Chapter 243: The Final Struggle
It was the Eight Desolations Illusion Formation that had turned the Heaventopple Stamp into the Nine Palace Heart Ring and the seal. They had been charging in the wrong direction from the very start. Rather than the Nine Palace Heart Ring, they had been running toward the Nine Palace Life Gate!
The Eight Desolations Illusion Formation had confused everyone’s sense of direction and muddled their senses.
It was no wonder she hadn’t been able to see through any illusion, because all of the illusions had been the real thing.
This was the special trait of the Nine Palace Illusion Formation, and Tang Jie had learned from it and used it.
“Nine truths hide one lie… nine truths hide one lie…” Su Xinyue muttered in a shaky voice.
A true illusion formation mixed truth in fiction and fiction in truth, making both of them difficult to distinguish.
This bastard had really managed to pull it off. Rather than using the illusion formation to imprison everyone, he had used it to fool them.
Shifting one’s position wasn’t something that could be done in an instant. It required a long period of slowly altering one’s vision before finally striking at the very last moment. It was like a big magic show. When everyone was focused on the prop on the stage, they didn’t notice that the viewing platform beneath their feet was slowly turning…
If Su Xinyue had broken out of the formation earlier, this trickery would not have succeeded.
If everyone had let Su Xinyue deal with the seal, this trickery also would not have succeeded.
And if they had been just a little more rational and taken some time to carefully observe their surroundings, this trickery also would not have succeeded.
But alas, they had done none of this.
With victory right before their eyes, everyone had gone crazy and lost their sense of judgment.
This truly wasn’t some mental illusion formation, but Tang Jie had used everyone’s desire to go through alone to plant the seeds of his conspiracy and fool all of them.
Though it was a physical illusion, it had reached the level of a mental illusion!
She finally understood Tang Jie’s scheme, and her entire body shivered. She shouted with all her might at Peng Yaolong, “Stop hitting it!”
At this moment, a fist howled out, striking Su Xinyue in the back, and she screamed as she was blasted away.
Turning her head, she saw Tang Jie’s callous face growing larger in her vision, soon encompassing her entire world…
As the students attacked, the seal finally began to falter.
With a boom, that invisible screen shattered.
That illusion that had obscured their vision disappeared, replaced by a giant golden stone that flew into the air.
No one had time to look at what it actually was. As that screen disappeared, everyone charged into the Heart Ring. As for who was first, that was a problem that Nan Baicheng could labor over.
Charging into the Heart Ring, Peng Yaolong excitedly cried out, “Success!”
His eyes went slack. In front of him was an empty island, Hurricane Peak in the distance. He roared, “What’s going on? Where am I?”
“Where am I?”
“Where am I?”
“Where am I?”
One roar after another resounded from various corners of Wind Devil Island.
The illusion on the Devil Crushing Path was finally shattered.
Those students who had yet to enter saw the world spin. Only now did they see that what they had been charging at wasn’t any Nine Palace Heart Ring, but the Heaventopple Stamp.
Under their concentrated assault, the golden boulder had finally been forced to transform. It shrank as it tumbled through the air, ultimately becoming a little stamp that landed in the hand of a person in the back: Tang Jie.
“What’s going on here?” everyone blurted out.
“It’s an illusion formation!” In the distance, Su Xinyue shouted with all the strength she had, “We all took the bait! Tang Jie was playing dead!”
Playing dead!
Playing dead again!
Tang Jie had already played this trick once in the Valley of No Return, and he had tried it again, yet everyone had still taken the bait.
With a flip of his wrist, the golden stone was thrown into his bag. Tang Jie smiled and said, “Jumping into the same hole twice, all of you should take a good, hard look at yourselves. Regardless, everyone, thank you for helping me get this treasure and clearing up the Life Gate! To thank you, I’ll send all of you back into the Nine Palace Illusion Formation!”
He took out an item: the Cosmic Breeze Pearl.
After absorbing all the spiritual energy in the pearl, he took out a talisman.
The Yellow Springs Talisman!
The Dao of the Yellow Springs made all ghosts swear fealty.
A sinister wind stirred, and a dark fog engulfed the area.
At the same time, Tang Jie charged at a person in the fog!
A battle commenced on the Devil Crushing Path.
This was a battle of one versus several dozen, but the one person had the overwhelming advantage.
Using the black fog as cover, Tang Jie went to and fro as if he had no opposition, and the corpses of the numerous fiend beasts that had been slain earlier became ghostly attacks. As sinister winds howled about the Devil Crushing Path, ghostly wails resounded.
Not only did this ghostly fog cover his tracks and summon the dead, it also terrified people and wore away at their fighting spirit.
People began to cry out in fear and alarm.
“What is this?”
“Damn Tang Jie!”
“Let me out!”
In the end, these students still lacked actual combat experience. Their panicked cries made them the best targets in the darkness and drew attacks on their location.
Tang Jie was like a ghost as he traveled through the darkness, following the voices like a tiger hunting its prey.
“Come out! Tang Jie, get out here right now!” Long Dao bellowed.
He had been a step too slow, so he had not charged back into the illusion formation with Peng Yaolong, but his fate wasn’t much better. This was because what awaited him was being beaten down by Tang Jie before being thrown back into the formation.
As he shouted, a dark figure rushed up to Long Dao.
Long Dao instinctively loosed an arrow, and a Sirius Arrow howled at that silhouette, obliterating it. But when he looked closer, he saw that it was the corpse of a fiend beast.
Long Dao knew that this wasn’t good and tried to retreat, but at this moment, he heard a cold voice behind him: “You were looking for me?”
“Aaaah!” Long Dao shouted as he chopped with his bow.
This bow was a treasure given to him by his father. It was a long-range spell weapon that could also be used in close combat.
But as he angrily chopped, a hand lifted up his wrist, which meant that he couldn’t actually bring the bow down. Long Dao thrust out an arrow with his left hand, but Tang Jie swung his head to the side, letting the arrow brush past him, and he used the momentum to ram his head into Long Dao’s face.
It was a brutal and heavy blow that sent Long Dao flying. Tang Jie didn’t pursue, instead grabbing a fiend beast corpse and throwing it at him. Long Dao’s body flashed as some spell art obliterated the corpse.
Neutralizing a spell art from his opponent, Tang Jie lunged like a tiger, swinging a punch at Long Dao. Long Dao shouted and threw a punch in return, but Tang Jie stepped to the side, dodging the punch while his own struck Long Dao in the belly. Long Dao bent over in pain, and then a knee blasted him into the air.
Before he could rise, Tang Jie grabbed him by the shoulder and pressed him back down, followed by an elbow.
He began to rain down punches, turning Long Dao into a battered and bloodied mess.
“This is in return for that arrow of yours!” Tang Jie sinisterly said. When it came to close combat, Long Dao was much worse than he was.
“Raaa!” Long Dao lunged at him, unwilling to give up, but Tang Jie grabbed his fist and threw him outward. This time, he threw Long Dao through the Life Gate and back into the formation.
Su Xinyue was the only person not caught in the ghostly fog. Tang Jie had suppressed her in the early stage of the battle, and Yiyi was currently using the flower formation to hold her while the little tiger was restraining the fiend wolf.
This was also why she was the only spectator to this battle.
She watched as Tang Jie moved through the fog, treating the other students as if they weren’t even there. Although he was just one person, he was like a massive wall that spanned the path, and her heart shivered at the sight.
She had never before imagined that someone could be this strong.
She had once believed that Tang Jie trying to hold the path was like a mantis trying to stop a carriage, that he had only been able to last this long because the students weren’t united and were plotting against each other. It was only now that she realized how absurdly wrong she had been.
The screams continued, but their number diminished until there were none at all.
The black fog scattered, and Su Xinyue saw Tang Jie standing there.
All alone.
He had a few more bruises and wounds, inflicted by the students, and his breathing was rather ragged. It was clear that this battle had been tough on him.
But Su Xinyue did not underestimate him. No one could say how much energy Tang Jie was hiding behind his exhausted exterior. At least at this moment, Su Xinyue didn’t want to try.
Looking at Su Xinyue, Tang Jie chuckled. “You’re pretty good, seeing through my illusion formation.”
“But I was ultimately too late,” Su Xinyue snorted. “Tang Jie, you’re quite ruthless. To fool us all with an illusion formation, I admit defeat.”
He had been able to win this battle not because of the Yellow Springs Talisman, but because of the Eight Desolations Illusion Formation.
It was this illusion formation that had deceived all the powerful players, including Ye Tianshang, Peng Yaolong, and Meng Shixue, into going back into the formation, giving Tang Jie a chance to clean up the rest.
“It was because I had no other option,” Tang Jie replied. “If I had any other choice, I wouldn’t have done this.”
Su Xinyue understood what he meant. “This is your last trick.”
This really had been Tang Jie’s last trick.
The spirit-draining formation had been broken, so there was no more binding people. The illusion formation had been broken, so there was no more deception. Even the flower formation that Yiyi had gone to such great lengths to make had been uprooted, and all the fiends summoned by the Yellow Springs Talisman had been used up.
He had used all of his cards.
But the students would keep showing up, even those he had thrown back into the formation.
There was no way he would be able to last long with his current strength reserves.
“But even so, you’ll still keep holding on, right?” Su Xinyue asked.
Tang Jie looked at his fist and replied, “Of course. So long as I still have strength, I’ll do what is my duty.”
“But you might not last until your young master arrives.”
“Maybe. But a mortal must do all he can and leave the rest up to heaven. All I seek is that when I look back on my actions, I feel no shame or regret.” Tang Jie remained calm and relaxed as he spoke, as if he didn’t care that all his efforts would be for naught if Wei Tianchong really couldn’t make it.
Su Xinyue was about to try persuading him some more when a figure appeared on the Devil Crushing Path, their cry shattering the stillness.
“I’m finally out! Tang Jie, Tang Jie, am I too late?”
It was Wei Tianchong.
He was finally here!
Wei Tianchong was covered in blood and grime, in absolute shambles.
In the past, he might have already been sitting on the ground and moaning, but his only concern at the moment was that he wasn’t too late.
Tang Jie smiled at Wei Tianchong’s bloodied but energetic person. “No… you came at just the right time. Congratulations, Young Master, you did it!”
“I did it…” Wei Tianchong looked at Tang Jie in a daze. “I’m going to become a True Inheritor… I’m going to become a True Inheritor! Haha!”
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