Chapter 115

Chapter 115: Sealed Slaughter

Wang Jie didn’t waste a second. He summoned Luo Yan.

“Find five sentimental people,” he said, handing over a stack of pages. “Read what’s written here—read it like you mean it—and make them cry.”

He paused to make sure Luo Yan understood.

“They have to cry for real. Five of them.”

Luo Yan accepted the papers. They were a collection of tearjerkers Wang Jie had adapted from Blue Star—tweaked, stitched together, and sharpened into something meant to hit hard.

And, conveniently, the “hero” in every story was named Master Wang Jie.

It was Wang Jie’s solution to “move five people to tears” without ever showing his face. If it worked, great. If it didn’t, he’d at least learn how people here reacted to this kind of story and adjust.

By now, Luo Yan had seen enough strangeness to stop being surprised. He simply tucked the pages away.

“Keep searching for slaughterstone,” Wang Jie said. “And when you have time, start scouting people who were born with rebellion in their bones.”

Luo Yan blinked. “Rebellion in their bones?”

He was starting to suspect his own comprehension was getting worse.

“People who don’t take orders,” Wang Jie said. “People who like causing trouble. Find me a batch.”

Luo Yan nodded. “Understood.”

“And when you visit the Outer Bazaar, keep an eye out for formation scrolls. Chen artifacts too—swords, anything useful.” Wang Jie rattled off items one after another. Luo Yan memorized every word.

In the end, Wang Jie handed him a stack of contribution points—far more than Luo Yan had any right to expect.

Luo Yan’s eyes lit up.

“Do your work well,” Wang Jie said. “I won’t treat you unfairly.”

Luo Yan dropped to his knees. “Thank you, Guest Elder. This disciple will work hard.”

Wang Jie nodded, satisfied. “When there’s a chance, I’ll help you enter the Inner Sect.”

Then he turned and left.

Luo Yan stayed kneeling, giddy, thanking him again and again until Wang Jie was gone.

The ship lifted off from Mist Peak and set a course for Deepweight Star.

An entry permit lasted a year. During that year, he could come and go as he pleased. Once it expired, he’d have to renew.

He was close to the deadline now—about twelve days left.

He didn’t need to reapply to enter. He could go now, and when the term ran out, come back and pay to renew. Besides, with all the attention on him lately, he stood out wherever he went. Better to move first and worry about paperwork later.

Ten days later, Deepweight Star filled the viewport.

The ship slipped into the atmosphere and began a slow descent.

Far from the planet, a star-sky monitoring station tracked the approach. Frostflower Sect Outer Sect disciples manned the consoles.

“Huh,” one of them said. “Someone entered Deepweight Star.”

“How?” the other blurted. “Wasn’t it sealed?”

“Elder Yan explicitly said no one’s allowed to apply.”

“I checked the registry,” the first said. “It’s that disciple from last time. He doesn’t need to apply. He still has two days left on his one-year term, so he can enter directly.”

The second disciple snorted. “What a miser. Can’t even spare two days. Why not just renew early?”

He leaned back in his chair, smug. “Fine. Two days from now, we reject his renewal and let him run for nothing.”

“So we don’t stop him now?”

“And how would we?” the second said. “Rules say he has two days. Even if Elder Yan were standing here, he couldn’t block the entry without breaking protocol. It’s only two days. No one will notice. When the time’s up, we drive him out.”

The first hesitated. “Elder Yan seemed to take this seriously. Should we at least warn him? If he leaves on his own, great. If he refuses, we deal with it in two days.”

The other shrugged. “Sure.”

Inside the descending ship, the sky streamed past like an ocean turned sideways. Wang Jie watched the ground rise to meet him. In the distance, black mountains speared upward—and on one cliff face, a crack caught his eye.

He adjusted course toward it.

A voice snapped through the ship’s comms, cold and official. “Fellow disciple, your cultivation term on Deepweight Star has two days remaining. Please leave as soon as possible.”

A beat.

“I repeat: please leave as soon as possible.”

Wang Jie kept his eyes on the cliff. “I’ll renew when I’m done cultivating.”

“Apologies. Deepweight Star is temporarily closed to outsiders. Please leave as soon as possible.”

Wang Jie frowned, but didn’t answer. The ship closed on the cliff face—and the crack resolved into something that wasn’t random stone damage.

The marks spread like a web. Scars in the rock aligned into a shape.

A shape he would never forget.

A thorn-crowned skull.

He’d seen that symbol carved into a luo bone before. It was the mark of Kui Yan’s luo bone.

It wasn’t perfectly clear, but it was unmistakable.

So the luo bone had landed here. The impact had gouged the cliff and left its emblem behind.

Why would a luo bone be on Deepweight Star?

Wang Jie didn’t know. But he knew what it meant when a sealed planet and a luo bone showed up in the same breath.

Trouble.

Elder Yan was a problem.

Wang Jie yanked the ship upward. The engines screamed as he tried to climb back into space.

He reached for his personal terminal to report everything to the sect—

Ping.

A soft sound. Then alarms erupted.

A pebble punched clean through the hull. A heartbeat later, explosions cascaded through the ship’s interior.

The craft lurched, shuddering, unable to gain altitude.

Wang Jie’s blood turned to ice. He kicked the hatch open and threw himself into open air.

Seconds after he jumped, another pebble tore through the ship.

The vessel detonated above the clouds in a bright bloom.

The shockwave slammed into Wang Jie and hurled him downward.

He fell through the cloud layer, plummeting toward the dark land below.

Then a dread so sharp it made his bones ache crawled over him.

He twisted his head.

In the distance, a battle-axe tore through the void and swung toward him like a verdict.

He couldn’t block it. Not with his body.

Wang Jie yanked out the two-tribulation chen artifact cauldron and shoved it in front of himself.

The axe crashed into it.

The impact was obscene. The cauldron and Wang Jie were driven sideways like they’d been kicked by a god. One face of the cauldron shattered instantly. Another caved and tore open—then the axe bit through the breach and cut into Wang Jie’s flesh, sinking deep, nearly to the bone.

Wang Jie clung to the ruined fragments as he was launched across the sky. He forced his body into a steep downward fall, trying to drop away from the line of pursuit.

Behind him, the axe kept pushing the cauldron shards farther and farther.

He hit the ground like a meteor.

The earth split.

Wang Jie spat blood, choking on the copper taste. His abdomen burned; blood seeped through his clothes.

That strike… so tyrannical.

Roaming-Star Realm.

He suppressed his aura at once and fled, staggering into shadowed terrain. If that monster chased him, he would die.

Far away, a Lu Luo Kingdom figure stood on a mountaintop, gaze dark. Dead?

Or not?

Even it couldn’t be sure.

That cauldron had been a two-tribulation chen artifact. Otherwise, one axe would have pulverized everything.

To casually produce a two-tribulation chen artifact… this human had teeth.

It turned its head. “Contact Elder Yan. Seal Deepweight Star’s outgoing communications. You five—go confirm whether the human is dead.”

Its voice dropped.

“Bring me his corpse.”

Five Full-Star Realm Lu Luo Kingdom warriors knelt and answered as one, then shot off into the distance.

Back at the monitoring station, the Outer Sect disciples waited, bored.

“Still hasn’t come out,” one muttered. “He really plans to cultivate for only two days?”

“Let him,” the other said. “Two days.”

Their terminals chimed. They looked down, and their faces changed.

“It’s Elder Yan.”

Both stood straight. “Greetings, Elder Yan.”

“Seal Deepweight Star’s outgoing communications at once,” Elder Yan ordered. “I am cultivating an important art. No one is allowed to disturb me.”

The first disciple swallowed. “Elder… you’re on Deepweight Star?”

“At once.”

“Yes.”

On the surface below, Wang Jie ran without using lockforce. He relied only on his battered body, pushing through pain and exhaustion. He kept away from the straight path he’d been flung along, forcing himself into uneven ground, shadows, and cover.

After a while, his skin prickled. He slipped into a narrow cave and held his breath.

A moment later, silhouettes flashed overhead—one after another—racing past in a line.

Lu Luo Kingdom.

So it really was them.

And those weren’t weaklings. Full-Star Realm, at least several of them.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed. Hiding wouldn’t save him. There was also that Roaming-Star Realm monster. If it moved, there was nowhere on the planet he could hide.

What now?

He opened Deepweight Star’s map on his terminal and stared at a marked region.

Deepweight Star’s gravity zones were famous. Where he was now was only thirtyfold gravity—nothing for him, nothing for them.

But what about one hundredfold?

Or higher?

The Lu Luo Kingdom looked terrifying, but their bodies weren’t necessarily built for extreme gravity. Their tolerance might not exceed his.

He made his decision.

One hundred fiftyfold gravity.

He would drag them there and bleed them.

Wang Jie left the cave and moved fast, angling for the nearest 150x zone.

He swallowed a revival pill as he ran, forcing his body toward something closer to whole.

He ran for five days straight.

Hunger became the next enemy. There was barely anything edible in this region.

He should’ve stocked food in his storage ring.

Now he had to chew whole-bone pills instead.

They weren’t pleasant, but they sat heavy in the stomach. The price was obscene, but whole-bone pills were the least valuable thing he carried now. He couldn’t bring himself to waste anything else.

By the time he reached the eightyfold region, the 150x zone was next.

Wang Jie hugged cliff shadows, sprinting along the mountain’s flank.

A sudden cold gleam swept in from the far side.

He stopped dead and stepped back.

A battle-axe punched through the cliff face, bursting out of stone like a predator.

Wang Jie snapped his head up.

A Lu Luo Kingdom warrior charged down with a savage grin. “Human. Found you.”

The ground shattered as it landed. Twin axes flashed as it hacked and hacked, the air screaming with each swing.

Wang Jie stepped into Jia Eight Steps.

His body blurred—an afterimage slipping through a storm. He passed the axe shadows and appeared right in front of it, then drove a fist into its abdomen.

The punch nearly tore it open.

The Lu Luo Kingdom warrior vomited blood, staring as if it couldn’t process what had happened. Where did that strength come from?

Wang Jie didn’t give it time.

He hit again.

The warrior lurched back, axes crossing to block. Wang Jie seized the axes, twisted hard, and forced the warrior’s body to flip. He kicked, launching it into the cliff so violently the rock cratered.

Then he raised a hand.

Heaven-and-Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

One point. A clean, brutal line of power pierced its throat.

The Lu Luo Kingdom warrior clutched at the gushing wound, eyes rancid with hatred. Starforce flooded its bones and joints—Power-Storing Method. One axe slipped, revealing a hidden needle in the handle. It drove the needle into its own body.

Blood-Prick Art.

Its aura surged violently. The bleeding in its throat began to seal.

It had underestimated him. It hadn’t expected a Ten Seals human to be this strong—strong enough to make the word “absurd” feel inadequate.

Wang Jie was stronger than he’d been when he fought Kui Yan. And here, under heavy gravity, with the enemy careless, he’d shattered it in a few exchanges.

But Full-Star Realm was still Full-Star Realm. It wouldn’t die easily.

The warrior lunged at him, claws and axes and raw fury.

Wang Jie met it head-on.

Their arms locked.

Wang Jie detonated a hundredfold burst of strength and tore the warrior’s arm off at the shoulder.

Before it could even scream properly, he stepped in and drove a finger straight into its forehead.

The Lu Luo Kingdom warrior roared as its starforce erupted like an exploding planet. The land trembled; the air shook.

Wang Jie nearly suffocated under the pressure.

But he forced the point through.

The skull cracked. The brain was pierced.

The warrior collapsed.

Wang Jie didn’t stay to watch it finish dying. He turned and ran.

One Full-Star Realm was dead—but there were more. If he got surrounded, he’d be finished.

He’d barely had the thought when a sharp blade tore through the air.

Wang Jie twisted away in time.

Another Full-Star Realm Lu Luo Kingdom warrior.

And behind him, a low growl—another presence closing in.