Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
One of the Blood River Lord's avatars was still roaming about the sea of flames.
Three days of fruitless search had left him very annoyed.
His immense strength allowed him to endure even without spirit-restoring pills, but the trickling away of energy over the last three days had forced him into a dilemma.
The Blood River Lord began to consider whether he should temporarily withdraw from Holy Fire Valley and rest up before coming back in.
But that was just another form of concession, which the Blood River Lord could not accept.
Moreover, the Blood River Lord was certain that the more Tang Jie acted like this, the more he gave away that his strength was limited and that he was unwilling to fight him directly. Otherwise, why would he resort to these methods to weaken him? It was only in this sort of circumstance that Tang Jie was willing to fight with him. If he chose to retreat from the valley, Tang Jie would continue to evade battle. There was nothing wrong with him avoiding battle, but if he were to die in Holy Fire Valley, all of his essence blood would be refined, which would mean that the Blood River Lord would suffer a major loss.
But the main reason he stayed in the valley was this: even at his current level of strength, Tang Jie couldn't possibly be a match for him.
It was this confidence that made the Blood River Lord stay and continue to search for Tang Jie.
As he was searching, he suddenly sensed something.
An intense sense of unease welled up in his heart.
The moment this feeling appeared, he heard a rush of wind behind him.
The Blood River Lord paled and immediately thrust out a palm behind him.
But how could an attack made in haste compare to the full-strength attack of another? A roaring white tiger phantom pushed the Blood River Lord back.
"The audacity!" the Blood River Lord shouted.
He turned, and, sure enough, the one who had ambushed him was that tiger fiend.
The Blood River Lord was furious. "A puny tiger fiend dares to be so arrogant as to attack me? Don't you know who I am!?"
"Of course," the tiger fiend coldly replied. "While the Lord of the Blood River is powerful, it's not enough for the entire world to be afraid, and besides, this is just a little avatar, not anything worth fearing."
"Bastard!" The Blood River Lord's blood rushed to the top of his head, and a sea of blood surged out from his body.
Although he was in the sea of fire, where his sea of blood was greatly suppressed and copious amounts of blood turned to steam, the immense pressure from the sea still weighed on the tiger fiend.
The tiger fiend jumped back, coldly glaring at the Blood River Lord with ridicule and contempt in his eyes before vanishing into the sea of flames.
Only when he was extremely far away did the tiger fiend turn back into Tang Jie.
With the Celestial Eye, Tang Jie had been able to find an avatar of the Blood River Lord before the tiger fiend's group. Employing the same tactic, he ambushed the Blood River Lord, and since both parties had now been attacked, they would probably start fighting as soon as they ran into each other.
It wasn't that they were dumb. It was just that none of them knew about Tang Jie's transformation ability.
Both the Blood River Lord and the eagle fiend had the ability to see through illusions, and ordinary disguise arts couldn't fool them. But it was precisely because they could see through illusions that they had fallen for it. If the Blood River Lord's real body had been here, he probably wouldn't have been fooled, but this was a Heart Demon avatar, which made seeing through the illusion almost impossible.
Moreover, Tang Jie had even used the white tiger phantom.
Now that he thought about it, it was rather lucky that the tiger fiend also happened to be a white tiger.
Tang Jie couldn't manifest any black tiger phantom, but he didn't have a problem with a white tiger phantom. After all, he had the White Tiger's essence blood within him and knew the Blood Refining Spirit spell. The two of them put together could easily create a white tiger phantom.
And the white tiger phantom made it so that the Blood River Lord had no doubts that it was the tiger fiend who had attacked him.
The two parties soon met in the sea of fire. Their eyes filled with bloodlust, and they started fighting without a word.
From a distance, one could see waves of blood surge and fiend energy run rampant.
Both sides consisted of powerful experts, and their moves threw Holy Fire Valley into turmoil.
In terms of strength, the Blood River Lord was naturally the strongest, but he was one person versus five fiends, and he was in unfavorable terrain, so he was quickly on the back foot.
But as his three other avatars arrived, the tables quickly turned.
Four Blood River avatars attacking in unison was a powerful force, and in a flash, the blood sea managed to suppress the flames.
The rat fiend had been the weakest, and he was the first to suffer. First, his rat clones were washed away by the corrosive blood, and then one of the Blood River avatars grabbed the rat fiend with a blood hand and threw him into the sea of blood. As the waves washed over him, his body was corroded away, and his true form was revealed: a fiend rat the size of a millstone. A few moments later, his entire body was dissolved into the blood.
Tang Jie had stolen his Flesh Millstone from the Blood River Lord. If Tang Jie knew it, the Blood River Lord naturally knew how to do it too.
Absorbing the rat fiend's essence blood allowed the Blood River Lord to recover some of his lost essence blood. Laughing, he waved his hand, targeting the boar fiend this time. The boar fiend was rich in blood energy, so absorbing him would stand to benefit the Blood River Lord even more greatly.
The remaining four fiends finally realized what they were dealing with, and they felt fear and shock.
The tiger fiend shouted, "Sir Hemos, we had no grudge with you, but you attacked us first…"
"Shut your mouth!" the Blood River Lord sinisterly said. "It's too late to beg for mercy now. Become blood and serve the endless Blood River!"
As he spoke, the Blood Fiends began to emerge from the Blood Sea, howling as they charged at the four fiends.
"'The endless Blood River'?" The tiger food was startled when he heard this term, and when he saw the Blood Fiends, he finally realized. Looking at the Blood River Lord in shock, he said, "You're…"
"It's too late for realization," the Blood River Lord coldly chuckled. With a wave of his hand, blood rushed at the four fiends.
In truth, by this point in the battle, he had already guessed that Tang Jie had played some trickery and was trying to use these fiends to weaken him, or else the tiger fiend shouldn't have been so surprised by his identity.
But they were already fighting, and stopping halfway wasn't his style. In any case, his Blood Sea Divine Connection could absorb blood and flesh to make their power his own. If he killed these fiends and absorbed them, he would recover all his energy and even make a little profit.
Thus, he attacked without mercy.
Countless Blood Fiends dragged the boar fiend into the Blood Sea.
The scene from before played out, the boar fiend madly shrieking as the Blood Sea ate away at him, unable to break free. As his flesh began to fall away and he was about to follow in the rat fiend's footsteps, a voice whispered into the tiger fiend's ear, "Kill it."
Kill it!
The voice exploded like a clap of thunder in the tiger fiend's mind. Entirely out of instinct, the tiger fiend roared and punched, and a white tiger emerged and lunged at the boar fiend.
The Blood River Lord scowled. "No!"
The white tiger phantom slammed into the boar fiend, and its vast energy surged into the boar fiend's body and made it explode into pieces.
"Bastard!" the Blood River Lord angrily said.
The Blood River's absorption of blood energy was not unrestricted. Only living creatures possessed formidable blood energy and had any value in absorbing. Upon death, the value would be greatly reduced. For this reason, Tang Jie's Flesh Millstone and the Blood River Lord's Blood Sea Divine Connection did not absorb existences that had been dead for a time, as there was no meaning to it.
The tiger fiend had killed the boar fiend with one punch and obliterated him in the process, so more than half of the blood energy had instantly been lost, which was undoubtedly a major blow to the Blood River Lord's hopes of recovery. The four avatars all glared at the tiger fiend with murderous eyes.
The tiger fiend trembled. He had just done as the voice had said, and only now did he realize what he had done. In a shaky voice, he said, "I didn't do it on purpose. There… there was someone else… that guy…"
"Die already!" The Blood River Lord had no interest in hearing the tiger fiend's excuses.
The victor didn't need an explanation from the loser. Death was the best form of compensation!
The waves of blood swept toward the tiger, snake, and eagle fiends.
"Run!" The tiger fiend knew that explanations were pointless, and only escape was left to them. He also realized that he had fallen for Tang Jie's trap, and though he hated Tang Jie down to his bones, he first had to look out for himself.
The three fiends turned into streams of light and fled in three different directions.
The Blood River Lord snorted, and three of his four avatars split off to chase after the fiends, leaving only one behind.
That avatar coldly said, "Tang Jie, come out. Didn't you trick those little fiends into fighting me in order to weaken me? I've fought them now, so it's time for you to collect your prize."
As he spoke, the figure of Tang Jie emerged from the sea of flames.
He smiled at the Blood River Lord and casually said, "I knew I wouldn't be able to hide it from Ancestor. Even a mere avatar of Ancestor is not something a lowly person like me can fool. Ancestor fought that battle ultimately so that you could draw me out."
The Blood River Lord grunted. "So long as you understand! I don't deny that you managed to fool me for a bit. After all, I didn't expect you to have an illusory disguise art. But the path of deception is not a long-term solution, and everything can't go as you want forever. I was simply going with the flow, doing what benefited me. Now that you've appeared, that battle was worth it. This time, I won't be letting you escape."
Tang Jie chuckled. "Now that I think about it, I feel quite accomplished, having escaped from the Lord of the Blood River twice. But I think that being able to escape three times is even better."
"What? You think you can still get away?" The Blood River Lord erupted in laughter.
Tang Jie had needed to bring together the power of five people to deal with a single Heart Demon avatar, and so even if this avatar was greatly weakened, it still wasn't something that Tang Jie could handle. The Blood River Lord didn't think that Tang Jie had any chance of escaping.
"Things aren't as sure as you think," Tang Jie casually replied. "What do you think about a wager?"
"'A wager'?" The Blood River Lord instinctively put up his guard.
"Yes." Tang Jie earnestly nodded. "A wager on whether your avatar can catch me. If I win, you need to answer one of my questions. If I lose… since I lose everything regardless, you can do whatever you want."
The Blood River Lord sneered, "It sounds like this is quite advantageous for you."
Tang Jie smiled. "Then what about the location of the Immeasurable Sword's sheath?"
Tang Jie had been present when the Blood River Lord had brought up his deal with Cang Qingfeng, so he naturally knew what the Blood River Lord wanted. But he had kept this information secret in the hopes of using it to save his life in case the Blood River Lord ever captured him, so it was surprising that he was throwing it out now.
"What did you say?" The Blood River avatar's voice rose several pitches.
Tang Jie raised a finger and made a "shhh" noise. "You haven't said that you agree to the deal yet."
"I agree! I swear on the Heavenly Dao!" the Blood River Lord roared.
He waved his hand, and the boundless sea of blood roared at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie simply smiled, and as the waves washed over him, this Tang Jie shattered into countless motes of light. Amid the light, Tang Jie's voice rang out, "You've lost! Don't forget that you owe me one answer."
This Tang Jie had clearly been a duplicate.
"Impossible!" the Blood River Lord bellowed.
Shadow clones had no magic power, so how could they release barriers to resist the flames? Even those blood birds had too little magic power to resist the flames for this long.
A moment later, a fiery red jade falling from the sky gave the Blood River Lord his answer.
An art relic!
An ultimate-grade protective art relic of Holy Fire Valley! Tang Jie had been so extravagant as to use an ultimate-grade art relic to fool him. Just what sort of question could be so important to him?
No, wait!
The Blood River Lord suddenly shuddered. The problem wasn't Tang Jie's aim, but the fact that he was buying time.
"Not good!" the Blood River Lord shouted as he flew off.
At the same time, behind the tiger fiend who was fleeing for his life, a sharp sword energy dropped from the sky, slashing the pursuing Blood River avatar and cutting it in half.
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