Chapter 182

Chapter 182: Kill

Shi Wei made no hostile move toward the Shen Wang Number. He simply looked exhausted, landed lightly atop the ship, and sat down as if using it as a bench.

Wang Jie projected his voice outward. “Brother Shi, come inside and rest.”

Shi Wei peered down at the ship. “Have we met?”

“Outside the Glazed Courtyard,” Wang Jie said. “I was beside Miss Su Le.”

Shi Wei stared for a moment, thinking, then dropped through the hatch.

Little Lan was resting. With no immediate danger, Wang Jie didn’t disturb her.

Shi Wei entered the reception room, saw Wang Jie, and nodded. “It’s you.”

Wang Jie gestured for him to sit and reached for the teapot.

Shi Wei stopped him with a hand, produced his own cup, and poured steaming, thick soup into it.

“What’s that?” Wang Jie asked.

“Three-flavor soup.”

“Is it good?”

Shi Wei looked at Wang Jie, then at the soup, and shook his head. “Not good.”

Then he drank it all down anyway, without the slightest intention of sharing.

Wang Jie poured tea for himself instead. “Brother Shi, are you participating in the star-devourer contest?”

“No,” Shi Wei said. “I’m going to beat Yun Ju.”

“You didn’t catch him at Zhi Academy?”

“That bastard’s ears are too sharp,” Shi Wei said flatly. “He ran.”

He lifted his gaze, suddenly intense. “But this time he won’t run. I will beat him.”

“Why?” Wang Jie asked.

“Arrogant,” Shi Wei said. “Self-important. He disgraces the White Realm Lord.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Wang Jie had no reply. He could only accept that Shi Wei’s priorities were… singular.

Shi Wei remained on the Shen Wang Number for a long time, resting in silence. Only when star-devourer finally entered view did he leave, drifting away as if he’d never been there.

A broadcast crackled through the channels. “All disciples, attention. The star-devourer contest will begin in five hours. No one may enter early. All disciples, attention…”

Wang Jie stared at the planet in the distance, his expression heavy.

Little Lan stepped to his side. “That disciple was Shi Wei. One of the white roamer under the White Realm Lord. His strength is not low. If he enters the contest, your chances are slim.”

Wang Jie asked, “Where do the black roamer and white roamer stand in Black-White Heaven? They seem to overlap with the steward hall and discipline hall.”

“They’re the same realm as the steward hall and discipline hall,” Little Lan said, “but their status is higher. They’re considered candidates for realm lord disciples.”

She continued, voice matter-of-fact. “Most of them already have masters. But unless they were accepted directly by a realm lord, joining the black roamer or white roamer gives them a chance. If a realm lord takes a liking to them, their previous master-disciple relationship is stripped away and they become the realm lord’s disciple.”

“One step to the heavens.”

“Yun Ju became a white roamer that way.”

Wang Jie frowned. “Then their previous masters wouldn’t resent it?”

“The universe is cruel,” Little Lan said calmly. “Everything is a fight. Disciples fight for good masters; masters fight for good disciples. It’s the same.”

She glanced at the planet. “So yes. You can think of black roamer and white roamer as the realm lords’ private forces.”

Five hours passed.

Outside star-devourer, a direction flared with light—an unmistakable beacon marking where the elders waited.

The contest began.

Little Lan left the ship.

The Shen Wang Number plunged toward the planet.

Wang Jie still hadn’t seen Mo Wan Yin. He didn’t know when she would arrive. The battlefield had opened, but no one had ever said late arrivals were forbidden. This was war, not ceremony.

Ships poured in from every direction. Some roaming-star realm flew through the void on their own, entering without ships at all. Wang Jie even caught one of them sneering at the disciples who still needed vessels.

Normally, the sneer would have been justified.

But cultivation was built on refusal. No one wanted to fall behind. No one wanted to admit defeat before trying.

Even if their hope was only a hair-thin thread.

The Shen Wang Number entered the atmosphere. Almost immediately, beams of light tore toward it.

Wang Jie swerved aside. Above, battle had already erupted—ships exploding into fireballs, wreckage raining down.

The Shen Wang Number was star chain-class. Even if it sat still, most ships here couldn’t scratch it.

But Wang Jie refused to be a beacon.

He dove, found a forest, and landed hard. Trees shattered under the ship’s weight, a wide swath crushed flat.

On the screen, he saw other ships landing nearby.

A call request blinked—a ship on the far side of a mountain range.

Wang Jie accepted the audio.

“Friend,” a voice said quickly, “let’s team up. If we don’t, we won’t even get scraps under roaming-star realm.”

“You don’t want to come here for nothing, right? Star-devourer is impossible, but at least we can avoid leaving empty-handed.”

So that was the truth.

Many people weren’t here for star-devourer at all. The contest was simply a sanctioned battlefield—an excuse to kill and loot.

Their real prey was other disciples.

Wang Jie cut the call without responding. He needed information first: how many powerhouses were nearby, how dense the landings were, where danger clustered.

The Shen Wang Number’s scanning functions far surpassed ordinary ships. He began mapping the region.

On the far side of the mountain range, inside another ship, two cultivators exchanged a look.

“No reply,” one said. “Meets the requirement.”

“Kill,” the other answered.

They disembarked, crossed the ridge, and headed for the Shen Wang Number.

Wang Jie, focused on the scan, didn’t realize he’d already been marked.

The alarm finally screamed.

On the screen: the hatch was under attack.

The ship shook under the impact.

Full-star realm.

Strike after strike hammered the hatch. If he didn’t open it, they would force their way in anyway.

Wang Jie opened the hatch and stepped out. “What are you doing?”

He got his answer in the form of a blade.

One Blade.

The attacker didn’t speak, didn’t hesitate, didn’t offer a shred of pretense.

Wang Jie used Jia Eight Steps. His body blurred sideways and the strike missed.

The attacker’s eyes widened.

That sensation…

Lockforce?

His expression twisted into excitement. “Lockforce—it’s him! Kill!”

From another direction, arrows screamed toward Wang Jie.

So they weren’t hunting a random ship. They were hunting him.

Wang Jie slipped past one arrow, and in the next heartbeat a curtain of cold blade-light crashed down—tight, suffocating. The swordsman’s eyes burned with naked intent as another arrow came in from the flank.

Wang Jie reached out and closed his hand around the hilt.

“Courting death!” the swordsman snarled, forcing the blade down as if to sever Wang Jie’s fingers.

But Wang Jie’s grip tightened like iron.

He yanked.

The sword swept sideways, cleaving the incoming arrow in half. In the same motion, Wang Jie’s fingers clamped onto the swordsman’s wrist. Bone crunched. Blood ran down the hilt.

The man screamed.

He kicked out, desperate.

Wang Jie swung him up by sheer strength, tore the wrist apart, and in the same brutal arc brought the blade up at an impossible angle.

One Blade.

The swordsman’s head flew.

Wang Jie didn’t even watch it land. He flung the long blade like a spear toward the archer.

The archer fired in panic. Arrow met steel—

and split.

The archer turned and ran.

No wonder a lockforce cultivator required full-star realm to hunt. Wang Jie wasn’t a star-breaking realm by any ordinary measure.

He was a monster.

The archer took only a few steps before a shadow fell across his path.

Wang Jie stood on a branch ahead, looking down with cold eyes.

“M-misunderstanding,” the archer stammered.

Wang Jie raised one finger.

Heaven-and-Earth Luo Xuan Finger.

The strike punched through the man’s body. The archer tried to flare starforce, tried to resist, but the finger-force crushed everything. He slammed to the ground, grievously wounded.

Full-star realm—around eighty thousand combat power. In Lock Xingjian, he’d be considered formidable, not far below the likes of Zong Cheng Ping, roughly comparable to Lie Qiu.

Here, he was helpless.

He lay there coughing blood, eyes wide with fear. “I… I don’t want to die. Please… let me go…”

Wang Jie crouched in front of him. “Why did you try to kill me? And how were you sure it was me?”

“S-someone told us,” the man gasped. “At star-devourer… hunting a lockforce cultivator… if we kill him, we get… resources. A lot.”

He swallowed, trembling. “We thought… that lockforce cultivator wouldn’t talk to anyone at the start. So we used comms—whoever didn’t respond, we went to check.”

Wang Jie nodded slowly. Clever.

Too clever, and blind to their own limits.

To starforce cultivators, lockforce cultivators were always weak.

And for most, it was true.

These two had probably been ordinary in Black-White Heaven—no strange starforce, no remarkable background. But placed in Lock Xingjian, they’d be feared. That was why they’d come in so confident, so contemptuous.

Wang Jie’s gaze sharpened. “Who told you?”

The man’s lips trembled. “The steward hall… Song Heng.”

Wang Jie rose and walked away.

Behind him, the archer’s breathing stopped.

Wang Jie crossed the ridge, found the attackers’ ship, and took it.

He needed distance from the Shen Wang Number—too eye-catching, too easy to trace. If these two could find him, others would as well.

The stolen ship lifted off and skimmed low over the ground, racing away.

Not long after Wang Jie left, several people arrived at the Shen Wang Number. The moment they saw it, their eyes lit up.

“That’s the one. Go!”

The hatch was still open. They poured inside—

and found nothing.

“Damn it. Someone got here first.”

“No.” Another frowned. “He ran. There are only two corpses outside, but no trace of him.”

“Brutal,” someone muttered. “Killed with pure strength. That Junior Brother didn’t even get starforce up.”

“The other one was pierced clean through by finger-force,” another said, uneasy. “They said he was star-breaking realm? From this… even if he isn’t roaming-star realm, he’s close.”

“Be careful,” a third warned. “If the steward hall is hunting him, he’s not small fry.”

Wang Jie flew low until he reached a swamp outside a stretch of hostile terrain. Huge predatory beasts prowled nearby.

Star-devourer was, in a sense, a slaughterstone planet. Many plants and animals here cultivated lockforce.

Wang Jie stepped out and placed a hand on the earth.

The lockforce beneath him was vast—an ocean.

Compared to it, the lockforce inside his own body felt like a single cup of water.

He’d thought the ten seals heaven-reversal path—and everything he’d absorbed afterward—was already a great deal.

Now he understood how small it truly was.