Chapter 162

Chapter 162: Nine-Form Diagram

Wu Yun stared at Wang Jie with naked unwillingness—then bolted.

She leaped back the way she’d come, fleeing toward the starry sky.

Wang Jie snapped his hand up. Dozens of swords shot out in pursuit.

Sword Rig: One-Line Sky.

Wu Yun whirled and released Black Snow Starforce in a towering curtain, blocking every blade. Then she broke out of Yi Sword Heaven and vanished into the void.

She escaped.

The moment she left Yi Sword Heaven, the Black Snow Starforce dissolved like smoke.

She was nearly empty.

Wang Jie stood there, swaying. He could only watch her run. He couldn’t chase, and even if he could, he wouldn’t catch her.

He swallowed a Recovery Pill and forced his breathing steady.

At his chest, shattered mask fragments slid free and fell.

That was what had saved him. Wu Yun’s strike should have ended him, yet the mask had taken the worst of it.

Without that, he wouldn’t have had the strength to borrow power with the IOU slip. And without that borrowed surge, Wu Yun would never have been forced back.

He stared into the distance, chest tight.

So this was Black-White Heaven’s true strength—its strange starforce cultivators. If he hadn’t had so many methods, even teaming up with Qiu Chou would have meant certain death.

No wonder they looked down on lockforce cultivators.

Wu Yun’s starforce reserves weren’t even larger than Qiu Chou’s lockforce. She won because her power was strange.

Black Snow Starforce crushed lockforce outright.

Wang Jie brushed the last of the mask fragments from his chest.

What a waste.

The land of Yi Sword Heaven had been scarred by the battle. Who knew how many creatures had died in the disaster.

He turned.

A head protruded from the ground nearby.

Qiu Chou.

Most of his body was still buried.

Wang Jie walked over and sat down with a weary exhale, watching him.

Qiu Chou’s eyes were still clouded from Black Snow; he couldn’t see. But he knew who was sitting in front of him.

If it were Wu Yun, he’d already be dead.

“She… left?” Qiu Chou asked.

“Yeah.”

Relief shook Qiu Chou’s voice. “Good. Good… We—cough—we drove her off together. Do you even know who she is? She’s a steward from the Steward Hall. Black-White Heaven stewards aren’t something ordinary cultivators can resist. They study Great Domain Scripture and carve their way through battlefields. That woman’s ruthless.

“Good thing you and I worked together. Otherwise… otherwise we’d have died.”

Wang Jie gave a short laugh. “You’ve got nerve. You shoved me out to die, and now you’re acting like nothing happened?”

“I didn’t!” Qiu Chou insisted. “You shoved me out before too. I just—I just didn’t find the right timing to strike.

“And you’re the one who dragged me into this. If you hadn’t told me she was Wu Yun, she wouldn’t have chased me at all, right? Right?”

Wang Jie nodded slowly. “True.”

Qiu Chou latched onto it. “So we’re even.”

“We’re even on that,” Wang Jie said. His voice cooled. “Not on everything.”

Qiu Chou went still. “What do you mean? I saved you. We’ve been cooperating this whole time. If it’s about that sword—fine, I don’t want it. We’ll call that even too. We’ll be done.”

Wang Jie didn’t answer.

Qiu Chou’s breathing sped up. His mind raced for an escape route. Both their personal terminals were damaged—Wang Jie’s partly, his destroyed. He couldn’t contact the outside world.

But he could contact his ship.

As long as it wasn’t too far, he could remote-control it back.

Time crawled.

Days passed.

When Wang Jie’s routine training time arrived, he swallowed a Recovery Pill and ran through the set that restored his body. When he finished, his presence was steady again—fully recovered.

Only then did he speak.

“With Wu Yun’s injuries, how long will it take her to recover?”

Qiu Chou’s wounds had worsened over these days without treatment. His face was ghost-pale. His voice sounded like it might snap. “Mostly… mostly external injuries. We don’t cultivate strange starforce, so recovery isn’t hard, cough.

“The hard part is replenishing starforce. Her starforce is strange. It’s almost impossible to refill in Lockspace unless she returns to her source.

“In Lockspace, at best, she can only replenish ordinary starforce.”

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed. “Then don’t worry. Once she’s down to ordinary starforce, you and I can kill her.”

Qiu Chou forced a laugh that sounded like he was choking. “Right… right.”

Wang Jie reached down, grabbed Qiu Chou by the collar, and yanked him out of the ground. Qiu Chou started to thank him—

Only to be tossed aside like trash.

He swallowed the insult along with blood.

Wang Jie pulled out an object and set it on his lap.

Nine-Form Diagram.

“Come,” Wang Jie said. “Move.”

Qiu Chou blinked. “Move?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Wang Jie said flatly. “You can see again. Walk. Jump. Run. Fly—every movement you can think of. Do them all.”

Qiu Chou stiffened. “Why?”

Wang Jie’s gaze was ice-cold. “Because I said so. And don’t think about running. The starry sky is still far. You’re not Wu Yun. You won’t escape.”

Qiu Chou didn’t understand. But he obeyed.

He walked. He jumped. He sprinted. He leaped and twisted and contorted into every posture he could, stealing glances toward Wang Jie with growing dread.

Wang Jie never looked away from the Nine-Form Diagram.

He was copying him.

As Qiu Chou moved, the figures on the diagram grew clearer. The Nine-Form Diagram had nine panels. Complete all nine, and the copy would be finished.

Five panels were already done.

Wang Jie forced Qiu Chou through more and more motions—thinking poses, flexing poses, awkward poses, even ridiculous faces.

Humiliation burned across Qiu Chou’s cheeks. He couldn’t refuse.

At last, the final panel sharpened into place.

The nine panels merged, and an impossibly lifelike Qiu Chou appeared on the diagram—so vivid it looked like he might step off the page.

Wang Jie stared.

Too similar.

No—this wasn’t similarity. This was identity.

If Qiu Chou weren’t so severely injured, Wang Jie suspected the diagram could have even copied his strength.

Qiu Chou was still moving, breathing hard.

Wang Jie loosened his hold. The Nine-Form Diagram rose into the air on its own.

Then Wang Jie stepped forward.

He walked through the diagram.

It rippled like water.

And when he stepped out the other side—

Wang Jie was gone.

In his place stood Qiu Chou.

A second Qiu Chou.

Qiu Chou stared at the duplicate, mind blank.

The same stance. The same expression. The same aura. Even a tiny, half-healed scar only Qiu Chou knew about was copied perfectly.

“What… what is that?” Qiu Chou whispered.

The duplicate smiled.

Meaning Qiu Chou smiled.

A cold horror tore through Qiu Chou’s chest. Seeing his own face smile at him felt like staring into a grave.

He turned and ran.

He was dead. This man had never planned to let him live.

A hand lifted.

Lockforce seized him from the air and dragged him back, slamming him to the ground. Qiu Chou erupted with lockforce, trying to break free—but against Wang Jie at full strength, he couldn’t even struggle.

“Don’t kill me,” Qiu Chou sobbed. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

Wang Jie looked down at him, eyes like ice. “Our old debts are settled. But you’ve seen my secret.”

He raised his hand.

Qiu Chou’s face went bloodless. “I won’t leave Lockspace! Everything I’ve collected, I’ll give you—materials, pills, a star map to hide in star-cloud battlefield, I—there’s more, I—”

The palm fell.

A single strike ended it.

Wang Jie didn’t hesitate.

He had used Qiu Chou to fight Wu Yun. Qiu Chou had used him as a shield. Neither of them was innocent. And Qiu Chou had always been an enemy Wang Jie intended to remove.

An enemy was an enemy.

He used Qiu Chou’s blood to open the storage ring. Inside was little: a small stash of starstone, some pills, and basic supplies.

Anything valuable had been hidden elsewhere, just like Nie Zhou.

Wang Jie hadn’t expected to take everything. A person couldn’t be too greedy.

He stepped through the Nine-Form Diagram again, returning to his own form.

He didn’t know how long the copied appearance would last without resetting. He didn’t care to test it.

When he reached Yi Sword Heaven’s entrance again, two ships sat there: Qiu Chou’s and his own, which he had remote-controlled back.

Qiu Chou’s ship was wrecked.

It had been intact during the fight. Wu Yun must have crippled it on her way out.

She hadn’t planned to spare anyone.

Wang Jie turned to board his ship—

And stopped.

A figure approached from the distance.

Lie Qiu.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re still alive?”

Lie Qiu’s face was drawn, her voice bitter. “Luck. Your ship happened to drift past me. I grabbed onto it and let it drag me here.

“Otherwise I would’ve died out there.”

Wang Jie’s gaze sharpened with killing intent. “And you still dare show your face?”

Lie Qiu swallowed. “I was forced. I didn’t expect Wu Yun to come personally either.

“She bet everything. If she killed you, even if Black-White Heaven discovered it, she could change identities and keep her steward position—maybe even rise higher.”

“But you led her to me,” Wang Jie said coldly. “That’s a fact.”

Lie Qiu didn’t deny it. “Then kill me. It wouldn’t be unfair. But you said you’d spare me if I brought the ship to Yi Sword Heaven. And I can buy my life.”

“With what?”

“An odd planet.”

Wang Jie’s eyes flickered. “You really have one?”

Lie Qiu gave a bitter smile. “You think Lockspace keeps changing hands because we offend someone above? That’s not the reason. Now we all know Lockspace is tied to Zhi Qing. With someone like that behind it, who dares compete?

“The real reason is odd planets.

“The higher-ups have been searching for odd planets for ages. If they can’t find one, they replace the people in charge—or wipe the slate clean and reshuffle everything.”

“And if someone does find an odd planet,” she continued, “they still get replaced… or taken out.”

Lie Qiu’s eyes were tired. “We’ve all been looking. I don’t know what anyone else found, but I hid one.”

Wang Jie tilted his head. “What kind?”

Lie Qiu thought carefully. “One that deflects attacks. Or folds them—more noticeably.

“On that planet, when you strike, your attack gets folded and shifted without you noticing, redirected in a different direction.”

Wang Jie’s gaze sharpened with interest. A good place.

“Fine,” he said at last.

But his voice stayed flat. “If you’re lying, you’ll die.”