Chapter 171

Chapter 171: Thunder-Seal Pill

Shi Jia carried the hundred swords into Wang Jie’s shop.

Wang Jie inspected them, then nodded toward the floor. “Cut them. All of them. Here.”

Shi Jia didn’t hesitate.

One blade after another snapped, metal crying out as it broke.

Wang Jie stepped into the field without another word. He picked up the broken pieces and, with casual indifference, performed Rainbow-Drinking Sword Form—resetting card after card.

As the cards reset, the restless agitation that had been gnawing at Shi Jia for days vanished in an instant.

Shi Jia stared at Wang Jie as if he’d seen a ghost. “Master… I’m better.”

Wang Jie gave a small hum. “Temporarily. If the cause runs deep, it may resurface later.”

He added a final line as insurance. “If it happens again, come back.”

Wang Jie didn’t know Shi Jia had come intending to cause trouble. But after this, Shi Jia wouldn’t dare. Starting trouble after having your lifeline cut and rewoven was madness—unless you wanted to ruin your future.

Shi Jia left the broken swords behind and walked out.

Ji Zheng intercepted him immediately. “Why didn’t you make a move?”

Shi Jia’s gaze turned icy. “He’s a true master with real ability. I advise you not to get clever.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“It’s not a threat,” Shi Jia said flatly. “One day when you run into trouble, you’ll understand how terrifying he is.”

Ji Zheng watched him go, still unable to grasp what had happened.

He didn’t understand Shi Jia’s relief—or the dread that followed it like a shadow.

But his view of Wang Jie shifted all the same.

He rushed to report to Master Bian.

Master Bian set down his terminal in silence. A cause from a past life?

Could it truly be the legendary, most unfathomable… Star Dao?

Ji Zheng withdrew.

For the time being, the Weapon Dao, Array Dao, and Pill Path all cooled their intent to move against Wang Jie.

The man was too strange.

Meanwhile, Wang Jie’s “fated one” theory spread throughout the Four-Dao Market. It could sound reasonable or ridiculous—acceptance depended on the listener.

But Yi Hao, Xiao Jian Mu, and Shi Jia all accepted it.

They weren’t ordinary people. Their approval stirred the crowd.

Soon, Wang Jie’s shop carried a different weight. People began to avoid it.

Of course, his pill business was still terrible.

The main reason was simple: the prices were outrageous.

Gao Chi came every few days to buy gravity starstone. Wang Jie refused him every time.

Wang Jie, on the other hand, kept buying pills for himself.

After constant attempts, half a month later he discovered something that made his pulse jump: Burststar Pill could merge with both blazing-sun starforce and gravity starforce, raising it by one grade.

Burststar Pill was a Roaming-Star Realm pill. After taking it, the starforce infused into flesh and bones would boil, boosting destructive power.

Each pill sold for one million starstones.

And with each additional mark, it increased battle strength by 10,000—while the price rose by another million.

One million starstones sounded excessive, but in the end a difference of 10,000 battle strength could decide life or death.

Wang Jie had been confident he could kill a Full-Star Realm with 90,000 battle strength back in Ten Seals—yet had no such certainty against a Roaming-Star Realm with 100,000.

Sometimes a gap of 10,000 or 20,000 changed an entire life.

Any cultivator who bought Burststar Pill would buy the best their body could tolerate.

And if it could fuse with blazing-sun starforce or gravity starforce, then its grade rose by one tier—an instant difference of one million starstones.

Wang Jie didn’t hesitate.

He swept the Four-Dao Market clean and bought every Burststar Pill he could find—three hundred in total.

One-mark had the most: one hundred and twenty pills. Two-mark had eighty. Three-mark and four-mark dwindled quickly. The rarest were five-mark pills: only twenty.

“Why are there so few five-mark Burststar Pills?” Wang Jie asked.

Du Xian rolled her eyes. “Five-mark is called the peerless grade. Not just anyone can refine it. Our five-mark pills come from headquarters. The five-mark pills you bought outside should have come from that Pill Dao celestial master in Black-White Heaven.”

Wang Jie’s brows lifted. “A Pill Dao celestial master?”

Du Xian nodded. “Her name is Bai Ye. Want to buy her intelligence? It won’t be cheap.”

“I won’t,” Wang Jie said. “I’m not worthy to know.”

Du Xian laughed. “Guest is too humble.”

Wang Jie couldn’t help imagining the status of such a figure. Even Master Luan—only a Pill Dao master—was treated like a revered ancestor in Shuanghua Sect.

A celestial master… he didn’t dare picture it.

Du Xian leaned forward, curiosity sparkling. “So why buy so many Burststar Pills? You almost bought out the entire market.”

“To sell them to you,” Wang Jie said.

Du Xian stared. “What?”

Wang Jie only smiled. “You’ll buy them.”

Then he left.

Three hundred Burststar Pills sounded like nothing in the grand scale of the universe, but for a market like the Zhi Academy, it was already saturated.

If it were Black-White Heaven, three hundred wouldn’t even splash.

Buying those three hundred pills had cost Wang Jie 650 million starstones—half the wealth on his person.

He didn’t regret it for a second.

Raise the grade by one tier and resell, and the profit would be obscene.

Raising a pill’s grade only consumed a small amount of starforce. Back in Shuanghua Sect, he’d experimented alongside Master Luan with only small amounts of Shuanghua starforce.

Starforce was ultimately a material.

That meant his cost to upgrade a one-mark Burststar Pill was the pill itself plus a small amount of blazing-sun starforce or gravity starforce.

For a one-mark pill, the cost came to roughly 1.05 million starstones. The extra 50,000 starstones equaled about five blazing-flame starstones or gravity starstones—roughly comparable in value to a starsea stone.

Upgrading it increased the selling price by 950,000 starstones.

That 950,000 was profit.

And there was an even bigger leap: upgrading a four-mark pill to five-mark added three million starstones in one stroke.

That wasn’t only battle strength anymore—it was a difference in the pill’s intrinsic quality.

Four-mark was super grade. Five-mark was peerless grade.

A Pill Dao master could refine one; the other required a Pill Dao celestial master.

The extra two million wasn’t just combat value—it was research value.

In total, excluding the twenty five-mark pills, the rest could net him three hundred million starstones.

As for the five-mark pills he intended to upgrade, he couldn’t sell them.

At least not yet.

Because a six-mark Burststar Pill was something even a Pill Dao celestial master would struggle to refine. If he let those appear on the market, the shockwave would be massive.

He could justify a jump to five-mark with star-refining.

Six-mark was another matter entirely.

So he closed his shop, claiming he was “resting.”

He needed time before he put upgraded Burststar Pills on display. If he sold too quickly, it would spook people.

Passing through the Nine-Form Diagram, he disguised himself as Qiu Chou and left. In that guise, no one followed him.

He found a shop capable of contacting Black-White Heaven, queued like an ordinary customer, and—under the stunned gaze of a little attendant—connected to Zhi Upper Realm.

The attendant silently slipped away. Before leaving, they set down a cup of tea.

“Senior,” Wang Jie said respectfully, “Junior has established a foothold in the Four-Dao Market…”

He summarized what had happened. As for the fortune-telling, he only said he’d purchased intelligence, learned the troubles those people faced, and happened to be able to solve them.

Zhi Xing Xue didn’t press. Everyone had secrets. She only praised his steadiness.

“As long as you can stand firmly in the Four-Dao Market, Zhi Qing’s people will find it hard to move against you,” she said. “But remember—don’t leave the Four-Dao Market lightly.

“The Zhi Academy is not Suoxingjian. There are too many strong cultivators here. Roaming-Star Realm aren’t rare.”

“Junior will be careful,” Wang Jie replied.

He hesitated, then added, “One more thing. Junior sold the strange planet to the Star Vault Vista.”

“How much?”

Wang Jie gave the price without hiding it.

Zhi Xing Xue sighed. “Too low… but acceptable.

“There’s something Du Xian didn’t mention. As long as it’s known the strange planet was sold to the Star Vault Vista, even Black-White Heaven will tacitly accept it and won’t interfere. That is the Star Vault Vista’s influence.”

Wang Jie’s brow twitched.

So Du Xian’s excuse for lowering the price—fear of Black-White Heaven intercepting—was nonsense.

She had played him again.

“Forget it,” Zhi Xing Xue said. “If you can work with her and get the intelligence you need, that’s worth more than a slightly higher price. Besides, the planet was never truly yours to begin with—you gained it for free.”

Wang Jie didn’t feel comforted. But there was nothing to be done.

He left and decided to stock up. He had too little on him. It made him restless.

Passing through the Nine-Form Diagram, he returned to his real appearance.

His shop couldn’t remain closed forever. And Qiu Chou’s identity had served its purpose.

There were two things he’d wanted to buy for a long time.

First: Revival Pill. Its effect far surpassed Recovery Pill.

He hadn’t bought it before due to the price. Now he bought one hundred pills in one sweep.

One million starstones per pill.

Over a hundred million in one transaction.

He bought out the Star Vault Exchange’s entire stock. Du Xian practically beamed.

Wang Jie smiled, too. Du Xian had tricked him twice already—once with a star-belt-class ship, once with the strange planet.

Yet he still bought from her.

If he’d already jumped into the pit, he might as well dig until he hit bedrock and see who bled first.

Next: Thunder-Seal Pill.

“Guest wants Thunder-Seal Pill?” Du Xian said, pleased. “That’s good stuff. Buying too few at once isn’t worth it.”

Thunder-Seal Pill wasn’t eaten. A bolt of lightning was refined into the pill. Crush it, and the lightning surged into the body to temper it—purging impurities. With enough sessions, thunder pattern would form on the skin, granting resistance against attacks.

Much of that lightning came from the thunder well.

Temper directly at the thunder well and you might be struck to death. But refined lightning kept its might while controlling its amount, stripped of some killing intent. It became survivable.

It was called a pill, but it functioned more like a tool.

Depending on the lightning’s strength, Thunder-Seal Pill had many tiers. There were tiers suited for Star-Breaking Realm, Full-Star Realm, Roaming-Star Realm, and even Hundred-Star Realm.

Wang Jie bought Full-Star Realm Thunder-Seal Pills—each containing lightning with Roaming-Star Realm-level destructive power, around 150,000 battle strength. It was an entry grade for Full-Star Realm Thunder-Seal Pills, perfectly suited to him.

There were also Full-Star Realm Thunder-Seal Pills sealed with 200,000, 300,000, and higher lightning, but the price climbed by multiples.

“I’ll take one thousand,” Wang Jie said.

Du Xian’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Guest.”

One thousand Thunder-Seal Pills at 120,000 starstones each came to 120 million starstones.