Chapter 245

Chapter 245: Up There

Wang Jie turned at the shout. Someone was pressed to a window, face drained of color, staring into the void as if it were about to swallow him.

Outside, space had changed.

The usual deep black was gone, replaced by a pallid, corpse-white haze.

Not just one window—every viewport around the bridge showed the same dead color, wrapping the warship on all sides.

He strode to the nearest glass and peered out. The sight tightened his chest. Then he glanced back at the middle-aged man who always seemed to find everything amusing.

For once, there was no smirk.

He stood rigid, eyes locked on the void, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe.

The warship had stopped.

“My lord… what is that?”

No answer.

A hush fell over the bridge, unnatural in its weight. Even the usual hum of the ship felt muted.

Wang Jie stared at the pale mass outside. The longer he looked, the more certain he became: it was bone—bone so vast it made the warship feel like dust.

It was as if some colossal skeleton had closed its hand around them.

Whose bone could be that?

A starry-sky behemoth?

But why here?

This was the First Main Battlefield. Something like this had no business appearing at the front.

As the questions flashed through his mind, the deathly surface began to lift.

One window cleared, black space bleeding back into view. Everyone snapped their gaze toward it.

Now they could see the edge: a jagged, serrated break, like a snapped rib. It really was bone.

And beneath it… a line.

A thread so thin it was almost laughable, piercing straight through the bone and drawing it upward.

Wang Jie’s window cleared as well.

He pressed close and tried to look overhead. He couldn’t see the top, but he saw enough to make his scalp prickle.

The bone wasn’t encircling the warship.

It was covering the universe.

As far as the eye could reach—endless, boundless—everything lay beneath that chalk-white arch.

How could anything be that large?

And what was that thread?

Before that bone, their warship was nothing more than a speck. Yet the thread remained just as thin in the distance, unchanged by perspective—as if distance meant nothing at all.

The bone pressed down on the asteroid belt. In one direction, rocks erupted in silent explosions, sound crushed beneath that impossible weight.

Like a giant smothering a spark with a fingertip.

Then, in an instant, the bone was gone.

As if the thread had snapped taut and yanked it straight up—dragged toward an incomprehensible “above.”

Up there… what was it?

Four great nebulae. The bridge-pillar. The bridge itself.

Inside the warship, the lights flickered madly. A second later the engines roared back to life, and the familiar vibrations returned.

Everything was normal again—

Except for the people who had seen it.

No one could calm down. One after another, they turned to the man, waiting for an explanation.

He walked away in silence.

From beginning to end, he didn’t say a single word.

Wang Jie watched his back recede, then looked out at the starry sky again. What had just happened felt like a fever dream.

After the white-bone incident, the man never came to them again.

Not until the warship reached the Cloudstream Domain.

They filed out. Ahead lay an endless sea, rolling into the distance. Faint, star-like bodies bobbed on its surface like tiny boats.

“Why are there so few of them? What can this do?”

“What, Old Mo, you don’t want them? Fine—then they’re all mine.”

“Luo, have you no shame? Is that what I meant?”

“Old Mo’s right. Toss this many in and they won’t even make a splash. We should have the chief huntsman report it to the sect. If that doesn’t work, we need Locking Interspace to send more people.”

“I say we increase the number of slaughterstone planets instead. Don’t count on Locking Interspace—compared to us, they send elites. These outer-region slaughterstone-planet natives are the real cannon fodder.”

“I’m done arguing. I’m taking my people.”

“Don’t break the rules.”

“Snatch them.”

A massive force swept over Wang Jie and the others. He didn’t resist as it dragged him in one direction. A booming laugh rang out from ahead.

“Old Mo, Old Luo—I’m leaving first! Hahahahaha!”

“Wu, you bastard!”

“Next time, we’re doing the same!”

The one who seized them was a Hundred-Star Realm expert. With starforce alone, he gathered tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—and plunged into the Cloudstream Domain.

Below was an endless cloudstream. Fall into it, and you were done.

Wang Jie suddenly remembered the little boat he’d taken from the Zhi Vault. Would it even float here?

Space warped around them as they traveled. Before long, he saw the answer: dozens of star bodies were linked together ahead, floating on the cloudstream like a long, flat vessel.

So that was how it worked. Stars as boats—just like the Han Hai Battlefield, where everything was planet fragments.

Until you reached the Roaming-Star Realm, the starry sky and the cloudstream were equally lethal.

Only after arriving did he realize something else. The deeper they went into the cloudstream, the thicker the fog became. It swallowed sight. You couldn’t see far at all.

Wang Jie and the others were thrown onto a star body. When he turned back, Elder Wu was already gone. The man left only a single sentence behind:

“Enter the Command Hub, and you’ll have freedom.”

They’d landed on an iceberg.

People were scattered across the peak as freezing wind howled. Looking into the distance, Wang Jie could clearly see the curve of the star body dipping into the cloudstream—half submerged, half afloat.

Between each star body ran an unimaginably massive chain, driven through them like a spine, binding dozens together.

Wang Jie swept his gaze around and bolted down the mountain without hesitation. Up here, he was an easy target. First priority: get away from the crowd.

Before coming, Zhi Xing Xue had told him how the First Main Battlefield worked.

There were no battle-trooper or battle-general rankings here, because the enemy didn’t wear identity tokens. There was no way to calculate it.

What mattered was survival time.

Kill counts, merit—none of it existed yet.

To earn anything, you had to reach the Cloudstream Domain’s Command Hub. Only there could you get the tool that recorded your kills and merit properly.

Right now, they weren’t even qualified to “earn merit.”

That was why Elder Wu had said it.

Enter the Command Hub, and you’ll have freedom.

Don’t enter, and you’re cannon fodder.

No one bothered counting cannon fodder.

Wang Jie included.

He’d thought being sent to the First Main Battlefield would make him special. Instead, he realized they didn’t even know who he was.

Maybe his cheap master had interfered. Maybe it was something else. Either way, Wang Jie had to find the Command Hub like everyone else.

And on the way here, that middle-aged man had said something else: the people who could truly find the Command Hub were few and far between.

Those were the real elites of the Cloudstream Domain.

Plenty of others thought the same. Most were starforce cultivators—volunteers who’d chosen to come.

Not long after Wang Jie left the peak, a beam swept across the mountain and erased it.

Screams tore through the air as countless figures fell.

Then a roar rolled in—distant at first, then rushing closer—shaking the void.

Wang Jie looked up.

A creature flew in from afar, lion-shaped with twin wings, its body plated in lightning scales. A horn jutted from its head as it fired a bolt straight at them.

A Thunderflare Hou.

A powerful starry-sky behemoth of the Ancient Sword Bridge-Pillar.

Wang Jie sprinted toward another star body.

This place was finished. They’d already been noticed by the Ancient Sword Bridge-Pillar.

On the far side of the mountain range, a massive shadow closed in—more than a hundred linked star bodies crashing toward them.

The moment Wang Jie stepped onto the chain, the ground shuddered. A fracture spread like a wound across the star body behind him, splitting the peak in two.

The Thunderflare Hou crashed down into the crowd, tearing cultivators apart.

Wang Jie didn’t look back. With Sword Steps under his feet, he flashed forward and reached the next star body.

The instant he landed, someone shouted, “Get over here! Watch your step—you’ll fall into the cloudstream!”

A group ahead stared at him, then past him at the star body already breaking apart.

Wang Jie ran to them.

Someone demanded immediately, “How many star bodies?”

Wang Jie blinked. “What?”

“How many are bound together!”

“I didn’t see.”

“Useless!”

The man didn’t waste time. “Forget it. Move. There’s a Thunderflare Hou—it’s not weak.”

The group surged toward the next star body as if on instinct.

Wang Jie followed.

They hadn’t gone far before the star body behind them shattered completely.

Wang Jie glanced back. Out of the hundreds of thousands who’d been thrown in, he had no idea how many had escaped.

At least there were two other directions along the chain. Maybe more people had made it out that way.

He kept his hands to himself. The situation was unclear, and he wasn’t about to expose anything if a Hundred-Star Realm expert was watching.

The Ying Yang Battlefield had taught him that lesson well enough.

They fled from star body to star body, practiced and almost automatic. Soon they reached another.

From high ground, they finally saw it clearly.

More than a hundred linked star bodies slammed into the area, tearing open a crack through the one they stood on.

“This is bad. At this scale, there will be experts.”

“Run!”

They ran again—toward other star bodies.

And people from other star bodies ran toward them.

That was how the battlefield worked. The more people gathered, the bigger the target and the greater the danger… but when danger arrived, you had to gather anyway. Only numbers kept you alive.

No one could stay out of it.

One Thunderflare Hou after another shot into the sky and dove toward them.

Wang Jie frowned. “Did Elder Wu seriously not scout ahead?”

Someone beside him clenched his jaw. “There are battlefields everywhere. Who’s going to watch over us?”

“Farther out, there’s a decisive war with over a thousand linked star bodies. Elder Wu won’t spare us even a glance.”

Honestly, dropping them here already counted as “safe.”

Who would have thought they’d run into a strong enemy?

“Rear line, forward!”

A shout rang out.

A group stepped up, raising enormous shields to face the lightning.

Boom!

Lightning smashed into the shields. The impact drove everyone back at once.

“Rotate! People behind them, take over!”

“Newbies—move!”

Wang Jie got shoved under a shield. It was wooden.

No wonder it could block lightning.

The men bracing it were already half drenched in blood. The constant tremors had numbed them to the bone.

Wang Jie planted one hand against the shield.

Lightning struck.

He didn’t move an inch.

The bloodied man beside him stared at him like he’d just seen a ghost. “Brother… you’ve got strength.”

Wang Jie flicked his hand, telling him to go.

The man tried to warn him. “Watch out for their cultivators. If someone calls—”

He didn’t finish.

A sharp bark cut through the noise: “Hide!”

Shields slammed down to the ground in unison.

Wang Jie reacted a beat too slow. He felt only a flash of cold—

The wooden shield split cleanly in two.

The bloodied man’s face went white.

Someone behind them glared at Wang Jie. “Idiot! You don’t know to drop the shield?”

Wang Jie truly didn’t.

Now he did.

Wooden shields blocked lightning.

Sword edges cut wood.

Each side had its methods.

Lightning came again.

The bloodied man’s eyes went hollow with despair.

Wang Jie turned toward the incoming bolt and raised his hand.

Thunder Pattern.

The lightning slammed into the barrier with a deafening boom—and shattered harmlessly.

Most of these Thunderflare Hou were Full-Star Realm. Roaming-Star Realm ones were rare.

The bloodied man stared at the Thunder Pattern, stunned.

“You… you’re loaded?”