Chapter 310

Chapter 310: One Sword

Among everyone present, only Nan Zhi had cultivated the complete Red Moon method. Wang Jie’s version was incomplete, but even so, he understood far more than anyone else.

Wu Yuan, on the other hand, hadn’t sensed Red Moon reaching out at all.

“So that’s it,” Wu Yuan murmured as he scanned their surroundings. “This must be how the Nan Family stays in contact with one another.”

He frowned at the vast, crushing presence of formations around them. “The formation dao here is too profound. Not every Nan Family member could understand it. If a powerful enemy attacks, their only way to coordinate would be the Red Moon method.”

Wang Jie had reached the same conclusion. The Nan Family truly had layers upon layers of backup plans.

Which was only natural. A clan that enormous couldn’t survive without methods.

Guided by the faint, hazy pull of Red Moon, Wang Jie led Wu Yuan forward. The tug grew stronger and stronger until they found Nan Zhi collapsed in a ruined corner, grievously wounded and barely clinging to life.

Wang Jie’s heart sank. He hadn’t expected her to be hurt this badly. He moved at once, forcing starforce into her body to stabilize her injuries.

She couldn’t die. Not now.

“You… finally… came.” Nan Zhi’s voice was threadbare, as if each word cost her blood.

Wang Jie stared down at her. “What happened? Where’s Guan Sou?”

Nan Zhi’s lips curved into something like a smile, but it held only bitterness. “Dead.”

Wu Yuan’s gaze sharpened. “One sword?”

Nan Zhi looked from Wu Yuan to Wang Jie, then back again.

“Elder Wu Yuan knows who you are,” Wang Jie said. “He already figured it out.”

Nan Zhi nodded, face bone-white. “Yes. One sword.”

Wang Jie and Wu Yuan exchanged a look. The shock in the other’s eyes mirrored his own.

Nan Zhi’s hands trembled. “No matter what Guan Sou set up, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t withstand a single sword. It was… ruthless.”

“How did you survive?” Wang Jie asked.

Nan Zhi swallowed hard. “I don’t know. They didn’t kill me.”

Her voice rasped as she forced the next words out. “My injuries came from that purple-eyed woman who follows Ke Mu Sheng. I was unlucky enough to run into her. The killer didn’t even look at me. I never saw their face.”

“Take us to Guan Sou,” Wu Yuan said, voice low and heavy. “Now.”

He didn’t believe her.

Wang Jie didn’t, either. There was always the possibility Nan Zhi had revealed her identity and joined forces with Guan Sou in secret.

But when they arrived, all suspicion died on their tongues.

Guan Sou lay sprawled on the ground, a clean, brutal puncture through his heart. Sword qi had ripped through him from the inside out, shredding meridians, bones, everything, leaving nothing intact. No resistance. Not even the chance to struggle.

Around him, faint traces of No-Abode Mirror Domain starforce were still dispersing, like fog torn apart by wind.

Wu Yuan’s expression darkened.

Nan Zhi looked even more terrified now, as if seeing the corpse made the killer real in a way words couldn’t. “Who… who are they?”

She stared into the shadows beyond the broken ground, breathing too fast. “They spared me. They knew I’m a descendant of the Nan Family. They want to use me to get out of the formation.”

Her voice cracked. “That means… we’re being watched.”

Wu Yuan lifted his head, scanning the void beyond the control-room walls. “Your Excellency—who are you? What do you want?”

Wang Jie swept his gaze across the same emptiness. He could feel it too: the uncanny certainty that if he stayed near Nan Zhi, someone was watching them through her, through Red Moon.

It was a strange, intimate kind of dread.

“We need to move,” Wang Jie said. “Head for the formation exit.”

Nan Zhi jerked violently. “No. I’m not going.”

Wang Jie looked at her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

She crouched again, arms wrapped around herself, shaking. “I’m not going. I’ll stay here. I’ll stay trapped here forever if I have to.”

“If you don’t go,” Wu Yuan said, “she’ll kill you anyway. If you do, you might have a chance.”

Nan Zhi’s breathing turned ragged. “A chance? Walking out is walking into death. The closer we get to the exit, the closer we get to that sword.”

Wang Jie watched her crumble and chose his words carefully. “Listen. With someone like that… if they decide you truly won’t go to the exit, the next sword will come immediately.”

Nan Zhi shuddered, as if he’d struck her. She raised her head, eyes wet and blazing with hatred, and stared at him.

“It’s all your fault,” she spat. “You exposed me. If it weren’t for you, no one would know who I am. No one.”

She lurched up and grabbed fistfuls of his robe. “You made me reveal myself—so why can’t you protect me? I can give you everything the Nan Family has. Everything. Why can’t you protect me? Why?”

She shook him, screaming, sobbing, clawing at the fabric, as if rage could rewrite reality.

Wang Jie didn’t move. He let her exhaust herself.

Wu Yuan waited in silence.

Only after a long, aching stretch did Nan Zhi sag and drop to her knees, shoulders shaking. “I only wanted my family’s inheritance,” she whispered. “I only wanted to rebuild the Nan Family. Why did it become this? Why?”

Wang Jie glanced at the star compass in his hand. “There’s no qi around us. If we waste time, the killer gets closer.”

He met Nan Zhi’s gaze. “Our guesses might be wrong. All you can do now is find the exit and run. That’s it.”

He let the words fall like stones. “If we don’t, everyone inside this formation will be killed one by one. You included.”

Nan Zhi stared at the ground, hollow-eyed. Then, slowly, she rose. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, said nothing, and began to search for the formation’s exit.

Wang Jie glanced at Wu Yuan. The heaviness in the elder’s eyes answered everything.

Wu Yuan spoke first. “We should find others. Join forces.”

“No.” Nan Zhi’s voice snapped, sharp with panic. “Faster is better. Wang Jie is right—faster is better.”

She started forward again.

Wang Jie followed, keeping his voice low. “Against that kind of sword, numbers won’t help. We’d only waste time.”

Wu Yuan clenched his jaw, then nodded. “Then we go.”

They walked for half a day without incident. Then, with a single step, the world changed.

The oppressive walls of starforce and void-blocking barriers were gone.

They stood in a corner of the train—an actual corner—where the familiar hues of real land spread beneath them. When Wang Jie looked back, he realized the formation had never covered the entire train. This section had been cut off.

The moment she saw open space, Nan Zhi sprinted toward one specific point. “Protect me.”

Wang Jie and Wu Yuan followed at once.

Protect her?

No one could protect anyone from that sword. They could only keep up.

Nan Zhi slammed her palm onto the surface and cast Red Moon.

Starforce surged upward from within her, gathering above her head, condensing into a blood-red moon. The moon sank into the void ahead and vanished.

Cracks spiderwebbed through the darkness.

Nan Zhi’s eyes blazed. She dove straight into the largest rift without hesitation.

Wang Jie and Wu Yuan followed, already prepared.

Inside was another space.

It looked like the train’s control room—compact, only large enough to hold something the size of a small hill. So it truly was a complete train, not a mere relic or fragment.

But there was no trace of technology. Only a single Red Moon, dim and hanging like an eye.

And beneath it lay a corpse.

Wang Jie and Wu Yuan froze.

An old man was sprawled under the Red Moon, blood long since drained, the body stiff with death.

Nan Zhi saw him too. For a heartbeat, grief flickered across her face.

Then she launched herself straight toward the Red Moon.

“Stop her!” Wang Jie shouted.

He burst forward with Jia Eight Steps. Wu Yuan struck at the same time.

Red light rained down in sharp, punitive streaks. Both men were blasted backward, slammed away by a force they couldn’t breach.

Nan Zhi reached the Red Moon and merged into it.

In an instant, she changed.

Bathed in crimson, she looked eerily beautiful—too bright, too sharp, like a blade dressed in silk. Blood vessels webbed across her eyes. When she stared down at Wang Jie and Wu Yuan, her gaze held cold amusement and open killing intent.

Nothing remained of the trembling, desperate girl.

She’d been acting.

Wang Jie and Wu Yuan saw it at the same time, and the realization hit like a hammer.

Nan Zhi clasped her hands together. With each movement, the Red Moon swelled larger. The void around her rippled, unreal, like mirages on water. Within those ripples, faint images of them surfaced and warped.

Ripples of time.

Wang Jie’s mind flashed back to their earlier fight. Nan Zhi had never used Four Seasons Bridgeway Art then. Not because she couldn’t.

Because she hadn’t needed to.

Now he watched Four Seasons Bridgeway Art unfold—tethered to Red Moon, fed by it.

Wu Yuan roared, lifting his blade. Starforce surged, dragging the air down as if the world itself had gained weight. A colossal beast phantom rose behind him.

“One Blade!”

He brought it down.

At the same moment, Wang Jie thrust out a finger. “Myriad-Stars Finger!”

Nan Zhi looked at them as if they were children throwing pebbles at a mountain. “Let me show you the Nan Family’s true Four Seasons—and Red Moon.”

Crimson light solidified in an instant, turning the void into blocks of red, as if reality itself had been boxed and sealed.

Wu Yuan’s One Blade froze.

Wang Jie’s finger strike froze.

Then both shattered.

The backlash hit like a crushing wave. Wu Yuan and Wang Jie spat blood and staggered back.

Nan Zhi flicked her wrist. Red light sharpened into a blade and slashed for them.

Wang Jie threw the boat up between them without hesitation.

The red blade struck the boat again and again, yet couldn’t break it.

Nan Zhi’s expression flickered with surprise. “What kind of chen artifact is that?”

Even force strong enough to kill a hundred-star realm cultivator couldn’t crack it.

Her eyes narrowed. “Fine.”

Four Seasons.

The ripples of time expanded, spreading toward the boat like an invisible tide.

Wu Yuan forced himself forward with a hoarse roar, blade raised again.

But his One Blade sank as if caught in sludge—slowed, trapped.

Nan Zhi didn’t even spare him a glance. Her gaze locked on Wang Jie, feverish with exhilaration. This was her forebear’s power: time itself. Even brushing against it felt like touching something supreme.

She would begin her mastery with Wang Jie’s death.

The ripples reached the boat.

Wang Jie gripped it, knuckles white.

The boat rocked.

Then, as if it had fallen into water, it flipped.

Wang Jie was dragged inside, and the boat swayed—not through space, but through time. The ripples became waves, the void became a current.

Wu Yuan stared, stunned.

Nan Zhi stared, stunned.

Wang Jie sat within the boat as it rocked, and the sight was so absurd, so impossible, that for a heartbeat it looked like he was rowing.

Rowing through time.

Wang Jie didn’t understand what was happening. He only felt it—time like a river under the hull, ripples rising like swells.

Then a thin streak of sword light flashed.

It passed over Wu Yuan.

Passed over Wang Jie.

And sank straight into Nan Zhi’s mind.

Nan Zhi froze mid-cast.

The Red Moon around her dimmed rapidly, its glow collapsing like a dying ember. She fell out of it and hit the ground near Wang Jie’s boat, motionless.

Wang Jie turned his head.

A woman was walking toward them, slow and steady, as if she’d been there all along.

A second soft sound rang out. Wu Yuan crumpled as well.

Wang Jie jumped down from the boat and rushed to Wu Yuan’s side. He checked quickly and let out a breath. Not dead—only knocked unconscious again. Just like before. Still no resistance. Still no clear glimpse of who had struck.

The woman walked past Wang Jie without a word and continued toward the front of the control room.

Step by step, as if nothing in the world could bar her way.