Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Full Recovery

By the time Wang Jie returned to the crater’s edge, the woman was gone.

Yan Si found calamity materials underground, but it was obvious they weren’t as valuable as the piece she’d taken. His expression was ugly.

Hong Jian barely looked at the loot. He focused on the squad, counting casualties.

The battle had been worse than anyone expected. No one had imagined the Moon Plant could drag a tide of mutated plants out of the earth.

More than half the squad was gone.

Over thirty cultivators had died outright, and everyone who had qualified for the hundred-person squad had been at least fourth seal.

Jin Ling Base had lost a chunk of its elite.

But the Moon Plant was dead.

That alone made it worth the blood.

Lian Fei was shocked Wang Jie had survived. She had ordered someone to watch for a chance to kill him.

The watcher had died instead.

She didn’t suspect Wang Jie. In her mind, it was simply bad luck. Anything could happen in a battle like that.

No one spoke much on the return.

Hong Jian reorganized what remained of the squad and ordered an immediate march back to Jin Ling.

“Chief Commander,” Feng Yu said, “should we rest first?”

Hong Jian didn’t hesitate. “No. After the moonlit night, mutated creatures undergo metamorphosis. They’ll be stronger. Staying in the wild is too dangerous.”

He gave the order to move.

Feng Yu could only go relay it to Yan Si.

Yan Si stared in the direction the woman had disappeared, anger and unease knotting together.

She wasn’t simple.

Jia Eight Steps. Lingguang Sword—both top-tier arts from the martial hall. Now she had calamity materials on top of that.

If she broke through to the eighth seal…

Where would that leave him?

He went to Hong Jian and argued, voice tight. Hong Jian refused something—Wang Jie didn’t catch the details, only the harsh tone and sharp gestures.

Feng Yu saw Wang Jie again on the way back and froze.

How was he still alive?

Once or twice could be luck. This was the third time.

Even fourth seal fighters wouldn’t survive three death traps.

Something was wrong with him.

They barely made it back to the base before another piece of news spread, drowning out the grim satisfaction of killing the Moon Plant.

One of the Three Gods and Five Peaks—the Winning Hand—was dead.

Wang Jie froze when he heard it.

The Winning Hand… dead?

The Three Gods and Five Peaks were the eight strongest people alive in the apocalypse. People called them gods—not because they were divine, but because the world needed symbols, and because their destructive power was beyond ordinary understanding.

And now one of them had fallen.

“The Winning Hand died to a trialist,” someone said in the streets. “That trialist killed him and declared the Three Gods and Five Peaks were all trash.”

“What’s a trialist?”

“I heard something about a sect… Jia-something Sect?”

“No idea. It sounds insane…”

The base churned with rumor.

Hong Jian’s face grew heavier by the hour. The situation was sliding toward disaster.

Yan Si wanted Jin Ling Base’s calamity materials. That was already too much.

But these other trialists—killing the Three Gods and Five Peaks outright—were worse.

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

War slave.

The term flashed through Hong Jian’s mind.

Maybe Yan Si hadn’t lied.

Feng Yu found Hong Jian and delivered Yan Si’s message. “Yan Si said that if we accept his conditions, he’ll protect Jin Ling Base. If we refuse… other trialists won’t be so reasonable.”

She hesitated, then forced herself to continue. “He also said… you’ll be the next Winning Hand.”

Hong Jian didn’t answer. He stared past the walls, eyes dark with thought.

Wang Jie didn’t linger.

He went straight to see Si Yan.

Si Yan eyed him up and down. “You actually killed the Moon Plant? Well? Did you get anything good?”

“Later,” Wang Jie said. “Is it ready?”

Si Yan rolled his eyes. “Kid, you’re lucky you ran into me. No one else could mix this in a few days.”

He handed Wang Jie a bag filled with white paste.

Wang Jie stared at it. “This will work?”

“Hawks have the sharpest eyes. Medicine made from their eggs is best for brain injuries.”

“You used all of it?”

“I kept some back,” Si Yan said, scowling. “I was going to mix you a dose too. You should recover first.”

Wang Jie tried to refuse, but Si Yan cut him off. “No one else can use it. It won’t fix Old Nine, and Old Five is already recovering. What else are you going to do?”

Wang Jie took the bag and left.

Shou Qing Group was about to depart.

His time was short.

He found them outside the south gate and met Wu Fei.

Wang Jie handed him the bag. “Medicine made from a hawk egg. It might help.”

Wu Fei took it, eyes narrowing. “The boss won’t agree to use something from you. We’ve tried plenty of precious calamity materials over the years. None worked.”

“That’s his son,” Wang Jie said, voice flat. “Instead of sulking, he should try.”

He held Wu Fei’s gaze. “The hawk is second only to the Moon Plant. Even Shou Qing Group might not be able to get a hawk egg. Even the trialists want them.”

Wu Fei didn’t ask how Wang Jie obtained it. He only nodded once. “Alright.”

Wang Jie turned to leave.

Wu Fei’s voice followed him. “Too bad the one who died wasn’t Zuo Tian.”

Wang Jie paused. His eyes went cold. “Good thing it wasn’t Zuo Tian.”

He walked away.

Wu Fei watched his back and sighed.

Zuo Tian.

One of the Three Gods.

In the following days, word of the Jia Yi Sect and the trialists spread through Jin Ling Base—and through other bases as well.

Another term spread even faster.

War slave.

What was a war slave?

A slave of war.

When the trial ended, every cultivator of Blue Star would become a war slave. Panic spread like plague. The phrase interstellar battlefield sounded like an abyss, an unmarked grave waiting to swallow countless lives.

No one wanted to become a slave.

Wang Jie stayed home in the Wastewater Zone. Madam Zhao’s people didn’t come looking for trouble again.

It hadn’t been a blood feud. There was no reason to keep harassing a guide.

A few days later, Wang Jie received Si Yan’s medicine for his own injuries.

Ointment again.

He spread it across his skin. It sank in quickly, leaving an itch under the surface.

Then the voice returned.

“Begin the eighth basic fitness routine now.”

Wang Jie stood up at once.

He checked the time.

Seven days.

Exactly seven days since the last time.

“Get ready.”

Wang Jie spread his legs.

“Start.”

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

The heat current linked through his body, far stronger than the first time. And beneath it, something else moved—another strange sensation flowing through him.

Si Yan’s medicine?

The effect was too strong. Too immediate.

It couldn’t be the ointment alone.

Then the only answer was the wrist guard. The routine was amplifying the medicine.

Wang Jie steadied his breathing and focused on the movements.

The sensation was unreal—like a severed limb being stitched back on, like wounds knitting closed before his mind could even accept it. The healing was fast enough to feel wrong.

His breath, blocked for two years, opened like a door being kicked in. His imprint power began to boil on its own, wrapping him in a misty haze.

When the routine finally ended, Wang Jie collapsed onto the floor, drenched. Sweat pooled beneath him.

Then a stench hit him.

Worse than the Wastewater Zone.

He looked down and saw a layer of gray grime coating his arms, his chest, his legs—filth drawn from inside him as if his body had been wrung out.

Disgusting.

He stood, flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders.

He was exhausted.

And he had never felt better.

The old injuries were gone.

All of them.

His body felt reborn—lighter than it had been even two years ago.

He closed his eyes and felt his imprint power.

For two years, his cultivation had been stagnant—only enough to maintain, only enough to recover.

Now, with his injuries healed, it felt like years of suppressed power surged forward all at once. He hadn’t just returned to seventh seal combat strength.

He had risen beyond it.

The eighth seal no longer felt unreachable.

Wang Jie looked down at the wrist guard.

Si Yan’s medicine wasn’t that miraculous.

The wrist guard was.

It had rewritten his life.

Now that he had recovered, there were things he needed to settle.

That same day, a woman appeared outside Jin Ling’s east gate.

One sword strike cut through the thick wall and severed a chunk clean off. Under the stunned gaze of countless cultivators, she demanded Hong Jian and Yan Si come out.

Wang Jie heard the news as soon as he stepped outside.

He had planned to go to Yan Si the night before and take the wolf king’s three eyes. But he’d been filthy, so he’d cleaned himself and slept, intending to handle it the next day.

He hadn’t expected this.

He followed the crowd to the east gate.

There she stood—the woman who had made the final strike in the battle against the Moon Plant.

Back then, Wang Jie hadn’t seen her clearly. He had only sensed that she was seventh seal at minimum.

Now he saw her.

She was a trialist.

A purple veil covered her face, fluttering in the wind, sometimes revealing the pale curve of her neck. He couldn’t see her expression, but her presence was unmistakable—calm, distant, certain.

And stronger than Yan Si.

Stronger than the boy Wang Jie had killed.

Stronger than the trialist Yan Si had murdered.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed.

Eighth seal.

No doubt.

The pressure she radiated wasn’t just power—it was realm. Height. A difference in kind.

Hong Jian arrived and faced her, expression grave. He felt it too. “You broke through to the eighth seal?”

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

The woman’s eyes shone like stars. “If I hadn’t, you still wouldn’t be my match.”

“What do you want?” Hong Jian asked.

“Hand over this base,” she said calmly. “And obey me.”

Hong Jian frowned. “For what purpose?”

“That’s not for you to ask.”

Hong Jian drew his blade. “Then you won’t take it.”

The woman’s gaze drifted toward the walls of Jin Ling Base. “Where is Yan Si? Tell him to come out.”

“The base is mine,” Hong Jian said, voice hard. “If you want it, step over my corpse.”

The woman looked back at him. “Protecting your home is understandable. Using you to make an example isn’t ideal.”

Her voice stayed soft, almost gentle. “Bring Yan Si out. Let your people see what a real gap looks like.”

Then her tone sharpened, just a fraction. “Or is he afraid to come out?”

Yan Si appeared on the wall above, then leapt down, landing in front of Hong Jian. His eyes locked on the woman.

“Who says I’m afraid?” Yan Si demanded. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

The woman studied him. “A mere Blazing Flame Body won’t stop me. Do you have any new moves?”

Her voice turned almost bored. “If not, leave.”

Yan Si’s brows furrowed. “I’ve never seen you in the martial hall. Yet you can use Jia Eight Steps. Where are you from?”

The woman moved.

For an instant, the world blurred.

Then she was standing right in front of Yan Si—close enough that the wind from her passage stirred his hair.

Fast.

Unbelievably fast.