Chapter 219

Chapter 219: Makes Perfect Sense

It wasn’t their fault.

Who would expect a Hundred-Star Realm to suppress their presence and approach?

Only a Hundred-Star Realm knew where a battle would erupt.

No one could avoid something like that.

Wang Jie was already lucky to be alive. He just didn’t know how Zhi Nan Xing was doing.

Normally, someone like Yue Bai would be watched by other experts.

Thinking about it, he and Zhi Nan Xing really had been unlucky.

“Move.”

At the Hundred-Star Realm’s order, everyone burst out from behind the mountains, battle cries shaking the sky.

At the same time, battle cries erupted from two other directions.

Wang Jie hadn’t expected a three-way melee.

Where was Black-White Heaven?

The people caught at the center of the three-sided war went blank. They didn’t even know which way to run.

The moment three Hundred-Star Realm clashed, those unlucky souls were erased without a trace.

Tragic beyond words.

Arrow rain poured down toward one direction.

The Falling Bow Hall.

To the side, Shield Mountain Peak charged forward with shields raised. Luo Kingdom and the Puppeteer Sect followed behind them.

Xia Xiao Nian tugged Wang Jie and moved with the Shield Mountain Peak line.

Wang Jie didn’t want to.

He was afraid of running into Yue Bai.

But everyone was charging that way. He couldn’t exactly turn around without drawing eyes.

Ahead, another wave of battle cries surged closer.

The three forces slammed into each other.

Wang Jie finally identified Black-White Heaven’s side. That meant the third force was Second Star Cloud.

The instant he realized it, his hairs rose.

A Dagger-Offering Order.

Wang Jie spun, seized the attacker’s wrist, and flicked his hand. The force was overwhelming. The assassin died on the spot.

Wang Jie snatched the identity token and kept moving.

Next.

Xia Xiao Nian stared, stunned.

On a battlefield, anyone who ran into a Dagger-Offering Order was unlucky. They could kill across realms.

And that one had been Star-Breaking Realm—same as Wang Jie.

How had Wang Jie killed him so easily?

Wang Jie said quickly, “Take care of yourself. I’m heading to the Black-White Heaven side.”

Xia Xiao Nian nodded once. “You too.”

Wang Jie fixed on Black-White Heaven’s line and surged forward.

Another group from Second Star Cloud charged in. Wang Jie dodged their attacks, looked up—and saw—

Zhi Nan Xing.

In the crowd opposite, Zhi Nan Xing saw him too.

Wang Jie?

One of them had been pulled into Third Nebula’s side. The other had ended up on Second Star Cloud’s side.

Yet both were from Fourth Nebula.

What kind of joke was this?

Maybe they had experience now.

Maybe last time they’d simply been too unlucky.

This time, the two of them linked up smoothly. They repelled enemies without drawing the attention of any true powerhouse.

“Why were you on Second Star Cloud’s side?” Wang Jie demanded.

“I was going to ask you,” Zhi Nan Xing snapped back. “Why were you on Third Nebula’s side?”

“Pull out first,” Wang Jie said. “Don’t let anyone lock onto us.”

Zhi Nan Xing nodded.

They fought while retreating, perfectly in sync, using nothing that would draw the wrong eyes.

Compared to their earlier wandering in confusion, this time they had rhythm.

Before long, they’d withdrawn to the rear of Black-White Heaven’s line.

Along the way, they were even attacked by Black-White Heaven cultivators. In this chaos, no one trusted anyone.

Beams bombarded again.

It was like Wang Jie had a map in his mind. He veered right without hesitation, and Zhi Nan Xing followed.

They dodged the bombardment cleanly.

Both of them exhaled hard.

They met each other’s eyes and saw the same helplessness.

If they’d understood the battlefield this clearly last time, it wouldn’t have been so miserable.

All they could say was that they were veterans now.

A war could last a long time.

In the distance, different forces clashed in waves. Above them, three Hundred-Star Realm powerhouses fought, tearing the sky apart.

At this point, the most dangerous thing wasn’t the ordinary battlefield.

It was the aftermath of the Hundred-Star Realm clashes.

Two days later, the war slowed. Many people withdrew.

Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing retreated with the crowd and ended up on a planet fragment surrounded by Black-White Heaven cultivators.

Only then did they finally relax.

Zhi Nan Xing stared at Wang Jie, voice low. “Why were you on Third Nebula’s side?”

Wang Jie raised a brow. “What do you mean? You were on Second Star Cloud’s side—how do you have the nerve to suspect me?”

“Hmph. I’m from the Zhi family,” Zhi Nan Xing said. “I can’t betray Black-White Heaven.”

“I’m originally from Frost Hua Sect in Third Nebula,” Wang Jie replied. “It makes perfect sense that I can blend in there.”

Zhi Nan Xing’s gaze flickered. He didn’t push further.

“I thought you got killed by Yue Bai,” he said instead.

Then he added, almost grudgingly, “Surviving Yue Bai’s ambush—if word gets out, it’ll shock the sect.”

Wang Jie didn’t feel proud.

Yue Bai wasn’t much older than him. The difference was that Yue Bai had trained since childhood.

And Yue Bai still wasn’t a Six-Path Roamer.

The gap between a Six-Path Roamer and a Skeleton Clan creature of the same realm was even larger. Wang Jie had watched one get one-shot, while a Skeleton Clan creature couldn’t even match a human at Guarding Star Realm.

If you measured it like that…

Would the gap between him and Shu Mu Ye only widen?

Wang Jie glanced around. Plenty of people were hiding here, likely waiting like those Xuan Gate groups—ready to be thrown into battle at any time.

Then he saw someone.

A sharp gaze.

Wang Jie looked away immediately.

It was him.

That Dead Realm man.

He had searched everywhere and found nothing—only for the man to be here, right in front of him.

Zhi Nan Xing sank against a cliff wall, exhausted. “You’re not far from Battle Trooper now, right?”

Wang Jie answered casually, “Still far.”

He didn’t alert the man. He only watched him in secret.

That man was from Dead Realm. If he’d infiltrated Black-White Heaven, he definitely had a purpose.

If Wang Jie exposed him now, the man could expose Wang Jie’s qi refining in return.

No rush.

There would be a chance.

In the distance, Cang Wu suddenly felt uneasy. He scanned the area carefully, feeling as if someone was watching him.

But he had always kept a low profile, and he’d mixed into battles countless times.

Who would be watching him?

After a moment, he quietly shifted positions.

They rested for less than ten days before war erupted again.

Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing had already survived two large-scale wars. With experience now, they absolutely didn’t stray from the main group.

Wars with massive numbers were fierce, with terrifying death rates—but for powerhouses like them, they were the safest.

Better than wandering alone.

One day you might stumble into a dead end.

Here, at least a Hundred-Star Realm held the front line.

They only had to be careful not to get targeted by someone like Yue Bai.

Because of that, Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing worked together more and more smoothly. The wariness between them faded.

Zhi Nan Xing never would’ve dreamed he’d become Wang Jie’s battlefield comrade.

Wang Jie hadn’t imagined it either.

For the next month, they followed a Hundred-Star Realm into one large battle after another.

Sometimes they launched from behind planet fragments. Sometimes they collided with enemy lines head-on. Sometimes they ambushed.

Around them, people died in waves. The death rate was horrifying.

But anyone who survived became a veteran.

By rough count, in just this past month of battles Wang Jie took part in, over two hundred thousand Black-White Heaven cultivators had died.

And that didn’t count Second Star Cloud and Third Nebula.

In a little over a month, more than five hundred thousand had died.

No wonder cultivators kept getting thrown into the Han Hai Battlefield.

And Wang Jie had finally gathered enough identity tokens to advance to Battle Trooper.

He was Star-Breaking Realm. Even killing across realms could count as a drop of blood.

Killing Full-Star Realm wasn’t hard for him.

Now all he had to do was wait for a return ship.

Kill—

Battle cries erupted again.

Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing searched in sync for a good position and found one quickly.

A round of arrow rain swept past, followed by countless shields. Behind the shields poured a flood of Luo Kingdom cultivators.

On the other side, people kept dying for no obvious reason.

There were huge numbers of Dagger-Offering Orders.

They had learned the pattern by now.

They could dodge the first sweep of clearing attacks.

But something was off this time.

Luo Kingdom cultivators kept pouring in from all directions. The arrow rain didn’t just sweep the old direction—it was coming toward them too.

And the Shield Mountain Peak line was closing in like it was trying to surround them.

“Something’s wrong,” Wang Jie muttered. “Where are all these Third Nebula people coming from?”

Zhi Nan Xing’s face was grim. “Third Nebula sent reinforcements. A lot of them.”

“Is there no interception behind them? When we came, our warships were destroyed. So many people never even made it onto the battlefield.”

Wang Jie frowned. “Switch positions.”

He remembered what Xia Xiao Nian had said.

If Xuan Gate increased investment in the Star-Cloud Battlefield, it meant they wanted the battlefield to draw the attention of Second Star Cloud and Fourth Nebula while they unified Third Nebula in secret.

Did this count as that?

Was this reinforcement for the entire Star-Cloud Battlefield—or reinforcements from Third Nebula’s command hub specifically for Han Hai?

Before he could think further, pain stabbed between his brows.

He stepped onto Jia Eight Steps on instinct and dodged.

A flash of light sliced past where he’d been. It grazed Zhi Nan Xing’s cheek, then stabbed into the void, leaving a thin groove in its wake.

Zhi Nan Xing touched his cheek. Blood smeared across his fingers—bright and glaring.

Wang Jie looked into the distance.

An arrow.

A woman stared at him from far away, surprise on her face. Then she raised her bow and fired again.

“Run!” Wang Jie snapped.

He turned and fled without hesitation.

He couldn’t even sense her arrows. He only felt danger at the instant she fired—and even then, he’d nearly failed to dodge.

She was a powerhouse.

Zhi Nan Xing ran too, not waiting for an explanation.

He knew the woman.

Lan Ning—one of the strongest disciples of the Falling Bow Hall. Her archery was unmatched.

Why was she here?

From far away, Lan Ning watched Wang Jie and Zhi Nan Xing split in two directions.

She ignored Zhi Nan Xing.

Her eyes locked on Wang Jie.

She fired.

You dodged the first arrow. Let’s see you dodge the second.

Wang Jie twisted and dodged with Jia Eight Steps.

Lan Ning’s brows rose. She sneered.

Again.

Arrow after arrow screamed through the void—and Wang Jie dodged every single one.

He was already far away. If she’d landed that first sneak attack cleanly, he wouldn’t have dodged even if he’d sensed danger.

After nine arrows were dodged in a row, Lan Ning’s gaze turned icy.

She switched bows.

She fired.

Wang Jie glanced back, scalp prickling.

What the hell?

Where did such a huge arrow come from?

The arrow was more than ten times bigger than a normal one. Forget arrows—even a sword wasn’t that massive.

It wasn’t as fast as the previous shots. It smashed into the ground like a falling mountain.

The explosion tore the planet fragment apart. The shockwave surged forward from behind, nearly flipping Wang Jie over.

This shot wasn’t about speed.

It was raw power.

The earlier arrows were built for precision and ambush.

Wang Jie barely escaped the blast radius when another arrow arrived.

He drew his sword and threw it.

Sword and arrow collided midair and exploded. The force slammed down and crushed many cultivators nearby to death.

Dust and debris swallowed everything.

Using the blocked view, Wang Jie fled on Sword Steps.

Lan Ning never moved from her distant position.

Wang Jie widened the distance until the dust fully blocked her line of sight. She lowered her bow, knowing she couldn’t catch him.

That speed and movement technique were definitely not from Black-White Heaven.

On the other side, Wang Jie had gained distance from Lan Ning, but he still couldn’t escape the battlefield.

Han Hai was enormous, stretching across the starry void. Even if he ran without stopping, he couldn’t get out in a short time.

And blindly running in a battlefield only got you killed faster.

So when he realized Lan Ning wasn’t chasing, he slowed down.