Aspiring to the Immortal Path
Aspiring to the Immortal Path - Chapter 668: Advancement

Little Three dumbly gazed at the spatial barrier for a while. Finally, it decided to jump in and test it out.

This was an extremely risky decision, for there was no telling what was behind it. It could be some forbidden ground that would kill it the moment it entered. Of course, there was also a chance that it was some land rich in resources. Or there might be nothing at all, only the empty void.

But Little Three didn't think about such things. It was only bored and thought this might be fun.

Thus, Little Three needed very little time to make up its mind. It gathered up all its strength and leaped at the spatial barrier, and in a flash, it found that it had passed through the barrier and appeared in a gloomy space.

The sky was overcast and devoid of sunlight, dust and haze obscuring everything.

At the very end of the sky, a giant river emerged from the air.

It emerged out of the void and descended from the heavens in a majestic waterfall. If one looked closely, one could see countless wailing ghosts within the river, desperately attempting to swim to the shore. The black soil of the shore was covered in white bones and wreathed in black energy. Some of the ghosts were coming ashore here, upon which they blindly wandered around.

Little Three found that it was standing in the river. A ghost swimming along the river flashed its claws and teeth at it. Out of instinct, Little Three used its spatial shift to evade the strike.

Standing on the black soil, it looked at those countless ghosts, and a deep hunger began to dominate its body.

So hungry!

So hungry!

Food was everywhere!

Little Three's eyes began to glow.

But Little Three had clearly forgotten about something here—in the past, it had only dealt with deceased ghosts. Now, it was dealing with ghosts that could strike back, or even kill it.

The dumb Little Three didn't realize this, and its desire for food had it quickly setting its sights on a phantom horse.

It lunged at the phantom horse, and the horse sensed the sneak attack from another ghost. The Nether Domain had never been a peaceful world, and battles between ghosts were plentiful. The phantom horse charged forward several steps and then kicked out with its hindlegs.

Little Three hadn't expected this reaction and was sent flying.

It then saw the phantom horse charging at it, wreathed in ghostly flames.

This terrified Little Three. Although it was a peak Mind Opening ghost, it was a just-awakened one. With Corpse Domination being its sole offensive talent, it had very little actual combat power. Thankfully, it didn't forget its powers, and it dodged with a spatial jump. But the phantom horse was also adept in the Dao of Space and actually gave chase.

Little Three had no choice but to make another spatial jump. As it was much stronger in the Dao of Space than the horse, it eventually managed to escape.

The first hunt had failed and almost been turned around on it, leaving Little Three rather dejected.

But its immense hunger whipped Little Three into once more stepping onto the path of danger.

It quickly selected another prey, a fog ghost, not something particularly powerful.

But before it could leap, the fog ghost disappeared, concealing its body.

While Little Three could also become invisible, that didn't mean it could see through the stealth abilities of other ghosts, even the lowest sort. It could only watch its prey escape again, and it was momentarily dumbstruck. In the middle of its daze, the fog ghost struck.

For the first time in its life, Little Three was wounded.

The third attempt was also a failure. This time, it had chosen a ghost that had the Corpse Domination ability, but clearly stronger than its own. With a howl, numerous white bones came to life and began to savagely beat Little Three, forcing it to scamper away.

Three failures finally made Little Three bring up its guard.

It didn't give up, but it became more careful.

It chose another target, a geist that was drifting about.

Geists were incorporeal ghosts that excelled at tampering with the soul.

Little Three concealed its body and cautiously approached the geist, which sensed no danger and continued to float about.

Little Three patiently drew closer, and it was only when it got right up to the geist that the geist finally sensed something. It let out a shriek and began to flee, but Little Three lunged, biting on the geist's cloud of a body. With a forceful bite, the cloud began to flow into Little Three's mouth and into its translucent belly.

The geist desperately shrieked, sounding like nails on a chalkboard. So sharp was the sound that Little Three's soul flame flickered, and its mouth loosened.

The geist used this opportunity to escape and float away.

But as it floated away, Little Three blinked above the geist, biting at the same place and once more sucking up the geist's body.

This time, the geist didn't escape, and Little Three ended up sucking the entire thing into its belly.

Stroking its belly, Little Three felt a great sense of satisfaction. Sure enough, fresh ghosts were more delicious.

It didn't continue hunting, instead returning to that thin spatial barrier, leaping into it. A moment later, it had returned to the bottom of the Inkcloud Abyss.

The cultivating Tang Jie and puppet clearly hadn't noticed that Little Three had gone. Little Three returned to its usual place and lay down. It smacked its lips, recalling the taste of the geist. A sliver of Spirit Touch power from its meal began to flow through its body and strengthen it.

Satisfied, Little Three took after Yiyi and went to sleep.

It had no idea how lucky it was.

There was no question that it had discovered the former Nether River passage. Even though the Inkcloud Abyss had been destroyed, that passage was still there, causing the spatial fabric in that area to be much thinner.

But getting through it into the Nether Domain wasn't easy. Firstly, the Nether Domain passage wasn't very big, so nothing too large could go through it. But Little Three had a small body, so it wasn't affected by this. In addition, even if the spatial fabric was thin, that didn't mean that one could just jump through it. It had extremely high demands when it came to Space power. But that was exactly what Little Three was good at, thanks to the Withering Yin Vine. It met the basic requirements to jump through that barrier.

Even Nether Domain Titans couldn't easily travel between the two domains, as there were far too many restrictions on it, but these restrictions didn't exist for Little Three, because it didn't belong to the Nether Domain. Ever since Hunter Ghosts had been driven out of the Nether Domain, they had ceased to belong to it, so they were not restricted by its rules.

To be able to enter and exit the Nether Domain was extremely important for Little Three. It had to be understood that Hunter Ghosts were killed on discovery in the Nether Domain, but being able to leave meant that Little Three had greatly decreased the chances it would be discovered, and even if it were discovered, it could escape through the spatial barrier. Although Little Three didn't know how unwelcome it was in the Nether Domain, its instinct for self-preservation meant that it chose to hunt in the Nether Domain and rest in the mortal realm.

Starting from this day, Little Three stopped throwing tantrums about food.

Tang Jie didn't know that this guy had a hunting ground, and he wondered why its nature had suddenly changed. In the meantime, the ghost guard had absorbed most of the soul remnants in the Soul Refining Pearl and was entering the final phase of advancement. Thus, for safety's sake, Tang Jie put all his attention on the ghost guard.

Actually, Little Three had never even thought about hiding its deeds from Tang Jie, but it was always jumping around, and it wasn't like it left trails that could be followed. And considering how far it could jump, Tang Jie simply thought it had gone out to play, not to another world entirely. Even if it jumped out of the Nether Domain right in front of Tang Jie, given that Tang Jie had no means of seeing where it had come from, he would simply think it had come back from playing.

In these circumstances, Little Three began its free hunting within the Nether Domain.

It gradually grew accustomed to this strange environment, grasping the tricks of the trade, and the hunting became smoother and smoother.

In this long process, Little Three learned how to choose a target, how to approach it, and how to hunt it down.

It started to understand which ghosts it couldn't deal with and which it could.

In truth, because of the nature of its abilities and its strength, Little Three currently couldn't hunt many ghosts. Its primary food was the geists, mixed with the occasional revenant, which were the ghosts that could use Corpse Domination. For this reason, Little Three's Spirit Touch talent rapidly grew.

Of course, Little Three still had the occasional failure and ran into danger.

Whenever this happened, Little Three would escape back to the Inkcloud Abyss through the spatial barrier. As it hadn't run into any powerful ghosts and those lower ghosts were extremely dumb, nobody noticed a problem. Just like this, the little Hunter Ghost borrowed the power of this spatial crack to rapidly grow.

Today, the ghost guard reached the final step of its breakthrough.

The Mother Cloud combat puppet's entire body was covered in starlight as the ghost guard activated all of the formations and began to fuse its boosted power with the combat puppet. As this happened, it meant that the combat puppet would no longer have to rely purely on the crystal cores for power, with the ghost guard becoming one of the power sources.

Finally, in a red flash, the ghost guard completed its advancement. Although it didn't seem to have changed very much, Tang Jie knew that with the advancement of the ghost guard, the Mother Cloud combat puppet had received a significant boost in power to all aspects.

Tang Jie was about to issue a few words of praise when Little Three jumped out of space and rushed into his embrace.

This was the first time Little Three had jumped into Tang Jie's embrace, and Tang Jie was flabbergasted. He was just about to say something when he suddenly felt something different about the little ghost.

He examined it carefully and said in shock, "You've advanced!"

Little Three had clearly advanced to Transformation.

Both of them had advanced on the same day, much to Tang Jie's delight.

Before he could say anything more, Yiyi called out, "Me too!"

He turned to see Yiyi's graceful figure standing behind him, grinning at him.

The immense energy radiating from her body told him that she had also advanced.

Yiyi had also been working hard these last few days. It was just that she hadn't told Tang Jie so that she could surprise him.

Three had advanced in a single day. This was truly a lucky day.

After a while, Tang Jie broke out of his gleeful stupor and said with a smile, "I wonder if there will be a fourth."

He looked at Tutu.

Tutu shrank back and muttered, "I… I'm just a mount."