Chapter 154

Chapter 154: Breakthrough

Not long after, a woman with delicate features entered under the old crone’s guidance. She looked no more than thirty, her expression cold as frost, her eyes indifferent.

Zhi Shu followed behind her.

The woman’s lips curved into a smile when she saw Zhi Xing Xue—warm on the surface, razor-cold underneath. “Little Sister Zhi Qing greets Second Sister.”

Zhi Xing Xue looked at her calmly. “It’s been a long time, Fifth Sister.”

Zhi Qing held her gaze. “After all these years, Second Sister—why have you aged so much? Does the water of the Frostflower Sect not suit you?”

“Fifth Sister looks much the same as she did when she was young.”

Zhi Qing laughed, but before she could speak again, Zhi Xing Xue’s voice cut in, quiet and sharp. “How fake.”

Zhi Qing’s smile vanished. “I’m curious, Second Sister. Why did you come back?”

“Getting beaten like a stray dog—wasn’t that humiliating?”

“Face stopped mattering long ago.” Zhi Xing Xue’s tone didn’t change. “You and I are already half in the grave. What’s the point of forcing youth with every breath you take?”

“That’s not for you to worry about.” Zhi Qing’s eyes narrowed. “But since you’ve returned, you’ve caused quite a stir.”

“Not much. If someone disgusts you, you strike back.”

“So you left my side of the battlefield with not a single Lockforce cultivator?” Zhi Qing’s voice chilled. “That breaks the rules, doesn’t it? Those aren’t Suo Xing Jian’s rules.”

“They are mine,” Zhi Xing Xue said. “They are Zhi Xing Xue’s rules.”

Zhi Shu frowned. “Great Aunt-Ancestor Granny, doing this is—”

“Shut up.”

The single word cracked like a whip.

Zhi Shu flinched, anger rising—then it froze.

A brutal cold flooded her from the inside out. In an instant, it felt as if her entire body had been locked in ice, thoughts stalling, blood turning sluggish.

She couldn’t describe it. Every cell seemed to split apart. She tasted death so vividly it stole her breath—a sensation she hadn’t felt in years, not even on the star-cloud battlefield.

Then it was gone.

She could breathe again.

Zhi Qing stepped in front of her, eyes fixed on Zhi Xing Xue. “Second Sister. The little junior is ignorant. Let her words pass.”

“As an elder, striking out like that is excessive.”

Zhi Xing Xue’s gaze turned glacial.

She walked toward Zhi Qing, one step at a time.

Zhi Qing didn’t move, staring back—until Zhi Xing Xue drew close enough that old memories crawled up from the dark.

Back then, she was called Xing Xue—blood. In those years, she had killed too many people in Black-White Heaven, forcing the family through the crisis of Zhi Yu’s sons dying, restoring authority with her own hands.

No one was unafraid of her.

And Zhi Qing had been a little girl, trembling every time she faced her.

That was why she’d chased her sister’s shadow, competing with her in everything. If she couldn’t break fear, she could never walk beyond it.

She’d thought she had.

But as Zhi Xing Xue approached, that fear rose anyway—quiet, relentless.

In Zhi Qing’s mind, Zhi Xing Xue’s eyes turned scarlet.

Zhi Qing took a step back without meaning to.

Just one step.

But in that step, her momentum broke.

Zhi Shu stared, horrified.

She retreated?

The person she’d always worshiped—retreated?

Zhi Xing Xue stopped. Her voice was low. “I disciplined you too little.”

“Now you dare scheme against me.”

“Xiao Qing… I did help you, didn’t I?”

Zhi Qing clenched her fists, forced herself forward, and met her sister’s eyes. “You betrayed the family. You shouldn’t have come back.”

“That isn’t for you to decide.”

“Times have changed.” Zhi Qing’s voice grew harder. “You think you can change the board with an ant.”

“Second Sister, you’re naive. That ant—if I want, I can crush him at any time.”

“Then you’ll face me,” Zhi Xing Xue said simply.

Zhi Qing turned and left.

—

As materials continued to flow in, Wang Jie reached a milestone: three full years in Suo Xing Jian.

Once that term ended, the Steward Hall could forcibly conscript him to the battlefield.

Wu Yun tried.

Her order was intercepted by Zhi Xing Xue, sending another wave through the upper levels.

Zhi Qing stepped into the game personally. She had one goal—drag Wang Jie onto the battlefield. Zhi Xing Xue, backed by several elders and especially by Zhi Ye, held the line.

For a time, the two sides were evenly matched.

Wang Jie waited.

Materials kept arriving.

Whether he was sent to war or not, he needed to deepen the tenth imprint to Tianfan. He’d already absorbed one round before. This time, it should be enough.

It was time for his workout.

He began absorbing Lockforce.

The tenth imprint darkened and deepened, shifting from deep black toward Tianfan.

All of Suo Xing Jian watched his fate.

Wang Jie watched the materials.

When the routine ended, the tenth imprint completed.

And in the instant it reached Tianfan, his body seized.

It compressed violently, driven by those ten imprints.

What—?

He didn’t even have time to react. His flesh began to tighten, and pain crashed down like a tidal wave, swallowing him whole.

He curled on the floor, feeling as if his body would tear itself apart.

Those ten imprints twisted like living things.

Then they melted.

Heat—impossible heat.

It felt as if his flesh was being dissolved.

The darkness melting from the imprints flowed through him, spreading slowly, seeping into muscle and bone.

Sweat evaporated instantly. Mist rose around him, shrouding his body.

No one ever said deepening imprint color would do this. This was what happened when you attempted to break a star.

To reach Star-Breaking Realm, you had to fuse the power in the ten imprints into your flesh, refine and transform your body, then shatter the star. That was the path.

The hardest part should have been the Ten Seals mountain—breaking it, releasing the power, forcing it into the body. That was the true trial.

But Wang Jie hadn’t broken anything.

The Ten Seals melted on their own.

Was he different?

And worse—no one else suffered like this.

He’d watched others break through on his terminal. Their Starforce or Lockforce merged into the body almost naturally. Painful, yes, but manageable.

This was something else.

It was melting.

He felt his flesh turning fluid, sliding, dripping—like he was dissolving alive.

Worse than death.

For the first time, regret slammed into him so hard it made him nauseous. If he’d known, he would have broken through at deep black. Tianfan wasn’t worth this.

But regret didn’t stop the process.

His pupils trembled as he looked down. The melting was slow, like ink bleeding through paper, spreading inch by inch.

How long would it take to reach every corner of his body?

His frame shrank as flesh was consumed.

He snarled and swallowed a recovery pill.

A pill meant for Star-Breaking Realm injuries—one thousand starstone a dose. He had two hundred, bought for emergencies.

The moment it entered him, he managed to breathe again.

He forced himself upright, body shaking. The pain didn’t stop. Along with the burning dissolution came countless needle-pricks, stabbing from within. It was worse than carving rock on Deepweight Star.

No one could help him.

When the pain became unbearable, he swallowed another recovery pill.

And another.

Every time he thought he would black out, he swallowed one more. His mind blurred. His awareness of the outside faded. Even pain became numb—not because it lessened, but because his body could no longer process it.

He didn’t know how much time passed. Only that the pills kept running out.

The darkness had already stained most of his body.

He couldn’t feel anything anymore—yet his flesh continued to compress, reminding him the process was still ongoing.

He kept swallowing recovery pills. Without them, he was certain he would have lost consciousness.

When the last of the two hundred pills was gone, his hazy estimate put the time at six days.

His next workout time was close.

And now the darkness covering him wasn’t black.

It was Tianfan.

Light around him seemed to bend and vanish. Even he couldn’t see himself clearly, as if his existence were being swallowed.

He felt like he was falling into an endless vortex.

As if he were being erased from the universe.

As if the universe rejected him.

When the final corner of his body was covered, his heart jolted.

A piercing cold surged upward, straight through his skull.

His mind separated from his body.

He seemed to see himself—yet Tianfan blurred the shape.

Was that him?

Why could he see himself?

Had he died?

His heartbeat grew fainter and fainter.

But his thoughts grew sharper, clearer, as if distance from his body made his mind brighter.

Instinct screamed at him: Do not leave. Do not leave your body. Never.

Then a faint sound drifted near—music, thin and distant.

Memory snapped into place: the journey back from Deepweight Star, the same drifting instruments, the yellow paper scattered across the ground, the figure that had pierced the ship, the face too clear.

A dead person.

He couldn’t die.

Not now.

Never.

But his body felt farther away, his heartbeat weaker, and panic surged. He couldn’t die, couldn’t die, couldn’t—

“Now begin the eighth set of Basic Fitness Routine.”

A voice hauled him back like a hook through bone.

Wang Jie’s eyes flew open.

He tore a revival pill from his storage ring and swallowed it. He only had two. He couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Still shaking, he forced himself upright.

And he began the routine.

What had that been?

Had he seen himself? Heard the instruments?

Hallucination or omen, he didn’t know.

His body moved on instinct. Within his wrist guard, the warm current surged stronger than ever, flooding through him.

As the movements continued, the Tianfan coating his skin began to fade, sinking inward, merging into flesh.

Deep black.

Light black.

Dark gray, then pale gray, then ash-white—until only an outline remained.

Then even that disappeared.

The routine wasn’t long, but Wang Jie felt every second like an entire lifetime.

When the guiding voice vanished and the set ended, he collapsed on his back, gasping, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes.

It felt like he’d walked through a death he couldn’t describe.

Then—thump.

His heartbeat roared back, loud and heavy.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Itching exploded across his entire body.

Wang Jie jerked upright.

It didn’t hurt anymore.

The agony was gone, without him knowing when it had left.

Lockforce had fully fused into his flesh. A layer of nearly black grime coated his skin.

That sensation was familiar.

He rushed to wash. When he looked in the mirror, he froze.

Was he taller?

By about five centimeters.

And his strength—

He flexed his fingers. Power pulsed there, heavier than before. Far heavier.

He measured by instinct, using Ten Seals as the baseline.

If a normal Ten Seals cultivator’s strength was one, then he had always been a hundred times that.

One hundred.

A normal Star-Breaking Realm’s starting strength should be ten times a Ten Seals cultivator.

Ten.

Before, he had been one hundred.

Now, he felt at least one hundred thirty—maybe one hundred fifty.

And that comparison wasn’t relative to his old self. It was relative to a Ten Seals cultivator.

Why had the increase been so extreme?

There was no doubt he had reached Star-Breaking Realm. Even without the traditional breaking of the Ten Seals mountain and the star itself, the realm had arrived.

His breakthrough method was simply different.

He was Star-Breaking Realm now.