Chapter 215

Chapter 215: Madness

The bombardment lasted for days before it finally died out.

Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing climbed back to the surface. The moment they looked around, they realized the terrain had been completely rewritten.

The planet fragment beneath their feet—and the broken land drifting in the distance—had been blasted into unrecognizable shapes. Even more chunks now floated through the starry void like shattered islands.

The air reeked of scorched ash.

It was hard to imagine any cultivator below the Ten Seals surviving here.

This was the interstellar battlefield.

If Blue Star hadn’t been pushed away, they would’ve been flung onto this killing ground as natives and reduced to ashes long ago.

Even with Wang Jie’s current strength, he moved with extreme caution. On a battlefield, luck was the only promise the weak ever got.

“We shouldn’t go anywhere right now,” Zhi Nan Xing said. “This side is the safest.”

“It just got bombarded. Unless we’re insanely unlucky, we shouldn’t run into enemies for a while.”

He clearly didn’t want to split up anymore. As long as he stayed close to Wang Jie, he had a chance to live.

The words had barely left his mouth when a group of puppets crawled out of the ground on a land fragment opposite them and locked onto their position.

Wang Jie went quiet for a beat. “You really jinxed it.”

Zhi Nan Xing’s eyelid twitched. He stared at the numbers on his combat power detector. “There’s a Roaming-Star Realm one. Be careful.”

The puppets leaped across the void and charged.

Wang Jie rolled his shoulders. He’d been bottled up for days. This was the perfect chance to vent.

He kicked.

The force was so terrifying it felt like it could shatter a planet. The puppet in front exploded into pieces on the spot.

Inside the remaining puppets, the puppeteers went pale. This man had been hiding his true strength.

Zhi Nan Xing moved too, but he didn’t dare use Spring-Autumn Hand. He fought with the simplest, safest attacks.

Wang Jie had run into puppeteers plenty of times, but he’d never truly fought one head-on.

The Roaming-Star Realm puppeteer controlled a puppet and swung a massive blade at Wang Jie. The strike swept wide, poison glistening along the edge.

Wang Jie twisted aside and kicked again, shattering the long blade. Then he raised a finger.

Heaven-and-Earth Luo Xuan Finger punched through the puppet cleanly—but the puppeteer wasn’t inside.

Wang Jie flicked his hand. Pure brute force tore the puppet apart.

That easy?

A figure appeared behind him, striking sideways while Wang Jie was ripping the puppet open. The blade flashed with killing intent.

Thunder-pattern flared before Wang Jie.

The strike hit the thunder-pattern and didn’t budge it in the slightest.

“A red thunder-pattern?” The attacker’s expression shifted.

Wang Jie grabbed the wrist holding the knife and twisted. The man couldn’t resist at all—his shoulder snapped with a sickening crack. Starforce burst out in violent waves. Through Qi Sight, Wang Jie caught the strange motion inside the man’s body: his qi spun in an unnatural rotation, then linked together into a chain.

What kind of battle skill was that?

The man’s combat power kept climbing, but he’d been an ordinary Roaming-Star Realm to begin with—just over a hundred thousand. Even with the boost, he wouldn’t break one hundred thirty thousand.

In Wang Jie’s hands, it meant nothing.

“Who are you?” the man blurted, panic rising.

Wang Jie didn’t answer. He chopped down with his palm and drove his fist straight through the man’s body.

Blood gushed from the man’s mouth as he collapsed, hatred blazing in his eyes.

Nearby, Zhi Nan Xing finished off the remaining puppeteers. They were ordinary Star-Breaking Realm cultivators—nowhere near his level.

Wang Jie pulled a Roaming-Star Realm identity token from the corpse. Two drops of blood glimmered inside the jade pendant.

He had killed two Roaming-Star Realm cultivators of the same level… so why did they feel this weak?

“Huh.”

Zhi Nan Xing’s voice sharpened with surprise. “This one is from Xuan Gate.”

Wang Jie’s gaze snapped up. “Xuan Gate?”

Of course he knew Xuan Gate.

Frost Hua Sect had been destroyed by Xuan Gate.

Xuan Gate was the ruling power of the First Star Chain in Third Nebula. On the surface, it defended the Nan family’s rule over Third Nebula the way Frost Hua Sect once had. In secret, it was the largest force opposing the Nan family.

After years of infiltration, it had finally brought Frost Hua Sect to ruin. Otherwise, Frost Hua Sect wouldn’t have fallen so catastrophically.

Even the war Frost Hua Sect launched against the Ninth Star Chain had been planned by Xuan Gate.

“Xuan Gate cultivators are easy to recognize,” Zhi Nan Xing said. “They cultivate the Divine Xuan Scripture. They link the starforce in their bodies into a xuan—each connection raises their combat power a little.”

Wang Jie remembered what he’d seen through Qi Sight. So that was the xuan.

“In Third Nebula, aside from the Nan family, the hardest people to deal with are Xuan Gate cultivators.”

Zhi Nan Xing glanced at the token in Wang Jie’s hand. After a moment, he handed over the tokens from the puppeteers he’d killed as well. “These are yours. Without you, I’d already be dead.”

Wang Jie accepted without ceremony. If he wanted a foothold, he needed to reach Battle Trooper as soon as possible.

“You’ve been on the battlefield a long time,” Wang Jie said. “What rank are you now?”

Zhi Nan Xing took out his own identity token. “Star-Breaking Battle Guard.”

Wang Jie blinked. “You’re a Battle Guard?”

Then why come here?

Zhi Nan Xing sighed. “Because of you. My family said I have to reach Battle Elite on the battlefield before I’m allowed to return.”

He shook his head. “Outside a battlefield like this, reaching Battle Elite is too hard. It takes too long. I can’t afford to wait.”

Wang Jie patted his shoulder. “Don’t talk like that. I held back back then. Otherwise, you’d already be dead.”

Zhi Nan Xing stared at him. “…This time, this place really is safe.”

For several days straight, no enemies appeared. They only saw their own side once.

They knew the other party was an ally because the moment they spotted Zhi Nan Xing, they were stunned that a core member of the Zhi family had come to the Han Hai Battlefield.

Once his identity was recognized, hiding here was no longer possible. He was too sensitive a target.

Wang Jie didn’t plan on separating yet, so they left together. Zhi Nan Xing silently accepted it.

Time dragged on. They’d already been at the Han Hai Battlefield for more than ten days.

In any other place, ten days would’ve vanished in the blink of an eye. Here, each day felt like a year.

They ran into plenty of fights, but none were particularly dangerous. The opponents that truly troubled Wang Jie were either inherently bizarre or absurdly powerful—and powerhouses at that level always had someone else capable of checking them.

Only then did Wang Jie feel a little more at ease.

He was two drops of blood short of advancing to Battle Trooper.

Leaving the battlefield didn’t seem that hard, either.

Zhi Nan Xing hadn’t improved much. Reaching Battle Elite would still take a long time.

The problem was simple: they rarely ran into same-level cultivators who could increase his blood-drop count.

A battlefield demanded not only strength, but time. Many people raised their rank by accumulating time alone. If promotion were always that fast, the sects would’ve run out of experts.

One day, they rested beneath a shattered mountain range on a broken landmass.

Wang Jie felt almost cheerful. “We’ll be able to leave soon. What about you? Still planning to stay here?”

He tilted his chin toward the void. “If you ask me, leaving is better. Enduring slowly is still better than dying here.”

After all these days together, neither of them treated the other as an enemy anymore. Zhi Nan Xing had targeted him because of Zhi Qing and the others. There had never been any personal grudge between them.

Zhi Nan Xing looked at him. “How are you leaving?”

Wang Jie paused.

Zhi Nan Xing’s smile turned smug. “Every so often, there’s a fixed battleship outside the Han Hai Battlefield that takes people out. Or you can leave on your own if you’re Roaming-Star Realm.”

“How often?”

“Fast is three months. Slow is half a year.”

Wang Jie’s expression changed. “That long?”

Zhi Nan Xing opened a star map—Han Hai’s star map. He hadn’t planned to show Wang Jie before, but their relationship had eased over the past days.

He tapped a corner. “We’re here. The return battleships usually appear in this region.”

He dragged his finger over the marked zone. “So if you want to leave, you don’t just have to wait—you have to actually run into the ship. If you don’t, you keep waiting.”

Wang Jie stared at the enormous area. How was he supposed to find a ship in that?

“Don’t overthink it,” Zhi Nan Xing said. “The sects won’t let people leave that easily.”

“Especially someone like you—a genius who rises too fast. Come in and then walk right back out? How could they allow that?”

Wang Jie gave a bitter smile and put away the identity tokens.

“What is Di Zi to your faction?” he asked suddenly.

“She’s Elder Ming’s disciple,” Zhi Nan Xing said. “Elder Ming has a very close relationship with Ancestor Qing.”

Wang Jie didn’t reply.

Zhi Nan Xing glanced at him. “You want revenge on Di Zi?”

He shook his head. “I advise you not to do that here. Elder Ming is in the Yin Yang Battlefield. Even if he kills you, he’ll only get punished a little.”

“But if you can leave Han Hai, you won’t need to care about Di Zi anymore. Elder Ming won’t be able to force you into anything either.”

“There’s no need for revenge.”

Wang Jie ignored him. He pulled out the star compass and checked it.

His pupils shrank.

“Go,” he snapped. “Move—now. Hurry.”

On the star compass, qi was everywhere—front and back, dense as a swarm.

And two of those signatures were vast.

They rushed off the land fragment toward a neighboring one, but it was already too late.

Two figures faced each other from far away—one in front, one behind—and struck at the same time. Starforce, vast as an ocean, slammed straight toward them.

Every planet fragment and stretch of land in the path was pulverized.

Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing felt their breath catch, then both were swept away. The two waves of starforce hit like gale winds, flinging them apart.

The next instant, earth-shaking slaughter erupted.

From both directions, countless cultivators crashed into each other.

Without realizing it, they had been hiding at the very center of a war—without a single warning.

Hundreds of thousands of cultivators on both sides had approached without making a sound.

This was a planned decisive battle.

The leaders were Hundred-Star Realm.

Without Hundred-Star Realm suppressing everything, that many people could never have gone unnoticed.

A war on this scale was rare even on the Han Hai Battlefield. Hundred-Star Realm powerhouses usually sat in command and rarely fought directly—unless they were chasing merit, or pressure had come down from above.

Wang Jie smashed into a cliff wall and spat blood. When he looked up, two waves of starforce split the heavens again and again. Even the void cracked, tearing outward in all directions like endless thunder.

A fissure spread toward him. He dodged hard.

The cliff behind him tore open like paper. The ground beneath his feet crumbled away.

Ahead, a group of cultivators with bloodshot eyes rushed in. Wang Jie drew his sword and swept it sideways, cutting them down in a single slash.

Most of them were below the Ten Seals. Many cultivators were swallowed by the aftermath of the Hundred-Star Realm clash and vanished without a trace.

Just as Zhi Nan Xing had warned him: on a battlefield like this, there was no enemy or ally.

Those Hundred-Star Realm didn’t care whether the people below lived or died.

Wang Jie turned and ran, trying to get as far from the Hundred-Star Realm battle zone as possible.

But the cultivators around him surged like a tide. Everyone was an enemy.

Killing drowned out everything else; life and death were just outcomes now.

The higher someone’s cultivation, the calmer they could remain. The low-level ones—the ones with almost no chance to survive—were the ones who went mad. Fear of death swallowed their reason whole.

In that moment, most people were lunatics.

“Watch out!”

Someone shouted, but Wang Jie didn’t know who.

From far away, countless arrows fell out of the starry sky, drowning the surrounding space inch by inch.

Wang Jie was caught in the barrage.