Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Still Not Enough?

Twenty-three days had passed since they first used the Eye to see qi. Wang Jie didn’t manage it until twenty-two days after Liu Ying did.

Chu Yao marveled at Liu Ying’s talent all over again and swore he would take her with him no matter what.

To Liu Ying, it sounded even less believable than before.

But she had no time to argue.

The first batch of volunteers—those willing to “fill” the altar—had already left the three major bases for the coastline.

Aircraft ferried people nonstop.

Hours later, a long line had formed at the shore. People moved toward the altar in dead silence.

The first to climb up was a middle-aged man in a shabby coat. He lay down beside Bai Yuan, his face pressed to the cold, blood-slick surface.

Bai Yuan watched him without a word.

“I never thought I’d get to lie here with the Three Gods of the Five Extremes,” the man said, his voice rough with disbelief. “My life wasn’t wasted.”

He swallowed hard, then forced the words out anyway. “Lord Bai Yuan… my child really will be looked after, right? And my mother—she’s over eighty. She can’t see with the Eye, so she doesn’t know what’s happening outside. She still thinks this is the peaceful era, that we’re just too poor to buy food. She… she’ll be allowed to die in peace, right?”

Bai Yuan met his eyes. “Unless Blue Star is destroyed, we will do what we promised. I swear it.”

The man let out a shaking breath. “Good. That’s… good.”

Then he lowered his head and slammed down.

Once.

His skull struck the mutated beast’s teeth. Death was instant.

An old man came next. He lay down with a bitter laugh that sounded like a sob. “As long as my old wife is still alive back in the base, that’s enough. Forty years together—and still not enough. Damn this apocalypse. Let it all die.”

One after another.

Each person had something they couldn’t let go of. Each person had someone they wanted to protect.

Just like ordinary people shielded cultivators, and behind those cultivators were children who couldn’t protect themselves.

Some people reached the altar and broke. They screamed, raged, went mad. Some charged Shu Mu Ye, trying to carve a single wound into him with One Blade before they died—

Only for Shu Mu Ye to erase their heads as casually as wiping dust from his sleeve.

This was hell.

Even the sand had gone heavy with blood, soaked until it clung.

An old woman crawled up, hands trembling as she pawed through bodies. Then her face crumpled. She found him.

“Old man… I’ll be scared if I’m left alone,” she whispered. “Come with me. We’ll go together. We’ll find the children.”

Shu Mu Ye watched calmly as row after row climbed onto the altar. They were terrified. They were desperate. And still they climbed.

Humans were like that.

A place even beasts wouldn’t approach—and ordinary people walked to it step by step.

Even for Jia Yi Sect, it was a shock.

Ting He’s eyes reddened. She hadn’t expected to see anything like this.

She had watched planets fall, deaths beyond counting—yet what she saw was always distant, brilliant, like fireworks blooming and vanishing. When had she ever seen death like this? Close enough to smell. Slow enough to feel.

Was this right?

She clenched her fists and watched in silence, staring into a blood-darkness so thick even sunlight couldn’t pierce it.

—

In Shang Jing City, Wang Jie was still training.

85 times.

Less than the last increase—but still an increase.

Updates from the outside stopped coming. Wang Jie shut out every stray thought and focused on qi refining.

The next day, Bai Xiao arrived. She dropped to her knees in front of him and begged him to save Bai Yuan.

Bai Yuan was pinned to the altar, buried under bodies. Still alive. Still forced to watch as endless lines walked toward death.

Bai Xiao hadn’t been there long before Sister Tang arrived and dragged her away.

Wang Jie couldn’t promise anything he couldn’t deliver.

After Bai Xiao was taken back, Sister Tang went to find Zuo Tian.

“How many more people have to die?” she demanded.

Zuo Tian’s voice was flat, steady as still water. “I’m controlling the timing. No rush.”

Sister Tang’s eyes were bloodshot, veins webbing the whites.

Zuo Tian looked at her. “If it hurts, stop watching. Cut the feed. Stop filming the coastline.”

“You’re not hurting at all?” Sister Tang shouted.

“Someone has to make the sacrifice,” Zuo Tian said. “Someone has to be the villain. I’ll do it. Tell everyone it was my idea. Tell them I’m the one controlling the timing.”

Sister Tang’s fury sharpened into something raw and bitter. In her eyes, the only difference between Zuo Tian and Shu Mu Ye was that Zuo Tian didn’t wear that blood-red aura.

He simply didn’t feel.

Zuo Tian gave a short, humorless laugh. “You don’t want Blue Star destroyed, do you? The longer we buy, the stronger Wang Jie becomes. And the higher the chance he can beat Shu Mu Ye. Isn’t that the point?”

Sister Tang’s fingers trembled. She spun and walked away.

Behind her, Zuo Tian called, “Wait for my message. You and I—we’re the last batch.”

Sister Tang paused, just for a heartbeat, then kept going.

In the end, the coastline feed wasn’t cut.

The people who died for Blue Star deserved to be remembered.

And the people they protected—those who mattered most—had the right to see them one last time. No one could take that away.

The altar rose to 970 meters.

Wang Jie’s strength climbed to 87 times.

Those thirty meters weren’t stone.

They were bodies.

Corpse after corpse covered the altar, piled higher and higher. Everyone who climbed was walking into hell—even though hell was supposed to be below.

Tens of thousands died. Even Wen Xing Ru and the trialists were shaken, staring toward the coastline in silence.

They’d witnessed death in every form.

And yet the destruction of a planet—the death of billions—still didn’t hit like this. Not like a line of people walking, step by step, into their own end.

Qi Wu went to the trialists with news: Blue Star’s strongest mutated creature had been located. He wanted the trialists to lure the worst of those monsters toward Shu Mu Ye, hoping they could buy even a little more time and delay the bridge-building.

Mo and the others agreed.

Maybe, for once, they also wanted Blue Star’s monsters to tear Shu Mu Ye apart—anything to stop this.

—

In Shang Jing City, inside the small courtyard, Wang Jie was practicing with a soybean.

It floated in front of him—up, down—then dropped.

He was trying to control it with qi.

Chu Yao had said it plainly: if he could move the bean however he wanted, that was the first step. The doorway.

Once qi and strength could be combined, combat power would surge.

Wang Jie couldn’t do it yet. He stared so hard he went cross-eyed, day after day, as the bean betrayed him again and again.

Liu Ying did it effortlessly. The bean circled her like a living thing, drifting left and right with casual ease.

Chu Yao stared at her like she’d broken the world. “Your talent with qi is absurd,” he said.

Whatever happened beyond the walls never reached that courtyard.

Wang Jie gradually forgot the outside world entirely. He watched only the bean.

Four days later, he could finally make it circle around him once without dropping.

That single lap left him drenched, sweat running down his neck.

On the fifth day, the ground shook.

The bean fell.

Wang Jie looked up, eyes snapping toward the south. The vibration was coming from the south.

A clear sky blackened in an instant. Clouds boiled in. Heavy moisture rolled across the air.

Imprint Power.

Massive Imprint Power surged toward them—mutated creatures.

Had one of them finally engaged Shu Mu Ye?

—

At the Nan Guo Base coastline, Qi Xue Yin ran, her breath tearing at her throat.

Behind her, a wolf chased—nearly a thousand meters long, hundreds of meters tall. Its fur stood like steel needles. Its eyes stared past her at the coastline, and its roar shook the heavens.

At the same time, a colossal lizard was already there, swallowing clouds and spitting fog as it released terrifying Imprint Power and charged Shu Mu Ye.

One trialist after another tried to drag Blue Star’s strongest mutated creatures to Shu Mu Ye.

One after another, they fell at his feet.

A single monster, no matter how strong, couldn’t buy time.

The line of volunteers grew shorter. Fewer and fewer people came.

Wang Jie shut himself in his room. He refused to see anyone.

He only took one thing with him: a bag of soybeans.

The altar reached 990 meters.

It could not rise any higher.

To build the bridge, it needed a full thousand.

Shu Mu Ye’s gaze slid toward Nan Guo Base. “So that’s all the people of Blue Star are willing to offer,” he said, mild disappointment in his voice. “A pity. Still not enough.”

Bai Yuan lay pinned beneath corpses. Through a thin gap where blood-water pooled, he stared north.

Was this the limit?

How long had they bought?

It didn’t feel like long at all.

Then the insects arrived.

Chong Xuan brought the tide a third time.

He hid himself afterward—because this time, Shu Mu Ye would not let him live.

If Chong Xuan showed his face, he would die.

Shu Mu Ye’s anger bled through at last. He could accept the delay bought by volunteers, because “willing sacrifice” might twist Bridgeway Art into something different.

But insects?

Insects were only a nuisance.

He still had to crush them.

He raised his blade. One Blade swept down, cutting through the swarm.

The insect sea forced another three days of delay.

—

In Shang Jing City, Wang Jie began training again.

He didn’t know what was happening outside, but he could feel it—this was the last time. Shu Mu Ye’s side could no longer be delayed.

When he finished, his strength had reached 89 times.

And with that increase came a cold certainty: this was the ceiling. He could not break it.

89 times.

He bathed. He changed clothes. He stepped out.

The floor was scattered with soybeans, each one a tiny dark dot in the sunlight.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Nan Guo Base.”

The aircraft had been waiting.

—

At the coastline, the last One Blade fell. The last insects died.

Shu Mu Ye turned.

Two aircraft landed in the distance. Sister Tang and Hong Jian stepped out.

From the north, Lian Qin arrived as well.

After the apocalypse, the Three Gods of the Five Extremes—Blue Star’s pillars—had become the final ones willing to die here.

Only Zuo Tian was absent.

Sister Tang’s hatred burned. That bastard ran.

No one wanted to die. Lian Qin least of all.

She ruled Nan Guo Base. She lived with style and ease. She could bend, cling to power, survive—so long as Blue Star survived.

But Blue Star was about to be destroyed.

And she couldn’t even get close enough to Shu Mu Ye to bargain.

She stared at the altar towering into the clouds. The sky itself seemed stained red.

She thought of Wang Jie—of that earlier defeat, and how it had felt like Blue Star losing.

Now three people walked toward the altar from three directions.

Blood-soaked footprints layered over each other, chaotic and endless, proving how many had already passed through here.

Farther out stood the trialists—watching. Not moving. Not helping.

They could only watch.

Shu Mu Ye moved.

He faced Lian Qin and walked toward her.

For a heartbeat, Lian Qin’s heart lurched. Hope, irrational and desperate, surged up anyway.

But as he neared, she realized his gaze wasn’t on her.

It was on what lay behind her.

Nan Guo Base.

Millions of people.

Shu Mu Ye brushed past her without sparing her a single glance and kept walking north.

The icy, blood-soaked stench of him stole Lian Qin’s breath. She whirled and screamed at his back, voice tearing her throat raw.

“Still not enough?!”

Her cry rang across the beach, sharp and glaring in the dead silence.

Everyone turned to look at her—especially those who knew her.

No one had expected Lian Qin would dare speak to Shu Mu Ye like that.

In Nan Guo Base, millions stared blankly at the feed.

Even Jia Yi Sect watched in silence.

That cry sounded like it rose from the bottom of a well, echoing across the empty earth.