Chapter 68

Chapter 68: Slaughterstone Planet

Wang Jie stared at the personal terminal on his wrist. To be honest, he wanted to ask Jun Hua why she treated him so well.

The terminal held only one contact.

Jun Hua.

Over the next few days, he learned Lakeside Residence. He trained in the gravity room, but it only reached fifty times gravity – useless.

His strength had risen to ninety-nine times its limit, and his defense rose with it. Fifty times gravity barely scratched him.

What he wanted most was to confirm Blue Star’s position – without the Silver Radiance Empire noticing what he was doing.

So he zoomed the star map in and out, pretending to explore, turning east, then north, then back again, trying to align it with memory.

He assumed everything he did was being watched.

No secrets.

Two months passed.

Jun Hua didn’t contact him once.

His public identity was Emperor Jun Hua’s guard – yet he hadn’t set foot inside the Imperial Palace even a single time.

Eventually he stopped thinking about it and decided to go to a slaughterstone planet.

If Jun Hua wanted him, she’d make a move before he left. His movements were being monitored anyway.

As for the Royal Library’s manuals, he didn’t bother. His battle skills came from Jia Yi Sect.

And the more he learned, the more he understood: Jia Yi Sect didn’t just look down on Blue Star. It looked down on the Silver Radiance Empire.

It even looked down on Frost Splendor Sect.

He already had the best techniques he could hope for. Why read the empire’s and owe a favor on top?

Besides – too many techniques weren’t always better.

Before leaving, he gave Cheng Qian two tasks: find an exquisite sword tassel, and find seven-colored flower.

Both were materials needed for Sword Steps.

Lakeside Residence’s status was high because the lake it “accompanied” was the one inside the Imperial Palace itself.

And the previous master of Lakeside Residence had been –

Jun Tang.

Under a deep sky filled with stars, two suns circled ahead, ensuring the planet below never truly knew night.

This was one of Wang Jie’s slaughterstone planets.

It was about the size of Blue Star. The similarity made him suspect Blue Star itself had once been a slaughterstone planet as well – at least in Jia Yi Sect’s records.

His ship descended. As it entered the atmosphere, it slowed until it glided down and settled into a lake.

Wang Jie hid the ship on the lakebed, then leapt out –

And a flying mutated beast lunged at him immediately. Triangular head, crimson eyes, jaws snapping.

Wang Jie twisted aside, grabbed its head with one hand, and flipped onto its back.

The beast thrashed, trying to throw him.

One punch.

It went limp.

A Sixth Seal mutated beast. Too weak.

Wang Jie forced its head toward a direction. “That way.”

The beast tried to resist. Wang Jie held it still until it had no choice, then it flew.

Wang Jie wore a Combat Power Detector. In that direction, numbers flooded the display – dense clusters of mutated beasts.

He didn’t expect anything too strong here. The planet belonged to the empire, and only one slaughterstone had been dropped. It had been awarded to him.

A truly valuable slaughterstone planet would never be handed out like this.

Especially not after the planet had already been harvested – tens of thousands of human cultivators taken away.

The people remaining didn’t dare step into the wild. The strongest mutated creatures had already been culled.

The air was cleaner than Blue Star’s.

The twin suns baked the world. Vast stretches had turned to desert. Only occasional lakes and forests broke the yellow expanse.

And in the sand, the mutated beasts were uglier, more vicious – buried underground like worms waiting to strike.

Then come out.

Wang Jie drew his sword and rose into the air.

Star-Gazing Sword Form.

His blade carved through heat-hazed air. The desert seemed to turn into a starfield, constellations hanging upside down. Sword qi fell like meteors, slamming into the sand.

The ground split open. Every strike drilled deep into the earth.

With one sword, the desert in a wide radius shattered into fragments. Wind howled, yellow sand rising into the sky like smoke.

Mutated creatures crawled out by the hundreds, the sight grotesque.

Wang Jie dropped to the ground and used Star-Gazing Sword Form again.

One of Sword Steps’ materials required him to “extinguish stars” with Star-Gazing Sword Form. He was still far from that.

For days, he slaughtered mutated beasts in the desert, gathering disaster materials.

Having a storage ring made it effortless. Everything went inside. Nothing weighed him down.

“Now I’m starting the eighth set…”

He spoke out loud as he did his calisthenics, dumping disaster materials beside him and absorbing imprint power as he moved.

During his time in the Silver Radiance Empire, he’d learned more about Ten Seals than he’d ever known on Blue Star.

Ten Seals weren’t all equal.

A Star-Breaking Realm cultivator’s strength depended heavily on how solid their Ten Seals foundation was.

You could, in theory, force your way through Ten Seals and step into Star-Breaking Realm anyway. But you’d become one of the weak ones at that stage.

Only by solidifying Ten Seals could you step into Star-Breaking with true power.

The solidity was marked by color.

At first, the imprint was only an outline – like Wang Jie’s, now.

In the earliest days of the apocalypse, his cultivation had been more stable. But after his battle with Shu Mu Ye, he’d recultivated and pushed into Ten Seals in the shortest possible time.

That speed had left his foundation thin.

All ten imprints were only outlines.

As the imprint deepened, the color grew clearer – gray-white, light gray, deep gray, light black, then the deepest black.

The guards at Lakeside Residence were mostly gray-white.

Common knowledge said that children of great powers should reach at least light gray.

In larger sects, true talents could reach deep gray.

Starforce cultivation also began at Ten Seals, with the same color progression – only the imprints came from starforce.

Wang Jie remembered seeing one of Wen Zhao’s imprints. Light gray.

Wen Xing Ru and the others – Chong Xuan, that group – had to be at least deep gray.

As for Shu Mu Ye… even if not deep black, then at least light black.

Wang Jie’s goal was simple.

Strengthen Ten Seals.

Everything else – people saying lockforce had limits, that it had no future – he ignored.

If he was already on this path, then he would go as far as he could.

There were lockforce cultivators in the universe who had reached Star-Breaking Realm. He’d take it one step at a time.

Normally, deepening an imprint would take absurd time and resources. Even Wen Zhao, from one of Jia Yi Sect’s great surnames, had only reached light gray.

That alone proved how hard it was.

But Wang Jie had calisthenics.

His absorption efficiency was terrifying.

One session didn’t just improve his physique. The outlines of his imprints became sharper, clearer.

So he kept going.

Besides imprint power, there was qi sight.

He could manipulate two hundred soybean-sized grains now, and that control needed to grow.

Since he couldn’t find any knowledge of the Dead Realm here – nor anything about the Corpse Sect – he didn’t know how to increase qi itself.

So he trained proficiency.

Back in the Imperial Capital, Jun Hua sat with eyes closed, exhaustion carved into her face.

Nearby, Yu Dong trained – cold air wrapping her body, twisting into strange patterns like a frozen array.

“Any news about Wang Jie?” Jun Hua asked suddenly.

Yu Dong opened her eyes. “He’s collecting disaster materials.”

“Trying to deepen his imprints?”

“Probably.”

Jun Hua’s mouth curved faintly. “He’s disciplined. With all those maids at Lakeside Residence, he hasn’t touched even one.”

Yu Dong looked skeptical. “Or it’s an act.”

“I still don’t believe he’s connected to Jia Yi Sect. That ship could be something he stumbled into.”

Jun Hua didn’t argue. “Let him be. Consider it repayment.”

Yu Dong leaned back. “And the interstellar pirates? Still not caught?”

Jun Hua rubbed her brow. “No.”

“They were Jun Tang’s white gloves. Individually they aren’t weak. None of them are Star-Breaking Realm, but they’re all Ten Seals, fully equipped with weapons and armor.”

“They have the empire’s star map and a lot of resources. They’re hard to pin down.”

Yu Dong’s eyes sharpened. “Want me to act?”

Jun Hua smiled bitterly. “You can’t leave.”

“And there’s another problem. The sect sent people.”

Yu Dong’s expression changed. “The sect? For what?”

“At first I thought they wanted to renegotiate tribute. But the ones coming are Rainbow Peak disciples from Frost Splendor Domain.”

Yu Dong frowned. “Rainbow Peak? Then they’re at least inner sect disciples, like us.”

“That’s not a tribute negotiation.”

“I know,” Jun Hua said quietly. “They set out early. I don’t know when they’ll arrive.”

She exhaled. “If only we weren’t so far from Frost Splendor Domain. Otherwise we could ask senior sister what’s happening.”

On the slaughterstone planet, heat baked the ground. Wang Jie sat on a stone amid piles of mutated corpses.

He opened his eyes and looked at the inside of his forearm.

One imprint.

Light gray.

He’d gotten there faster than he expected – because of the calisthenics.

The other nine remained outlines, but clearer than before.

He’d been on this planet for over half a month.

Not nearly enough.

He needed more.

That day, he looked up and saw a ship descending from the sky, angling toward his region.

His brows tightened.

Why would a ship come here?

In the empire’s records, this planet belonged only to him.

Jun Hua sending people?

He decided to watch first.

Far away lay another lake, smaller than the one where he’d hidden his ship.

The descending ship headed straight for it – and sank beneath the surface.

Wang Jie’s expression cooled.

Not here for him.

If they were, they wouldn’t hide the ship.

He hid his ship to keep mutated beasts from tearing it apart.

As the ship disappeared, the lake boiled, steam rising.

Nine figures walked out through the water.

Wang Jie flattened himself against the ground, breath controlled, watching with only the corner of his eye.

His detector numbers jumped.

Every single one – above three thousand.

Nine Ten Seals cultivators.

That was not normal.

Blue Star had needed time and countless slaughterstone to produce Ten Seals in numbers. The empire itself didn’t hand out Ten Seals like candy.

Lakeside Residence didn’t even have a Ten Seals guard.

That mining planet had only a few Ten Seals at most.

A faint voice carried on the wind.

“Just this?”

“Hide for a while,” another voice said. “This is the slaughterstone planet owned by Lakeside Residence.”

“Lord Jun Tang brought us here before.”

“As long as Lakeside Residence has no master, this place won’t be discovered.”

“That’s all we can do.”

Someone spat in disgust. “Damn it. I thought following Lord Jun Tang would get us into the empire’s upper ranks.”

“Now we’re fugitives.”

“Lay low. Once we leave the Silver Radiance Empire, it won’t matter.”

“With our strength, even in Frost Splendor Sect’s outer court we could carve out a place.”

“That bitch is from Frost Splendor Sect, isn’t she?”

“I was just making an example.”