Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Wrist Guard

Feng Yu drew a long breath and lowered her voice. “Ten years ago, when the apocalypse came… it wasn’t an accident. It was a trial. A trial from the Jia Yi Sect.” She paused, then kept going, laying out everything she knew.

As a captain, she had the clearance. In all of Jin Ling Base, only Chief Commander Hong Jian and five captains knew the truth. Everyone else lived in the dark.

That made Wang Jie the seventh.

“The Jia Yi Sect is a powerful cultivation sect somewhere out in the universe,” Feng Yu said. “Every so often, they select disciples. The selection method is simple—they look for trial grounds.”

Her voice sank. “And Blue Star… is one of the trial grounds they chose.”

In just ten years, Blue Star had been forced from a technological world into a cultivation world. The strongest fighters had reached the seventh seal—exactly the level the Jia Yi Sect expected for its trial disciples.

“Yan Si is one of those trial disciples,” Feng Yu continued. “He arrived, repelled the beast tide, and saved Jin Ling Base. But he had conditions. He took every calamity material the base had.”

She looked at Wang Jie, her expression heavy. “The wolf king’s three eyes you want are among the best calamity materials we’ve ever found. They’re in his hands. How am I supposed to take them from him?”

Wang Jie hadn’t expected any of this.

So the boy he killed… had been a trial disciple too?

No wonder the kid’s clothes and strength didn’t match. No wonder he insisted he was a native. No wonder he could recognize Wang Jie’s footwork at a glance.

Wang Jie slowly lifted his head.

So the projection hanging in the sky—those techniques, those combat arts—were gifts from the Jia Yi Sect. A whetstone for the trial disciples. A tool designed to grind Blue Star down, to force it to evolve into a cultivation world in only ten years.

How could they do that?

How many people had died for it?

He still remembered the days before the apocalypse—the easy smiles, the ordinary peace. Gone. All of it.

This was an era where people ate each other alive.

And it had all been born from a “trial.”

They didn’t even see the people of Blue Star as human.

Feng Yu’s voice dropped further. “There’s more. When the trial ends, every cultivator on Blue Star will be treated as a war slave and shipped to the interstellar battlefield. All trial grounds end the same way. Yan Si said the power they let us cultivate was designed for war slaves.”

She hesitated, then forced out the rest. “He claims the forces behind him can help us shed that status—if we help him complete the trial.”

Wang Jie stared at her. “Hong Jian believed him?”

Feng Yu let out a bitter laugh. “Does it matter whether we believe it? We don’t have a choice.”

Her eyes dulled, edged with despair. “You haven’t felt the gap between Yan Si’s starforce and our imprint power. Even if Chief Commander Hong Jian were at full strength, he still wouldn’t be Yan Si’s match.”

She swallowed. “Yan Si can recognize our combat techniques. He sees flaws at a glance. When we face him, it’s like we’re naked—transparent.”

She looked away, voice hollow. “You can’t understand what that feels like.”

Wang Jie understood better than she thought.

He’d felt it. He’d even killed one.

Trialists weren’t invincible.

But how many people on Blue Star could do what he’d done? And the trialist he killed had only been at the sixth seal.

“If you want to tell Chief Commander Hong Jian, then tell him,” Wang Jie said. “I can’t get the wolf king’s three eyes.”

Feng Yu didn’t argue.

Wang Jie’s gaze sharpened. “Where is Yan Si?”

“By Xuan Lake. Guarding it for Chief Commander Hong Jian.”

Xuan Lake lay within Jin Ling. Hong Jian stayed near it year-round because a powerful mutated beast lurked at the bottom. If it ever surfaced, it would surface inside the base. Someone had to watch it.

Now Hong Jian had exhausted himself fighting the hawk. The only one left who could keep watch at Xuan Lake was Yan Si.

Wang Jie left without another word. There was no point pressing Feng Yu.

Only after he was gone did Feng Yu finally exhale.

That man’s pressure had nearly suffocated her. And what Yan Si had revealed had draped Jin Ling in darkness.

Once the trial officially began, they wouldn’t have much time left.

How long did a trial even last?

Waiting for the people of Blue Star was the fate of war slaves.

No. She refused.

Thinking of the way Yan Si had looked at her, she wavered—then turned back into the house.

The arrival of the trialists tightened into a hard knot of urgency in Wang Jie’s chest. He needed strength, and he needed it fast. First, he would grow the Heaven and Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

His old finger technique was already powerful. The Heaven and Earth Luo Xuan Finger would be stronger.

But its requirement was absurd.

Tears from a heartbroken girl.

Wang Jie moved through the Clean Zone, turning left and right with practiced ease. Half an hour later, he stopped outside a restaurant.

It was upscale even by Clean Zone standards. Soft music seeped through the walls. The reason he chose it was simple: there was a hotel upstairs.

Wang Jie had never been here, but Hui Zhua had told him this place produced a steady supply of crying girls every night. Wang Jie decided to wait.

He lingered in the shadow of a corner, watching men and women come and go, laughing and flirting as if the apocalypse were nothing but a bad dream.

A lot of people stayed in the Clean Zone and never stepped out, as if walls and distance could keep the end of the world away. They lived in a different circle than the Wastewater Zone. The people outside the base might as well have been in another universe.

After a while, a couple stormed out mid-argument. The woman’s eyes were red.

Wang Jie’s gaze lit.

He gripped a glass bottle, ready to dash out and catch her tears—

Only for the man to slam her against the wall and kiss her.

Wang Jie froze, bottle in hand.

…He kept waiting.

Another pair stumbled out shouting. This time the man got dumped.

Still no tears.

Wang Jie glanced up at the sky. The projection overhead was still sharp, still clear. Whenever he had time, he studied it, hunting for combat techniques that suited him.

But the restaurant doors finally shut. The hotel lights went out.

This wasn’t working.

Too passive.

He decided to force the issue.

In the distance, a couple walked hand in hand, whispering sweet nonsense. Wang Jie drew a breath.

It was a rotten thing to do.

But he didn’t have a choice.

He moved like a shadow. In an instant, both of them were unconscious. He dragged them into a narrow alley, then slapped the man awake.

The man jolted, eyes wide. In the dark, he couldn’t make out a face—only Wang Jie’s outline.

“Y-You… what do you want?” the man stammered. “My cousin is a cultivator—under Captain Da Hu—”

Wang Jie cut him off by raising his knife. The cold flash of steel drained the color from the man’s face.

“Break up with her.”

The man blinked, convinced he’d misheard. “What?”

“Break up with her.”

Wang Jie shoved the glass bottle at him. “Make her cry. Catch the tears.”

The man stared at him like he was looking at a lunatic. At first, he thought this was some jealous stalker. Then the bottle came out, and the demand somehow got worse.

“That’s… it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what about me and Xin’er?”

“Not my problem,” Wang Jie said flatly. “I only want the tears.”

The man swallowed hard. “O-Okay. I understand.”

Wang Jie stabbed his knife into the wall beside the man’s head—close enough to make the message clear—then slipped back into the shadows.

The man stared at Xin’er, still unconscious. He had no choice.

He woke her.

And he broke up with her.

Xin’er exploded. “Fine! Break up, then! Like I’m short of men. You trash!”

She turned and stormed away, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. The man fumbled the bottle, catching what he could as she raged.

A gust of wind rolled through the alley.

The man stood there, dazed. Heartbroken. Alone.

Wang Jie watched, equally dazed.

Was that really all it took?

He swallowed the strange guilt, found another couple, and tried again. And again.

Half the night later, Wang Jie finally returned to No. 17 with a glass bottle that held what he needed.

Getting those tears had been harder than winning a fight.

He went straight to the field and dripped the tears into the soil.

The third green sprout folded inward.

Then all three sprouts bloomed at once. Three beams of light gathered in the center, forming a shadowy figure. It raised a hand and pointed a finger at Wang Jie.

At the same time, the ground beside the field split open, and a second plot of land formed. A new green sprout pushed up, slowly growing taller.

Wang Jie didn’t move. The phantom’s finger sank into his mind, and his eyes went blank. A long moment passed before he snapped back.

He lifted his hand and stared at his finger.

Heaven and Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

Terrifying.

And the most terrifying part was this—he didn’t have to learn it. The moment it entered his mind, he simply knew it.

Wang Jie raised his hand and pointed forward. His fingertip trembled.

Then blood sprayed from the torn skin at his finger as the power ripped through him.

His brows knotted. He understood the technique, but his body couldn’t bear it. With his old injuries, even channeling that force shredded him.

He lowered his hand.

The first plot went still again. Wang Jie turned to the second plot. Like the first, it had already produced fruit.

The first plot’s fruit had been the IOU slip—an absurd thing that had saved him from disaster and let him crush Hu Guan and Feng Yu in an instant.

So what was the second plot’s fruit?

The sprout grew to waist height, then chest height, then the height of a man. It bloomed.

Inside lay a wrist guard.

Dark gold. Carved with strange patterns that didn’t resemble any script he knew. In the grooves, something like liquid shimmered faintly, like moonlight caught in water.

Wang Jie picked it up and tested it. He squeezed hard.

It didn’t even flex.

He slid it onto his left wrist. It was loose at first—almost comically large—then, as if alive, it contracted until it fit perfectly.

A voice spoke beside his ear.

“Begin the eighth basic fitness routine now.”

Wang Jie stiffened. “What…?”

“Get ready.”

He didn’t move. The wrist guard turned scorching hot.

Wang Jie cursed under his breath and tried to rip it off. It wouldn’t budge.

Heat surged from the wrist guard into his body, flooding him head to toe. In the same instant, a sequence of movements unfolded in his mind, clear as if he’d practiced them for years.

“Start.”

He gritted his teeth and kept trying to remove it.

The heat climbed higher.

It felt like being shoved into molten rock. Sweat poured down his face. He could barely breathe.

Coldly, he realized he had two options: follow the movements—or be cooked alive.

He moved.

“One-two-three-four. Two-two-three-four. Three-two-three-four…”

Each motion looked simple. The problem was the transitions. None of them connected. They were jagged and unnatural, yet he had to link them smoothly. If he broke the flow, the heat spiked.

And it didn’t just spike. It punished.

Wang Jie had a vivid, horrifying sense that if he hesitated, his body would melt.

His muscles screamed. His joints felt like they were being pried apart. Sweat drenched him, and the wrist guard kept sending waves of heat into whichever part of his body failed to meet the standard, forcing him to correct every angle, every line, every breath.

Minutes blurred into something longer. Or maybe it really was only minutes. It felt like hours.

At last, the voice went silent.

The heat vanished.

Wang Jie collapsed, gasping. Sweat soaked him through, like he’d crawled out of a river.

He stared up at the hazy sky, body numb. He couldn’t even twitch his fingers.

What kind of cursed thing was this?

He rolled onto his side and stared at the wrist guard. Then, with shaking hands, he tried to remove it again.

Nothing.

He couldn’t pry it off. Couldn’t twist it. Couldn’t even make it shift.

Panic rose.

It really wasn’t coming off.

He should find Si Yan. Maybe that man could do something—

Wang Jie pushed himself up, then froze.

He touched his chest. Pinched his arm.

A warm, strange comfort lingered under his skin.

The routine had been torture. The movements had felt like they would tear him apart. But… his old injuries felt lighter.

He told himself it was just numbness, just exhaustion.

He waited. Recovered his breath. Checked again.

The improvement remained.

Wang Jie stared at the wrist guard.

That ridiculous routine… could heal him.