Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Starry Sky Martial Tournament

No one said a word as they hoisted Wang Jie onto their backs and carried him toward Jin Ling.

Two days later, someone finally asked, “When are we sending Old Boss off?”

“Not yet,” another voice said. “I want to look at him a little longer.”

Three days after that, the same question came again, quieter now, uneasy. “Why is Old Boss still warm?”

“It’s hot out,” someone muttered. “That’s all.”

No one laughed.

Days passed.

“He’s still warm,” someone said, voice shaking. “And… I think I felt a heartbeat.”

“Doctor. Where’s the doctor?”

Hong Jian stood at the bedside, staring at Wang Jie’s motionless face, stunned. “He didn’t really die?”

Across from him, Si Yan looked like he’d been dragged into a bad joke against his will. “He’s not dead,” he said flatly. “But he’s also dead.”

“A living corpse?”

“A vegetable?”

“I don’t know.” Si Yan’s patience snapped. “The shadow girl is gone, and now this little kid is like this. Blue Star is about to be destroyed, and you people are still wasting time.”

He raked a hand through his hair, eyes sharp with irritation and exhaustion. “Dead or alive—does it even matter now? If you ask me, what matters is enjoying whatever makes you happiest before the end.”

He turned and walked out.

The room stayed silent.

No one could explain Wang Jie’s condition. Bai Yuan had vanished. Wang Jie was neither alive nor dead. More and more, it felt like Blue Star had been abandoned.

Two more days passed. Sunlight still poured over the earth like it always had.

Then darkness fell in an instant.

Every head tilted up. The world froze.

A hand blotted out the sun.

It reached from impossibly far away, swelling larger and larger as it closed in on Blue Star.

Hong Jian and the others stood on the balcony, utterly dazed.

What was that?

No one had ever imagined they would witness something like this. Whose hand could be so vast it could grasp a planet like a toy? Vast enough to eclipse the sun?

People who saw it couldn’t move. They could only watch as the hand descended. As it drew closer, the oceans reared into towering tsunamis. Countless living things pressed themselves flat, instinctively submitting. Glaciers melted. The entire world seemed to shrink into something fragile and meaningless.

Darkness swallowed everything.

They were inside a fist.

In that moment, everyone believed they were about to be crushed—that Blue Star would shatter. Seconds crawled by, each one stretching into a lifetime.

Why was it taking so long?

Why weren’t they dead yet?

Some people envied the dead. At least they didn’t have to endure the waiting.

They all waited for the final end.

It didn’t come.

Ten minutes passed.

The world remained pitch-black. Looking up showed nothing at all.

An hour.

A day.

Two days. Three.

Only on the fifth day did five thin slashes of sunlight spill through gaps between fingers and fall onto the earth.

The hand lifted.

Slowly, as if reconsidering, it withdrew from Blue Star and retreated into the distance.

The sky returned to blue. The sun burned bright. The moon rose in the east. The sunset bled across the horizon. Everything looked normal—so normal it was almost obscene.

As if the hand had never existed.

The only proof that something had happened was the bridge.

A faint, half-hidden bridge hung somewhere above the sun, so far away no one could grasp its distance. Its beginning and end were invisible.

And yet the moment you saw it, you knew what it was.

A bridge in the starry sky.

At the same time, Wang Jie was experiencing something even stranger.

He felt as if he’d become a speck of dust—less than dust—drifting through one universe after another. He saw people. Real people. Each one felt vividly alive, made of blood and warmth and weight.

He should have known them.

He couldn’t name a single one.

He saw a ship so enormous it could carry endless stars.

He saw a city that enclosed entire universes within its walls.

He saw a river cutting across the heavens, boundless and without end.

And he saw a lone back at the very front—someone standing as though they held up the sky itself, branches wrapped around their waist, bracing the whole vault of existence.

Then everything vanished.

The memories smeared and faded, slipping through his grasp as if they had never been his to hold.

Only one thing grew sharper: the heat inside his body.

The wrist guard.

That heat was the wrist guard—scorching, unbearable. It felt like he was burning from the inside out. Someone, anyone, should pour cold water over him.

It was too hot.

Suddenly, a face appeared before him—bathed in gold, holy and radiant.

A voice boomed like thunder in his skull. “Bring me the wrist guard.”

“Bring it to the Holy Star Linked Bridge.”

“Bring it over—”

Pain tore through his heart, so fierce it felt like it was melting him.

Wang Jie’s eyes flew open. “Who are you?”

He stared up at the ceiling as the world snapped into focus, blur sharpening into something familiar. He turned his head slowly.

This was… home?

The door slammed open. Someone rushed in, eyes blazing with disbelief. “Old Boss!”

Old Nine.

Wang Jie looked at him, his gaze gradually clearing. “Old Nine?”

Old Nine shook as he stared at him. “Old Boss. You didn’t die. You really didn’t die.”

Wang Jie tried to move.

He couldn’t.

Fragments of memory slid into place—an altar, sunlight, Shu Mu Ye. He had fought Shu Mu Ye. In the end, he’d borrowed force to throw one last punch, and then everything had gone blank.

Now, it still was.

Was he… crippled?

Old Nine caught the look on his face and rushed to speak over it. “Old Boss, don’t think like that. You’re fine. You were just hurt too badly—your body’s numb. Wait here. I’ll get the doctor.”

He bolted out, shouting down the corridor, “Old Five! Old Two! Hurry—Old Boss is awake! Get the doctor! Drag Si Yan over here too—Old Boss is awake!”

Soon the room filled with people. Hands checked, pressed, prodded. Hong Jian arrived. Lian Qin. Sister Tang.

Word of Wang Jie waking rippled across all three major bases. Everyone waited for the verdict.

Si Yan stared at Wang Jie like he was looking at a corpse that refused to stay dead. “He’s alive?”

“This body is supposed to be dead.”

Qing Zheng’s face darkened. “Watch your mouth.”

Si Yan pushed his glasses up and looked to the other doctors.

They shook their heads. They traded helpless glances. They looked at Hong Jian, then at Qing Zheng, and didn’t dare speak.

Si Yan’s voice turned harsh, as if he could bully reality into making sense. “This is a dead man’s body. He shouldn’t be alive. He can’t produce blood anymore. His meridians are shattered. His bones are broken. He shouldn’t be breathing.”

Hong Jian’s expression didn’t change. “This is the age of cultivation. If he’s alive, there’s a reason.”

“Find it. Treat him.”

Si Yan looked back at Wang Jie.

Wang Jie’s voice was calm. “Same as always. Bring me the medicine.”

“It won’t help,” Si Yan said instantly.

“Bring it anyway.”

Si Yan hesitated. “Then when you use it… can I watch?”

Wang Jie met his gaze without blinking.

Si Yan clicked his tongue and walked out.

People gradually dispersed until only Hong Jian, Old Five, and a few others remained.

Wang Jie learned the situation quickly.

After the trial ended, Imprint Power in the world grew thinner by the day. Jia Yi Sect no longer dropped Heavenstone. The mutated creatures stopped getting stronger. The safe zone kept expanding, and the bases were finally—briefly—safe.

Most of the strongest mutated creatures had already been culled, especially the ones the trialists had lured over for Shu Mu Ye to slaughter.

And the hand… the hand had grabbed Blue Star. What it had done was still a blank.

Wang Jie didn’t know either.

“Bai Yuan disappeared?” he asked.

Hong Jian nodded. “Probably taken by Jia Yi Sect. He mastered Jia Yi Divine Sword.”

Wang Jie stared out the window. “Liu Ying was likely taken by Chu Yao. What about Zuo Tian?”

Hong Jian shook his head. “Zuo Tian vanished too. We don’t know where.”

“Do you think Jia Yi Sect took him?”

Wang Jie couldn’t answer.

All he knew was the heat inside him was still there—hotter every day. It had started at his wrist. Now it crept up his entire arm like something living.

Crippled?

Maybe. Maybe not.

The wrist guard had stopped forcing him through the routine. It was as if it knew he couldn’t move, as if it was waiting.

The Holy Star Linked Bridge…

Wang Jie couldn’t forget the golden figure. A full suit of golden armor—missing only the wrist guard.

One wrist guard had done this to him. He couldn’t imagine what a full set could do.

He had to go there. He could feel it. If he didn’t, something worse would come.

After Hong Jian left, Sister Tang visited and filled him in on minor news—rebuilding, regrouping survivors, bringing people back from Jiang City. Then she said, “There’s something else.”

She handed him a sheet of paper.

Messy doodles. A few bitter complaints. Most of it meaningless.

Only one thing mattered: four words written large enough to hurt the eyes.

Starry Sky Martial Tournament.

“This was drawn by one of the trialists we captured,” Sister Tang said. “He was bored.”

Under the words, the trialist had written a long, rambling passage—dreams and longing—then scribbled most of it out.

Wang Jie’s gaze fixed on the title. “Starry Sky Martial Tournament…”

“When Wen Xing Ru told us to release the trialists,” Sister Tang said, “we asked about it. One of them said it’s the biggest martial tournament in the universe. Every power and civilization that’s qualified to touch the starry sky participates.”

“Even nonhuman civilizations.”

“And if you rank high… you rise in one step.”

Wang Jie set the paper down and looked up. The bridge was faint against the sky, like a mirage that refused to disappear. “Right now, we’re all just dreaming.”

He paused. “But Bai Yuan might actually have a chance.”

Sister Tang didn’t stay long after that.

It was cruel, telling someone who had reached the peak and then fallen into paralysis about a grand tournament among the stars. But she couldn’t help it.

Wang Jie had created a miracle once—three battles against Shu Mu Ye.

Maybe he could do it again.

Jin Ling Base no longer had tattered tents outside its walls. The base had expanded. Everyone lived inside now.

The safe zone kept growing. Humans reclaimed more land with each sweep.

Wang Jie sat in a wheelchair as Old Five pushed him along the wall, looking out over the world.

“Old Boss,” Old Five said, voice thick, “because of you, Blue Star didn’t get destroyed. Everyone’s still alive.”

Wang Jie smiled faintly. “I did it for myself too.”

In the distance, Feng Yu was on patrol. When she saw him, she stopped and bowed.

People treated Wang Jie with respect even now. His battle with Shu Mu Ye had shattered their understanding of what Blue Star’s people could be. To them, Wang Jie was both savior and legend—someone who had truly stood at the summit, even if only briefly.

Wang Jie swept his gaze across the wall.

Even crippled, he still had Qi Sight. He could see the flow of qi in every person.

Before the trialists arrived, among the “three gods,” the strongest “five” were only at Seventh Seal. Across the five major bases, a million cultivators averaged only two imprints to Third Seal.

Now the average had climbed to Fourth Seal. And that was only the average. Seventh Seal, Eighth Seal—even Ninth Seal cultivators appeared more and more often.

Feng Yu, for example, was Ninth Seal.

Wang Jie knew she had secretly helped Yan Si, trying to shake off the stigma of being from Blue Star. He didn’t care. Everyone fought to survive. There was no shame in it.