Chapter 116

Chapter 116: Desperate Straits

Wang Jie was boxed in.

A battle-axe from the front, a sabre from behind—two Lu Luo Kingdom warriors closing in with perfect pincer timing.

He drew his sword and merged qi and force. The blade swept in a clean arc, knocking both weapons off-line at once. He followed through with a forward thrust, Sword Steps flashing underfoot like a second blade.

The front warrior’s eyes widened. Red energy boiled across its skin—Blood-Prick Art—then the axe dropped like a guillotine.

Clang.

Wang Jie’s sword knocked it aside, and Sword Steps carved across the warrior’s body, leaving a gash deep enough to show bone.

But the sabre arrived a heartbeat later, slamming into Wang Jie’s back.

Pain flared white-hot. He pitched forward, barely catching himself as blood spilled down his spine.

The Lu Luo Kingdom warriors surged after him.

Wang Jie stepped into Jia Eight Steps and fled, forcing his battered body toward the place he’d chosen.

One hundred fiftyfold gravity.

He had to fight there.

The two warriors howled and chased. Another silhouette appeared to his right, cutting off his angle.

Wang Jie bared his teeth and swallowed another revival pill.

He would die before he let them take him quietly.

These Lu Luo Kingdom warriors would never have imagined they’d be dispatching Full-Star Realm numbers to hunt a Ten Seals human. They’d mobilized so many because they needed to search.

They hadn’t realized finding him would be the nightmare.

Wang Jie crossed into the 150x gravity zone.

The air itself seemed warped, bent under invisible weight.

Behind him, the Lu Luo Kingdom warriors stepped in—and immediately faltered. Their bodies sank; their speed crashed as if their limbs had turned to iron.

Wang Jie seized the opening and snapped his finger forward.

The sabre blocked the strike—

—and shattered anyway.

The impact blasted the sabre wielder backward, broken hilt still in hand, slamming it into the slope.

Wang Jie bared his teeth. “If you’ve got the guts, come.”

He sliced two fingers across his own throat in a crude, mocking gesture, then sprinted deeper into the zone. Mountains rolled ahead, ridges and gullies perfect for ambush.

The two Lu Luo Kingdom warriors hesitated. They waited until a third arrived, then charged in together.

To them, this was humiliation. They had to wash it away with his death.

The terrain darkened. Black, needle-like trees rose everywhere, their trunks harder than iron.

Wang Jie moved between them, breathing hard, listening. The three pursuers split up, fanning out to search.

He slipped into a narrow gorge, crouched low, and forced lockforce through his aching joints. Power-Storing Method. Then Qi-Qi Convergence—two currents of qi blending until a faint, transparent flame shimmered over his skin.

His eyes snapped open.

He burst out.

The three Lu Luo Kingdom warriors were close—separated, but not far from one another.

Jia Eight Steps flared beneath him. In a blink he appeared in front of one, arm extended, finger poised to kill.

The warrior curled in on itself, teeth bared, ready to tank the strike.

At the same time, the other two attacked.

They didn’t care that their own ally was in the strike zone. To them, dying in battle was honor.

Wang Jie’s gaze flicked once—then he vanished.

Jia Eight Steps.

A supreme technique of Jia Yi Sect, beyond anything this eighth star chain could truly grasp. These Lu Luo Kingdom warriors looked like Full-Star Realm, but their aura and habits were wrong—copies, mass-produced killers, cannon fodder.

And under 150x gravity, their movements were even slower.

The mountainside was shaved away by crossfire.

The warrior who’d chosen to tank took two hits and nearly got torn apart.

Wang Jie reappeared beside the one on the right and drove a finger through its forehead.

Blood sprayed the ground. The body folded.

The remaining pursuer roared and swung its battle-axe in a wide sweep. “Human—coward!”

Wang Jie flipped past the axe’s edge and came down hard, planting his foot on the warrior’s shoulder and crushing it into the earth.

Stone exploded. The ground split in a long, ugly scar as the warrior was driven into the soil.

The landscape shifted under the violence.

Wang Jie raised his hand again.

Heaven-and-Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

A fingertip manifested above and below, pressing like the world itself had decided to crush that body between heaven and ground. The warrior was pinned, bones cracking under the pressure.

Wang Jie stepped in to finish—

An arrow screamed in from the distance.

Then another.

Wang Jie twisted away and withdrew, dragging himself back into cover.

A short time later, a fifth Full-Star Realm Lu Luo Kingdom warrior arrived. It took one look at the carnage, face twisting with hatred. It grabbed the heavily wounded companion and dragged it away, retreating toward the direction Wang Jie had fled.

Wang Jie let out a slow breath.

He didn’t know how many Lu Luo Kingdom forces were on the planet. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could kill them all.

His priority was survival.

But there was a bigger threat than Full-Star Realm.

The Roaming-Star Realm monster.

If 150x gravity could slow Full-Star Realm, higher gravity would affect Roaming-Star Realm too.

If that Roaming-Star Realm reached him in open ground, he would die.

He needed a place even that monster feared.

Wang Jie checked the map and picked a boundary.

One hundred eightyfold gravity.

Even he couldn’t truly endure it.

But a normal Roaming-Star Realm might not endure it either. If the monster came, that was his only sliver of life.

Days later, the Roaming-Star Realm Lu Luo Kingdom expert entered the 150x zone.

It was the same one that had destroyed Wang Jie’s ship.

It walked through the warped air, studied the battlefield, then moved in the direction Wang Jie had fled.

Wang Jie was waiting at the boundary between zones, hidden among rocks and black trees.

When he saw the Roaming-Star Realm figure, he exhaled once—like a man accepting an ugly gamble—and launched himself forward.

Sword Steps flashed. He slammed into the 180x gravity zone.

The world crushed down on him.

Sword Steps carried him one last blink, punching through a mountain ridge. He crashed into its interior and disappeared into stone.

At the boundary, the Roaming-Star Realm monster stared into the 180x zone and hesitated.

One hundred eightyfold gravity.

Even it was wary. If it went in, and the human somehow endured it, then the human might turn the tables and kill it.

Absurd.

But not impossible.

After a long moment, it didn’t move.

—

Not long after Wang Jie left Mist Peak for Deepweight Star, Sect Master Wen Guan formally confirmed the next master of Mist Peak: Cold Domain Lord Zhu Cheng.

Once Zhu Cheng took the seat, he handled a pile of affairs. Days later, he finally remembered Wang Jie.

He moved immediately.

Using Master Xu’s refusal to acknowledge Wang Jie as a chen refiner as pretext, Zhu Cheng expelled Wang Jie from Mist Peak and stripped him of his Guest Elder position.

By then, Wang Jie had already reached Deepweight Star.

Master Que Yi went to Zhu Cheng at Mist Peak and opposed the decision, refusing to accept the stripping of Wang Jie’s status.

Master Xu argued with Master Que Yi, the two locked in bitter debate over whether Wang Jie truly was a chen refiner.

Days later, Master Luan emerged from seclusion. Xia Xiao Nian had disturbed him, and when he learned that Zhu Cheng had stripped Wang Jie’s Guest Elder status, he flew into a fury and came to argue in person.

Now two Masters—one of artifacts, one of pills—stood against Zhu Cheng. Even the Cold Domain Lord couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure, and it drew Sect Master Wen Guan himself.

In the end, Zhu Cheng had to continue recognizing Wang Jie’s Guest Elder status. But he made one thing clear: if Wang Jie failed to complete the Guest Elder task the sect had assigned, his status would still be revoked.

Everyone knew Wang Jie had left Mist Peak.

Everyone could also see the trap. Zhu Cheng wanted Wang Jie gone long enough to fail the mission. All he needed was to stall a year. After that, even if Wang Jie returned, Zhu Cheng could strip his status for failing his duties.

Zhu Cheng’s aggressiveness baffled many. The only explanation anyone could find was this: Master Xu had targeted Wang Jie so relentlessly that Zhu Cheng, newly installed and dependent on having recruited a powerful chen refiner, felt he had to act.

People tried contacting Wang Jie.

No one could reach him.

Because Wang Jie was pinned under 180x gravity and barely alive.

At the edge of the zone, inertia had carried him into a tight mountain crevice. He lay in darkness, body flattened, unable to move even a finger.

At the limit of the body, even a straw could break you.

This was dozens of straws.

He bit down hard, inching his arms through stone, tearing bloody lines across rock and skin. The weight blurred his sight. His breath came shallow, more out than in.

His heart barely beat.

He had to gather qi at his chest and keep stabbing his own heart with it—stimulating it—because he was terrified that if his heartbeat stopped for even a moment, it would never start again.

Lockforce scraped through his joints like rusted gears.

Even lifting his hand from his waist to his mouth drained him. Sweat and blood streamed together. The world seemed to tilt, spin, and smear. His eyeballs felt as if they were being pressed down into his skull.

His consciousness frayed. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood—until the pain kept him awake.

Finally his right hand reached his mouth. He fumbled a revival pill from the storage ring and swallowed it.

His heartbeat kicked violently. Blood rushed. Strength surged like a sudden return to life.

Wang Jie gasped and forced himself upright, trembling.

Bruises had pooled where his body had been pressed into the ground. His bones felt brittle—too close to snapping.

A voice rolled across the landscape, huge and taunting.

“You’re still alive, right?”

It was the Roaming-Star Realm Lu Luo Kingdom expert, somewhere outside the zone.

Wang Jie didn’t answer. He didn’t even look.

How long had it been since he crashed in here? Half a day, at least. The fact the monster hadn’t followed proved it couldn’t guarantee surviving 180x gravity.

Good.

Let it think he was dead.

“If you’re not dead, you’re unlucky, human,” the voice continued. “Don’t think hiding inside makes you safe.”

“I don’t know what trick you used to survive under this gravity, but you won’t last long.”

“Our Hundred-Star Realm expert is here too. When it leaves seclusion, it’ll crush you.”

Wang Jie’s eyes widened.

Hundred-Star Realm?

So Lu Luo Kingdom had hidden that kind of power inside Frostflower Sect’s territory?

Impossible that the sect knew nothing.

And yet… when his ship exploded, he’d tried to send messages immediately. Nothing had gone through.

Deepweight Star was jammed.

Someone in Frostflower Sect was colluding with Lu Luo Kingdom. And whoever it was, their status had to be high.

This was Deepweight Star—the elder who sealed it without reason, the elder who ordered the communication blackout…

Elder Yan.

A traitor.

The Lu Luo Kingdom voice pressed on, still fishing. “Come out and I’ll spare you. I’ll even let you join Lu Luo Kingdom. When Frostflower Sect falls, you can become the leader of the surrenderers.”

Wang Jie went still.

Falls?

Surrenderers?

So Lu Luo Kingdom planned to wage war against Frostflower Sect.

He had stumbled into something far bigger than a hunt.

The Roaming-Star Realm voice kept talking, trying to lure him, trying to confirm whether he was alive. Wang Jie stayed silent.

At last, the voice turned low and vicious. “Even if you die, I’ll have our experts find your corpse. You’d better be dead. Otherwise you’ll learn what it means to wish for death and never get it.”

Wang Jie leaned back against the stone, breathing hard.

He still had revival pills—but not enough to last forever.

He needed a way out.

With shaking hands, he pulled up the star map again.

Every movement drained him. Every breath hurt.

But if he didn’t find a path, he would die here.