Xu Miaoran was a rich young lady who really didn’t think of money as money, randomly throwing out long-range message talismans, and now, she had sent another message.

“Hey, have you entered the Devil Crushing Path yet? Have you already blocked it off? If you’re fighting, there’s no rush to reply to me. I’ll be there soon.”

At the end was a little smiley face.

Tang Jie hadn’t had the chance to tell Xu Miaoran his plan, but just like Nan Baicheng, Xu Miaoran had already guessed. The only way to get Wei Tianchong first place in this situation was to hold the Devil Crushing Path.

Tang Jie was taken aback by the message, and then he realized, That’s right!

I can have her help!

He could tell from Xu Miaoran’s tone that she was very familiar with the Nine Palace Illusion Formation.

Tang Jie saw a sliver of hope. He quickly took from his Mustard Seed Bag his only paper crane. He took a deep breath and then hastily wrote a few sentences on the crane before releasing it.

Powered by spiritual energy, the paper crane opened its wings and soon turned into a streak of light.

As the paper crane left with all his hopes, Tang Jie muttered, “It all depends on you.”

He looked toward the distant entrance to the path.

After him and Zhang Qinan, who would be the first to appear?

Xu Miaoran casually strode through Wind Devil Island, but despite her leisurely look, she was moving very quickly. If she hadn’t entered the formation later than the Basking Moon students, she might have been the first to reach the Devil Crushing Path.

Xian Tao and Hong Yuan panted for breath as they tried to keep up. Finally having enough, Hong Yuan shouted, “Young Miss, please, slow down!”

Xu Miaoran paced as she replied, “Am I fast? I’m already going very slowly.”

She made a little circle on the ground, appearing like she really had just come to take a stroll in the formation.

Hong Yuan rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s why you’re using the Oceancrosser Step! Young Miss, if you want to feign calm, this isn’t how you do it. While you appear to be moving very slowly, your strides are huge!”

Xu Miaoran’s face turned red. “Oh, is that so? I must have not noticed. Cultivation involves constant hard work, you know? Making use of every moment. That’s what my father taught me, anyway. Ah, let’s not talk about this. We’re almost at the Devil Crushing Path.”

Hong Yuan pouted and said, “Indeed, indeed, you must be quite anxious to see your boyfriend. Don’t think I didn’t see you secretly sending him a message. Goodness, it’s one thing to send him a message, but you think we can’t see a spirit crane flying off? You want to go and help him, right?”

Xian Tao pushed her and said, “You and your quick mouth. This expedition into the formation is meant to test the students of the Basking Moon Sect, and members of Horizon Ocean Pavilion can’t interfere. Helping him might just ruin things for him.”

Xian Tao was a cautious person, and she was using her words to warn Xu Miaoran that even if she got to the Devil Crushing Path, it wasn’t right for her to openly help Tang Jie. If this went poorly, Tang Jie would be accused of colluding with outsiders, which would only hurt his cause.

Xu Miaoran knew this, and she nodded. “I know. I’m just going over to take a look. And besides, even if I can’t help him in the open, I can at least do so from the shadows, right? With me there, some people will stop overstepping their bounds.”

She wasn’t worried about whether or not Wei Tianchong could become the True Inheritor, only that Tang Jie didn’t offer up his life in this battle. With her around, at least she could guarantee that Tang Jie wouldn’t die.

As she spoke, there was a flash of spiritual light, and then Xu Miaoran’s jade pendant trembled.

“Eh? Who on this island has a long-distance message talisman?” Hong Yuan shouted.

Xu Miaoran looked down. “It’s from Tang Jie. He used the only message talisman he had.”

“What did he say?” Hong Yuan curiously looked over, but Xian Tao pulled her back and glared, causing Hong Yuan to pout.

Fortunately, the contents were not particularly intimate. Xu Miaoran said, “He wants me to help him save Wei Tianchong.”

“Wei Tianchong?” Xian Tao and Hong Yuan looked at each other.

“Mm.” Xu Miaoran explained, “Tang Jie wrote that Nan Baicheng’s subordinate, Zhang Qinan, ambushed him and was chased off by Tang Jie, but before leaving, Zhang Qinan used a Heaventopple Stamp to seal off the Nine Palace’s Life Gate, which stops Tang Jie from sending the people he’s defeated back into the formation. Right now, Tang Jie has to face the combined assault of the other students, and he’s worried that Wei Tianchong has been hindered and wants me to go and help him.”

“But the Nine Palace Illusion Formation has numerous illusion zones spread over a vast area. Finding Wei Tianchong won’t be easy,” Xian Tao said with a frown.

The Nine Palace Illusion Formation didn’t make it impossible to meet, but it covered an area of several thousand square kilometers. Finding someone here was difficult, and this wasn’t even considering the illusion zones. Even if it were just empty ground, finding a single person would still be hard.

Xu Miaoran began to think.

“Young Miss, I’m afraid we won’t be able to help him with this. We have no idea where Wei Tianchong is,” Xian Tao said.

Xu Miaoran snorted. “That’s not for certain. You’ve forgotten that there’s a place where you can see everything that’s going on in the island, no?”

Xian Tao and Hong Yuan looked at each other and blurted out, “The Heart Anchor Hall?”

“Yes, I’m off to the Heart Anchor Hall! Xian Tao, Hong Yuan, wait here for my orders.” As Xu Miaoran spoke, she threw a message talisman into the sky.

This was to notify a worker of the island to go out and meet her. She had given up on making her way through the formation.

On the Devil Crushing Path, the road was immersed in thick white fog, and within the fog was a large flowery forest that blocked off the path to the Nine Palace Heart Ring. And the floral formation was still growing outward.

Tang Jie sat within the formation like a meditating monk, but there was no calming his restless mind.

He knew that this was the nerves that came from an imminent battle. He clearly wanted his opponents to arrive later so he had more time to prepare, but this excruciating waiting period also made him anxious for his opponents to arrive a little earlier.

Countless thoughts ran through his mind. He wondered who would be the first to arrive at the Devil Crushing Path, and if Xu Miaoran had received his message and what she would do, and he also wondered about the heaven-shaking punch of the Gigantes King.

As he became lost in thought, his breathing became a little hurried.

He took a deep breath and told himself, Calm down, calm down…

But the sea of his heart remained tempestuous, and just telling himself to be calm was no solution.

The stronger he suppressed it, the stronger the pushback was.

As his mind seethed, Tang Jie could no longer just sit around, so he decided to cultivate the Parting Classic.

The Parting Classic required an herbal bath to be effective, but Tang Jie just wanted to borrow the cultivation mindset to calm himself down and didn’t actually seek the effect.

As he guided the energy through his body and followed the moves recorded in the Parting Classic, throwing out those swift punches, he began to calm down. The miscellaneous scenes in his mind faded away, replaced with that image from the Martial Mirror of the Martial Lord standing against thousands of Immortals.

That domineering aura filled Tang Jie’s mind, and it spurred him on. Without him even realizing it, his punches grew stronger and stronger, producing sharp cracks in the air.

Suddenly, the image of the Gigantes King blasting away Nine Disaster appeared in his mind. Tang Jie seemed to understand something and roared, punching a large tree with the first move of the Parting Classic.

The tree swayed a little, appearing to be little affected.

Tang Jie said nothing, only stared at the tree.

A few moments later, the tree exploded into shrapnel.

“Eh? What spell art was that? It seems quite powerful.” Yiyi rushed over and landed on his shoulder, but she wasn’t too surprised. While a spell art that could blast apart a tree in one strike was quite powerful, it wasn’t anything too absurd.

But Tang Jie’s reply made her jump to her feet.

“It wasn’t a spell art.”

“Not a spell art?” Yiyi looked at Tang Jie in shock. “How is that possible?”

“Mm, it’s not a spell art.” Tang Jie looked at his fist and smiled.

He smiled because he finally understood what was going on with the Gigantes King’s punch.

The Parting Classic’s moves were truly moves meant for cultivation, not combat.

But unlike spell arts, what these moves cultivated was the body, and in the process, they absorbed external spiritual energy into the blood to strengthen the body.

But what if it were done in reverse?

What would happen if he absorbed power from his blood energy?

This was an idea Tang Jie had come up with as he was cultivating the Parting Classic without any herbs and finding it difficult to circulate his blood energy.

And as could be seen, with just one strike, he had obliterated a tree.

“You’re saying that when the cultivation method of the Parting Classic is used in reverse, it becomes an offense technique?” Yiyi was in awe after she finished listening to Tang Jie’s explanation. After all, she had never heard of such a thing before.

“Yes, and you saw it. A casual punch from me, not at full power, unleashed the power of a spell art,” Tang Jie replied.

“Then doesn’t that mean that a single punch or kick from you would be like a spell art?” Yiyi grew excited.

Tang Jie shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because the blood energy consumed cannot be recovered,” Tang Jie replied. At this moment, he could tell that although the reverse circulation just now could unleash a great power from his blood energy, this was a consumption that had an upper limit.

He had been wondering why the Martial Lord had left behind this cultivation art instead of an offensive art, but now, he knew.

While this combat art was enormously powerful, it hurt both oneself and the enemy, especially for people who were first learning the Parting Classic. If they recklessly used this art against the enemy, they might never be able to rise any higher for the rest of their life. They might even get weaker, falling below the level of a mortal and being crushed to death.

“What a great pity,” Yiyi sighed.

“But precisely because it consumes true blood, you can endlessly stack this power,” Tang Jie said, clenching his fist.

“‘Endlessly stack’?”

“Mm. What’s truly special about the Martial Lord’s Parting Classic is that the refining and absorption process is very crude and simple. With just a bath, one can absorb the spiritual herbs of the world. As for one’s blood energy, because it belongs to oneself, it has no limiter. It is completely possible to gather all of one’s blood energy into a strike, and the power…” Tang Jie looked at the giant golden stone. “It would be able to destroy that with no problem.”

“But that would make you back into an ordinary person, right?”

“Yes.” Tang Jie smiled. “Relax. I’m not willing to sacrifice myself for Young Master Wei.”

Yiyi slapped her chest. “That’s good.”

Tang Jie couldn’t help but smile at her cute and innocent appearance. “While the reversed Parting Classic can’t be used carelessly, it can at least serve as a trump card. If my life is in danger, it might be able to save me, and it’s better than nothing.”