Chapter 69

Chapter 69: Beyond Understanding

The nine didn’t stay together.

They scattered into the wild to hunt mutated beasts and gather disaster materials.

Only two remained behind – one on each side of the lake, alert.

Wang Jie watched, calculating.

Instantly killing two Ten Seals at once would be difficult if they were prepared.

So he waited – until the others moved farther away.

He didn’t want a single one escaping.

They were Jun Tang’s people. Killing them would likely help Jun Hua.

And more importantly –

They were trespassing on his planet.

Then a thought flickered through him, and he paused.

Why kill them now?

Let them gather for a while first.

Collect for him.

Wang Jie backed off, silent as sand, and left.

With those people hunting and all of them carrying Combat Power Detectors, he didn’t want to move openly. If they noticed anything strange, they could triangulate him.

For now, his own disaster materials were enough.

Half a month passed.

He did calisthenics twice more.

He used up his stockpile.

Time to hunt again.

Wang Jie checked his detector. He was north of the lake now. He remembered two of them had moved this way.

He released a bit of presence – deliberately exposing Ninth Seal battle power.

Dozens of kilometers away, a burly man sat on a corpse, gnawing a beast leg. His detector beeped.

His eyes lit.

Ninth Seal?

He tossed the leg aside and stood, hoisting a blade.

Worth the trouble.

He charged toward Wang Jie’s position.

Not long after, he saw him.

Wang Jie saw him too.

They locked eyes.

The burly man frowned, surprised to find someone here at all. “Are you a native?”

Wang Jie’s expression didn’t change. “Guess.”

The man’s temper snapped. He lifted his blade and slashed. “Looking for death!”

Blade force surged, stretching a hundred meters in front of him.

Wang Jie ran straight into it.

A beam fired from the weapon in the man’s hand – so the brute wasn’t as simple as he looked.

Too bad.

Wang Jie flicked grit from his fingers.

The burly man instinctively raised his blade to block. In his mind, Wang Jie was only Ninth Seal. Why dodge?

Then the detector screamed.

The number jumped violently.

The man’s pupils shrank.

Too late.

The grit punched through blade force, through metal, and straight through his skull.

Wang Jie had fought Shu Mu Ye three times. Each time he’d grown explosively. He had no real concept of how large the gap was between him and ordinary people at the same level.

Chong Xuan and the others were already so far above ordinary cultivators that normal people couldn’t even imagine them.

Yet they couldn’t withstand even one move from Shu Mu Ye.

That was Wang Jie’s reality now.

It was also why Bian Qi and Jun Tang could never understand him.

How could a Ten Seals be this strong?

Wang Jie looked down at the mangled corpse.

He’d used too much force. He’d meant to leave the man alive for questions.

Forget it.

He opened the man’s storage ring with blood and poured the contents out.

Weapons. Armor. Food. Water. Silver Radiance coins.

And the largest pile – disaster materials.

Something else caught his eye.

Starstone.

Starstone was one of the currencies used by cultivators. The universe had countless currencies across endless civilizations; even disaster materials could function as money.

But the truly valuable currencies almost always related to starforce.

Starstone contained starforce and could be absorbed.

Useless for Wang Jie – he cultivated lockforce.

Slaughterstone, too, was a currency, and its value was enormous.

This man cultivated lockforce and still carried starstone.

Interesting.

Next.

Wang Jie followed his detector’s signals and hunted.

Far away, another man stood in the desert, staring at the sand. He waved a hand, whipping up a gale that tore across the ground.

When the wind settled, it was still desert – but he crouched and scooped sand, eyes narrowing.

“It’s been cut,” he murmured. “What a sharp sword method…”

His detector beeped.

He spun.

Someone was behind him – close enough that the detector warning came late.

The man’s face changed. That meant the newcomer had a powerful breath-concealing method.

“Who is your excellency?” he demanded.

Wang Jie lifted his head. Under twin suns, the air itself shimmered with heat. “You’re more polite than the last one.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “The last one…?”

“Yeah.” Wang Jie raised his sword. “This desert was cut open before. The wind covered it up again, but you noticed. Sharp eyes.”

He tilted his head. “Want to see how it was done?”

The man turned and ran without hesitation.

Wang Jie thrust.

Flow streaked across the air.

The strike passed through the man’s body and vanished into the distance as if it had never existed.

The man stumbled, still running, but his strength drained out of him like water.

A sticky warmth slid down his neck. He touched it, and his palm came away red.

Ten Seals…

This man was Ten Seals.

And Wang Jie was terrifying.

The loot was a mess of unfamiliar items, more starstone, more supplies.

Wang Jie didn’t know what half of it did, so he stored it all.

For the next two days, the remaining fugitives hunted mutated beasts.

Wang Jie hunted them.

A Ten Seals cultivator’s attack could, in theory, affect half a planet. That meant they ranged widely, moving far, spreading out.

A few disappearing shouldn’t be noticed immediately.

But these people were unusually cautious.

After several lost contacts, they decided to regroup.

Wang Jie intercepted them – cutting down pairs at their meeting points, one after another – until only three remained.

Then, as he approached the lake –

The hidden ship shot upward, launching into space.

They ran.

All three ran without even checking what had happened to their companions.

Wang Jie inhaled, lowered his stance, and drew his sword.

Star-Gazing Sword Form.

Heaven and earth seemed to turn. Stars flowed. Sword qi fell from the sky like a meteor shower, spearing down into the ship’s hull.

The ship shuddered mid-ascent, pierced through.

Then it exploded, flashing wildly, tearing apart in the upper air.

Wang Jie sprinted to the ground beneath it.

The burning wreck crashed downward.

Two figures burst out – one fleeing left, one fleeing right.

From that height, they had to fall first.

That was more than enough time.

Wang Jie swung twice.

He used only Rainbow-Drinking Sword Form, but his strength turned it into a sky-cleaving strike. One fugitive was ripped apart instantly.

The second managed to block – barely – and was blasted away instead of dying.

Wang Jie’s brows rose.

He hadn’t even used qi.

With Wang Jie’s current power, even a casual sword strike should have been fatal to anyone within Ten Seals.

This one’s battle power…

Close to someone like Yun Lai.

Wang Jie chased.

A sandstorm rose in the distance, wind roaring, yellow dust swallowing the horizon.

The fugitive slammed into the storm, twisted midair, and used the gale’s force to fling himself away.

His face was pale. Blood streaked his mouth. The moment his feet hit the desert, he yanked a massive weapon out of a storage ring and fired backward.

Beams tore into the sand, bombing randomly in every direction.

Wang Jie’s sword flashed.

Flow poured out in a storm – dozens of slashes in a single breath. The strikes refracted harsh light under the blazing suns, covering a huge range.

One slash collided with a beam and dispersed.

Found you.

The fugitive’s eyes went wide. He threw the weapon away and ran.

It didn’t help.

Wang Jie caught him.

The man gasped, staring at Wang Jie with fear that looked almost too rehearsed. “You’re from the Silver Radiance Empire, sent to hunt us down?”

Wang Jie studied him.

He looked older than Bai Yuan. His armor was fine quality. He acted terrified.

Was he really?

Wang Jie’s qi sight saw the truth: the densest qi gathered in the man’s right palm.

The blade in his left hand carried qi too – but that qi wasn’t connected to him. It didn’t flow like it belonged.

Qi could be forged, shifted – but the Silver Radiance Empire didn’t even know the basics of the Dead Realm, let alone advanced qi manipulation.

So the man wasn’t shifting it.

He was disguising his true specialty.

Palm strikes.

Starforce.

The fear, the posture, even the way he held his blade – an act.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” the man rasped. “When Jun Tang lost his inheritance, he hid massive resources for the day he rebelled.”

“If you spare me, I’ll tell you where it is.”

Wang Jie lifted a brow. “Oh? Really?”

“Then why do you think the empire is hunting us?” the man continued, voice low. “Jun Hua is a Frost Splendor Sect disciple. Would she care about a few of us?”

He coughed, bending as if he could barely stand. The blade in his left hand slipped, clattering onto the sand.

Wang Jie walked closer and stopped less than three meters away. “Where?”

The man kept his head down, panting. “It’s… it’s…”

Then his right palm snapped up.

Starforce spiraled like a vortex, dragging the wind with it. For one breath, the desert went unnaturally silent.

The palm strike missed.

It slammed into the sand behind Wang Jie, forming a solid palm shadow that tore open the earth in a straight line.

The man’s eyes went wide.

He spun to run –

A heavy blow crashed into his back.

Bones cracked.

His strength vanished. He stumbled forward and collapsed, unable to rise.

He turned his head, blood at his mouth, staring at Wang Jie with disbelief. “Who… are you?”

Wang Jie didn’t answer.

He finished it.

Then he opened the man’s storage ring.

The contents were obscene – far more than the others. Starstone in bulk. Techniques. Equipment.

This was their leader.

Wang Jie’s gaze shifted to the fallen blade.

He raised a hand, and the blade flew into his palm.

Starforce pulsed inside it.

A Chen Artifact.

Wang Jie wasn’t a clueless newcomer anymore. He’d learned enough to recognize what mattered.

The universe held countless powers – techniques, methods, Bridgeway Art, strange energies beyond simple cultivation.

Weapons could carry starforce too.

Chen Artifacts were weapons infused with starforce. The simplest were ranked by the amount of starforce they held; the strongest carried strange innate abilities.

This blade was the simplest type – but it was still a Chen Artifact.

In the hands of someone evenly matched, it could decide life and death. The starforce within it was, by itself, equivalent to Ten Seals level.

Chen Artifacts weren’t cheap.

Then Wang Jie found something else.

A newspaper.

He blinked.

In the universe?

Even on Blue Star, printed news had almost vanished long ago.

He unfolded it and realized it wasn’t paper at all. It was palm-sized, tough, and the text shifted depending on the angle you held it.

The header identified its origin:

Star Vault Vista.

Wang Jie rotated it curiously, scanning headlines that changed as the surface caught the light.

Then he froze.

His face sank, eyes hardening on a single item.

“Shu Mu Ye: Star-Breaking – Thirteen Stars.”

“Rating: Beyond Understanding – Gu Yue.”