Chapter 140

Chapter 140: I Want Everything

Even a Full-Star Realm expert couldn’t pin Wang Jie down with lockforce alone, but the crushing pressure that surged at him left no room to dodge.

Wang Jie could only brace and shove back with his own lockforce—yet he was still blasted backward.

Lie Qiu sprang after him, the spear tip flashing with icy light as she drove in.

Countless cultivators swarmed around the battlefield, but none of them could interfere.

Miao Tai tried to retreat, only to be singled out. One attacker after another pressed him, forcing him to fight for his life on the fringes.

Clang after clang—spear against sword—sparks burst into the air as shockwaves repeatedly scoured the ground. Wang Jie’s raw strength and Lie Qiu’s lockforce were evenly matched. Neither could gain the upper hand.

“You really think you can deal with me?” Lie Qiu snarled. “Without that creature, what are you relying on?”

“Moon-Point!”

Her spear whirled and crashed down. With each step, countless afterimages bloomed—overlapping crescent arcs that stacked from every angle until Wang Jie had nowhere to advance and nowhere to retreat.

Wang Jie slipped through with Jia Eight Steps. The space in front of him became a blur of phantom spearheads. His gaze sharpened as Qi Sight ignited—One Gaze, Three Thousand.

His body turned weightless, drifting like a willow catkin through the spear shadows. As if he were stepping from crescent to crescent, he slid in close—sword in one hand, the other palm slamming into Lie Qiu’s shoulder.

Her shoulder went numb. A jolt ran through half her body as bones fractured. She staggered back, face twisting in disbelief.

Impossible.

He dodged her Moon-Point?

Wang Jie’s sword swept sideways.

Lie Qiu barely raised her spear in time.

Boom!

She was hurled away, crashing into a distant mountain range. The earth caved into a massive crater, and the mountains began to collapse.

Wang Jie lifted a hand.

Heaven-and-Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

Two gigantic fingers pressed down from above and below, grinding toward Lie Qiu like a heavenly millstone.

The cultivators around them were shaken to the core, yet they still attacked the fingers in a frenzy, throwing themselves at them without regard for their lives.

Lie Qiu gritted her teeth and forced herself upright. Her long hair fell loose over her shoulders as the lockforce in her body erupted without restraint. She stopped the crushing fingers by brute force alone. Wind-Seeking Star trembled.

Bloodshot veins spread through her eyes. Half her body was numb, but she still planted her stance.

“Moon-Point—Broken Spear!”

She leapt, spear angled downward.

But her target wasn’t Wang Jie. With Jia Eight Steps, he could dodge any direct strike.

Her target was Wind-Seeking Star.

She meant to shatter the planet and leave Wang Jie exposed in open space.

Miao Tai’s face drained of color. The cultivators on Wind-Seeking Star panicked, scrambling for the nearest ships.

Wang Jie looked up.

Lie Qiu wasn’t fast—she was charging. The spear shaft shook as power gathered. The spear tip visibly began to melt, lockforce compressing into a terrifying point.

“Either get out,” she said, her voice rolling across heaven and earth, “or die with me!”

She couldn’t afford to lose her position among the Four Alliances. Whatever this man’s purpose was, she’d rather drag him into death than give in.

She was Lie Qiu. She would not surrender.

Wang Jie watched her calmly.

Back in Yi Sword Heaven, they had been evenly matched. Even with Sword Rig, he’d struggled to put her down.

But now he had One Gaze, Three Thousand and Chen Art. It wasn’t his realm that had changed—it was his fighting. The details. The precision.

He could win.

And she wanted mutual destruction.

“It doesn’t have to come to that,” Wang Jie said. “I just want materials.”

Lie Qiu’s jaw clenched. “One last time. Leave—or die together.”

Wang Jie exhaled, almost amused. “I don’t know whether to admire you or call you stupid. Since I came, do you really think I’ll be scared off?”

Lie Qiu’s eyes snapped wide. She drove her spear downward.

“Then we die together!”

Wang Jie stepped onto Sword Steps and shot upward, charging straight into the descending spear shadows.

Lie Qiu’s expression turned feral. He was going to take it head-on?

Through Zong Cheng Ping, she already knew Wang Jie was only at Ten Seals. Ten Seals fighting her at all was outrageous—but there had to be a limit.

She had no idea how he’d persuaded Zong Cheng Ping to stop pressuring him.

But this strike?

He could not catch it.

Wang Jie raised his left arm.

The instant the spear point fell, he swung his arm up and smashed forward—

with his bracer.

The impact detonated like thunder.

Heaven and earth shuddered. The force drove down through Wang Jie and obliterated the ground beneath them. The collision’s shockwave ripped outward, and countless cultivators died instantly.

Miao Tai felt the invisible blast hit him like a wall. His chest seized. He spat blood.

The land buckled and tore. Cracks split open so deep they exposed rolling dark-red magma. Even the sky seemed to dim.

Wang Jie planted his right hand against his left arm, gritting through the pressure as he held the strike in place.

Lie Qiu froze.

How…?

Her gaze locked on his bracer.

A Chen Artifact?

Three-tribulation, or higher?

She didn’t know. She only knew he had taken her full-power blow head-on.

And the longer he held it, the more the strike bled away its destructive power.

As the force began to wane, Lie Qiu suddenly released the spear and slammed down with both palms.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed.

Her aura wasn’t in her palms.

It was still on the spear.

A feint.

He lifted his right hand and met her palm strike head-on.

Lie Qiu’s right leg snapped up. She kicked the spear shaft, sending it whipping around in a circle to smash into Wang Jie from the side.

Sword Steps flowed under his feet. With a sharp bang, he knocked the spear away—then drove a palm into Lie Qiu’s hands.

The impact nearly broke her arms. The remaining force blasted her backward in a long arc before she crashed down.

Wang Jie landed lightly. The spear fell nearby, and he caught it.

All eyes locked on him.

Many had died to the shockwaves, but most still lived. They stared at the victor with dread.

Wang Jie had won.

Miao Tai rushed forward, breathless with excitement. “Congratulations, Lord—you defeated Lie Qiu!”

Wang Jie carried the spear and walked toward where she had fallen.

Lie Qiu lay on the ground, half her bones fractured. Her hands trembled, numb and useless. She was hurt badly enough that she couldn’t even rise.

Smoke churned across the sky. Beneath her, heat radiated—magma flowed through the cracks in the earth.

She had lost.

Back in Yi Sword Heaven, she’d been sure she could win. Why was she losing now?

She replayed the exchange again and again. No matter what she did, he saw through it.

How?

The scrape of a spear tip against stone reached her—an old, habitual sound.

She turned her head.

Not far away, Wang Jie stopped and casually tossed the spear back to her.

“Again?” he asked.

Lie Qiu stared at him. “You won. Kill me, cripple me—do whatever you want.”

Wang Jie sat on a nearby rock, rolling his shoulders as if easing fatigue from his bones. “I told you. I don’t want a place in the Four Alliances. I just want materials.”

Lie Qiu’s brow knit. “What are you talking about?”

Wang Jie gave her a faint grin. “Protection money.”

Her eyes sharpened.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “If you don’t pay, I’ll come beat you up every so often. I’ve got a mask—I can change my face. Do you really think the trash under you can stop me?”

He leaned back. “Or are you planning to disappear from public forever, Lie Qiu?”

“Wang Jie,” she said coldly, “I’d rather die than yield.”

“Then tell me,” Wang Jie replied, voice turning sharper, “how did you become one of the Four Alliances in the first place?”

He stared her down. “Someone’s backing you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting where you are.”

Lie Qiu fell silent.

“Choose,” Wang Jie said.

She tried to push herself up. Her body was too numb. The heat rising from below grew worse by the moment.

“How much?” she ground out.

“Everything.”

Lie Qiu’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Buying your life,” Wang Jie said. “Is it expensive?”

“It’s impossible,” she snapped. “If I give you everything, I’ll have nothing left. How am I supposed to explain that to the people above me?”

“That’s your problem,” Wang Jie said easily. “Let them come find trouble with me, then. We’ll see if they’ve got the ability.”

Lie Qiu studied him for a long moment, then finally lowered her gaze.

Materials were external things. She had no reason to die for them.

This wasn’t surrender. It absolutely wasn’t.

And it definitely wasn’t “protection money.”

Supported by others, she forced herself to stand with the spear as a crutch, watching Wang Jie’s retreating back with raw unwillingness.

“You’re not only going after me, are you?” she called out.

“Of course not.”

Lie Qiu’s mouth twisted. “Want me to set someone up for you?”

Wang Jie glanced back, a smile in his eyes. “That would be great.”

Lie Qiu spat blood. “Go. Bring Brother Feng over. Tell him I’m going to butcher that bastard Wang Jie.”

Then her voice turned hard. “And lock down all news from Wind-Seeking Star. If anyone leaks it—death without mercy.”

Wang Jie raised an eyebrow. She was cursing him to his face.

He let it go. After all, she was about to hand him a mountain of materials.

And she did.

Lie Qiu’s hoard was enormous—far more than everything Wang Jie had gathered before.

Still, it didn’t match what someone who controlled a slaughterstone planet should have had.

The reason was simple: every year she had to hand over most of her materials to whoever stood behind her. What Wang Jie took was only this year’s share and her personal stash.

As for who that person was, she refused to say even at the cost of her life.

Wang Jie didn’t press. He didn’t know them anyway.

Could their background really be larger than Elder Zhi Xing Xue’s?

He didn’t believe it.

With Lie Qiu arranging the meeting, he didn’t need to go hunting. And he wasn’t worried she’d try to ambush him—not in her condition. Her subordinates wouldn’t matter.

So he stayed and waited.

“Time to start…” Wang Jie murmured.

He absorbed lockforce while doing his exercises, and at the same time drove Heaven-Reversal Path, funneling the power toward his Ten Seals.

The materials vanished at a terrifying pace.

To store them, he had nearly a hundred storage rings. Most of them hadn’t even belonged to Lie Qiu—they were Black-White Heaven’s. But now they were his.

One or two rounds of exercises still weren’t enough to completely fill an imprint.

But the deep black inside him was already sinking toward a devouring darkness.

Wang Jie could feel it: his imprint had become frighteningly tough.

Now the only question was how to break Ten Seals that had become a mountain.

“How did you break Ten Seals back then?” he asked Lie Qiu on Wind-Seeking Star.

Lie Qiu didn’t want to speak to him. She didn’t even want to look at him. Yet this man’s shamelessness had no bottom—he came to her anyway.

Didn’t he know they were still enemies?

“I forgot,” she said flatly.

“You forgot?” Wang Jie blinked. “That’s one of the biggest moments of your life.”

Lie Qiu didn’t answer.

Wang Jie dragged over a table and placed his right hand on it. “Come on. Let’s compare.”

Lie Qiu stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Compare what?”

“Arm wrestling.”

“What?”

“Arm wrestling. It’s simple.”

Lie Qiu almost laughed. This man was sick. Arm wrestling?

His strength was already higher than hers. What was the point?

Then she looked at him again and caught something in his eyes—strangely earnest.

Wang Jie didn’t want to do it either, but one of the requirements for Bone-Motion Art was to win arm wrestling against ten “professionals” who were two major realms above him. Whether “professional” meant craft refiner, pillmaster, or something else, he didn’t know. He only knew she was Full-Star Realm.

If it worked once, it was worth trying.

“Come on,” he urged.

“You’re serious?” Lie Qiu said slowly.

“Obviously.”

Lie Qiu stood to leave. “You’re insane.”

Wang Jie’s voice dropped into cold steel. “Take one more step and I’ll beat you.”

Lie Qiu’s face hardened. She turned back, glaring. “I gave you materials, not permission to humiliate me.”

Wang Jie nodded toward the table.

In the end, she sat.

Their hands clasped.

Wang Jie won with humiliating ease.

“Thanks,” he said, and stood.

Then he walked away.

Lie Qiu sat there for a long time, staring at the table, speechless.