Aspiring to the Immortal Path

Chapter 434: The Dao Will of Time (2)

I stand on the center of the timeline, facing the choices of the past and the future.

Behind me is the eternal past, a sturdy wall that is difficult to overcome.

In front of me is the blurry future, ethereal and unstable.

I firmly look forward. Even if I cannot see through it and cannot advance into it, I still stubbornly stretch out my hand.

Where I stretch my hand out to is the future…

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The six savage refined beasts lunged at Tang Jie—the eagle coming from the sky, the snake thrusting out its tongue, the tiger pouncing, the shark biting. The six refined beasts came from the sky, the surface, and from under the water, instantly cutting off all of Tang Jie’s possible paths of retreat.

At the same time, the two Beast Refining Gate disciples applied barriers to themselves, even activating their protective jade tokens and armor, using multiple layers of defense.

The two of them were extremely wary of Tang Jie, as if they were facing a peak Mortal Shedding expert rather than one at Nine Revolutions.

Tang Jie simply smiled and backed away, dodging the attacks of the six beasts, then thrust out his right palm.

Dragonlike Hand!

“Be careful!” The two Beast Refining Gate disciples called out to each other and retreated at the same time.

But this Dragonlike Hand had no effect—not even a gust of wind. The six beasts pushed through without encountering any resistance. The golden eagle, which was the fastest of them, struck Tang Jie in the chest with its claw, and then the tiger’s pounce sent Tang Jie flying.

As the two disciples were stunned by this sight, Tang Jie cast a spell.

This time, he used the Heavenly Cloud Blades.

As the hand signs were formed, an astonishing energy formed around him.

The two Beast Refining Gate disciples shrank back like turtles, preparing to evade.

But after Tang Jie had finished casting the spell, there was nothing.

Meanwhile, the snake and crane attacked, and even with Tang Jie’s Formless Golden Body, they still made him throw up some blood.

He simply smiled, pulled out the Heartbreak Saber, and swung.

Matchless Slash!

But as before, there was no reaction from the blade.

The two Beast Refining Gate disciples stared at each other in surprise. They began to wonder if this guy had gone crazy, only demonstrating the form of his attacks.

They had been too afraid of Tang Jie before to attack with all their strength, but after seeing Tang Jie’s casts repeatedly fail, they finally worked up the courage, each of them thrusting out a palm.

Winds surged up while flames and lightning flashed. Together with the six beasts, the Beast Refining Gate disciples fully displayed their might.

Tang Jie began to cast a fourth spell.

The Heavenly King Mara Incantation.

The incantation took a particularly long time, and Tang Jie endured the attacks of the two humans and six beasts to finally cast it. But just like before, there was nothing.

The two Beast Refining Gate disciples were utterly speechless.

They now felt like Tang Jie was teasing them and grew furious, their attacks increasingly vicious. But they knew that Tang Jie was a schemer, so even when they attacked, they prepared to defend or dodge, not giving Tang Jie any opportunity to exploit.

Tang Jie continued to concern himself with his own business, casting the Divine Court Thousandshift, the Star Finger, and the Jade Shattering Finger. He basically cast every spell art he knew.

During this time, he was attacked again and again and threw up blood over and over from his serious injuries.

“Tang Jie, what are you up to?” a Beast Refining Gate disciple shouted in confusion.

Tang Jie simply smiled.

He swung his blade at the air and then raised his head to look at the two.

There was a flash of lightning in his eyes.

He said, “The time is now!”

What?

The two of them were stunned.

Suddenly, the skies rumbled with thunder.

An enormous phantom like a golden Buddha thrust out a giant palm at the people below.

The Heavenly King Mara Incantation!

At the same time, in the clouds above that Buddha phantom, twenty Heavenly Cloud Blades dropped from the sky at the two Beast Refining Gate disciples.

From the west came an energy palm that roared like a dragon.

Dragonlike Hand!

From the north came a howling wave of saber energy.

Matchless Slash!

From the east came nine flying stars, as swift as lightning.

The Star Finger!

From the south were the lights of numerous weapons, all of them shining off each other.

Divine Court Thousandshift!

The attacks came from four different directions at the same time and converged at a single point.

And at the very center, a finger made of white jade thrust out.

The Jade Shattering Finger!

They were accompanied by various energy bolts and waves of saber energy.

Energy Needle, Windcleaver!

In the space of one second, Tang Jie attacked this area from seven or eight different directions.

The ferocity of the assault, the power of the spell arts, and the level of damage were far beyond what could be imagined.

These two Beast Refining Gate disciples were strong enough that they could have easily defended against these attacks if they had come individually. If their barriers fell, they could even take on an attack while they applied a new barrier.

But when all of these attacks were concentrated into a single point, normal methods no longer worked.

The surging palm blasts, saber waves, and energy bolts landed on those two people and six beasts and unleashed a dazzling explosion of light and flames.

Under this savage assault, barriers dissipated into white light, protective jade tokens shattered, and armor was shredded like paper. All defensive methods melted like ice, and the two Beast Refining Gate disciples were exposed to this flood of spell arts and instantly annihilated…

Not even when they died did they understand what had happened.

Whew! Tang Jie let out a long breath and landed on a tree. He began to adjust his energy flow and recover from his wounds.

“This… What in the world happened?” The rabbit fiend was utterly baffled by what it had just seen.

“You still don’t understand?” Tang Jie chuckled. “This is my Dao Will of Time.”

“You’re saying…” The rabbit fiend took a few moments to finally understand, shouting, “You sent all your attacks to a certain moment of time in the future and had them all erupt at the same time?”

“Correct!” Tang Jie replied.

Delayed eruption was the Dao Will of Time that he had comprehended. Tang Jie called it “Time Set”.

Comprehending the Dao of Time had never been easy.

Standing on that timeline only meant that he had the right to comprehend, not that he could succeed.

In truth, the Dao of Time was far more difficult to comprehend than the previous three Daos that Tang Jie had comprehended. For example, the Dao of Karma took three days to comprehend, but there had been no time limit. But standing on the timeline drained one’s life force, meaning that Tang Jie couldn’t just grind away at the problem. Thus, the difficulty doubled.

In these circumstances, he had despaired, believing that he would have to let this opportunity go.

But at that final moment, unwilling to leave, he had stretched out his hand, and this had allowed him to touch the other side of Time.

Tang Jie had reached out toward that blurry, dark, and unfathomable line of the future…

From that moment, he possessed the ability to send his attacks to the future, but this had also thrown a wrench into his plans. In reality, he had not managed to comprehend the Dao Will on that treasure. He had only borrowed that Dao Will to comprehend his own Dao Will.

And this ability was only at its most basic level.

He could only send out his attacks 30 seconds into the future, which limited his attack window to thirty seconds. Moreover, they were also released at a fixed position.

For example, if Tang Jie attacked Point A, after 30 seconds, wherever Tang Jie was, the attack would still be aimed at Point A. If the target had moved somewhere else in the meantime, the attack would miss.

For this reason, Tang Jie had used Time Set on wide-area attacks like the Dragonlike Hand, the Heavenly King Mara Incantation, the Matchless Slash, and the Divine Court Thousandshift. As for the Jade Shattering Finger, alas, this spell art had actually missed, and only six of the Heavenly Cloud Blades had hit something.

For the same reason, when Tang Jie used Time Set attacks, he couldn’t wander too far from the area. Thus, he had to endure the attacks of his enemies and run around in circles rather than trying to evade.

Fortunately, he was facing the Beast Refining Gate’s people, and the Beast Refining Gate had always relied on numbers for victory, with their explosive abilities always ranking at the very bottom of the major sects. This was why Tang Jie was easily able to drag things out for 30 seconds.

If it had been someone from the Thousand Passions Sect, Tang Jie could only have cast two or three spell arts. Any more would be suicidal.

Worth noting was that each Time Set had a fixed time that could not be changed, and there could not be multiple time points.

In other words, Tang Jie couldn’t cast ten spell arts and have some of them explode after ten seconds and the rest explode at twelve seconds.

For the same reason, once he cast a spell, he couldn’t change the time the spell erupted, nor could he take it back. He had to wait for everything to pass before he could set a new time for his spell arts to erupt.

Of course, this all had to do with his level of comprehension. As he furthered his understanding of this Dao Will of Time, his ability to manipulate it would gradually improve.

In short, this was a time bomb ability, a new trump card that Tang Jie could add to his arsenal after showing his hand at the battle over the sea.

And it was also the first Dao Will Tang Jie had comprehended that directly improved his combat power. Wisdom, Space, and Karma all did not provide much help in battle.

Wisdom primarily improved his comprehension, and while Insight could let him discover the weak points of his opponent, it took too much time, and finding a weakness didn’t mean that he could exploit it. Space had been for him to create the domain-breaking teleportation formation, so it was mostly focused on spatial formations. As for Karma, it was focused on specific events and was useless in battle.

Only after comprehending the Time Set Dao Will did Tang Jie truly have a chance to greatly improve his strength.

The rabbit fiend was stunned when it understood what Tang Jie’s Dao Will could do.

The rabbit fiend naturally understood the difference between concentrating spell arts and sending them out separately, and Tang Jie had just proved the power of this method. When the rabbit fiend thought about what would happen when this kid reached a higher level, unleashing numerous powerful spell arts all at once, it shivered and counted itself lucky that this was the master it was serving.

As it was lost in thought, someone flew out from the distance.

Wearing a pink gown, who else could it be but Shen Qingdan?

Well, well, well, look who it is.