Chapter 210

Chapter 210: Slaughter

Every promotion was hard-won. To condense blood, it wasn’t enough to kill someone in a higher realm—you had to kill someone who had earned the same battle merits you had.

“So on the battlefield, your kill count is the only standard,” Di Zi said evenly. “Don’t talk to me about realm or cultivation. It’s useless. On the battlefield, even star-refining realm can die. Once you’re in that place, any realm is no different from being ordinary.”

Her gaze swept over the crowd.

“Kill count is the only thing that gives you a voice on the battlefield.”

Wang Jie lowered his eyes to the jade pendant in his hand. That was it?

It looked like the other star clouds used the same jade pendant as an identity token. Without it, you couldn’t condense blood.

The more he thought about it, the more it felt planned—structured, deliberate.

So this was the star-cloud battlefield.

Beside him, a woman laughed bitterly. “What’s the point? It just makes it convenient for them to tally our merits.”

She stuffed the pendant into her clothes and turned away.

Wang Jie didn’t respond.

One after another, everyone boarded the ship. The moment the hull shuddered, Ping Xiao vanished behind them, and they officially began the journey toward the Ying Yang Battlefield.

Inside the ship, Di Zi waited outside a private lounge.

The door opened.

She entered and bowed deeply. “Master, we’ve departed.”

An old man opened his eyes and looked at her with calm indifference. “You saw Wang Jie?”

“Yes.”

“Assign him to protect the formation master. The front line.”

“This disciple understands.”

—

All one hundred thousand recruits were crammed into the ship’s cafeteria. The space was enormous, yet it still felt cramped.

After the first wave of panic passed, people began to accept reality. Like the starforce cultivators, they started forming cliques—pulling each other in, bargaining for alliances, trading favors—anything to raise their odds of surviving.

Wang Jie, the strongest lockforce cultivator among them, received no invitations.

The gap was too wide. Too far beyond them.

Under the gaze of a hundred thousand people, Wang Jie rose and began doing his exercises.

He did it with a blank face, so calm and practiced that the onlookers started feeling like they were the odd ones for staring.

At the speed of a nebula-class ship, the trip from the Death Island region to the Ying Yang Battlefield took a little over a month.

Wang Jie spent that month in a corner, undisturbed. When it was time, he did his exercises. The rest of the time, he cultivated quietly. He didn’t dare practice any bone-tempering method in full view of the crowd.

If he survived and made it back, he would return to star-devourer and absorb another wave of lockforce.

His storage ring held a stockpile of materials meant to replenish lockforce in emergencies.

Too bad lockforce had nothing like the convenient starforce pills that could restore energy on demand.

No pill cultivator wanted to waste time helping a lockforce cultivator refine anything of the sort.

A little over a month later, Di Zi appeared.

It was only the second time most people had seen her.

She was here to assign battlefield tasks.

Out of a hundred thousand, only two battlefronts were announced. Eighty thousand would follow her. Twenty thousand would be sent elsewhere. And Wang Jie—Wang Jie received a mission alone.

He stared at the star chart and mission details on his personal terminal.

Protect a formation master?

Again?

The first time he’d been given that task, it had been in Silver Radiance Empire, and the one he protected had been Mu Ran.

After distributing orders, Di Zi didn’t spare him a glance.

No one else noticed that Wang Jie had been assigned separately.

Then the ship arrived.

Ying Yang Battlefield.

The hatch opened. People spilled out—and froze.

Warships packed the void beyond planet after planet, their silhouettes so dense they seemed to blanket the stars. Massive structures stretched from the planets into space, linking docked vessels like bridges. Supplies moved in constant streams. Repair rigs crawled over scorched plating. Cultivators darted through open air like swarms, too many to count.

At the port alone, there were at least a thousand ships like theirs. Around the neighboring vessels, tens—hundreds—of thousands of people poured into loading bays.

Wang Jie looked at the closest groups.

They weren’t from Black-White Heaven.

Then they had to be from Third Nebula.

Different builds, different faces, rough clothes and crude gear. Some clutched homemade weapons. Every expression was tight with fear.

Those people boarded. Their ships powered up. One by one, they lifted off and vanished into the starry dark.

On the distant planetary surface, countless figures ran in every direction, frantic with work. Orders echoed. Names were shouted. Alarms blared. Signals flashed.

A line of warships moved out in formation and disappeared into the distance.

This was the interstellar battlefield.

Technology. Cultivation. Numbers beyond imagining.

Black-White Heaven had only transferred them in. Compared to the locals, even sect disciples counted as “core.”

Wang Jie’s gaze sharpened.

The people he’d seen earlier—those had to be natives of a slaughterstone planet.

Not Lockspace.

These “slaughterstone planets” were worlds Black-White Heaven had conquered outside the fourth nebula’s direct territory.

If Blue Star hadn’t been relocated, he would’ve been one of them—holding a crude weapon, shoved onto a transport, turned into cannon fodder that vanished in the flare of a planet’s destruction.

The lockforce cultivators around him split into two groups and departed.

Wang Jie followed his mission prompt deeper into the vast port, searching for Ship 11693—the vessel he’d been assigned to board.

The port stretched across multiple planets. Finding one ship number felt like trying to pick out a single grain of sand from an ocean.

He was still searching when his eyes suddenly narrowed.

A ship off to the side was powering up.

And beneath it—

Someone was clinging to the undercarriage.

Hidden.

The ship thrummed. At the last moment, the figure dropped, landing hard on the platform as the vessel shot off into space.

Wang Jie stared.

The man wore armor like an ancient general, breathing like he’d run for days.

He lifted his head—and met Wang Jie’s gaze.

An alarm blared.

“Port 0057. Capturing a war slave. Capture immediately. Capture immediately.”

A light screen flared into existence, projecting the man’s face in brutal clarity—large enough to dominate the air.

Cultivators surged toward them at once.

The armored man roared through clenched teeth, voice raw with fury. “I’m not a slave! I’m a guardian general of my nation! Who the hell are you to call me a slave?”

A figure flashed past Wang Jie. A hand slammed down toward the man’s head.

The armored man threw a punch. Lockforce burst out—an indistinct phantom flickered.

Wang Jie’s eyes widened.

Spring-Autumn Hand?

He’d learned it?

Even if it was only the opening move—

The phantom shattered in a single strike. The man was crushed to the ground. A boot pinned his head.

A young man stood over him, sneering. “Guardian general? Here?”

He kicked the man hard enough to make him skid.

“You’re just lockforce cannon fodder. If you hadn’t learned a little Spring-Autumn Hand, you’d already be dead.”

Others rushed in to seize the prisoner.

The young man turned on Wang Jie, eyes sharp, appraising. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for Ship 11693,” Wang Jie said.

The young man pointed to the right. “Port over there.”

“Thank you.”

Wang Jie left.

It still took him hours.

When he finally found Ship 11693, he boarded, entered his mission credentials, and the ship launched—climbing into the void and racing toward its destination.

Ying Yang Battlefield was vast, fractured into countless smaller fronts.

His star map estimated ten days of travel.

That alone told him where he’d been sent.

The far edge of this directional line.

The front line.

Formation masters didn’t set up formations in the middle of safe territory. They worked on the boundary—where the line could be pushed.

Was the placement deliberate?

He couldn’t tell whether his bargain master had arranged it, or whether Di Zi had done it herself.

He suspected the latter.

In Black-White Heaven, he had enemies. Plenty of them.

Three days into the flight, the ship alarm went off.

Enemy traces, front right.

He diverted at once and took a detour.

Two days later—another contact. Another detour.

A few days after that, a broadcast crackled through the comms. “Ship 11693, do you have supplies? Repeat: Ship 11693, do you have supplies?”

“No,” Wang Jie answered.

The voice belonged to another Black-White Heaven ship. After his reply, they fell silent.

More days passed. His destination drew near.

Several planets clustered around the mission marker on his star map. Which one was it?

He was still searching when the alarm abruptly escalated into a shriek.

Wang Jie’s expression tightened. Bad.

Beams of light stabbed toward him from the distance.

The ship’s shields snapped into place. Impacts came in rapid succession—too many. The barrier rippled and shook violently.

Wang Jie steered straight toward the nearest planet.

But the beams were relentless—dense enough to blot out the darkness.

His ship was standard-issue. Built for speed. Built cheap. Defense was an afterthought.

That speed was the only reason he’d been able to reach the area in ten days.

It was also why his barrier shattered so quickly.

Beams punched through the hull.

Wang Jie dashed inside the compartment, kicked the hatch open for leverage, and launched himself into the void, angling for the planet below.

A heartbeat later, the ship exploded—erased in a bloom of fire and debris.

The beams stopped.

But the attackers revealed themselves.

Insects—space locusts—three meters long, swarming through the void.

And on their backs—

Riders.

Luo Kingdom.

He’d flown straight into a trap.

Locust after locust closed in, carrying Luo Kingdom fighters. They caught him in moments.

One of the fastest riders hurled a blade, grinning viciously. Wang Jie swept it aside, but the impact slowed him, stole his momentum.

The locust shrieked, jaws opening wide enough to swallow him whole.

Wang Jie waited for that exact moment.

He spun, seized the locust, and vaulted onto its back. Before the rider could react, Wang Jie struck once—killing him outright—and hurled the corpse into the void.

The locust bucked and writhed, trying to shake him off.

Wang Jie locked it down with brute force. He’d controlled creatures for travel often enough.

One punch cracked the locust’s limbs. It froze, terrified, barely daring to twitch.

Wang Jie forced it toward the planet.

Too late.

The swarm had already surrounded him.

The Luo Kingdom riders released a chorus of eerie, taunting calls, utterly indifferent to the one Wang Jie had killed.

They charged.

Dozens slammed in at once.

Weapons rained down.

Wang Jie drew his sword.

One slash.

Lockforce detonated through the blade. Metal snapped and spun away in fragments. The strike cleaved through dozens of locusts and riders in a single sweeping arc.

And still more came.

They circled him with Blood-Prick Art, darting in and out, striking and retreating, striking again—like wolves harrying prey.

Wang Jie tightened his grip.

He tried to form Star-Gazing Sword Form—

The locust beneath him suddenly thrashed.

His rhythm broke.

A cold flash. A huge saber dropped toward him with brutal force.

Roaming-star realm.

Wang Jie stepped on the locust’s back and pointed with one finger.

Myriad-Stars Finger.

Stars spun into existence across the air, spreading outward. Finger shadows fell like a meteor shower, striking everything around him—riders, locusts, and the roaming-star realm Luo Kingdom fighter alike.

The area emptied in an instant.

Even the Luo Kingdom fighters who didn’t fear death recoiled.

They didn’t fear dying—but they weren’t eager to die for nothing.

Wang Jie was too far beyond them.