Chapter 311

Chapter 311: Your Name

Under Wang Jie’s gaze, she stepped over Nan Zhi’s corpse.

She crouched beside the Nan Family old ancestor’s corpse. Her fingers moved as if wiping something away. Then she rose.

A flick of her hand—sword light flashed.

The old ancestor’s corpse dissolved into dust and vanished.

Wang Jie watched her in silence. The last time he’d only caught a glimpse of her. This time, he stared as if he could carve every motion into his bones.

She finally turned to face him.

Her eyes were so calm they felt abyss-deep—no ripples, no emotion, no warmth.

“Thank you,” she said.

Her voice was gentle. Nothing about it suggested someone who could erase people with a single sword.

Wang Jie forced himself to stay steady. “Even without me, you could have gotten in.”

He had followed Nan Zhi into the control room with caution. Before stepping through, he’d wedged the void splint outside—partly to leave this woman a way in if she wanted it, and partly to guard against Nan Zhi.

The Four Seasons train was Nan Family territory. No matter how frightened Nan Zhi acted, trusting her completely would have been stupid.

And Wang Jie meant what he said. Even if he hadn’t left a gap, this woman would still have entered.

Otherwise, Nan Zhi would never have been allowed to live long enough to reach this place.

Wang Jie stepped forward. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer. She turned away and walked toward the exit.

Wang Jie moved to block her path.

He drew out the sword tassel he’d kept—an old keepsake from Thunder Abyss. “Since Thunder Abyss, I haven’t stopped thinking about you.”

His voice roughened, but he didn’t look away. “I want to know how you’ve been. Who you are. Where I can find you.”

He swallowed, then pushed on, words tumbling out like something he’d held back for years. “I want to know everything about you.”

She slipped past him as if he were air. Wang Jie didn’t even have time to react. When he turned, she was already behind him.

“You and I,” she said without looking back, “met in nothing but a dream. Why cling to it? Let each of us cross safely on our own.”

Wang Jie stared at her back. “Four thousand three hundred forty-eight days.”

She stopped.

Wang Jie’s voice dropped lower, heavier. “Since we met… it’s been four thousand three hundred forty-eight days. Nearly twelve years.”

He breathed out, the confession sharp and raw. “Ten years of footsteps. Ten years of heart. How am I supposed to forget?”

She didn’t answer.

“Everyone says that once you let go, you’re free.” He took a step closer. “But who can actually do it?”

He paused, then asked the question that had gnawed at him since the first time he’d seen her sword light. “If it was only a dream, why didn’t you kill me?”

“I know I’m not worthy of you,” he continued. “But if you can’t give me anything else… then at least give me a name. Give me something to hold onto. Anything is better than praying I might see you again in a dream.”

His throat tightened. “I’m not someone who can’t live without you. If it truly can’t be done, I’ll let go.”

He looked at her like he was looking at the only light in a starless sky. “But even if there’s only one chance in a hundred million, I want to take it—because you’re mine.”

A beat.

“And I’m yours.”

She didn’t turn.

Wang Jie stopped moving. He simply waited, heart pounding.

Finally, her voice came—soft as water over stone.

“Ban Xia.”

The name flowed into him and lodged there, warm and cold at once.

Wang Jie’s eyes widened. “Ban Xia… one of Tian Cang’s guarding star realm figures?”

Ban Xia didn’t answer. She stepped away, leaving behind a heap of striped key fragments.

Then, without looking back, she said, “There is someone from Dead Realm in your club.”

And she was gone.

Wang Jie stared after her, then looked down at the striped key fragments.

Before, he and Wu Yuan had tried to guess the killer’s identity. With Ban Xia’s strength, if she were only hundred-star realm, she would still have guarding star realm-level combat power. But it was far more likely she was star-refining realm.

Now he knew. She truly was one of Tian Cang’s guarding star realm figures—someone spoken of in the same breath as Shu Mu Ye.

Guarding star realm figures stood above all. A sentence from them could decide the survival of countless forces within a bridge-pillar.

Anyone else would feel crushed by that gulf.

Wang Jie didn’t.

He had already beaten a guarding star realm figure once. So what if Ban Xia was one too? If he could cross that gap once, he could do it again.

He picked up the striped key fragments and stored them.

So many. Did she take them from the dead? Or had she gathered them elsewhere?

It didn’t matter. They were his now.

He also retrieved the void splint and put it away.

Then he looked at Wu Yuan—still unconscious.

Ban Xia had said there was someone from Dead Realm in their club.

Who?

She had no reason to lie.

And yet… Wang Jie was also from Dead Realm, and he hadn’t sensed anything suspicious.

That was normal. The other person wouldn’t necessarily know his Hundred Coffins identity, either.

He ran through every strong figure in the club—especially anyone with combat power above four hundred thousand.

He still couldn’t pinpoint it.

Wang Jie walked back to where the Nan Family old ancestor had died. There was nothing left, only emptiness. Ban Xia had erased something here.

The control room held only the dim Red Moon.

Wang Jie steadied his breath and began to run the Red Moon method.

Slowly, his lockforce rose toward the Red Moon. His method was incomplete, but the Red Moon itself tugged at him—pulling, guiding, forcing fusion.

His body floated upward.

He sank into the Red Moon.

Now he understood why Nan Zhi had only dared to give him so much of the Red Moon method. If she had given more, he might have touched the core of the Nan Family’s inheritance.

And if he touched that core, he might have replaced her.

Wang Jie was glad he’d squeezed more out of her back then. Without it, he would never have been able to find her through the Red Moon link—and he certainly wouldn’t be able to do this now.

Inside the Red Moon, the world changed.

He heard the low thunder of the train’s movement. He saw streaks of light cutting through darkness—its route through the void. He sensed formations woven through the lead car like a living net.

A feeling rose in him—of grasping something vast, of holding the entire train in the palm of his hand.

There was power here, too—those lights, those threads. They felt usable.

But he couldn’t sense Four Seasons at all.

Time’s great power came from bridgeway art. He had none. He couldn’t draw on it.

Still… he felt he might be able to control the train’s movement. To make it advance. To make it stop.

He closed his eyes, accepting the Red Moon’s gift.

Remnants lingered here—memories left behind by the Nan Family. Scene after scene unfolded, fragments imprinted by forebears through Four Seasons Bridgeway Art. Wang Jie couldn’t touch the power of time, but he could witness what it had left.

This was inheritance—left for Nan Family juniors who reached this place in a moment of life and death.

And what he was seeing was the Nan Family’s greatest secret.

A foundation that could rebuild a fallen clan.

The images weren’t many, but they spanned the four bridge-pillar. Wang Jie didn’t know what each scene meant—only that reaching the places shown, then using Red Moon, would open them.

The Nan Family’s Four Seasons train had once been warned by major forces not to roam freely.

Now he understood why.

A clan that could appear anywhere could learn anything.

Was that why they had been exterminated? Because they knew too much?

The scenes were few, but each one felt heavy—like a secret worth killing for.

Then his lockforce cycled through the Red Moon and returned to him, changed.

Wang Jie’s eyes snapped open.

This wasn’t just resonance.

This was the complete Red Moon method.

The Red Moon was teaching him.

He immediately began to cultivate.

Nan Zhi’s elaborate scheme had become his ladder.

Time passed—how much, he couldn’t say. At one point, Wu Yuan began to stir.

Wang Jie raised a hand. Red light pulsed, and Wu Yuan collapsed again.

“Sorry, Elder,” Wang Jie whispered. “Sleep a little longer.”

He couldn’t let this be seen. If Wu Yuan woke and witnessed this, he would connect far too many dots—why the killer hadn’t killed Wang Jie, why even knocking him out had been unnecessary, what Nan Family secrets Wang Jie might have obtained.

And Ban Xia’s warning still echoed: someone from Dead Realm was inside the club.

Wu Yuan might not be that person… but he also might.

Eventually, Wang Jie descended from the Red Moon, feet touching down lightly on the control-room floor.

He tested the flow of lockforce within him, feeling the new structure of the Red Moon method. Of everything he’d cultivated, this might be the strongest true method he had—something that could aid absorption of starforce, not merely strike in battle.

No wonder the Nan Family had treated it as their clan’s foundation.

Next came the striped keys.

He looked at the heap of fragments Ban Xia had left behind.

A strange thought slipped in, half amused, half wary. Was this what people called living off a woman?

He shook it off and began to piece the striped key fragments together.

There were many. He assembled them one by one and opened them.

He started with the red striped keys—the most numerous.

The first opened, and a mountain of starsea stone poured out.

Wang Jie stared. Then, expression stiff, he gathered it back up and stored what he could. There was too much. Even his storage ring couldn’t hold it all.

The Nan Family had accumulated wealth for countless years. How could he compete with that?

The second red striped key—more starsea stone.

The third—more.

Key after key, most of them spilled out starsea stone. By rough estimate, it was already in the hundreds of trillions—an absurd, terrifying amount.

Some keys held strange starstone he couldn’t identify.

A few opened into coordinates.

Wang Jie tucked them away. Perhaps they were coordinates to strange planets. Strange planets were valuable even if the top inheritances didn’t cultivate strange starforce. They could be sold… or given to Blue Star cultivators.

Blue Star people never turned anything down.

Next came the yellow striped keys.

The first opened into a jade slip.

Wang Jie checked it—and froze.

Shield Mountain Peak’s Shield Lock combat technique?

Why would the Nan Family have this?

Shield Lock was the signature technique of Shield Mountain Peak in Third Nebula’s Fifth Star Chain. Wang Jie remembered it far too clearly. Back at Ying Yang Battlefield, Yue Bai had hunted him with it and crushed him until he could barely breathe.

Shield Lock had three stages—earth-vein shield lock, heaven-vein shield lock, and star-vein shield lock.

But the jade slip described a fourth.

Chen-vein shield lock.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed. He stored it and continued.

Another key opened into a different combat technique—a mace method, broad and forceful but oddly tricky. Not his style. He stored it.

He kept going.

The Nan Family’s stored techniques were all impressive—treasures elite disciples would fight for even in Black-White Heaven. But Wang Jie had no intention of learning everything.

Then he opened Frostglow Moon—a Frostglow Sect method that could deepen the Ten Seals into a pale-black shade, strengthening a disciple’s foundation.

Next came Frost-Shattered Heavens—Frostglow Sect’s signature technique.

Even this was here.

He exhaled slowly and kept opening keys.

Two remained.