Chapter 205

Chapter 205: Skeleton Clan

Bai Ye’s tone shifted without warning. “Of course, there’s a second possibility now.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You really don’t know Star Dao, because the one who taught you Qi Refining wasn’t that old bastard. It was someone from First Nebula.”

Wang Jie let out a helpless sigh. “Senior, you’re reading too much into it again.”

“Heh.” Bai Ye’s eyes narrowed. “That Qi Xue Yin doesn’t know you?”

“She does.”

“I mean before.”

“She didn’t.”

“You’re lying to me again.”

Her smile sharpened. “Do you really think we’re stupid?”

“She’d offend a disciple of the White Realm Lord for a Chen Refiner. Do you really believe she did it out of kindness?”

Bai Ye leaned forward, amused and relentless. “Little kid, you’ve lied to me far too many times in far too short a span.”

Wang Jie knew plenty of people suspected he and Qi Xue Yin were acquainted. But without proof, no one dared press.

Bai Ye, however, had no restraint at all. She asked whatever she pleased, prying straight into the things people guarded most.

After days of being worn down by Celestial Master Bai Ye, Qi Xue Yin finally came to him.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You’ll be going as someone from Milky Way Defense Corporation.”

She tossed him a mask—so plain it looked like a cheap prop.

Wang Jie pinched it between his fingers. A little more force and it would have shattered. “This thing’s supposed to help?”

Qi Xue Yin answered with absolute confidence. “Of course it won’t.”

Wang Jie stared at her.

She gave a small laugh, eyes bright. “Useless is useless. But who’s going to say it out loud?”

He understood what she meant—no one would care enough to call it out. The problem was that he cared.

If people from Black-White Heaven saw Qi Xue Yin bringing him to watch bridge-building, what would they think?

Charm? Favor? Some kind of special relationship?

He hesitated only a moment. Under Qi Xue Yin’s impatient urging, he still put the mask on and set off.

Compared to the lure of seeing bridge-building, he’d rather invent any other excuse later.

Especially after the Pill Assembly—where too many people had already realized he and Qi Xue Yin weren’t strangers.

Bridge-building was different for him. Not because of Bridgeway Art, but because Blue Star had endured it. He wanted to see it again from another angle, to understand exactly what kind of despair he’d once lived through.

Only five people went.

Besides Qi Xue Yin and Wang Jie, there were Zhi Ye, Zhi Lan Xue, and Luan Dao.

Zhi Lan Xue was the one from Black-White Heaven who would build the bridge. She was also one of the Six-Path Roamers.

A Zhi, and a Six-Path Roamer. It fit.

What surprised Wang Jie was who didn’t come. The White Realm Lord stayed behind; Zhi Ye came in his place.

Zhi Ye saw Wang Jie and, just as Qi Xue Yin predicted, didn’t care.

Zhi Lan Xue didn’t care either.

Luan Dao cared least of all—he didn’t even glance at Wang Jie.

The bridge-building site lay in Fourth Nebula, within Black-White Heaven’s territory. By rights, building a bridge here shouldn’t require sharing anything with Milky Way Defense Corporation. But “rights” meant nothing in the universe. If the corporation saw it, demanded a share, and Black-White Heaven refused, war would follow.

Even a behemoth that held an entire nebula couldn’t always do as it pleased.

It only reinforced Wang Jie’s belief that refusing to go to First Nebula had been the correct choice.

Even at Zhi Ye’s speed, it took nearly ten days to travel from the sect to their destination.

A dark red planet hung ahead, dull and ominous.

Wang Jie searched the sky beyond it and found nothing—no sign of what made this place different.

“Go,” Zhi Ye said.

Zhi Lan Xue moved first, descending toward the planet.

So even if you already possessed Bridgeway Art, you could build again and draw down another Bridgeway Art.

Once inside the planet’s atmosphere, they arrived at a desert.

Not dark red—scarlet. The color of fresh blood.

The sand looked soaked through, nearly black with it. Even from a distance, the stench rose in a visible haze, thick enough to make the throat tighten.

That was when Wang Jie understood.

This was staking.

There were no humans on this planet. Only living creatures.

Zhi Lan Xue walked step by step toward the altar. Wang Jie didn’t know what she did, but in an instant the desert came alive—countless creatures surged in from every direction, swarming her, biting, clawing, tearing in a frenzy.

Zhi Lan Xue moved like a machine. A snow-white saber rose and fell without pause, cutting them down in a steady rhythm. The altar climbed higher with each body, blood spraying outward in sheets.

Wang Jie watched her expressionless slaughter and, without meaning to, remembered Shu Mu Ye.

Back then it had been the same—One Blade, then another, and another—killing everything on Blue Star, even people, raising the altar higher and higher.

The familiar image struck him so hard his breath caught. His fingers curled into a fist, tight enough to ache.

Qi Xue Yin coughed once.

The sound jolted him back. Wang Jie loosened his hand, forcing the pressure down.

The altar was nearly complete. Only a few more hours passed before the final One Blade fell.

The planet shuddered.

Qi and blood—so dense it seemed to have a will—began pouring toward the altar from every direction. It gathered, thickened, and then erupted into a scarlet pillar that speared into the sky, reaching for the bridge that could be seen but never touched.

That bridge was always there, hanging over every head.

No one could climb it. No one knew how high it truly was.

Only this torrent of blood qi connected heaven and earth, as if tearing through the barrier of space and time, approaching an unreachable height by some other rule entirely.

Zhi Lan Xue lifted her head. She stood in the center of the blood qi, eyes slowly closing.

“So this is bridge-building?” Luan Dao murmured.

His gaze had changed—calm burned into something fierce, hotter than it had been even in his fight with Han Ling.

Qi Xue Yin nodded. “Yes. This is bridge-building.”

“When the blood qi fully surges into the bridge, it will draw down Bridgeway Art,” she continued. “It’ll descend and enter Lan Xue’s body. What she receives depends on luck.”

Zhi Ye added, “Once it comes, it’s done.”

Wang Jie stared up at the unseen span.

What was the bridge?

If Bridgeway Art was obtained through sacrifice—through endless flesh and blood—then did the bridge itself belong to a power humans couldn’t comprehend?

If there were beings on the bridge… what were the people beneath it to them?

How did they judge what happened here?

His eyes drifted back to Zhi Lan Xue.

And then his pupils snapped tight.

Two figures had appeared.

They were humanoid, pure white from head to toe, as if carved from bone and ash. Wang Jie couldn’t tell how they had arrived. It was as though they’d always been there—on the dark red planet, standing directly in front of Zhi Lan Xue.

Zhi Ye lunged forward, voice cracking through the air. “Skeleton Clan—stop!”

On the altar, Zhi Lan Xue’s eyes opened.

Two white humanoid creatures stood close enough to touch. They weren’t human, not truly. They had the shape—eyes, ears, mouth, nose—but where a heart should have been there was only a hollow hole.

No heartbeat. No warmth. Nothing.

One of them shot upward like a streak of white fire, meeting Zhi Ye in the sky.

The other walked toward Zhi Lan Xue.

One step.

It crossed an impossible distance and appeared right before her.

Zhi Lan Xue struck.

Starforce exploded outward. Twelve bronze slips whirled around her in a tight, cutting orbit. She attacked with everything she had.

The white creature raised its right arm and flicked it.

Once.

Twice.

Twelve times in a heartbeat.

Each motion knocked a bronze slip from the air as if swatting insects.

Zhi Lan Xue’s saber came down hard, blade biting into its skull—

And stopped.

Not a scratch. Not even a blood mark.

Zhi Lan Xue stared, shock hollowing her face.

The creature’s hand closed over the blade and snapped it as easily as breaking dry wood. It waved once, casually, almost lazily.

A thin red line appeared.

Zhi Lan Xue’s eyes went blank.

She staggered back two steps and fell from the altar.

Her head separated from her body mid-fall.

Above, Zhi Ye was locked with the other creature. Two invisible forces collided, shaking the planet until it swayed like something suspended on a thread. A violent wind burst outward and scythed across the sky.

Luan Dao grabbed Wang Jie by the shoulder and yanked him back at blistering speed. Qi Xue Yin was pulled along with them.

Space twisted. The stars warped. For a moment, there was nothing to see—only distortion and pressure.

When the chaos finally thinned, they saw the blood qi dispersing, thinning from the sky downward.

“Bridge-building is over,” Qi Xue Yin whispered, face drained. “Luan Dao—now. Hurry.”

Luan Dao surged forward with Wang Jie and Qi Xue Yin, trying to return to the planet. A second impact hit them—a force collision they couldn’t see.

Qi Xue Yin and Luan Dao saw nothing.

Only Wang Jie saw it.

A vast, abyssal qi—pure white, glaring against the dark of space—like it belonged at the center of the universe itself.

It was the qi of the being fighting Zhi Ye.

Zhi Ye’s starforce hammered it again and again, immense and roaring—and the white qi didn’t move.

They attempted to return several times. Each time, that unseen clash flung them away.

Eventually, the battle ended.

When they could finally see the planet clearly again, Zhi Lan Xue’s corpse lay beneath the altar.

And Zhi Ye stood above it with an expression so calm it was frightening.

What were those two things?

Zhi Lan Xue was dead.

A Six-Path Roamer. A genius of the Zhi family. Dead—cleanly, effortlessly, as if she’d been nothing.

On the return trip, Zhi Ye didn’t speak once.

Qi Xue Yin remained pale and distant, as if part of her still stood on that blood-soaked altar.

Even Luan Dao, normally unreadable, carried shock in his eyes.

Back at Black-White Heaven, Wang Jie contacted Little Lan immediately and asked her to take him to Zhi Xing Xue.

In the courtyard, Zhi Xing Xue listened in silence, her stillness stretching long enough to become oppressive.

Finally, she spoke.

“That was the Skeleton Clan.”

Wang Jie frowned. “Skeleton Clan?”

Zhi Xing Xue’s voice dropped. In her eyes was something harder than fear—an unease that made the skin prickle. “A branch of humans that exists in the Dead Realm.”

“Qi Refining, but not strength.”

“Every Skeleton Clan being is born with Roaming-Star Realm battle power.”

Wang Jie’s mouth fell open.

“Born with Roaming-Star Realm battle power?” he echoed. “How is that possible?”

Zhi Xing Xue’s gaze darkened. “The one that killed Zhi Lan Xue may have been newly born.”

Wang Jie could only stare, stunned beyond words.

Dead Realm?

Wasn’t that like Corpse Sect?

Zhi Xing Xue rose to her feet. “Black-White Heaven has been watched for a long time. Otherwise, bridge-building wouldn’t have been stolen at such a perfect moment.”

Little Lan’s face tightened. “Master… why would the Skeleton Clan target Black-White Heaven? Is there something they want in Fourth Nebula? They should be active in First Nebula.”

Zhi Xing Xue shook her head. “No one understands the Skeleton Clan.”

“They have no good or evil. No heart. No one knows what they want.”

Her eyes returned to Wang Jie. “Humans struggle enough just to stand in this universe. The Skeleton Clan may be a branch of humans, but their slaughter of humans is no less than any other species.”

“You came back alive. That alone wasn’t easy.”

She paused, then said, with finality, “Forget it. This isn’t something you should be thinking about.”

“Little Lan, take him back to Suo Xing Jian.”

Wang Jie bowed, then left with Little Lan.

Black-White Heaven sealed itself soon after. The mood within the sect turned heavy, unfamiliar.

Wang Jie sent Qi Xue Yin a brief farewell, then boarded a ship with Little Lan for Suo Xing Jian.

Midway, Zhi Xing Xue contacted them again.

“Go directly to Great Chen Mountain.”

Wang Jie understood why. He’d helped the sect win two rounds. That had earned him a permission he otherwise wouldn’t get easily—especially with Zhi Qing’s faction standing in the way.

On the ship, he asked quietly, “Senior… how does the Skeleton Clan compare to Jia Yi Sect?”

Little Lan shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never dealt with the Skeleton Clan.”

“Even you?”

“The Dead Realm is usually active in First Nebula,” she said. “They rarely go to the other three.”

Then she looked at him carefully. “Master asked whether you were willing to go to First Nebula. Your answer made her very happy.”

She hesitated. “But do you know the difference between First Nebula and the other three?”

Wang Jie shook his head. “I only know First Nebula is the strongest. I don’t know the specifics.”

“It’s like the difference between the four refining grounds and Black-White Heaven,” Little Lan said.

Azure, who’d been quiet until then, added calmly, “That kind of difference.”

Wang Jie blinked. “That big?”

He knew Suo Xing Jian and Zhi Academy well. As for Death Island and Great Chen Mountain, their overall strength wasn’t even on Zhi Academy’s level.