Chapter 329

Chapter 329: Feint East, Strike West

The ink lines were straightforward, but their power was obscene. The substitute could even fool Qi Sight.

And that pillar—Wang Jie still didn’t understand it, only that it was unreasonably hard to break.

Another pillar crashed down.

Gu Shang stayed silent, firing ink lines without pause while her substitute technique kept her just out of reach.

Wang Jie flashed to the nearest pillar with Jia Eight Steps and slammed a palm into it. The pillar shuddered—barely—and remained intact.

“That’s a totem,” someone outside said, voice low with recognition.

“A totem?”

“Yes. The Phantom World Sect’s Gu family has a Bridgeway Art called Spirit-Drawing. They fuse starforce into their blood, then use that blood to draw their own spiritual nature into offensive and defensive forms. Every Gu family member has a unique pattern for their entire life—their totem.”

“Gu Shang has never fought outside, so no one knew what hers was. Now we see it.”

“The pillar.”

Wang Jie didn’t care what it was called. He only cared what it did.

And his instincts were screaming: don’t let her finish whatever she’s building.

He drove another punch into the pillar. It cracked—

and repaired itself.

Worse, Gu Shang’s offense escalated. The ink lines multiplied. A handful became dozens. Dozens became nearly a hundred, blanketing the arena in a deadly lattice.

Then Wang Jie noticed something.

Whenever he damaged the pillar, Gu Shang’s real body faltered.

So that was it.

The pillar wasn’t just defense. It was linked.

That made his goal simple.

Break it.

No matter how Gu Shang tried to stop him, he found ways to land hits. His fist crashed into the pillar. Gu Shang stiffened, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.

Her starforce surged, ink lines raining harder.

A third pillar descended.

Wang Jie’s targets multiplied, and with them a thin thread of unease coiled in his chest.

If he felt uneasy, this couldn’t be allowed to complete.

Qi and strength fused. Power surged.

Ink lines screamed toward him.

Rain thickened.

Three swords rose into the downpour.

Wang Jie didn’t move.

The swords did.

They slashed on their own, intercepting the incoming ink lines as if guided by instinct rather than control.

The crowd stared, stunned.

Even the ancient sword bridge-pillar experts stiffened. You could control a blade. You couldn’t give it awareness.

And yet those swords defended him.

Wang Jie’s answer was simple.

Intercepting Sword Art.

The second layer of Yi Sword Art, a three-sword chen art born from enlightenment tea’s insight. With enlightenment tea—and the ruler his cheap master had given him—his lockforce control had been forced to a terrifying level. Three swords were still difficult to command perfectly, but paired with Sword Rig, he could do it.

Sword divided into intercept. United, it struck. Under Rain Sword Art, the sword qi could circulate and respond, sensing what approached and cutting it down.

Ink lines snapped and scattered under the intercepting blades.

Wang Jie stepped forward, passing through the rain, and punched the pillar.

A boom shook the arena.

The pillar was pierced through.

Gu Shang spat blood and stumbled back.

At the Phantom World Sect, spectators went feral, eyes burning through the light screen.

“That bastard dared hurt Junior Sister Gu!”

“We should’ve gone to the Ying Yang Battlefield!”

“Where are the idiots who surrounded Black-White Heaven at Skyport? How did they fail to kill him? Junior Sister Gu is injured because of their incompetence!”

On the arena, Gu Shang’s face went bloodless.

The pillar repaired itself.

Wang Jie stepped in with Jia Eight Steps and struck again. He didn’t care what the totem was meant to do. If it could be broken, he would break it.

Gu Shang stared at him, then smeared her own blood across her fingers. Starforce and void intertwined as she drew—painted—red lightning that snapped sideways toward Wang Jie like a living stroke of ink.

The three swords locked in tight, intercepting everything that came.

The rain grew heavier.

Sword qi thickened.

Another punch landed.

Gu Shang coughed blood again.

Her stare sharpened, desperate. She couldn’t wait any longer. If she kept letting him hammer the pillar, she wouldn’t even get to fully manifest her totem.

She spat blood into her palm and flung it upward, blood scattering into the air like a crimson mist. Her face turned even paler.

Then—

Wang Jie appeared.

Right in front of her.

Gu Shang’s eyes widened, slow and blank with shock.

Only then did the truth click into place.

Wang Jie had never intended to fully break the pillar. It was too passive. The pillar was the bait. The real target was her.

With the pillar constantly taking damage, her mind would inevitably churn with panic, with desperation, with the urge to gamble everything—and under that pressure, her substitute would lag.

That was the opening Wang Jie had been waiting for.

He grinned once—quick, sharp.

Then dropped a palm.

Gu Shang fell.

The arena went still.

So… what had the pillar been for, in the end?

Zhi Xing Xue and the others watched, speechless. Gu Shang had been played.

Rumor had painted her as a mystery—someone who lived inside Gu Xun Yi’s calligraphy, present even during the dual-wind line war. But that kind of cultivation came at a cost: battle experience. The ability to read a feint.

And so, she lost—not because she was weak, but because Wang Jie was experienced enough to turn her strength into a trap.

At the Phantom World Sect, the crowd went silent.

Gu Xun Yi offered only one sentence: “Send her to the sparring hall. She needs some exercise.”

No one argued.

Wang Jie’s feint would have been obvious to a seasoned fighter. The surprise wasn’t the tactic—it was that it worked, and that Gu Shang didn’t see it.

In truth, Gu Shang fought well. Smooth, efficient, deadly.

But the process and the result didn’t bend to her will.

The matches continued—one ending, another beginning—until the arena everyone waited for finally arrived.

Shao Gu Chen versus Zhou Ye.

The barrier held between them.

Shao Gu Chen stood calm and still. As the inheritor of Cheng Yi Dao’s Madam Shao line, having shattered thirteen stars—second only to Shu Mu Ye—he was a prodigy of unquestioned weight.

Across from him, Zhou Ye lifted his head—

and Cheng Yi Dao erupted into laughter.

Zhou Ye had real achievements. He’d pressed Imperial Kun to the edge and defeated Blood Vine. But no one had ever placed him in the same breath as Shao Gu Chen.

And when his eyes rolled—

the laughter turned vicious.

On a nearby arena, Gui Xiao Die snorted and burst out laughing.

Zhou Ye snapped his head toward her.

She laughed harder, wheezing. “No, no—hahaha—cross-eyes—hahaha!”

Zhou Ye’s face twisted with rage. He raised his bow and shot an arrow toward her platform.

The arrow flew—

and froze in the void.

The arenas looked close, but the distance between them might as well have been the horizon. The arrow couldn’t enter Gui Xiao Die’s platform. It hung suspended, forever mid-flight.

Gui Xiao Die’s amusement faltered, replaced by surprise—not at the arrow, but at the rule it revealed.

Others glanced around, suddenly alert. Attacking across arenas wasn’t possible.

Zhou Ye didn’t care about any of it. He pointed at Gui Xiao Die, shaking with fury. “Apologize.”

Gui Xiao Die lifted her chin, eyes bright with mockery. “If I, this miss, can laugh at you, that’s your blessing. Those idiots wish they could see it and can’t. Hmph.”

“Apologize,” Zhou Ye repeated, voice raw.

Shao Gu Chen’s gaze turned cold. “Are you done?”

Zhou Ye ignored him and kept staring at Gui Xiao Die. “Apologize.”

Gui Xiao Die laughed again, softer now, like she was savoring it.

Shao Gu Chen’s patience snapped. He flicked a hand. Starforce surged like a gale, and the closer it got to Zhou Ye, the more violent it became—like a sideways tornado meant to rip him from the platform.

The starforce passed through Zhou Ye.

As if he weren’t there.

Shao Gu Chen narrowed his eyes and struck again—an empty-handed palm that condensed into a massive grasping force, five fingers closing from above. Cheng Yi Dao had countless battle arts, and in Shao Gu Chen’s hands even a “common” technique became lethal.

He was confident this would crush Zhou Ye.

The crowd murmured.

“Cultivating void power doesn’t make you invincible. It’s just a different form of defense.”

“And it’s not hard to break. If you can sustain a single strike long enough, the void power collapses on its own.”

“Shao Gu Chen’s palm should last three breaths.”

The palm landed on Zhou Ye.

It still passed through—

but it didn’t disperse.

It lingered, sustained pressure grinding in place.

At Bu Zou Guan, Qin Xiao Shu watched with interest and clicked his tongue. “That really is a method. We hide in the void, and we’re consuming starforce too. But our burst cost is higher than theirs.”

He glanced to the side. “Master, do we have a counter for that?”

No one answered.

Qin Xiao Shu rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I already lost. Nobody’s winning the crown anyway. We’ll fight again at the Roaming-Star Realm tournament.”

On the screen, one breath passed.

Two.

Three.

The crowd expected the palm to vanish.

It didn’t.

It held until the fifth breath before finally dissipating.

But by then, the more horrifying fact was undeniable:

Zhou Ye still looked untouched.

Still “absent.”

Still staring at Gui Xiao Die as if Shao Gu Chen didn’t exist.

Shao Gu Chen’s face darkened completely. Attacking while the other wasn’t paying attention already bordered on a sneak strike. Failing to even force a reaction felt like humiliation.

Gui Xiao Die tilted her head and smirked. “Cross-eyes, you’re pretty durable. If you’ve got guts, keep wearing him down. Maybe you’ll bore him to death.”

Zhou Ye’s teeth clenched hard enough to ache. “You have to apologize. And I’m not cross-eyed.”

Gui Xiao Die sneered. “This miss won’t. If you’ve got guts, come hit me.”

“I will,” Zhou Ye roared. “I will! I definitely will!”

Then—finally—he tore his gaze away from Gui Xiao Die and faced Shao Gu Chen.

He bowed, stiff and formal. “Apologies. I was rude just now. I won’t be again.”

He straightened. “We can begin now. A fair and just match.”

Shao Gu Chen stared at him, stunned into stillness.

“What did you say?”

Even Wang Jie, watching from his arena, went momentarily speechless.

Fair and just… now?

Then what had those earlier attacks been?

The crowd’s mouths twitched as if they’d been struck.

Who exactly was Zhou Ye calling out?