Chapter 322

Chapter 322: The Gap

Wang Jie didn’t move.

The contestants below him surged up his line all at once.

Above him, the pale girl and the middle-aged man exchanged a glance and held back, waiting for the swarm to gather before acting.

Wang Jie looked across the cone instead.

He spotted Hou Qing Ge on Xi Ci’s line.

He spotted Shao Gu Chen on Wu Ming’s line.

Then the melee erupted.

Attacks flooded toward Wang Jie.

He raised a hand and pointed.

Myriad-Stars Finger descended like judgment.

He didn’t even need to fuse the finger shadows. Everyone on his line was within range. The finger shadows swept through them, erasing contestants one after another so quickly it left people staring.

The gap within the same realm was simply too vast.

Wang Jie’s Myriad-Stars Finger had always been used against roaming-star realm elites. Unleashed indiscriminately on full-star realm cultivators, it was pure annihilation.

Even sect genius disciples with over 300,000 combat power couldn’t withstand a single finger shadow. Any one of them would have been enough to crush a line.

And he wasn’t alone.

Across the cone, other top-tier monsters did the same, wiping out entire lines in moments.

Even when several top experts ended up on the same line, they didn’t engage each other. Not yet.

This still wasn’t the real tournament.

This was the last slaughter before it began.

The numbers dropped fast.

When exactly three hundred contestants remained—

The sky sank.

Wang Jie barely had time to look up before it felt like heaven and earth slammed together.

Boom.

The cone vanished.

He appeared on a square arena of dark stone. A nervous man stood across from him, separated by a thin barrier of light.

Around them, more square arenas filled the space in an orderly grid. Each arena held two people. Invisible walls sealed each arena from the others.

The rules arrived at once.

As expected, everything before had been elimination.

Only now did the Starry Sky Martial Tournament truly begin.

One-on-one.

Winner advances. Loser is out.

There were one hundred and fifty arenas.

From above, you could see them arranged in neat rows. The moment the barrier on the first arena vanished, that match began—while every other arena remained sealed.

So it would be done in turns.

Everyone watched the first arena.

The two fighters needed only a moment to adjust. Then they struck.

Wang Jie looked away. Those two were just strong full-star realm cultivators—elite, perhaps, but nothing worth his focus.

He scanned other arenas.

The matchups were suspiciously generous.

None of the widely known monsters had been paired together.

Was it deliberate?

Or coincidence?

The man across from Wang Jie kept measuring him, mind racing.

At last, their barrier dissolved.

The man lunged at Wang Jie, eyes wild.

Wang Jie lifted a finger to strike—

The man twisted, moving with a speed that made spectators gasp.

Then he vanished.

Gone from the arena.

The crowd murmured in shock.

Wang Jie wasn’t surprised at all.

“The Dagger-Offering Order,” he said, voice calm. “I didn’t expect to run into one here.”

He flicked his hand.

A heavy force rippled through the shadows, and the man’s hiding place warped. The assassin was ripped out of Wang Jie’s own shadow and forced into view.

He didn’t look shocked. He stepped back and tapped the ground lightly, shifting position again and again. Each movement sent a ripple through the void, ten ripples forming a ring around Wang Jie.

They converged.

Ten Stars, One Kill.

Dagger-Offering Order’s chen art.

For a full-star realm cultivator, mastering chen art was impressive. And Dagger-Offering Order’s chen art was far harder to cultivate than stacked sky light.

Wang Jie swept his gaze, stepped aside, and reached out.

Two fingers pinched something in the air.

A dagger sat between them.

In front of him, the assassin stared in disbelief.

“Surprised?” Wang Jie asked. “It’s not that hard.”

He twisted his fingers.

The dagger turned and slashed backward across the man’s throat.

The assassin stumbled, eyes wide with resentment—

Then vanished, eliminated.

In Second Star Cloud, within a nest of watching shadows, someone sighed.

“Ding Guo was too impatient. Against that kind of opponent, how could he strike so recklessly?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” another replied. “That Wang Jie is at six-path roamer level. Ding Guo was never close.”

“Ten Stars, One Kill was still impressive for full-star realm.”

“This loss might be good training. Maybe he’ll become the next Wu Yan.”

A pause.

“Is Wu Yan even dead? They never found his body.”

A long, weary sigh answered.

Wang Jie’s match ended quickly.

Soon the first round of arena fights concluded.

Three hundred became one hundred and fifty.

Arenas vanished. The space cleared. The remaining arenas expanded, growing wider.

The second round began immediately—without rest.

Wang Jie glanced around, irritation flickering. Were they really going to decide everything in one continuous run?

His gaze caught on an arena not far away.

A woman stood there with long pink hair and a beautiful face, her expression cold.

She was unforgettable if you truly looked at her—yet somehow, in a crowd, she would never be the first person your eyes found. As if she existed and didn’t exist at the same time.

A strange, unsettling presence.

The man Wang Jie had bargained with had once shown him two portraits: Ting He and Ting Chen. He’d said, smiling like a demon, that Wang Jie would have to marry both someday.

Judging by the woman’s distant, icy calm, this one had to be Ting Chen.

As Wang Jie watched, Ting Chen seemed to sense it and looked back.

Their eyes met.

Then they both looked away.

Wang Jie felt a flicker of discomfort—like being caught stealing.

He forced his attention elsewhere.

Another arena.

Li Ao.

The Dou Huo creature he’d fought on the battlefield.

Li Ao spotted him too, baring its teeth in a cold grin, eyes full of provocation. It had suffered in their last encounter; if Luo Kui hadn’t dragged it away, it would have kept fighting.

Now it wanted Wang Jie again.

Wang Jie looked at Li Ao’s opponent.

He didn’t recognize the man, but he’d heard the name—Qin Xiao Shu, a Bu Zou Guan disciple, one of the experts Star Vault Vista had highlighted.

Li Ao clearly didn’t care.

“Um,” Qin Xiao Shu called, waving. “Wolf, right? It’s almost our turn. How about you look at me?”

Li Ao turned, eyes vicious. “Human. Don’t worry. I’ll end you quickly.”

Wang Jie raised a brow. So it really did speak human language.

Qin Xiao Shu didn’t seem offended. “Sure. I’ll try to be quick too.”

He nodded politely toward Wang Jie, then turned and stared at Qing Kong with open fascination, waving like a fool.

“Kong Er! I’m here! Here!”

Qing Kong didn’t even glance at him.

Li Ao snorted. “Pathetic courting.”

Qin Xiao Shu’s face twitched. “That’s… harsh.”

The barrier vanished.

Li Ao lunged, savage, a claw dropping like a guillotine. Black star-sand flowed across its body, and as the claw fell, starforce flooded the entire arena.

Wang Jie had learned it the hard way: Li Ao’s starforce was terrifyingly abundant.

Qin Xiao Shu tilted his head up, watching the blow drop. He gave a faint chuckle, and then his body twisted the void in a way that made no sense.

The claw slammed into the arena stone, cracking it slightly.

The arena’s material was unknown, but it was strong enough to endure such a strike with only a shallow scar.

Spectators gasped.

Li Ao’s attack had passed straight through Qin Xiao Shu.

Li Ao swept again.

Qin Xiao Shu remained in place—yet somehow he wasn’t truly there, as if he had sunk into the void itself.

You can’t hide forever, Li Ao seemed to say with its steady, predatory patience.

Qin Xiao Shu took a step.

“Wondrous Roaming Art.”

His body compressed, shrinking into a whirlpool that tightened into a point.

Li Ao answered with pure force.

A pillar of starforce crashed down, piercing from sky to ground like a spear holding up the world. The spectacle made people go cold.

A full-star realm shouldn’t have that much starforce.

And yet it did.

Then, in an instant, the pillar shattered, collapsing into the same shrinking vortex Qin Xiao Shu had become.

Li Ao snarled and attacked the vortex again and again.

It was useless.

The vortex felt like it didn’t exist in this void at all. Every strike cut through emptiness.

The starforce vanished.

Qin Xiao Shu stepped out again, smiling at Li Ao.

“Here,” he said lightly. “I’ll return it.”

Starforce reappeared, slamming into Li Ao like a mountain.

Li Ao was forced down under the pressure, even its massive strength straining. It threw its head back and howled as even more starforce erupted from inside it.

Two tides of starforce collided midair.

The void trembled. Starforce piled up, burst outward, and swept the edges of the arena like a storm.

A full-star realm fight shouldn’t look like this.

But it did.

Qin Xiao Shu walked toward Li Ao.

Li Ao lowered its head, eyes fixed. When Qin Xiao Shu came within ten meters, Li Ao’s starforce roared again, forcing back the starforce pressing down on it.

Spectators went numb.

The starforce Qin Xiao Shu had used against it had come from Li Ao in the first place.

And Li Ao still had enough to reclaim it.

How much starforce did it have?

Two arenas away, Wen Qing spoke calmly, watching the scene.

“They say the Dou Huo clan can store starforce in their fur. That’s why their starforce can’t be measured.”

Wang Jie blinked in realization. So that was it. No wonder even qi sight couldn’t read the creature properly.

He scanned the arenas again, frowning.

Where was Xiao Mu?

Star Vault Vista had reported on him. How could he not be here?

Had he really been eliminated?