The last of his life had leaked out from his punctured heart.
Tang Jie felt an inexplicable sorrow as he looked at that body laid out on the rocks.
He actually held no hatred against Shu Mingyang. If possible, he would have even liked to turn him from an enemy into an ally.
But he hadn’t been able to do it.
Such was the way of the world. When you did everything in a way that maximized your own profit, you had to wipe away all emotional factors and silently endure everything.
As he looked at Shu Mingyang, Tang Jie felt his heart slowly grow cold.
He sighed, shook his head, and left.
Deep in the mountain forest, he ran into a white-clothed girl playing among the trees: Yiyi.
She was responsible for spreading the rumors.
Upon seeing Tang Jie, Yiyi happily ran over and leaped into his embrace. She excitedly asked, “Is it all done?”
“Mm.”
“What do we do next?”
“Next…” Tang Jie thought it over before answering, “Naturally, we’ll take a break. Right now, there’s no need for there to be two Tang Jies.”
He went to a clearing and punched at the ground, creating a pit.
Tang Jie jumped inside and placed the stone canvas over his body. (See Chapter 255)
Large amounts of soil automatically began to converge, slowly covering Tang Jie and leaving only a small space so that Tang Jie could breathe.
The stone canvas would block Divine Will while the soil would block Spirit Will and eyes. In this way, Tang Jie temporarily disappeared from the world. Even a Violet Palace Titan would find it difficult to find him.
Yiyi giggled and transformed into a little white flower that grew atop Tang Jie’s “grave”, swaying in the wind. As for the little tiger, he just roared and ran off into the forest.
If one stood at the highest point of Red Plum Ridge and looked into the distance, one would see a large swath of mountains rising and falling within a sea of clouds. At this distance, its mysterious, winding form was like that of a dragon.
This was the famous Ten Direction Valley.
Ten Direction Valley was one of the forbidden grounds originating from High Antiquity and was known as a place from which there was no return. It was said that those at Violet Palace or below went in and never came out, and even Immortal Platform Titans found it hard to keep themselves alive. Breaking through it was simply impossible.
The lives of countless people had verified these legends. Eons had gone by without its secrets being revealed.
Until the present day!
The one who had discovered the secret of Ten Direction Valley was no bigshot, but some minor figure of Godhead Palace. While adventuring, he accidentally wandered into Ten Direction Valley. He had considered himself doomed, but to his surprise, he had miraculously emerged alive.
Not long after getting out, he made his report to Godhead Palace.
Not paying much mind to this report at first, Godhead Palace took it as nonsense. An Immortal Platform Titan found it hard to get out of Ten Direction Valley, so how could a puny Mortal Shedding Realm expert do it?
But that disciple persisted, so the sect eventually sent someone along with him.
To verify his discovery, that expert recklessly entered Ten Direction Valley again.
This was extremely dangerous, for doing it once didn’t mean he could do it twice. But this person was truly quite capable, actually remembering the path he had taken. By taking this same path, he was able to make it in and back again.
The follower had believed that he wouldn’t see the man again, so when he did, he hastened back to Godhead Palace to report it.
This time, they finally had Godhead Palace’s attention.
It was later proved that the initial discoverer had been extremely lucky.
This was because a second and third wave of explorers had been sent in—seven people in total—but in the end, all of them had become lost in the valley, with no survivors!
With no other choice, Godhead Palace had that first explorer lead the way, but this time, he wasn’t so lucky.
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On his third trip into Ten Direction Valley, he only made it halfway before disappearing into the valley.
Just like that, the first discoverer of the Martial Lord’s secret ground had offered up his life without enjoying any of the benefits of his find.
But before dying, he had left a rough outline of the path he had taken.
With this, Godhead Palace was able to determine one thing: there was a great formation in Ten Direction Valley, and the passing eons had caused a flaw to appear in the formation.
The Godhead disciple who had returned alive from Ten Direction Valley had inadvertently walked through that gap, which was how he was able to survive.
In the past, Ten Direction Valley was a place where death was guaranteed, but now, there was hope, albeit a slight one.
This sliver of hope gave Godhead Palace a chance to solve the secret.
From then on, Godhead Palace began to invest large amounts of manpower into solving the mystery of Ten Direction Valley’s formation. By repeatedly studying the route that had been left behind and sending numerous low-level disciples in to explore, resulting in a loss of twenty-some lives, Godhead Palace was able to find a safe route through Ten Direction Valley.
The outer perimeter of Ten Direction Valley was an illusion formation. Those who entered would be immersed deep into the maze and find it difficult to get out. Finding the safe path was essentially solving the perimeter illusion formation.
After the illusion formation fell, the Martial Mirror appeared.
In front of the first formation wall of the Nine Executions Immortal Formation, Godhead Palace discovered the Martial Mirror. It was then that it began to suspect that this might be the location of the Martial Lord’s Returned Remnants, and that what they were facing was the Nine Executions Immortal Formation that could kill even the Boundless True Immortal.
The first formation of the Nine Executions Immortal Formation was the illusion formation. The damage to the formation had caused it to lose effect, leaving only the formation wall. Once one had broken through this wall, one could enter the second formation.
But this harmless formation wall had left Godhead Palace at a loss, and in the end, it had needed Xu Muyang’s help to get through.
The second formation of the Nine Executions Immortal Formation was the Weakwater Formation. After heavy losses, Godhead Palace had managed to get through this formation and find the Visceral Manifestation Classic in front of the formation wall.
Alas, before the second formation wall had fallen, Xu Muyang had resigned and left. Ever since then, Godhead Palace’s progress had been stopped at the second formation wall.
There was a rustling sound as Tang Jie walked through the woods.
Tang Jie advanced through the forest, vigilant of his surroundings.
After getting about twenty kilometers into Ten Direction Valley, he stopped using the Violet Lightning Lunge and switched to normal speed so as to avoid being noticed because of the spiritual surges.
Godhead Palace had installed Spirit Light Pillars in the valley. These were a kind of surveillance spell art that surveilled an area by assessing spiritual energy pulses. Stealth spells were no good against them, and even top-class spell arts like Illusion Thousandform would be seen through, though this was only possible if one got too close.
Before his death, Xu Muyang had recorded all the arrangements that Godhead Palace had made in Ten Direction Valley within his formation treatise. Thus, Tang Jie was extremely familiar with all their defensive measures.
Of course, Tang Jie wasn’t sure what had changed after Xu Muyang’s death.
But Tang Jie thought that the change probably wasn’t big.
This was due to the limitations of the era.
When it came to the ancients, people often fell into two extreme lines of thought. One school of thought believed that the limited experience of the ancients meant that they were doomed to be playthings for transmigrators. The other school believed that any figure of high status was bound to be extremely intelligent and capable, not easily dealt with by a man from modern times.
Both schools were actually biased.
The powerful figures of ancient times definitely weren’t stupid, but they had their own limitations in terms of thought, knowledge, experience, and many other fields. Thus, they were quite smart, and if you were playing in their playground, they could definitely play you to death. But beyond this playground, if you used methods and lines of thought they had never seen before, they would be left groping around in the darkness, perhaps even worse off than a modern-day middle-schooler. Moreover, because they were adults, their ways of thinking were hardened, and they found it nigh impossible to accept new ways of thinking, particularly those that went against their current understanding of the world. In their eyes, the common sense of modern society could be heretical. Let alone learn it, they would consider it blasphemous to their ears.
Thus, when fighting against these people, one had to fight them beyond the circle defined by their rules rather than inside.
Society and reality tell us that even the smartest person would have circles run around them by someone of lower intelligence if they were in a field that they didn’t understand.
Zhuge Liang might have been a strategic genius, but he could never dream of competing in the finance field with someone who had majored in finance. In this field, he was just, just… an idiot!
The same was true for the Rosecloud Domain. While the people here had their own systems and rules, they just weren’t good at using them compared to the people of Tang Jie’s former era. If one looked at the Rosecloud Domain from a modern perspective, their systems and rules were actually quite impractical and unreliable.
To take Godhead Palace as an example, while it had a system of spies similar to the spies of the modern era, their methods of managing and training spies were far inferior. They lacked almost all professionalism, and all they essentially did was: find a person that would definitely serve them, send them into the enemy base, and then issue them missions.
Passwords, code words, ways to keep secrets… What did these all mean?
In truth, they had none of it.
Everything was done on an individual basis, and had nothing to do with the upbringing they had had in the system.
Although Shu Mingyang had been the most valuable spy, his value was only linked to his talent and future prospects. It had nothing to do with “professional course grades”. In truth, Godhead Palace’s Hawk Hall didn’t really have any “professionals”.
This was why Shu Mingyang had seemed unprofessional… because there was no such thing as professionalism!
The same applied to the arrangements in Ten Direction Valley.
Substantially adjusting one’s defenses and countermeasures because of a possible information leak was both extremely troublesome and absurd to Godhead Palace.
Of course, there was an even more important reason: Godhead Palace wanted Tang Jie to go inside and serve as their vanguard. Thus, even if they had thought of it, they wouldn’t change anything, or would have changed things back if they had changed anything.
While they wanted him to have free reign, they didn’t want to make it too obvious. It wasn’t as though they could have the Godhead Palace disciples guarding Ten Direction Valley yield the path as soon as they saw Tang Jie.
In a play, both sides needed to do their best to put on a good show.
Tang Jie avoided possible traps and pitfalls as he advanced, eventually stopping beneath a large tree.
In front of him was the entrance to Ten Direction Valley.
The valley entrance was not large—about fifty meters wide. A white fog roiled within the valley, churning like the waves of the ocean. But it remained within the valley, only a little of it leaking out. These cloudy tendrils would make it ten-some meters before dissipating, draping a light gauze over the valley entrance.
Tang Jie knew that this was a phenomenon created by the damage done to the formation, permitting commingling in what had once been absolute isolation.
It was precisely this point that allowed Godhead Palace to go into the valley and study the formation. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have even been able to get through the outermost illusion formation.
Countless cultivators had once gathered in front of this entrance, but none of them had succeeded in breaking through the formation, and countless Titans had died.
Forbidden grounds had reputations that were created with the lives of countless people.
No one was interested in coming to Ten Direction Valley now, which was precisely why Godhead Palace had the opportunity to carefully research the formation.
But no matter how remote the location, people would inevitably come.
Godhead Palace could hold it for a while, but not forever, especially because this wasn’t their territory.
This was precisely why Godhead Palace was extremely anxious to get the Martial Mirror back. Each day of delay was another day where they risked discovery.
Even now, after a few years, some people had already discovered that there was something not quite right about this region.
Tang Jie focused his vision, but alas, his Celestial Eye was not focused on penetrating through illusions, and the illusion formation of the Nine Executions Immortal Formation was not some minor formation. Thus, even though he stared until his eyes were sore, all he could see in the fog was a faint red light.
Tang Jie knew that these were Netherred Wolves.
Netherred Wolves were not native to the valley, but were bred by the Beast Refining Gate. Netherred Wolves were born with Nether Eyes, which could see through illusions, making them ideal fiends for breaking through illusion formations. In order to break through the formation, Godhead Palace had purchased a pack of Netherred Wolves and released them into the valley. Unfortunately, the illusion formation of the Nine Executions Immortal Formation wasn’t that easy to break, and even the Netherred Wolves had found it a difficult task, many of them becoming lost.
But Netherred Wolves were different from humans, as they subsisted on spirit. Thus, though they became lost in the formation, they didn’t die, instead becoming creatures of the formation, adding another dangerous element to this formation. But regardless of what abilities they had, they faced the same fate as all other lives lost in the formation, ending their lives in the valley with all their fiend power converting into spiritual energy and returning to the earth.
With the Netherred Wolves around, Tang Jie knew that there wouldn’t be anyone guarding the valley entrance for the moment.
Now that he thought about it, since “You Shaofeng” had gone missing, Godhead Palace had probably moved away all of its disciples to give Tang Jie a chance to enter the valley. Of course, to prevent this from seeming too obvious, they had used a spell art to draw some Netherred Wolves here to patrol the area. It was like Godhead Palace was being lazy, using the defenses already in the valley to keep out any outsiders.
Tang Jie had thought countless times about how he was going to get through Godhead Palace’s defenses and enter the valley.
To his surprise, when he actually came, it turned out that all his effort had been for nothing.
Tang Jie felt a deep sense of helplessness.
Laughing, he tightened his clothes and then boldly strode into the valley.