Upon returning to the Basking Moon Sect, Tang Jie acted like usual, cultivating every day and preparing for the push to Celestial Heart.

Other than that, he even more proactively planted and gathered beans.

After ten years, he had more than forty thousand beans, but after that battle and learning of the bean king’s power, Tang Jie realized that he had too few beans. Theoretically, if he had enough beans, he could even sweep through the six major sects.

He had so few beans primarily because he had too little space for planting. His cave estate was only so large, so he found it hard to find space to expand.

Tang Jie began to consider moving the beans to the Nine Executions Immortal Formation.

The problem was that He Chong was in the Nine Executions Immortal Formation, and the beans would essentially be a target that He Chong could attack.

While the original body was about to reach the middle tier of the Diamond Body, given that He Chong was at the Soul Transformation Tier, he still couldn’t guarantee that he could defeat He Chong. Planting beans there would have to wait until he reached greater attainment in the Diamond Body, at which point he could restrain He Chong.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have to wait that long. If the original body entered the middle tier of the Diamond Body and the avatar entered Celestial Heart, the two of them plus the ghost guard, Yiyi, and the bean army could deal with He Chong’s group of three, at which point He Chong would cease to be a problem.

Once Tang Jie understood this, his future plans became clearer.

Besides cultivating every day, Tang Jie occasionally kept an eye on that valley.

The valley had become much quieter after the grand fiend conference, as if everything was in the past. But from a few clues, Tang Jie knew that many things were still being carried out in secret. Through the arrangements Tang Jie had secretly set up in the valley, Tang Jie was able to keep a close eye on everything that happened inside.

Time swiftly flowed past.

It was soon another month.

Today, Wei Tianchong suddenly visited.

He had just come back from his mission. Hearing that Tang Jie had emerged from seclusion, he had come to ask how he was doing.

Seeing that Tang Jie was fine, Wei Tianchong became extremely excited. Tang Jie also divulged to him that he had actually passed the Three Witherings.

Wei Tianchong was dumbfounded to learn that Tang Jie had passed the Three Witherings. After a while, he scratched his head and said, “On this mission, I had a flash of inspiration and finally entered Cognitive Creation. I was going to brag in front of you, but you ended up getting way ahead of me.”

Tang Jie laughed. “You’re not the first person to say this.”

Quite a few people had come to see him lately, including Peng Yaolong and Cai Junyang. All of their jaws had dropped when they had learned about his real cultivation level, and their tone had been exactly the same as that of Wei Tianchong and Qi Shaoming. Tang Jie was getting rather tired of hearing it.

Hearing Tang Jie say this, Wei Tianchong could only sigh in wonder at the power of the Water Moon Paradise.

The two of them chatted for a while before Tang Jie asked, “Right, do you have any plans on going out anytime soon?”

Wei Tianchong replied, “I plan to take some missions to gather up contribution points. In this way, if I get a chance to enter the Water Moon Paradise, I can exchange the points for a few more days.”

Tang Jie rolled his eyes. This guy’s thinking was a little too long-term.

He smiled and shook his head. “If you trust me, then listen to me and don’t go out of the sect for the next few months.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Just sit back and cultivate. Sometimes, if you stay at home, treasures can just drop from the sky,” Tang Jie profoundly said.

Wei Tianchong was startled, and he gave Tang Jie a suspicious look. “Do you know something?”

Tang Jie indifferently said, “You’ll find out when the time comes. Right, also tell Senior Brothers Bei, Peng, and the others. Don’t tell them anything besides that. In any case, they can listen to it if they want to.”

Tang Jie was still very friendly with the people whom he had fought the Seven Absolutions Sect with, so he had decided to notify all of them.

“Okay!” Wei Tianchong nodded in agreement. “But that guy Cai Junyang is always out, so informing him won’t be that easy.”

Tang Jie replied, “He left me a few locations where he can pick up messages. Send the messages to these places telling him to come back early. Whether he’s able to get the message or not will depend on him.”

The two chatted for a while, and then Wei Tianchong took his leave.

Now that he thought about it, after entering the sect, everyone spent more time apart than together, and they now barely saw each other even once a year.

This was the price of maturity. It was just like when one moved from school to society. Gone were the carefree days of youth, replaced by ceaseless struggle and improvement.

Another two months went by.

In these two months, Bei Canghan and the others, who had received Tang Jie’s notice, hadn’t gone out on missions. Besides Cai Junyang, who was difficult to get in touch with because he spent so much time outside of the sect, almost all of his good friends remained in the Basking Moon Sect.

But for this reason, everyone ended up frequently visiting Tang Jie to ask why he had wanted them to stay.

Today, Peng Yaolong and the others visited again.

Once they were inside the cave estate, Peng Yaolong shouted, “Tang Jie, if you don’t tell why you had us stay in the sect, I’ll stop being polite.”

Tang Jie was seated on the large stone in meditation. Waving his sleeve, he said, “Be patient.”

With the wave of his sleeve, four puppet maids served tea, and a table and chairs appeared in front of the group.

Bei Canghan and the others sat down. They watched as Tang Jie formed hand signs, spiritual light flashing around. In front of him was a basin of water.

Bei Canghan blinked. “Junior Brothers, can you tell what Tang Jie is doing?”

Ye Tianshang shook his head. “I’m not familiar with these hand signs.”

Wei Tianchong and the others all looked at each other and shook their heads.

It was Qi Shaoming who said, “It seems like the Moon in the Water, which allows you to observe a specified area.”

“Junior Brother is formidable as always,” everyone said.

Qi Shaoming’s face reddened as he explained, “I didn’t see it through the hand signs, but the basin of water. Moon in the Water observes an area through the reflection in the water. The real strong point of this spell art is that it leaves extremely light traces, making it very difficult to detect, almost to a divine level. But this spell art requires understanding the principle of turning reality to illusion to use, which is an extremely high threshold. I didn’t think that Tang Jie knew this spell art, let alone that he could use it.”

“This guy is always hiding more than he shows,” someone commented.

Everyone immediately voiced their agreement.

But this wasn’t wrong. At the very minimum, he was hiding more than a hundred spell arts from the Divine Firmament Sword Classic, which served as his most powerful back-up.

Tang Jie finally opened his eyes and said, “I comprehended the Dao of Reality-to-Illusion in the Water Moon Paradise, and it’s thanks to that that I can use the Moon in the Water.”

“What sort of opponent is this that has you using this art to spy on them? Does it have to do with why Brother Tang had us stay in the sect?” Peng Yaolong asked.

Tang Jie first activated a sound-blocking array, and then he indifferently said, “It’s nothing. It’s just a vast army of fiends that will attack out of the Zephyr Mountains in seven days.”

Now that he knew the exact time the fiends would attack, Tang Jie stopped hiding the matter.

“What?” Everyone was flabbergasted by the news.

Bei Canghan stood up and said, “Tang Jie, are you being serious?”

Tang Jie casually countered, “What did you think I was looking at just now?”

Everyone sighed.

A few moments later, Bei Canghan breathed in and said, “This matter is so important, why didn’t you report it to the sect?”

Tang Jie nonchalantly replied, “‘Report it to the sect’? How many contribution points is that worth? Senior Brother Bei, let me ask you: when has my Basking Moon Sect ever taken these fiends seriously?”

Bei Canghan fell silent.

Yes, a vast army of fiends attacking the sect sounded scary, but when had the Basking Moon Sect ever cared? Even if it were reported, one would get a few hundred contribution points at best, which was nothing for Tang Jie.

Wei Tianchong scratched his head and said, “But it’s better than nothing.”

Ye Tianshang chuckled in reply. “Unless you could get something better by not reporting.”

Everyone’s eyes glowed.

They knew that Tang Jie wasn’t someone who did things for no reason.

Since Tang Jie had had them stay in the sect and suppressed the news, giving up on the benefits from giving notice, he had to have a better plan in mind.

Tang Jie replied, “I truly do have a plan, but there’s some risk to this plan.”

“Just go ahead and say it, Tang Jie. There’s nothing nice in this world that comes risk-free,” Peng Yaolong said.

“Right, right!” The others nodded in agreement.

Disciples like them who had been in the Basking Moon Sect for eleven years were like employees who had only been working for one year, their foundations far from sturdy. Although they had gotten away from the title of “newcomers” and had even been praised for their performance, their path forward was still winding and full of potholes.

In these circumstances, they had to seize every opportunity they could get.

And the last time with the Seven Absolutions Sect had already told everyone what they stood to gain from following Tang Jie.

With one successful collaboration under the belt, getting them to work together a second time went even more smoothly.

Tang Jie then gave a rough summary of what had happened with the fiends.

Of course, he didn’t talk about how Godhead Palace had ambushed him, only that he had found the Thunder Wolves suspicious when hunting them, and when he followed them, he found out that a vast assembly of fiends was plotting to attack the Basking Moon Sect.

Upon hearing that thirty thousand fiends were plotting an attack, Qi Shaoming sneered, “Such a small number of fiends wants to attack my Basking Moon Sect? Have they gone crazy or are they just dumb?”

“It’s neither. Didn’t Tang Jie say? They’re only attacking one hall,” Liu Hongyan said. “I think the key here is that this is a sneak attack.”

Tang Jie immediately gave Liu Hongyan a thumbs-up.

Liu Hongyan had truly grasped the key of the issue.

The fiend attack was bound to fail, but as it was a sneak attack, their initial assault was bound to inflict immense damage on the Basking Moon Sect, particularly as their attack was focused on one location.

One could easily imagine the sequence of events. The fiends would attack, and then the Basking Moon Sect would be caught off guard and suffer huge losses. The Titans of the Basking Moon Sect would then take action, annihilating the fiends, but there would be no recovering the lives already lost.

But what if one looked at it from another perspective?

What if a group of disciples discovered the fiend sneak attack ahead of time and even risked their lives to stop it, buying time for the hall being attacked?

The meaning would be completely different.

Yes, this would result in far more benefits than reporting it to the sect, like how putting out a fire would result in greater merit than preventing a fire.

Rather than notify everyone far beforehand so that they could take precautions, it was better to set up defenses oneself and seize the opportunity. This was the way to maximize the eventual reward.

As Liu Hongyan spoke, everyone finally understood what Tang Jie was thinking, and they were stunned by his audacity and madness.

Peng Yaolong said in a trembling voice, “You’re saying that our small group should fend off tens of thousands of fiends in order to buy time for the hall being attacked?”

Even he was trembling despite his usual boldness.

One versus ten thousand!

What sort of joke was this?

Not even a True Person could accomplish this. One would probably have to be a True Lord.

“To be more precise, we send a warning and then hold out for at least fifteen minutes,” Tang Jie said.

“With the twenty-some of us, we wouldn’t even be a stumbling block for an army of tens of thousands of fiends. They would roll right over us,” Su Xinyue said, pursing her lips. She hadn’t participated in the fight against the Seven Absolutions Sect, but after the battle at the Beast Garden, she had established a connection with Wei Tianchong, so Wei Tianchong had decided to pull her into the team.

“That’s why we need to prepare.” Tang Jie grinned. “Seven days is enough to do a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Laying formations!” Tang Jie replied.

———————————————

From this day forward, Bei Canghan and the other disciples were all very busy.

Just like last time, everyone put in money to buy materials, and they were to be rewarded according to how much each person contributed. Tang Jie had calculated everything beforehand, and it was all very fair, so nobody had any objections when Tang Jie took the lion’s share.

Besides formation materials, Tang Jie also bought some Heavenbane Lightning Pearls.

Using these things to blow up fiends was actually a loss. After all, a pearl cost tens of thousands of coins, and the amount from killing ten fiends probably wouldn’t make up for it.

But as life-saving items, they truly had a unique use. If the enemy knew that one had one, they couldn’t underestimate its threat. Thus, in front of a stronger power, Tang Jie wouldn’t mind using a few pearls.

Other than that, he built up his rapport with the bean king, letting him out to play when he was free.

During these times, Tang Jie gradually came to understand that the bean king used minuscule amounts of energy when not commanding soldiers, and he recovered energy while in the bean garden. If he stayed in the bean garden the whole time and didn’t need to command soldiers, he could theoretically remain in human form. And as he got stronger, he could even come out of the bean garden to play.

As Tang Jie interacted more and more with the bean king, he also came to better understand the little guy.

Though he still didn’t understand one bit of all that jabbering, sometimes, the gestures were enough to get the general idea across. Besides, he also had Yiyi to translate.

Thus, as time passed, the little bean king became like Yiyi and Tutu, Tang Jie’s third companion pet. Although he was a little too proud, and had a rotten temper and rather low intelligence, he was pretty decent overall.

This being the case, Tang Jie decided that it was time to give the little bean a name. Calling him “bean king” all the time was a little unpleasant.

Tang Jie found it hard to settle on a name.

At times, he thought about his little tiger, Bao’er, who was off wandering all by himself.

The little bean could be said to have filled an empty spot in Tang Jie’s affections.

One son had left, and Tang Jie felt like he had gained a new son.

After a long period of thinking, he decided on the little bean’s name: Tang Dou (Sugar Bean

/Jelly Bean).

There was nothing more fitting.

Little Tang Dou didn’t feel anything from this, continuing to arrogantly stalk around the bean garden every day. He was innately hungry for battle, so he occasionally requested from Tang Jie a chance to lead his army into battle.

Tang Jie had no choice but to comfort him and tell him that there would be a battle to fight soon.

Finally, after all the soothing, the day of battle arrived.

It’s time for Tang Jie to earn some extra contribution points! But it remains to be seen what those conspirators who planned this fiend uprising are after.