Chapter 271

Chapter 271: Dou Huo

Not long after, the old man arrived before Wang Jie.

“You. Come with me.”

Wang Jie turned and bowed with controlled courtesy. “May I ask what you need, Senior?”

“When I tell you to come, you come,” the old man snapped. “You’re only a disciple. Since when do you get to question me?”

“Then forgive me,” Wang Jie said, his voice cooling. “It’s my rest rotation. I won’t be going.”

A sneer curled the old man’s lips. “On the battlefield, you think a lockforce cultivator like you is entitled to rest?”

Nearby, the disciple who’d explained the “dead men” earlier froze and quietly backed away.

So this guy is lockforce too?

You couldn’t tell at all.

And he’s got no sense.

After hearing what’s happening, he should’ve vanished. Instead, he stayed.

Wang Jie raised his terminal, showing the message that confirmed his rest slot.

The old man didn’t even glance at it. His hand shot out. “Insolent. You dare bargain with me?”

Wang Jie retreated—but the old man was hundred-star realm.

Starforce surged out in a brutal wave, slamming into Wang Jie’s chest. His breath caught. He staggered, coughing, a suffocating pressure squeezing his lungs.

The old man reached for him again.

Wang Jie’s eyes turned sharp. Hundred-star realm was a tier that began beyond Six-Path Roamers. He had no intention of trading blows.

He gritted his teeth and shouted, “If you touch me, the chief huntsman won’t let you off!”

The old man stopped.

His eyes locked on Wang Jie. “What did you say?”

Wang Jie held his gaze, unflinching. “Ordinary people don’t get rest. Only those with names do.

“I cultivate lockforce and still have a rest slot—do you think I’m ordinary?”

He leaned in, voice like a blade. “It’s not just the chief huntsman. Senior Zhi Ye. The Black Realm Lord. They’re all watching me.”

“Go ask around,” he added. “When I disappeared on the Yin Yang Battlefield, how many people came looking for me?”

The old man hesitated.

He didn’t know Wang Jie well. His only clear memory was that this brat had once taken hostages from the Elder Council’s junior line and forced Lockwalkers to declare independence.

After that, the old man had gone into seclusion. He’d been awakened and thrown straight into reinforcement duty. He hadn’t learned what had happened in between.

If Wang Jie was bluffing, he could crush him.

If he wasn’t…

“Do you know how Elder Cheng died?” Wang Jie said casually.

The effect was immediate.

The old man’s face changed. “You know? Elder Cheng is dead?”

The sect’s strangest recent mystery was Elder Cheng’s disappearance. No one knew where he’d gone. There were no traces of him leaving. And yet he vanished.

Even more unnerving: nobody investigated.

The Elder Council didn’t. The White Realm Lord didn’t. Even the Zhi family didn’t.

It was as if everyone silently accepted he was gone.

A hundred-star realm expert. Vanished.

Wang Jie’s expression dripped with contempt. “You’re hundred-star realm and you don’t even know that? You’re not qualified to lay a hand on me.

“Get out.”

The old man’s anger flared—but uncertainty smothered it.

“Elder Cheng is truly dead?”

“Go ask,” Wang Jie said. “And while you’re at it, find out how many people are behind me.

“You think you can afford to provoke me?

“You wouldn’t even need to reach the front lines for them to leave you without a corpse.”

The old man stared at him for a long moment, then nodded once. “Fine. I’ll spare you for now. If I find out you lied, I’ll make you pay.”

He turned and strode away.

Only when he was gone did Wang Jie let out the breath he’d been holding.

No matter how many people watched him, this was the battlefield.

If that old bastard decided to kill him here, even if the sect executed him afterward, Wang Jie wouldn’t come back to life.

He had no interest in dying together.

Soon after, one small warship after another was flung into the distance by hundred-star realm starforce.

Each ship was packed with lockforce cultivators.

Their faces were ashen. Their bodies had been seeded with foreign forces, technological weapons embedded beneath flesh and bone, torment twisting them into something barely human.

Some ships detonated mid-flight, reduced to scrap and blood.

Some slammed into the enemy’s rear.

Lockforce cultivators spilled out and surged forward in suicide waves—living bombs that tore open defensive lines and dragged enemies down with them.

Wang Jie watched, grief tightening his throat.

Human life was that cheap.

Back on Blue Star, the people from Jia Yi Sect had spoken lightly about the battlefield.

This was worse.

These weren’t cannon fodder. They weren’t even worth the cannon.

“Old bastard,” Wang Jie called out, voice carrying. “Doesn’t it make you sick?”

The elder who had tried to seize him stood in the distance.

He didn’t answer.

Wang Jie’s eyes were bleak. “Maybe one day, even hundred-star realm will get thrown into the grinder as cannon fodder. Then you’ll understand.”

The old man laughed coldly. “Ignorant little junior. What battlefield turns hundred-star realm into cannon fodder?”

Wang Jie looked up. “In my eyes, hundred-star realm isn’t all that.”

The old man gave him a long, unreadable glance, then walked away.

Wang Jie had been testing him. The man moved like a veteran of the battlefield.

But Wang Jie had learned nothing useful.

The war’s cruelty was only beginning.

Black-White Heaven’s suicide attacks bought them blood—so the other side answered in kind.

Small sword arrays were hurled over like spinning tops, screaming through the void. Few could stop them. They ripped open space and slammed into Black-White Heaven’s lines.

Wang Jie slashed once.

Rain Sword Art tore at the array’s structure, ripping it apart by force. The three cultivators inside were shredded, bodies scattering into the dark.

There were three-person arrays. Five-person arrays. Larger ones beyond counting.

Only those with three to four hundred thousand combat power could confront them head-on—and there were far too many arrays for that to matter.

Black-White Heaven responded by throwing out a wave of colossal trees.

Trunks and branches twisted together, interlacing into towering walls. Sword arrays slammed into them and shuddered to a halt.

Then countless fighters from Luo Kingdom stepped onto the living barricade.

The trees bent like bows, whipping their branches and flinging those fighters across the void into the enemy lines.

Their blood had been ignited. Their strength surged beyond its limits. They fought like people who had already accepted death.

Arrows and battleship beams laced the space around them, covering their charge.

The enemy answered with more sword arrays.

On this battlefield, war had a thousand shapes. Each new tactic arrived before the last could even be understood.

Only now did Wang Jie truly feel what interstellar war meant.

A flesh grinder.

No sky to hide in. No ground to burrow into.

Then, in the distance, the tree wall split—yet not by sword arrays.

A hundred-star realm cultivator had been hidden within an array, riding it like a shell.

Wang Jie’s scalp went cold.

If a hundred-star realm had been tucked into the array that had targeted him earlier, he would already be dead.

He tightened his grip on his Star Compass, monitoring everything around him with renewed caution.

Above, a crack suddenly tore open across the starry sky, swallowing the battlefield ahead.

Cultivators vanished beneath it by the thousands. Even hundred-star realm were erased.

That crack was nothing more than the aftershock of star-refining realm combat.

Chief Huntsman Shuang Jin came crashing back, body broken, slamming into a battleship.

The Black Realm Lord staggered out as well, swaying, wounded badly enough that each step looked uncertain.

Across from them, a shadowy figure spat blood.

Gu Xun Yi’s calligraphy—so fearsome it had once seemed untouchable—now carried visible cracks. One against three, even he couldn’t stay unscathed.

Time slipped by.

Wang Jie rotated into rest again, then back out.

At some point, Celestial Master Qi retreated from the battlefield entirely. Gu Xun Yi dragged another star-refining realm opponent away by force, and the overall situation became murky.

If Gu Xun Yi collapsed, the entire battlefield would collapse with him.

Wang Jie glanced back and saw Celestial Master Qi pale and trembling, waving weakly as he withdrew.

Then the man ran—without looking back.

He was an alchemy Celestial Master. Combat had never been his strength.

Even so, abandoning the field like that left a bitter taste.

Another tree wall collapsed under a hundred-star realm strike.

Enemies poured through the gap, dangerously close.

Wang Jie raised his sword and unleashed a storm of sword qi. He killed what he could, bought what space he could—

Then his eyes snapped to something that slipped through the breach.

A massive wolf, dark blue-black, star-sand ripples flowing across its hide.

A starry sky behemoth.

He hadn’t met one like this before, but he knew it from Si Yao’s footage. Si Yao had shown him countless recordings of battlefield beasts, and this wolf was among them.

It carried eleven seals.

And it belonged to the Ancient Sword bridge-pillar.

Its name was Dou Huo.

The wolf surged into Black-White Heaven’s lines. Its fur rose like blades. One sweeping paw sent visible edges through the air—like knife light—ripping a swath of disciples apart.

A roaming-star realm cultivator charged it and struck with a palm.

The palm force never even reached the wolf.

It rebounded, and the wolf’s fur pierced straight through the man’s body. He died with wide, unblinking eyes.

Full-star realm.

Dou Huo was full-star realm.

Wang Jie was staring too hard.

Dou Huo sensed it.

The wolf turned, pupils flashing with cruel amusement, and lunged at him. A paw slammed down like a falling mountain.

Wang Jie steadied his grip and slashed.

Rain fell—Rain Sword Art spreading like a curtain.

Dou Huo’s claw knocked the blade aside. Sword qi rained onto its body, but just like the roaming-star realm cultivator’s attack, none of it could penetrate.

Wang Jie’s qi sight flared.

He saw it clearly then—an ocean of starforce inside the wolf, vast beyond anything he’d seen in a roaming-star realm cultivator.

Even Six-Path Roamers didn’t compare.

How could it have that much starforce?

He didn’t have time to think.

Dou Huo slammed in again, starforce wrapping around its body to form a starry barrier. Its eyes stayed locked on Wang Jie like a predator savoring its meal.

Wang Jie stepped with Jia Eight Steps, appearing at the wolf’s flank, and drove a kick into its abdomen.

His force crushed the starforce barrier like glass.

Dou Huo’s body flew back through the void.

The mockery in its eyes shattered into disbelief.

Wang Jie lifted a hand and pointed.

Myriad-Stars Finger dropped like a falling star.

Dou Huo threw back its head and howled. Its fur bristled. Starforce shot upward in patterned streams—like a formation—shredding Myriad-Stars Finger and then spread toward Wang Jie as a killing array.

Wang Jie’s heartbeat thudded.

This was the first time a full-star realm had broken his Myriad-Stars Finger outright.

He had challenged above his level again and again, nearly always winning.

Now he’d finally met something that could make him feel pressure.

But he still hadn’t truly gone all out.

As the killing array descended, Wang Jie clenched his fist and punched.

Ninety-ninefold limit strength erupted.

The array shattered.

Black-blue fur drifted down.

Dou Huo stared at him, eyes wide with shock.