Chapter 87

Chapter 87: That Woman

In the thunder, Jia Eight Steps suddenly opened.

It was as if the lightning itself had carved understanding into his bones. The distance his movement could cover exploded—from a hundred meters to a thousand.

One step, and anything within a thousand meters was within reach.

At the same time, Star-Gazing Sword Form shifted.

Wang Jie swept his sword, stirring the lightning like a tide. Each strand of sword qi he released dragged thunder with it, bolts crashing down alongside his strikes.

The remaining scorpion-headed beast was swallowed by the storm.

It couldn’t dodge. It couldn’t escape.

It screamed as the thunder tore into it.

Above, the beast near the house roared, voice cracking with panic. “Human! We’ll let you go! Stop!”

Wang Jie’s eyes were ice. Let him go?

If he hadn’t been strong, he would already be dead.

He pointed.

Heaven and Earth Luo Xuan Finger drove sideways into the beast’s flank, crushing through and pinning it into the lightning. The thunder finished the rest.

Wang Jie didn’t spare it another glance. He launched upward.

One remained.

The final beast fled, hatred twisting its face. Its tail rose and fired another poison arrow.

Wang Jie slipped aside without effort.

“Human!” the beast shrieked. “I’ll swallow you alive!”

Then it opened its jaws and released a piercing, resonant scream that cut through the thunder itself.

Wang Jie’s heart sank.

It was calling for reinforcements.

He accelerated, Jia Eight Steps chaining across the rim in long, fluid leaps.

The beast turned and ran, desperate. Two of its kin were dead. Alone, it knew it couldn’t win.

Wang Jie was nearly upon it when an indescribable chill dropped over him like a veil.

His skin crawled.

He turned slowly.

In the lightning below, something massive forced its way upward.

A beast of the same type, but more than ten times larger, scales reflecting thunderlight like polished armor, shrieking as it shouldered through bolt after bolt.

Full-Star Realm.

Wang Jie ground his teeth and sprinted for the house.

He didn’t know if the house would save him, but it was his last refuge.

It wasn’t enough.

Even with Jia Eight Steps expanded, he couldn’t outrun a Full-Star Realm predator.

The colossal beast’s gaze locked onto him. A claw reached out.

It covered the space above Wang Jie in an instant, descending like the sky falling.

Wang Jie’s pupils shrank.

He was pinned between thunder and void.

Fine.

He stepped onto the rim and drove himself straight at the beast—into the lightning, into the storm.

The beast’s eyes gleamed with contempt. Its claw withdrew—

And then, as if distance meant nothing, the same claw crossed space and smashed into Wang Jie’s back from behind.

Wang Jie managed only a single twist in the void. That fraction of movement kept him from being struck dead-on, but the impact still tore him free of the rim.

He fell.

Like a meteor, he plunged into the depths of the Thunder Well.

Thunder roared around him. Lightning flayed the void. Sound, light, heat—everything tried to rip him apart.

Wang Jie tore out his chen artifact bell and threw it over himself. A protective dome snapped into place as the thunder hammered it.

At the same time, he released all his imprint power.

Silver Radiance Art.

His body became a streak of silver light, falling faster, deeper.

Behind him, the Full-Star Realm beast chased without hesitation.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The bell rang under the relentless strikes, cracks spiderwebbing across it. Threads of lightning slipped through and struck Wang Jie’s armor, scorching and searing.

Even with the battle armor, he couldn’t endure much longer.

The thunder grew louder, denser, heavier.

He passed through the shallow thunder zone.

He entered the deep thunder zone.

A violent detonation struck him like a hammer.

His consciousness snapped.

His body kept falling.

Above, the beast caught up, teeth bared in a savage grin. Its claw reached out to seize him—

And then, from far below, something rose.

From Thunder Abyss upward, cutting through the heavy thunder zone and surging toward the deep thunder zone, an oval craft slid through the lightning.

It looked like a ship, but it was forged of swords.

Blade after blade twisted and shifted, assembling into a smooth oval shell. Within that shell, a woman slept.

Under the thunderlight, her beauty looked almost unreal—skin like crystal, flawless and luminous, delicate as if it could be broken by a breath, yet radiant in a way that made the storm itself feel dull.

Even the endless roar could not wake her.

Not until the fading streak of silver—Wang Jie—fell into the oval’s path.

The moment the silver light entered her field of view, the woman’s finger moved.

Her eyes opened.

She saw the silver glow dimming, and behind it the pursuing beast, savage and eager.

Her fingertip flicked.

One sword that formed the oval vanished in an instant. It flashed across the void.

The Full-Star Realm beast froze.

Then its body fell apart.

Slice by slice, countless pieces dropped away, as if reality itself had cut it into fragments. It died without even understanding it had been struck.

The sword stabbed into the cracked bell and carried it toward the woman.

She looked at Wang Jie, unconscious inside. The bell was failing. One more wave of thunder and it would collapse—and if it did, he would die.

“In the vast universe,” she murmured, “our meeting—whether fortune or misfortune—no longer matters.”

“Today, we both face tribulation. Let each of us endure it.”

The bell shattered.

Wang Jie’s body fell into the oval craft.

The woman looked at him from arm’s length, her cheeks flushing faintly. She slipped out of her clothes, then sealed the oval completely with a sword, shutting out the thunder like closing a door.

Wang Jie dreamed.

He was back at the orphanage. The director stood there smiling, holding fried chicken and youtiao, calling him over to eat.

But there were too many little friends. He couldn’t squeeze through. The good food was disappearing. He panicked, shoved hard, forced his way in, and finally grabbed something.

Huh?

Why was it soft?

The dream shattered.

Thunder hammered the ground. Cities cracked apart. Fire-meteors fell from the sky. A beast tide drowned the streets.

The director. The little friends.

Flames swallowed everything.

Wang Jie’s mind shook. Where is everyone? Don’t die. Don’t die—

“Don’t die!”

He jolted awake, sitting up with a gasp.

For a moment he was lost, staring into the lightning.

Then he realized where he was.

The boundary between the shallow thunder zone and the deep thunder zone.

He looked down at himself, at his battered armor. Confusion surged through him.

Hadn’t he been hunted by a Full-Star Realm beast?

Was it all an illusion?

No.

His chen artifact bell was gone. His battle armor was damaged. The danger had been real.

Did Jiang You Sheng save him?

He shifted to stand—and realized his hand was gripping something.

A sword tassel.

Exquisitely made.

He stared at it, and a clean, subtle fragrance drifted into his lungs.

So familiar.

A blurred face rose in his mind—a woman, her features indistinct, yet the imprint she left behind was overwhelming, as if she were both stranger and mirror.

He wanted to find her.

Not casually. Not curiously.

Desperately.

At the same time, unfamiliar memories surfaced—patterns of movement, flashes of technique. A combat technique, suddenly lodged in his mind as if it had always been there.

He closed his eyes, chasing the fragments.

He saw the woman rise to leave. He saw himself reach out—grabbing something. Not stopping her, only catching that one thing. She looked back once, then allowed it to fall and left.

The thing was the sword tassel.

Wang Jie opened his eyes and stared at it again.

So she saved me.

But who is she?

Why did the thought of her make his chest tighten?

He didn’t know her. He shouldn’t feel anything.

And yet the urge remained—raw and insistent.

In the endless universe, he’d had no destination.

Now he had one.

He wanted to find her. He felt—absurdly, unreasonably—that she belonged to him, that she was another self he’d lost and needed to recover.

The tassel, he knew, was one of the materials required for sword steps. It would work. It was perfect.

But he didn’t want to use it.

He curled his fingers around it, held it for a long breath, then tucked it away.

He rose.

His whole body ached, bones screaming as if they might split.

But something was different.

He clenched his fists and felt it immediately—his strength had surged.

A hundredfold.

He had broken past ninety-ninefold and crossed the limit.

And with the breakthrough came something else.

Inside him, another kind of qi had emerged—qi born from strength itself. It separated from his original qi, distinct and independent, as if his body had forged a second core within his flesh.

Wang Jie didn’t understand it. Even if the woman saved him, why would that push him past his limit?

Still, both qi existed within him.

He tried to fuse them.

The two currents collided—and visible vapor rose around his body, like transparent flames licking up his skin. It resembled starforce at a glance, but it wasn’t starforce.

It was the union of two qi.

The moment they merged, power surged through him, violent and astonishing—far stronger than the crude “qi and strength combined” he’d used before.

His hair lifted. The air around him trembled.

He had never felt so strong.

Then he forced the two qi apart, and the overwhelming sensation receded.

Not because he weakened—he was still stronger than before, simply by virtue of breaking the limit—but because that fused state vanished when the qi separated.

He breathed out, steadying himself.

He had also gained a new combat technique, one that felt made for him, though he didn’t yet know its full power.

He took out disaster materials and absorbed them carefully. This was still the shallow thunder zone. As long as he stayed alert and avoided direct strikes, he could recover.

The loss of the bell still stung.

When his lockforce stabilized again, he began climbing upward.

Slowly.

Even stronger, he was still helpless against a Full-Star Realm beast.

Lightning formed a dense net overhead. He slipped through it piece by piece, climbing along the rim toward the upper edge.

He saw one of the beasts again—one of the three that had attacked him at the start.

But not the Full-Star Realm one.

Where had that monster gone?

Wang Jie didn’t dare relax. At his current level, he could only wait for Jiang You Sheng.

Days passed.

Jiang You Sheng still didn’t return, and the remaining beast was eventually killed by other cultivators. When they left, Wang Jie seized the chance and climbed quickly up to the house, shutting himself inside at last.

Only then did he breathe.

This trip had been a brush with death.

He still didn’t understand how he’d lived.

He was too exhausted to think further.

He slept.

Two days later, knocking woke him.

Jiang You Sheng’s voice came through the door. “Master?”

Wang Jie opened it, bleary and sore.

“What?” Jiang You Sheng blurted the moment he saw him. “Master encountered spikehorn beasts?”

Wang Jie blinked. “That’s what they’re called?”

Jiang You Sheng’s face was grave. “Spikehorn beasts are notorious among starry sky behemoths. They refuse control and live to plunder. The Eight Hells Mad Clan nearly wiped them out once, but some always manage to hide.”

He exhaled sharply. “I didn’t expect them to be lurking near this Thunder Well.”

He bowed. “It was my oversight. I caused Master to face danger.”

Wang Jie waved it off. “It’s over. Luckily, other creatures seemed to have a grudge against them and killed them all.”

He hesitated, then asked, “And the shadow-hunting beast? What was that thing?”

Jiang You Sheng’s eyes widened. “Master ran into that too?”

Wang Jie nodded.

Jiang You Sheng’s voice lowered. “That explains why Master couldn’t call for help. The shadow-hunting beast likely ambushed you first—controlled your movements—then the spikehorn beasts moved in.”

He frowned. “Shadow-hunting beasts are strange. They aren’t starry sky behemoths, so they can’t survive freely in the universe. They hide inside a creature’s shadow and seize control of its body.”

His gaze sharpened. “Master can rest assured. The Mad Clan will give an explanation. This was a premeditated hunt. Who knows how many cultivators have died to that combination.”