The real reason the fiends had been let go had been revealed.

The soul of Lin Xin, an ordinary human, simply couldn’t control as powerful a body as the Azure Dragon, just like how a person with congenital brain stem atrophy would find it extremely difficult to even move a little.

Lin Xin was a smart girl, so when she discovered this problem, she didn’t immediately call it out, instead pretending that everything was fine. If she had said the truth, then rather than veneration, she would have been welcomed by a dragon hunt.

The only person who understood this point without needing to have it pointed out was the old dragon, which was why Lin Xin had interrupted him and handed him over to Tang Jie.

That roar that had interrupted the old dragon and the request to catch the old dragon despite Tang Jie’s heavy injuries had made Tang Jie realize that something was wrong. And when Lin Xin asked him how the fiends should be handled, Tang Jie was certain that Lin Xin had encountered a problem.

Given his mind, he needed only a little thought to realize that this was probably due to the strength of Lin Xin’s soul, so together with Lin Xin, he put on a play and let the fiends go.

There was no telling what would happen if they pushed the fiends too far.

“Then… then you still… had Aurora commit suicide?” Ximen Changfeng stammered, pointing a finger at Tang Jie.

This guy was so bold! Wasn’t he afraid that Aurora would fight for his life?

Tang Jie was unperturbed. “If you don’t make any demands at all, you will fill the other party’s mind with suspicion. Aurora was the main culprit behind the effort to prevent Lin Xin’s rebirth, so while I could let the others go, I couldn’t let him go. And his daughter was here, so if he didn’t want to see his own flesh and blood die, committing suicide was the best choice. Of course, the Aurora Fiend Emperor was also the leader of the Five Fiend Emperors, and his body and a thousand years of cultivation were worth the risk.”

“I feel like the last reason was the most important one,” Shentu Yuan muttered.

The four of them were speechless at the fact that Tang Jie had tricked Aurora into killing himself. For a mighty Divine Division great fiend, the leader of the Five Emperors, to die this way was truly aggravating. Fortunately, he was already dead, or else his rage might have brought him back to life.

As for why Tang Jie had taken the Ironblood Saber, everyone understood.

Rather than using it to temper his will, Tang Jie was taking it to weaken Iron Blood in case he realized what was going on and came back to cause trouble.

Without the Ironblood Saber, even if Iron Blood and the Millepluma Guard came back, Tang Jie was confident he could deal with them. He had told this to Shentu and the others in the hopes that they could stay here and help him.

“Of course, as a sign of my gratitude, all of this will be yours,” Tang Jie said, pointing at the ground littered with fiend corpses.

“Haha, as expected of a brother, you really are a loyal one!” The four of them were delighted.

These fiend corpses were valuable resources, with many of them being great fiends in the middle or late phase of Transformation. The three hundred Millepluma Guards were enough to make countless people lose their minds.

Since Tang Jie was asking for their help, he naturally wouldn’t treat them poorly.

While they were happily splitting the spoils, Ye Xiao asked, “Right, when will the Sacred Azure Dragon be able to truly move freely?”

Although he knew that Lin Xin couldn’t move, Ye Xiao still chose to speak respectfully, just in case.

A True Immortal was a True Immortal. Even if she couldn’t move, a single breath could take their lives. This was not an existence that could be ignored.

“That depends on how fast her soul improves,” Tang Jie replied.

The Sacred Beast lineages were extremely powerful, and now that Lin Xin’s soul was in the Azure Dragon’s body, it would be nurtured by this bloodline power. Slowly, she would grow stronger, and she would eventually adapt and fully merge with the body.

But before then, she would have to hibernate here for some time.

“But while Lin Xin’s soul is that of an ordinary person, the old dragon’s soul spent a long time slumbering in her body. The two of them influenced each other, and Lin Xin’s soul was probably long ago stained with the old dragon’s aura. This is why she was able to so smoothly occupy the dragon’s corpse. Any other person, even a cultivator, might not have been able to do it. Thus, her progress shouldn’t be too slow.”

“That’s great.” Everyone sighed in relief.

So long as Lin Xin could control a little of the power in the Azure Dragon’s holy body, nobody in the Verdant Cloud Domain could cause her trouble.

As everyone sighed in relief, Tang Jie suddenly grimaced, dropping to his knees and howling in pain.

“Tang Jie, what’s wrong!?” The four of them jumped in fright and immediately moved to help Tang Jie up. Even the distant Lin Xin opened her eyes to look at Tang Jie.

Grasping his head, Tang Jie shouted, “I’m fine! It’s my avatar that’s in trouble!”

“Big Brother!” Yiyi’s cry came from the distance, and she flew over while hugging the avatar.

In Yiyi’s embrace, Tang Jie’s avatar was lying quietly with its eyes shut, as if it was sleeping.

Only Tang Jie knew that his avatar’s life force was growing weaker and weaker because it had consumed too much of its Divine Soul.

This was an inevitable side effect of using the Peaceful Divine Abode Classic. The only thing that Tang Jie didn’t understand was that Immortal Ji Yao had said that the soul would recover through rest, so why was Tang Jie’s Divine Soul getting weaker?

Could it be…

A thought occurred to Tang Jie.

“Hahahaha!” Immortal Ji Yao’s voice rang out. “What does it feel like to lose your soul? Don’t you feel like your entire body is drifting away?”

Tang Jie grunted. “Immortal Ji Yao, so it really was your doing! But how did you manage to do it? I tested your Peaceful Divine Abode Classic, and there should have been no problems with it. Moreover, it’s impossible for you to create such a perfect fake art in such little time.”

Immortal Ji Yao laughed. “Hahaha! The art isn’t fake, but it’s divided into two parts. The upper part is the Peaceful Abode Classic, refining the Divine Soul into a Violet Palace, but the lower part is the Divine Restoration Classic, for restoring the Divine Soul. I only transmitted you the first part, not the second. And simple rest alone won’t heal your soul. So? Tang Jie, in the end, you still fell into my trap. Now that your soul is drying up, it’s beginning to degenerate. If you don’t have the Divine Restoration Classic, your death is inevitable! But if you’re willing to release me, let alone the Divine Restoration Classic, I can also transmit other Immortal arts to you!”

Tang Jie coldly laughed. “No wonder you were so confident and so anxious to help, and in the end, I failed to notice this trick. But I haven’t experienced any sort of drifting feeling. Mm, true, you’re stuck on the other side of the passage and can only rely on your hearing, even your Demonic Will being suppressed, so there’s a lot you still don’t know… You don’t know I have two bodies, right?”

“What?” Immortal Ji Yao was dumbfounded.

She truly did not know that Tang Jie had one soul in two bodies.

While others could see it, having an avatar wasn’t something too rare. The only thing special was that Tang Jie had an avatar very early on and had cultivated it to an extremely high level. Thus, nobody had ever called it out.

For this reason, Immortal Ji Yao had been unaware of his having one soul in two bodies and was stupefied by this news.

Tang Jie chuckled. “As expected, you didn’t know. But now that you know that I have one soul in two bodies, you should have guessed that I’ve split my soul before, which means I have a way of restoring my soul.”

“Hmph, your method might not work,” Immortal Ji Yao snorted.

“Well, I have to at least try it first. Moreover, even if it dies, it’s only an avatar. I would still keep my life, so don’t even think about using my life to threaten me into releasing you.”

Immortal Ji Yao was so angry that she couldn’t speak.

But Shentu Yuan and the others could see that Tang Jie didn’t seem happy at all, and he didn’t seem to be making any attempts to save the avatar.

When making the avatar, he had used Soulnurture Grass, a Soul Guardian Pill, and Hanging Fate Grass, and the method he had used was the Three Corpses Conversion Art. ᴡ ᴏᴠʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛʀs ᴀʀ ᴘᴜʙʟsʜᴅ ᴏ ovl_Fir.et

But he had none of these herbs or pills now, and the Three Corpses Conversion Art’s method of soul restoration was of a very low grade and would have an extremely limited effect on a Soul Transformation cultivator. He was powerless to deal with the damage incurred from creating a Violet Palace.

Thus, this avatar, without the Divine Restoration Classic, was bound to die.

Although it was only an avatar, it had been with him for many years and had been crucial to many things, and it had even been cultivated to the Soul Transformation Tier. He couldn’t help but be griefstricken at its imminent death.

Everyone sighed in sorrow.

Yiyi dumbly hugged the avatar’s “corpse”.

Although she knew that Tang Jie was still alive and wouldn’t die from this, when she saw the avatar, she felt another big brother was leaving her, or like someone had suddenly had their lifespan cut in half. Tears began to well up in her eyes.

In the end, Tang Jie said nothing, picking up the avatar and walking to the side.

Everyone chose to leave him alone, knowing that he was in a bad mood.

Tang Jie went to a clearing and punched a large hole in the ground, which he placed the avatar in.

He seated himself next to the hole and looked at the body, feeling that last sliver of its soul dissipate, its life force soon to follow.

Yiyi sat down next to him and sobbed, “Big Brother.”

Tang Jie hugged Yiyi and smiled. “Don’t be sad. Life is all about experiencing various things, and isn’t experiencing one’s own death also rather fine? It’s not an experience that many people get to have. I might even comprehend the Dao of Reincarnation from it.”

Yiyi was so tickled by the notion that she giggled, but tears were still streaking down her cheeks.

Thus, they sat together, chatting as they sprinkled handfuls of soil over the avatar, scenes of all they had experienced coming to mind, particularly those he had experienced as the avatar.

The struggles in the Langya Blessed Land, the battles with the Stone Gate Sect and Wang Juemie, those difficult trials in the Beast Garden, and also their times in Nadir Hill, the Blood River Domain, and the Myriad Court fragment—the avatar had been there for all of them.

Without the avatar, Tang Jie might still have been in the Martial Lord’s hidden realm with no chance to leave.

Many of the treasures Tang Jie possessed were thanks to the avatar.

Thinking this, Tang Jie reached into his bag and took out several treasures, throwing them onto the avatar. “It’s not like I need them anymore. In ancient times, emperors were buried with their treasures, so we should also put some inside.”

“Mm, alright.” Yiyi reached into the Mustard Seed Bag and began to throw any art relics she found useless into the hole, commenting, “This one is useless, we don’t use this one…”

These poor art relics would have been widely sought in the outside world, but Yiyi considered them all useless and used them as burial goods.

In her enthusiasm, she grabbed something and said, “This one is also useless.”

She threw it into the hole.

Tang Jie saw that it was the Dream Pearl Lady painting.

He had gotten this long ago from Mei Huaping. Although he sensed that it held secrets, he had never been able to comprehend them. When Yiyi threw it in, there was a moment he wanted to take it back, but then he decided to let it go.

The painting drifted onto the avatar like a burial shroud.

As it covered the avatar, it began to emit a gorgeous light.