eagle fiend’s other powerful move, the Thousand Feather Eagle Strike.
The Redfeather Eagle King’s Thousand Feather Strike had astonishing power, and while its penetrating power might not match up to the lifelink eagle feather, its lethality was greater. The eagle feathers were about to turn the little tiger into a pincushion, and Tang Jie couldn’t bear to watch.
Raaa! A heaven-shaking roar resounded through the forest, jolting minds.
This was Bao’er natural ability, Tiger Roar!
The Thousand Feather Eagle Strike froze, and though the feathers had already stabbed into the little tiger’s body, they were not able to exert their full power. They only managed to puncture several dozen holes in the tiger’s body, from which blood gushed and rained down.
But this was the last counterattack the eagle fiend could make.
The golden thread curled around the eagle’s head and, with a pull from Tang Jie, sliced it off.