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Chapter 777: Freedom

Deification was a fundamental refinement of the Primal Infant, and this tier involved countless small thresholds and transformations, all of them complicated and difficult to pass. A cultivator needed to be cautious and careful when navigating them.

But Tang Jie had boldly let out his Primal Infant.

The Primal Infant floated in the air, three inches above Tang Jie\'s head, its eyes closed and palms brought together in meditation. A Violet Palace appeared to protect it.

Whenever there was a gust of Astral Wind, some of it would inevitably penetrate the Violet Palace.

This force wasn\'t great, but it was enough to have a massive influence on the Primal Infant.

The Primal Infant shuddered, its face twisting in pain, and parts of its body sloughed off.

This was the Divine Soul taking damage, and each piece that sloughed off inflicted immense pain on Tang Jie, but he endured.

The Primal Infant opened its mouth and sucked in that Astral energy that had penetrated through the Violet Palace.

Condensing the Astral Winds to attain the supreme True Soul!

Tang Jie was using a body-tempering method to temper his soul! This was a shocking move that would horrify anyone who heard about it. He had come up with this idea when he was ascending to Violet Palace in the Astral Winds. Since the Astral Winds could be used to temper the body, why not the soul?

Since he had the Peaceful Divine Abode Classic, he felt like he could endure a certain level of damage, so he performed some risky experiments.

He managed to prove that the Astral Winds could temper the Infant, making it more dense and powerful.

But the flaws were also extremely obvious: the Divine Soul was easy to damage and hard to heal.

Without the Peaceful Divine Abode Classic, allowing him to erect the Violet Palace and heal the Divine Soul, this method would be suicidal.

And even with this secret art, Tang Jie had been in danger several times.

Some of these dangers were man-made, like someone passing by while he was cultivating such that he almost died from a sneak attack; and some were natural, like a stronger gust of Astral Wind tossing his Primal Infant about like a little boat in a storm, almost capsizing it. His own recklessness also played a role. Thinking that his Primal Infant was strong enough, he once lowered the protective power of the Violet Palace, letting in more Astral Wind, upon which he learned what it meant to be young and fragile.

Whenever the Primal Infant was injured, it needed a long time to recover.

Even when Tang Jie was being careful, each injury would take ten-some days to heal. And when he wasn\'t being careful and ended up more injured than expected, healing took several dozen days to a few months.

Although this level of injuries wouldn\'t affect his cultivation, it definitely lowered his efficiency.

This made tempering the Primal Infant much more difficult than tempering the body. Although it had been thirty years, the number of times he had been able to do this tempering had been very limited.

But as the Web of Fate approached completion, things began to change.

Through the protection of Fate, those surprises became less possible. There was no way they could be rendered impossible, but the chances that they happened would be much smaller. As for those sudden strong gusts of wind, those actually became impossible, the Web of Fate ensuring that the weather remained predictable, even adjustable.

Of course, there was no such solution for his own recklessness.

His Primal Infant began to digest that wisp of Astral Wind while Tutu began to carefully take Tang Jie out of the Astral Wind region so that they wouldn\'t be interrupted by another gust.

This sort of thing had happened before, and Tang Jie\'s Primal Infant had been so injured that it had taken half a year to recover.

Ever since then, Tang Jie would always sit on Tutu when tempering the Primal Infant, and this succeeded in allowing him to avoid many risks. In this way, Tutu was also able to gain back some of its value.

After a while, the Primal Infant finished digesting the Astral energy. Tang Jie sensed its condition and found that the injuries were extremely light and only needed around three days to heal.

He rejoiced, for he knew that this was a benefit of the Web of Fate\'s completion. This was the first time he had encountered such ideal circumstances.

Tang Jie\'s ideal circumstances sought an Astral Wind that was neither too weak nor too strong, a perfect balance of tempering the Primal Infant and minimizing the damage. Based on his thirty years of experience, he judged that three days was the best result. Any shorter meant that the wind wasn\'t strong enough, but any longer would cut into his cultivation time.

In thirty years, Tang Jie could count on one hand the number of times he had run into these ideal circumstances. He hadn\'t expected that he would run into one the moment the Web of Fate was completed. Tang Jie was extremely satisfied by this, and also more confident.

Godhead Palace and the Beast Refining Gate would have to be dealt with and looted, but if his plan failed, he needed a back-up plan, and this Astral Wind cultivation was his back-up plan.

Tempering the soul in the Astral Winds didn\'t increase his cultivation speed, actually slowing it down, but it made him more adapted to the Astral Winds. If he couldn\'t reach Deification within one hundred and fifty years, and the arrangements around Heavenly Balance Mountain weren\'t enough to deal with Jewel, the Astral Winds would become his last shelter, and he could do the same thing he had done to Silver Eyes.

Starting from this day, Tang Jie concerned himself less and less with the Basking Moon Sect\'s affairs, putting more time into his cultivation. Fortunately, after thirty years of cleaning up, Sageheart was a different place, and so even when he was less involved in the political side, the influence from Sageheart continued to expand.

Ling Xiao and the others were also delighted to see that he had finally "returned to the right path".

Two years later, Tang Jie put aside all of Sageheart\'s matters and went to Horizon Ocean Pavilion, where he began to live a relaxed couple\'s life with Xu Miaoran.

Life became much simpler.

Other than cultivating, he spent his days tending to his garden and occasionally going out traveling with his wife. Tang Jie was now at Violet Palace, one of the highest existences of the Rosecloud Domain, so nobody came to cause him trouble. With all these twists and turns out of the way, his days were smooth and simple.

When a cultivator reached their final form, this was an inevitable sight. Right now, Tang Jie still had an interest in traveling with his wife, but at the Cloud Ancestor\'s level, even this interest would be lost, and all that would be left was meditation.

Sometime, Tang Jie wondered what was the point of this sort of cultivation.

The higher one\'s state of existence, the more boring and simple one\'s life became.

At that point, perhaps the only thing that drew one\'s interest was that unknown power on the road yet to be explored.

Perhaps this was why cultivators were always trying to get stronger.

It wasn\'t to be invincible. At Earth Immortal, one was invincible enough. What was the point of going further? And it wasn\'t for eternal life. Earth Immortals had already grown indifferent to life, so what was the point in more lifespan? An eternal life with none of a human\'s joys was no different from being a rock.

They wanted to get stronger for the sake of getting stronger, for that was an all-new vista all on its own.

It was a vista that no one could see, only experienced by those who got that far.

This was the only reason people kept living. It was their goal to plumb the Immortal path, seeking its terminus and fulfilling that ultimate dream of cultivators.

Perhaps, that was the Heavenly Dao.

Upon understanding this, Tang Jie valued his time with Xu Miaoran even more.

In the past, he had lived life too hastily, doing everything he could for more power but never deriving any joy from it. Even though he had roamed the world, he had never once felt free.

Now that he had let everything go and enjoyed this ordinary relaxation, enjoyed the warmth and gentleness of his wife, even while he was in the Rosecloud Domain, he felt truly free.

So this is what real freedom is like, Tang Jie thought to himself.

He laughed at himself for how he had busied himself so, never thinking that real freedom was right at his side.

If Xu Miaoran hadn\'t been so loyal, he might have missed out on it entirely.

Alas, the pressure from the Jewel Immortal Sovereign was still there, and so even when Tang Jie understood this, he couldn\'t truly put everything aside. He could only make as much time for Xu Miaoran as possible, though he still spent much of his time cultivating.

Thankfully, Xu Miaoran knew Tang Jie\'s situation and didn\'t pester him, even often explaining the properties of Horizon Ocean Pavilion\'s mantras to him.

"The Jewel Immortal Sovereign cultivates the Immortal Three Purities Mantra, one of the three greatest mantras of my Horizon Ocean Pavilion. It is a profound and mysterious art that I was fortunate enough to read once, but alas, the rules of the sect prevent me from telling you of what I learned from it," Xu Miaoran regretfully said.

The major sects had thought of all kinds of methods to prevent their secrets from leaking to outsiders. They could be simple oaths, to Heart Demon Oaths, to even Heavenly Dao Oaths. To make sure their disciples remained silent, sects would sometimes even plant seals in the bodies of their disciples, and the moment they sensed that a disciple was divulging secrets, the seals would attack. Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran were not exempt from this rule. It was why Tang Jie could teach Heart Consonance to Yiyi and Xi Canhen, but not Xu Miaoran.

For the same reason, Xu Miaoran couldn\'t tell Tang Jie her sect\'s secret arts.

Moreover, when she made up her mind to marry Tang Jie, Horizon Ocean Pavilion had agreed on the condition that she accepted the implanting of a secret seal within her body that would prevent her from leaking any of Horizon Ocean Pavilion\'s secret arts to anyone from the Basking Moon Sect.

The cost of this seal was extremely high, and Horizon Ocean Pavilion was only willing to do it because it was Xu Miaoran. Xu Miaoran had agreed to this condition, or else Horizon Ocean Pavilion would have never allowed this marriage so easily. A legacy of a thousand years was at stake, so there could be no exceptions, not even for a True Lord\'s daughter.

But Tang Jie didn\'t have any sort of seal. The Basking Moon Sect trusted that he understood restraint. Still, Ling Xiao would occasionally have serious conversations with him on the subject.

Tang Jie simply smiled. "I don\'t need you to leak secrets to me for my battle with Jewel. It\'s going to be a fair and open battle."

Xu Miaoran\'s eyes twinkled.

She knew that in the past, Tang Jie would have said something like, "I just need to examine her past battles to analyze the secrets of Jewel\'s arts. Miaoran, I need you to gather Jewel\'s battle records for me."

But now, Tang Jie no longer needed to plot and calculate.

Wasn\'t diligently cultivating precisely so that one could overwhelm one\'s opponent in an honest fashion rather than always relying on scheming?

The current Tang Jie no longer needed this style of the past.