Chapter 170

Chapter 170: Fated One

“Your Excellency is the shopkeeper?”

Wang Jie gave a faint hum, gaze fixed on the street as though he were waiting for someone to step out of the tide of passersby—the fated one.

“I want to buy gravity starstone.”

“This shop only sells pills,” Wang Jie said. “I don’t sell starstone.”

“Shopkeeper, your pills are overpriced. Hardly anyone can afford them. With this many gravity starforce pills, how long do you plan to sit on them?”

“No rush. I’m not short on money.”

Gao Chi’s brow tightened. His Roaming-Star Realm aura rolled out, pressing down like a heavy tide.

Wang Jie lifted his eyes and met it head-on. “Are you trying to break the rules of the Four-Dao Market? And don’t forget where you are—this is the Zhi Academy.”

In the Four-Dao Market, disputes were settled with money. Anyone who tried to bully others with cultivation would be expelled.

Gao Chi might be Roaming-Star Realm, but he didn’t dare challenge the Four-Dao Market—especially not here. If word got out that he’d tried to force a sale inside the Zhi Academy, his reputation would be finished.

He drew his aura back. “My apologies. I was impatient.”

He hesitated, then tried again, voice lowered. “But this pill truly won’t sell in the Zhi Academy. Please reconsider, Shopkeeper.”

Wang Jie waved him off.

Gao Chi opened his mouth to argue, but footsteps approached. Wang Jie’s eyes sharpened.

The fated one had arrived.

“I am Xiao Jian Mu,” the newcomer said, bowing politely. “I’ve come to visit Master.”

He looked young, but his gaze was steady and mature, his presence restrained yet firm. His manners were impeccable.

Wang Jie gestured for him to sit.

Xiao Jian Mu sat down and studied him. “I wonder if I have fate with Master?”

“You do,” Wang Jie said without hesitation.

Xiao Jian Mu’s eyes lit up. “I’ve encountered troubles and hope Master can enlighten me. This is one hundred starsea stones.”

Wang Jie’s reputation was beginning to spread. He’d only read fortunes for two people, yet the entire market was already buzzing with speculation.

“You once wronged a woman,” Wang Jie said.

Xiao Jian Mu frowned. “No. I study the Array Dao day and night. I’ve never had any emotional involvement with a woman.”

“Those who come to me are bound by causes from a past life,” Wang Jie said. “Your Excellency—how would you know what you did in your past life?”

Xiao Jian Mu’s expression tightened. “There truly is such a thing?”

“It cannot be said,” Wang Jie replied. “And it should not be said.”

Xiao Jian Mu looked miserable. “No wonder it forced me to do those things.”

He drew a breath. “Then how should I resolve it, Master?”

“I can resolve it for you,” Wang Jie said, “but the cause is best resolved by your own hands. Do it.”

Xiao Jian Mu gave a bitter smile. “But I don’t even know what to do. I truly have no place to start.”

Wang Jie’s lips curved faintly. “If you owe someone a debt, repay it. The one you owe doesn’t want your feelings. They want a single tear.”

Xiao Jian Mu exhaled slowly. “A heartbroken girl’s tear.”

“Go,” Wang Jie said. “Pretend to break up a pair of lovers and make the girl cry.”

Xiao Jian Mu froze. “That… that’s not right.”

“Even if I cut the karmic thread for you, it will come again,” Wang Jie said. “So you must do it yourself. I’ve already told you the method—pay a greater compensation afterward. You’re not truly breaking anyone up.”

Xiao Jian Mu’s face twisted with reluctant acceptance. “Fine.”

He stood, then glanced at Gao Chi, still lingering near the gravity starforce pills. Xiao Jian Mu’s gaze cooled. “Your Excellency didn’t come here to target Master, did you? I advise the Forging Branch to do its own work instead of acting as someone else’s dog.”

Gao Chi glared at him, swallowed whatever he’d been about to say, and turned away.

Xiao Jian Mu watched him go, disdain plain in his eyes. “The Zhi Academy grows more polluted by the day. We used to cultivate our own paths, but outsiders can’t stop meddling. Those cultivators who coast and rot have no bottom line at all.”

He turned back to Wang Jie. “Master, be careful.”

Wang Jie nodded, genuinely grateful. “Thank you.”

A flicker of guilt rose in him. Xiao Jian Mu was an honest man—rare currency in this place.

“Also,” Wang Jie added, “your strength is uneven. If you leave it uncorrected, you’ll waste energy and your efficiency will drop.”

Xiao Jian Mu startled. “Master means…?”

Wang Jie tapped lightly at Xiao Jian Mu’s left arm.

Xiao Jian Mu’s eyes widened, then softened into sincere awe. “Thank you, Master.”

Wang Jie had seen it with qi sight. Consider it repayment.

Whether it was Xiao Jian Mu’s character, or what Yi Hao and Su Le had experienced before, the outside world’s mockery of Wang Jie thinned by the day. Fewer people called him a fraud. More people simply watched, curious.

From afar, Ji Zheng observed without blinking.

After Gao Chi returned, his face was dark. He even suggested killing Wang Jie and taking the gravity starforce pills for themselves.

Ji Zheng didn’t care about the pills. He only cared about timing.

He went to Master Bian.

Master Bian told them to withdraw.

“After observing these days,” Master Bian asked, “what have you learned?”

Ji Zheng struggled for an answer. The shop’s pill business was dead, but the fortune-telling only grew more uncanny. If it were someone else, you could call it a setup. But Xiao Jian Mu was famously rigid, a man who offended powerful people without blinking. He’d even dared to clash directly with Feng Hu, the number one in Array Dao at the Zhi Academy. How could someone like that be bought?

“This disciple… can’t say,” Ji Zheng admitted at last. “Wang Jie doesn’t feel like the usual Shuanghua Sect disciples. He’s not easy to handle.”

Master Bian’s expression hardened. He raised his personal terminal and made a call.

“Brother Xu,” he said, “Alchemy Branch has completely given up on dealing with him?”

Xu Yang’s voice came through, clipped. “What can we do? We don’t have the ability. It’s on your Forging Branch now.”

Master Bian sneered. “Spare me. Why did you give up?”

He pressed harder. “The ones going to him for fortune-telling are all from your Alchemy Branch. You must know something.”

No matter how Master Bian probed, Xu Yang gave the same answer: no ability.

Master Bian contacted Feng Hu as well and still got nothing useful.

In the end, he could only order Ji Zheng to send Forging Branch people to seek readings.

At the Star Vault Exchange, Du Xian was just as curious how Wang Jie was pulling this off.

Yi Hao, Su Le, and Xiao Jian Mu were not simple figures. They weren’t the kind you could hire or bribe.

If it wasn’t bribery, there was only one explanation: Wang Jie had truly resolved their troubles. And those “troubles” had to be traps he’d arranged himself—because every so-called fated one matched an intelligence list he’d purchased earlier.

No one else knew that.

Du Xian did.

Even so, the Star Vault Vista’s intelligence still couldn’t see how he’d done it.

Strange.

Could it be the legendary Star Dao?

“Master, I want my fortune told!”

“Sorry,” Wang Jie said flatly. “If you’re not a fated one, I don’t read.”

“Then what counts as a fated one? Someone you already investigated and know exactly how to help?”

Not just that. The trouble was something he’d created himself.

Wang Jie didn’t even look at the man. The question was pure provocation.

He let him shout and slander. It wasn’t the first time.

Still, the man had stamina—three full days camped at the door.

Wang Jie had half a mind to stick a talisman to the man’s forehead and send him running.

Two more days passed. Someone new arrived. Wang Jie’s eyes brightened—finally.

These people could endure.

The tasks he’d assigned were meant to be difficult. Anyone who hadn’t completed theirs would have spent days gnawing on anxiety. And yet several still hadn’t come.

This one belonged to the Weapon Dao.

Of the three daos, only Weapon Dao hadn’t sent someone yet.

“I am Shi Jia,” the newcomer said. “May I become Master’s fated one?”

He was middle-aged and ran a weapon shop not far from the Star Vault Exchange. Like Yi Hao, he owned multiple storefronts.

Wang Jie gave a small hum. “You may.”

Shi Jia stepped into the shop.

Outside, the man who’d been slandering exploded. “Why is he a fated one and I’m not? Everyone, judge this! What kind of shop opens and refuses to do business? This is obviously a scam—he chose so-called fated ones after investigating them. Even if they aren’t planted, it’s the same!”

Shi Jia turned, gaze dropping like a blade. “Get lost.”

The man tried to argue again.

Shi Jia’s voice cracked like a whip. “Don’t pretend I don’t know who you serve. You’re Ji Zheng’s man, here to stir trouble. Get out of my sight.”

In the distance, Ji Zheng’s eyes darkened.

The loudmouth hurried away.

Wang Jie smiled faintly. “Guest, please.”

Shi Jia flicked a subtle glance toward the distance.

He, too, was Ji Zheng’s man.

Or rather, he was the real tool Ji Zheng had brought to deal with Wang Jie. The loudmouth had been a decoy. Letting Shi Jia drive the decoy away only made the scene more convincing to onlookers.

After all, Shi Jia’s reputation and standing in the Zhi Academy were not low.

This Wang Jie was finished.

What Ji Zheng didn’t know was that Shi Jia had come for himself.

He’d been tormented for days—unable to cultivate, unable to forge, unable to rest. His mind felt constantly on fire.

He didn’t even know what Rainbow-Drinking Sword Form was, yet he was forced, again and again, to perform a hundred chained moves of it.

Why?

He didn’t know the sword form at all.

So he’d spent the last stretch of time frantically searching for Rainbow-Drinking Sword Form without pause.

When Ji Zheng approached him, it happened to coincide with Shi Jia hearing about Yi Hao and Xiao Jian Mu—and deciding to seek out Wang Jie anyway.

So he didn’t refuse. He came along.

Shi Jia sat across from Wang Jie, worry etched into his features. “I heard Yi Hao came before. Did Master resolve his trouble?”

Wang Jie nodded slightly. “Does Guest know what a fated one is?”

“I don’t.”

“A fated one,” Wang Jie said, “is someone entangled by a cause from a past life.”

He raised his voice deliberately, letting it carry beyond the shop.

“Fate is for looking into the past to understand the future—not for changing the future. Those of us who walk special paths must keep sincerity in our hearts if we wish to prove the Dao.”

“Anyone who comes seeking a bright road, a good future, or romance has come to the wrong place.”

“I only help a specific type of person solve a specific type of trouble.”

Shi Jia’s expression eased into understanding. “So… I’m one of those people?”

Wang Jie studied him. “Does Guest practice the sword?”

Shi Jia’s eyes widened. Even his breathing caught. “I didn’t before. Now I do.”

Wang Jie nodded once. “From your face… your Sword Method is wrong.”

“How do I make it right?”

“You don’t need to make it right,” Wang Jie said. “You only need to cut the karma.”

He leaned back, voice calm and certain. “Tomorrow morning, bring one hundred swords. I will destroy them and cut off the sword’s karmic thread.”

Shi Jia stared. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Shi Jia rose at once and bowed. “Understood. I will return tomorrow morning.”

Wang Jie added, “If you want it cut cleanly, the swords should be as high quality as possible.”

Shi Jia bowed again and left.

Once he was a distance away, Ji Zheng caught up to him. “What are you doing? Why didn’t you start trouble?”

Shi Jia answered evenly, “Tomorrow. If I start trouble before I’ve done anything, it’s too obvious.”

Ji Zheng thought it over and reluctantly agreed.

Then Shi Jia said, “Help me find swords. One hundred of them. As high quality as possible.”

Ji Zheng blinked, momentarily certain he’d misheard.

Why was Shi Jia ordering him around?

In the end, Ji Zheng still went to find them.

The next day, Shi Jia brought over twenty high-quality swords from his own shop—fifth-grade materials, and even one forged from seventh-grade material.

Ji Zheng provided the rest.

Those were far more ordinary, all made from third-grade materials.