Chapter 248

Chapter 248: Cloudstream Command Hub

On the way back, they passed battlefield after battlefield.

Some were small—only a few linked star bodies, a few hundred thousand fighters.

Others dwarfed even the war Wang Jie had barely escaped, swallowing more than a million.

The First Main Battlefield had existed for countless years.

Its death rate was terrifying. New blood was fed into it without end.

“The main force is Black-White Heaven,” the woman said, “but many lockforce cultivators are sent here by the four great nebulae. It’s not just us.”

“Otherwise, Black-White Heaven alone couldn’t hold a battlefield this massive.”

“Stop,” Wang Jie said suddenly.

The woman blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“Wait a moment,” he said, utterly serious. “I’m doing calisthenics.”

She stared at him.

They were midair over the cloudstream. She was literally supporting his footing—and he started doing calisthenics as if they were in a quiet courtyard.

She had so many questions that none of them made it past her lips.

When he finished, Wang Jie’s expression hadn’t changed. He grabbed her arm.

“Let’s go.”

She was still in a daze.

He offered no explanation.

A few days later, the woman stopped again, her expression shifting.

Wang Jie frowned. “What is it?”

“It’s too quiet,” she said hoarsely.

Wang Jie looked around.

Fog filled the Cloudstream Domain, thick and suffocating. Visibility was almost nothing.

“Normally,” she said, “we should see linked star bodies within three days at most.”

“It’s been five.”

“Not a single one.”

“That isn’t normal. Unless…”

Before she could finish, the fog ahead split in two.

Coldness rushed toward them—so sharp it felt like a blade brushing skin.

Wang Jie grabbed the woman and spun. They barely avoided the strike.

A Hundred-Star Realm attack.

Through the severed fog, they could see it far away: a vast region churning with chaos.

A battlefield.

The woman’s face drained of color. “A thousand-star-body war. Hundred-Star Realm leading. Run!”

Wang Jie caught her wrist. “We can’t run. We go in.”

“You’re insane!” she hissed. “In a battlefield like that, even Roaming-Star Realm die easily!”

Wang Jie pointed behind them—the direction she’d tried to retreat.

The stray force from that Hundred-Star Realm strike was spreading outward in a widening wave.

They couldn’t outrun it.

The only way to survive was to dive into the battlefield itself, where the flow of force was less certain.

On solid ground, Wang Jie might have been able to break through.

But this was above the cloudstream. Wang Jie could survive. The woman couldn’t.

And if she died, he’d fall into the cloudstream along with her.

He wasn’t gambling on that.

They rushed toward the battlefield.

The closer they got, the louder the slaughter became. Techniques detonated. Sword qi tore the air.

From above, the scene was horrifying—tens of thousands killing each other across shattered ground.

The moment they landed, eyes snapped toward them.

But Roaming-Star Realm were high-end power here. As long as they didn’t run into true monsters, they could usually survive.

The woman had no intention of earning merit in a battlefield like this. She only wanted to avoid being targeted.

Wang Jie felt the same.

The Ying Yang Battlefield had taught him that the more you stood out, the faster you died.

But luck didn’t care how careful you were.

Above them, shockwaves from a Hundred-Star Realm clash poured straight down.

The woman was erased instantly.

Wang Jie stared, stunned, then snapped his head up.

He could make out several Hundred-Star Realm fighting—not two or three. Several.

He moved at once.

But the entire battlefield lay under the shadow of their power. Whether Black-White Heaven or Fengmen, everyone was dodging and striking in the same breath, the pressure never easing.

Slaughter turned eyes red.

Thunderflare Hou screams ripped through the sky.

Chaos swallowed everything. There was nowhere to run.

Wang Jie focused on the only threat that truly mattered—the shockwaves of the Hundred-Star Realm.

That focus saved him…

And nearly killed him.

He didn’t realize he’d drifted into a Fengmen encirclement.

All around him were Fengmen cultivators.

They surged at him like a tide.

Wang Jie gripped his sword with both hands. In the blood-soaked confusion, he looked like any other sword cultivator—and he couldn’t understand how they were identifying him as an enemy.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Steel met steel.

Then came the sound of flesh tearing, the wet crack of bone, the sharp gasp of someone dying.

Blood smeared his vision.

He swallowed a Revival Pill.

Then a Body-Guarding Pill.

Then a Swiftstep Pill.

His outer robe shredded to rags, exposing the cloud-thread robe beneath.

A brutal sword qi slammed into his back and forced blood from his mouth.

Sword Spine.

A Cheng Clan Roaming-Star Realm cultivator had hit him from the shadows.

Other Roaming-Star Realm strikes flickered in and out of the chaos as well.

Wang Jie ground his teeth.

Kill.

He didn’t know how long he fought.

Then, overhead, vast pressure crashed down.

People screamed and fled. Most didn’t make it. They were crushed to death beneath the sheer weight of the Hundred-Star Realm clash.

Wang Jie slipped away at the last moment with Jia Eight Steps.

His Thunder Pattern shattered under the residual force.

But he made it out.

He tore through the encirclement and ran.

After some time, the war stalled.

The Hundred-Star Realm withdrew to their own sides.

Wang Jie spotted the direction of Black-White Heaven and retreated with them.

Only when the battlefield faded behind him did he finally breathe.

He’d almost been surrounded to death.

His strength wasn’t weak, but when attacks fell like rain, there would always come a moment when even he couldn’t hold.

Worse, a hidden Cheng Clan expert had ambushed him three times. Every wound came from Sword Spine.

Despicable.

But also… weak.

The battlefield proved one thing clearly: even with Bridgeway Art and resources, someone could still be mediocre.

A drifting star body carried them away. Survivors stood in silence, too drained to speak.

Wang Jie didn’t know where the Hundred-Star Realm experts were, but the direction they were moving…

It was probably the Command Hub.

As for the woman—

She’d died before he ever learned her name.

Fog smothered the Cloudstream Domain. It never dispersed. It must have been tied to the cloudstream itself.

Half a day later, the Command Hub came into view.

Wang Jie stared at the warship looming behind the fog, vast enough to blot out the sky.

So that was why he hadn’t seen warships out in the open. They were stationed here as fixed artillery.

Behind them towered the Command Hub itself.

It stood on a star body—star body stacked atop star body, forming a monstrous structure.

Through the fog, it looked like a giant staring down.

Cultivators poured in.

Wang Jie followed and quickly found the registration for newcomers.

“That guy is a newcomer?”

“Which one?”

“Him. I saw him get swallowed by an encirclement on the battlefield. I thought he was dead. He fought his way out.”

“And he’s a newcomer?”

“No way.”

“Maybe he’s Roaming-Star Realm?”

“I don’t know. Even the sect’s Roaming-Star Realm geniuses might not have made it out.”

“A six-path roamer definitely could.”

“Of course. A six-path roamer wouldn’t need to ‘fight out’—they’d just slaughter everyone.”

Wang Jie heard the chatter and was surprised his performance had been noticed at all.

“It’s done,” the registrar said. “From now on, any enemies you kill within a hundred meters will be sensed and counted as merit.”

“From now on,” Wang Jie repeated quietly.

Given what the woman had told him, those words were chilling.

The registrar gave him a faint, practiced smile.

“Also, the resource exchange has been loaded into your personal terminal through Orbital Dust. You can check it anytime.”

“Everything is exchanged with merit points.”

Wang Jie opened the list at once, anticipation stirring.

This was different from the Ying Yang Battlefield. Killing enemies didn’t rank you up. It gave you points.

And points were determined by battle power.

If an enemy had ten thousand battle power, killing them gave you ten thousand points.

Clean. Simple.

But exchanges started at one hundred thousand.

A threshold meant to stop people from farming Ten Seals cultivators.

If you could reach a hundred thousand merit points, you were considered an elite—only then did you qualify to trade for resources.

Wang Jie stared at the rewards list, eyes widening.

So many good things.

And all of it outrageously expensive.

A five-wen Roaming-Star Teleportation Pill: twenty million points.

Who would exchange for that?

Teleportation Pills could be bought with money. They were lifesaving, yes, but not rare.

The real prizes were the things you couldn’t buy even with starstone.

Bodyfall Pill.

An exclusive pill from Milky Way Defense Corporation, supplied only to Jia Yi Sect.

It formed a starforce vortex inside the body, storing excess starforce. When you hit your limit, you could release it. Or you could use it in a crisis to replenish starforce instantly, without wasting time swallowing starforce pills.

A treasure.

Unavailable on the open market.

And it worked on lockforce too.

Thirty million points—painful, but worth it for something with no price.

Void Pill.

A Roaming-Star Realm pill that let parts of the body merge with space. It required the pill-maker to have true comprehension of space, which made it extremely rare. Without that understanding, even a Celestial Master couldn’t refine it.

For those pursuing spatial power, it let you feel the void itself.

Outside, it sold for a hundred million starstone.

Here, it was fifty million merit points.

He scrolled further.

Among pills, the most expensive was something called Rebirth Pill.

One hundred billion merit points.

Wang Jie didn’t even want to think about that number.

He switched to weapons.

Thousand Bamboo Sword, Five-Tribulation Chen Artifact: two billion merit points.

Heaven-One Armor, Six-Tribulation Chen Artifact: one hundred billion merit points.

Absurd.

Then he checked Formation Scrolls.

One entry stopped his breathing.

Withered-Wood-Meets-Spring Array Book—Bu Zou Guan’s original formation: one hundred million merit points.

The formation used seasonal change to drag time over the body, forcing a cultivator to experience decay and rebirth through the turning of four seasons. It could help break bottlenecks.

The effect was powerful, but few could truly use it to break through.

For Wang Jie, though…

It would work.

He needed to shatter his limit.

He’d been using calisthenics to keep increasing his strength. The moment he saw that formation, he could feel it—it would help.

But a hundred million points was still a mountain.

How many people would he have to kill to reach that?

Why was everything here so expensive?

Wang Jie exhaled hard.

The registrar watched him with amused eyes. Everyone who came here looked like this when they saw the exchange list.

They wanted it.

They couldn’t afford it.

They thought it was unfair.

They didn’t understand that once you reached the Command Hub, leaving wasn’t easy.

People stayed here for years. Decades.

As long as you stayed alive, merit points accumulated into something terrifying.

The battlefield never ran out of enemies.

Some even spent their lives hunting Ten Seals cultivators. Over time, the points still piled up.

In the end, the “abundant exchange list” was just another kind of consolation—

A way to make the trapped feel like they still had hope.