Chapter 254

Chapter 254: Stacking Sword Arts

The command hub was formed from many piled-up planets. Each planet covered a vast area, and there were nowhere near enough cultivators to fill it.

Seclusion was easy to find.

Right now, Wang Jie needed to use the Withered-Wood-Meets-Spring Array to break his limit—and he also needed to cultivate Yi Sword Art.

Both mattered.

He took out the star compass, expanded its range, confirmed there was no qi nearby, and only then released the formation scroll.

He’d never felt anything like it.

Grass across the earth revived. The air filled with a clean, pleasant fragrance—comfort that came with all things awakening.

Wang Jie stood inside the Withered-Wood-Meets-Spring Array and drew a deep breath, savoring a climate that felt unnaturally friendly to the body.

Then the world shifted.

The void visibly yellowed. Time flowed.

Outside the array, everything looked unchanged.

Inside, the grass withered. The air turned cold and dry. The world decayed, slowly and steadily, until time itself felt tangible.

Inside and outside were two different worlds.

His body followed the same rhythm. His skin aged; his bones gave off brittle, fragile cracks as the seasons turned over him.

Wang Jie sat cross-legged and quietly felt time passing.

Like a leaf, he grew—and withered.

It was as if an hourglass hung above him, endlessly spilling down, grains falling onto his body and into his senses.

He reached out.

The shifting void felt like something he could touch.

Was he touching time?

Or space?

In a blink, the climate shifted again. Fresh grass pushed up once more, vivid and green, bending in a gentle wind.

Wang Jie opened his eyes.

No—too fast.

The decay ended before it pushed him to his body’s true limit.

It seemed the array’s greatest use was experiencing the replacement of time itself.

A pity.

It didn’t reach his intended goal.

Still, he watched the void change again around him, then closed his eyes.

No matter what, he would see it through. He wouldn’t waste something like this.

For cultivators seeking the path of time, this kind of formation was rare.

When the scroll finally dispersed, Wang Jie stood and looked down at his palm.

He’d touched time, but time was too fast—like water, flowing and formless, impossible to grasp.

If one day he could truly grasp it…

Perhaps he could cultivate a power ordinary people couldn’t even imagine.

Next was Yi Sword Art.

Before, he hadn’t practiced it often. Chen Art had already granted him Myriad-Stars Finger, and until his eyesight reached the next level, Yi Sword Art could only use one sword and didn’t help much.

But watching the Sword Dao Grand Array had given him insight.

One sword was Yi Sword Art’s current limit.

Not his.

Because he had Sword Rig.

Sword Rig was a formless linking power—something that could connect sword to sword. It had appeared after the Thunder Well, like Bridgeway Art, and it defied clean explanation.

The Sword Dao Grand Array made him realize something simple:

He controlled one sword.

But what could be linked didn’t have to be only one.

He raised his hand.

A sword appeared.

He lifted his arm slowly—Yi Sword Art.

Rain fell from the sky.

Rain Sword Art.

The rain was sword qi. It could attack, defend, and—strangely—also fall like real rain.

Drops pattered onto the ground. Under Wang Jie’s control, some places were sliced apart while other places were untouched.

The grass looked greener under the rain’s moisture.

Then he called a second sword.

Still Rain Sword Art.

He couldn’t meet Yi Sword Art’s next-level requirements, so it should have been the same one-sword Rain Sword Art again.

But when the second sword joined—

The rain thickened.

Wang Jie’s eyes lit up.

As he’d suspected.

He was stacking Rain Sword Art.

This wasn’t simple control.

It was Sword Rig linking.

This was Sword Rig’s true use.

So what if he could only cast the one-sword Rain Sword Art for life?

If he could link more and more swords—two swords, three swords, more—casting Rain Sword Art together, the power would become tremendous.

It depended on Sword Rig’s control.

Not eyesight.

Yi Sword Art was Chen Art.

But stacking Rain Sword Art like this wasn’t Chen Art.

Wang Jie felt invigorated and kept testing.

In the end, he confirmed he could currently stack three swords.

The rain was already dense. The sword qi carried more weight, more bite.

It still couldn’t match Yi Sword Art’s true three-sword swordplay, but as the number increased, it would surpass it.

And when his eyesight advanced and he could cast Yi Sword Art’s three-sword swordplay—

What kind of power would it have if he stacked three swords of that swordplay?

He couldn’t help looking forward to it.

Not long after, Wang Jie left the command hub and explored in one direction with a group.

Many recognized him now and treated him with respect.

Again and again, when they encountered enemies, Wang Jie used Rain Sword Art directly. The clearing effect was too strong.

Within a hundred meters, rain fell. With a shift of his gaze, enemies were cut down—unless he met someone truly strong and had to strike personally.

As he killed again and again with Rain Sword Art, the battlefield gave him a nickname.

Rain-Slaying God.

It sounded awful.

The first time Wang Jie heard it, his face went blank. He seriously wanted to find out who coined it—and make them regret it.

Xiao Luo Si tried twice to recruit him into Jia Yi Sect. He refused both times.

She was warm on the surface and spoke as if she valued him, but she couldn’t hide the contempt for lockforce cultivators in her eyes. That contempt came from her status as Madam Xiao’s direct line—and from the cultivation world’s disdain for lockforce itself.

The old crone looked down on lockforce cultivators too, but she hid it better.

After being rejected repeatedly, Xiao Luo Si’s mood soured.

Not long after, she left, departing the battlefield.

During that period, Wang Jie witnessed something that shook him.

Countless planets were pushed into the Cloudstream.

He’d never imagined that enormous planets—big enough to hold billions of lives—could be shoved into the fog like bubbles.

Where did those planets come from?

What kind of powerhouse could do something like that?

If someone like that pushed Blue Star… wouldn’t it be just as easy?

He asked around.

No one had an answer.

Back in the command hub, in a quiet place, the Chief Huntsman’s face was cold as she listened to the argument below.

“I still suggest abandoning the rescue,” one voice said. “It’s Fang He’s own arrogance. He won’t listen, he keeps charging forward. Does he really think a Six-Path Roamer is invincible? Now he’s fallen into a trap. Feng Men clearly laid methods there. Whoever goes to rescue him dies.”

Another voice snapped back, “That’s true, but Fang He came to the battlefield willingly. If we let him die surrounded without rescuing him, once word reaches the sect, what will the disciples think? Who will still be willing to come here?”

“And how much will it cost to rescue Fang He?” the first voice shot back. “Feng Men is targeting us.”

“You still don’t get it,” the second voice said. “This isn’t about saving or not saving Fang He. It’s about our stance.”

“A stance means sacrificing us?” the first voice hissed. “If you want to save him, you go. I’m not going.”

“What can one person do?”

“Enough.”

The Chief Huntsman’s voice cracked like a whip.

The arguing stopped.

Elder Wu and Elder Luo stood below her.

The Chief Huntsman stared down at them, eyes sharp. “Fang He deserves to die, but not like this.”

Elder Wu stepped forward. “Chief Huntsman, even if we go, their Hundred-Star Realm can hold us back. Who can truly save Fang He? We only have one Six-Path Roamer here. It’s too late to call reinforcements from the sect.”

He hesitated, then added, “And Fang He isn’t weak, and he isn’t stupid. I believe he would retreat if he met someone he couldn’t fight. If he’s still trapped despite that… then maybe Feng Men’s Three Swords are here.”

Elder Luo frowned. “Old Wu, don’t guess wildly. What proof do you have?”

Elder Wu didn’t answer. It was only a suspicion.

Feng Men’s Three Swords were equivalent to Black-White Heaven’s Six-Path Roamer. But because Feng Men was stronger overall, those three swords’ strength nearly surpassed a Six-Path Roamer.

If Feng Men’s Three Swords were present, and their Hundred-Star Realm were being pinned elsewhere, then even Fang He might be impossible to extract.

The Chief Huntsman thought for a long moment.

Then she said, “No matter what, Fang He must be rescued.”

Her voice hardened. “If we abandon him, none of the other Six-Path Roamers will come here.”

“But rescue is rescue,” she continued. “We need a way to win with surprise.”

She looked at Elder Wu. “Bring Wang Jie.”

—

In a corner of the Cloudstream, the fog was so thick it swallowed the forest and blinded the eye.

Inside the woods, someone leaned against a boulder, sitting in exhaustion.

His face was pale. He stared blankly into the fog, thoughts heavy and numb.

A voice beside him murmured, “Brother Xiao, do you think Senior Brother Fang He has a way to break out?”

The one called Brother Xiao shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The other man sighed, keeping his voice low as if the fog itself could hear. “I thought following a Six-Path Roamer would let us earn merit. Who knew we’d get trapped in this rotten place.”

Then, remembering something, he asked, “Brother Xiao, I heard you were transferred back to Suo Xing Jian a while ago. How did you get dumped here again?”

Brother Xiao was Black-White Heaven’s number one lockforce cultivator.

Xiao Rong.

A Roaming-Star Realm lockforce cultivator.

A name surfaced in Xiao Rong’s mind.

Wang Jie.

That man had given him hope of returning to Suo Xing Jian. Someone had even promised he would never again be forcibly drafted to the battlefield—that he could retire in peace.

Xiao Rong had been thrilled. He’d rushed back—

Only to discover Wang Jie had methods of his own. Xiao Rong still didn’t know how, but Wang Jie had forcibly thrown him back onto the battlefield again.

Not the old Silver-Sand Battlefield.

This one.

The First Main Battlefield.

The place you couldn’t come back from.

Who had he offended?

No one.

He’d simply been used—used badly—and now he was here to die for it.

His luck was rotten.

Wang Jie.

Just thinking the name made Xiao Rong’s teeth itch.

“Brother Xiao, look,” the man whispered. “He’s cursing again.”

Xiao Rong followed his gaze.

In the distance, Fang He was berating a disciple. The disciple’s face was deathly pale, blood at the corner of his mouth. Who knew if he’d been beaten by enemies—or by Fang He himself.

Faintly, Xiao Rong could hear Fang He shouting about despicable tactics.

Xiao Rong let out a bitter, silent laugh.

Despicable?

This was war.

What was “despicable” supposed to mean on a battlefield?

This Six-Path Roamer was too naive. Did he think the enemy would line up and duel him fairly?

They had to want to give you that chance first.

Following someone like that had been his own blindness.

Xiao Rong looked up at the endless fog.

This time, he really was going to leave his life here.

Outside the planet, a chunk of planetary debris drifted closer.

On that fragment of land, over a hundred thousand cultivators waited in tense silence, barely daring to breathe for fear of drawing attention.

They didn’t know they were already being watched.

Two figures observed them from afar.

A man and a woman.

The man was Luo Kui—one of Feng Men’s Three Swords.

The woman was Hou Xiao. She gazed at Luo Kui with open admiration. “Senior Brother is truly amazing. You’re sure they’ll come to rescue him?”

Luo Kui sneered. “Fang He is one of Black-White Heaven’s Six-Path Roamers. How could they not rescue him?”

His smile turned cold. “This place is clearly a trap, but it’s an open scheme. So what if they see through it? They still have to obediently come and die.”

He chuckled softly. “Remember last time in Hao Qian Domain? I used this method to kill a Hundred-Star Realm. It works every time.”

His eyes narrowed, voice low and pleased. “War isn’t only slaughter.”

“It needs strategy too.”