In the darkest corner of the deck, Zhi Xuan listened to every word, his face hidden within the shadows of the Ghost Hood as his long fingers traced the rough surface of the ark's wooden wall. Hearing his own name spoken as a historical fable—a fragment of a past he had buried deep—brought a strange, bitter taste to his tongue.

  "Zhi Xuan... the Heavenly Devil of Xing Luo," Ruo Xianxue whispered, her voice now laced with a provocative, mocking tone. "Do you hear that? Even after two hundred years, your name remains a ghost haunting their nightmares. You thought you could erase your footprints just by changing your name to Gu Fengyan? It turns out this world has a memory sharper than your blade."

  Zhi Xuan did not answer. His sapphire eyes remained cold, staring straight into the darkness ahead. He realized that in the world of cultivation, truth often became legend, and legend turned into irrational fear.

  "They speak as if they know me," Zhi Xuan thought flatly. "When in reality, they only worship a shadow of their own creation."

  Suddenly, the tolling of a massive bell resonated throughout the ship, vibrating the wooden planks of the lower deck. The echo carried a pressing authority, signaling that the giant ark was about to release its mental anchor.

  "Attention to all inhabitants of the lower deck!" a voice amplified by spiritual essence thundered from the ceiling. "The spatial seal is about to be activated. Remain in your seats and do not trigger even the slightest bit of spiritual energy if you do not wish to be torn apart by dimensional pressure! The journey to the Western Region will take seven solar cycles!"

  The previous clamor of conversation died down instantly, replaced by the frantic movements of passengers huddling against support pillars or curling up atop their belongings. The air pressure inside the deck began to shift; spiritual essence felt heavier, and a sharp aroma began to fill the room.

  Zhi Xuan closed his eyes, letting the Heavenly Samsara Wheel within his mind rotate at a glacial speed, just enough to protect his internal organs from the coming dimensional shocks. Opposite him, the hunter girl gripped her dagger tightly, her face drenched in cold sweat, while the drunken old man had finally fallen fast asleep, as if the death lurking behind the ship's walls were no more frightening than his thirst for wine.

  GROOAAARRRR—!

  The roar of the ark reached its peak. From tiny cracks in the wooden walls, a reddish-purple light began to seep in—a manifestation of the friction between the ship's shield and the spatial particles in the Sky Veil. The ship jolted violently, causing several unsecured cargo crates to slide and create a deafening racket.

  "We have entered the spatial path," Zhi Xuan murmured.

  He felt his body being pulled by thousands of invisible threads. The space around him seemed to warp unnaturally. Yet, amidst the sensory chaos, his mind drifted far ahead, crossing thousands of li toward the Western Region.

  If it were true that the Sacred Pavilion Heavenly Leaf held control over that Holy City, then his meeting with Ye Xishui was no longer a matter of if, but when. That woman—under the wing of the exalted Elder Qing He—surely possessed an information network capable of detecting the arrival of anyone carrying a ripple of essence she recognized.

  "Two hundred years," Zhi Xuan hissed in silence. "Is that clear water still pure, or has it frozen into ice capable of wounding anyone who draws near?"

  Suddenly, a jolt far more devastating than before struck the ark. The sound of wood groaning in agony was sickening. The mental lamps on the lower deck flickered wildly before finally dying out completely, leaving hundreds of humans in a stifling darkness.

  "What's happening?! Why is the ship like this?!" the scarred youth screamed in the dark, his voice filled with contagious panic.

  "Something has hit the ship's shield!" another voice shouted from a distance.

  Zhi Xuan immediately opened his eyes. His sapphire gaze flashed in the darkness, piercing through the wooden walls of the ark to see what was happening outside in the midst of the turbulent spatial storm. What he saw made his essence stir; amidst the chaotic flow of dimensional light.

  There were large black shadows moving nimbly—they twisted like dragon-snakes made of thick smoke, cleaving through the spatial currents with a speed that defied ordinary practitioners. Every time one of those shadows touched the ark’s light shield, a sickening corrosive hiss followed, accompanied by a jolt that made the ship's ironwood structure groan.

  "Void Crevice Dwellers!" Ruo Xianxue hissed, her tone no longer cynical but filled with sharp alertness. "How is it possible for these creatures to be awake? This spatial path should have been cleared by the grand factions before this ship was released!"

  Zhi Xuan did not reply, but his mind tensed. In the darkness of the lower deck, screams of panic began to erupt. Low-level practitioners fumbled blindly, releasing their spiritual essence haphazardly to create light, which only worsened the situation as the wild energy clashed with the unstable dimensional pressure.

  "Stay still! Do not trigger your inner energy!" screamed a ship guard who had fallen from the upper deck stairs, his face covered in blood. "Those creatures are attracted to ripples of essence! If you don't want to become their meal, suppress your breath now!"

  However, the warning came too late. A direct hit tore through the side of the ship's hull, not far from where the hunter girl was cowering. Ironwood that should not have been destroyed by even the sharpest weapons was now shredded like wet paper. Cold air carrying stardust particles rushed into the room, sucking in anything nearby.

  SRAAAAKKK—!

  A black shadow—a Spatial Leech with thousands of circular teeth—burst through the hole. The creature had no fixed physical form, appearing only as a slimy lump of flesh radiating an aura of void.

  "Help! Help!" the hunter girl screamed, slashing her dagger wildly into the empty air.

  Zhi Xuan watched the scene without blinking. Behind the Ghost Hood, he could feel death feasting. He saw how fear destroyed the mental foundations of these mortal humans faster than the creature’s teeth.

  "Zhi Xuan, if this ship is destroyed in the middle of the spatial path, you will be trapped here before you can even reach the Western Region," Ruo Xianxue warned. "You must act, or let me take over to cleave these foul creatures apart."

  "It is not yet time," Zhi Xuan replied internally, his voice as cold as cracking ice. "If I release my Soul Transformation power here, the ship's shield will explode due to the massive energy resonance. I must handle this from the shadows."

  Zhi Xuan stood up with an incredibly fluid movement, as if he were not part of the physical body being tossed by the storm. In the midst of total darkness and sickening screams, he stepped forward. Every footfall made no sound, yet beneath his soles, a blackish ripple spread, swallowing every creak of wood and groan of fear around him.

  "It would be foolish to use a blade here," Zhi Xuan whispered, not to Ruo Xianxue, but to himself.

  He moved his right hand beneath his wide sleeve. He did not trigger an exploding spiritual essence; instead, he invoked the Law of Winter at its smallest degree. His fingertip touched the air rushing in from the gaping hole in the hull.

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  Instantly, the atmosphere around the hole froze. It was not merely a physical freezing, but a freezing of the movement of the wild space. The Spatial Leech that was about to pounce on the hunter girl stopped abruptly in mid-air. Its body of thick smoke hardened into a brittle black crystal before finally shattering into fine dust that was sucked back out into the dimensional crevice.

  "What... what happened?" the hunter girl whispered hoarsely. She couldn't see who had helped her; she only felt a cold so pure that her fear seemed to go numb.

  Zhi Xuan did not stop there. His sapphire eyes flashed through the dimensional fog. He realized this attack was no coincidence. Outside, beyond the churning spatial currents, he caught a hidden ripple of killing intent—not from a beast, but from remnants of formation energy that had been intentionally sabotaged.

  "Someone wants this ship to fall," Zhi Xuan muttered. "A conspiracy on the upper deck, or a betrayal from within?"

  He flicked his finger toward the shadows on the wooden floor. "Go. Clear out the vermin without damaging this shell."

  From the shadows beneath Zhi Xuan's feet, five thin and tall silhouettes emerged slowly. They were part of the Nirvana Shadow Army he had recently forged. Without a sound, without a breath of life, the five puppets sped off like spilled ink on paper, piercing through the wooden walls of the ship toward the outer light shield.

  Outside the ark, a silent but horrific battle erupted. The Nirvana Shadow Army moved through the vacuum as if they were part of the darkness itself. They gripped the black shadows attacking the ship, tearing apart the essence of the crevice creatures with claws coated in Nirvana physiques. To an outside observer, all that could be seen were flashes of grey light swallowing the black shadows one by one.

  The violent jolts shaking the hull slowly began to level off, turning into a heavy vibration. Inside the pitch-black lower deck, a haunting silence enveloped the passengers.

  They didn't know what was happening out there; they only felt the bone-chilling cold and witnessed how the horrific shadows that had burst in earlier suddenly vanished as if swallowed by a more primal darkness.

  Zhi Xuan remained standing tall, letting his robes sweep the wooden floor now littered with ice crystal shards. His sapphire eyes continued to monitor the spatial path through the frozen hull gap. His five shadow puppets were working with deadly efficiency; they hunted down every Spatial Leech trying to latch onto the ship's shield, breaking the creatures' essence before the ripples of their attacks could damage the ark further.

  "Look at that... up there!" the raspy voice of the drunken old man broke the silence. He had apparently woken up, his bloodshot eyes staring toward the frozen hull hole, pointing at a cluster of golden light starting to appear in the distance of the spatial path.

  Zhi Xuan looked up. In the middle of the grey dimensional storm, another ship—much smaller but more magnificent, with golden cloud carvings—seemed to be sailing parallel to their ark. The small ship showed no signs of being attacked; instead, its light shield seemed to cleave the path smoothly, as if the storm and the crevice beasts were intentionally avoiding it.

  Zhi Xuan’s jaw tightened. The greed of the grand factions and mortal nobles truly knew no bounds, even in the midst of fragile spatial laws. To him, the lives on this lower deck might be worthless, but the act of using an ark as bait was an insult to the silence he sought.

  "Disgusting mortal nobles," Zhi Xuan muttered. He moved his fingers, drawing his five shadow puppets back into his mental recesses.

  Zhi Xuan stared at the small golden-lit ship through the ice crystal gap. He fully realized what was happening; that luxury ship was using this large ark as a shield. By luring the Void Crevice Dwellers toward the larger ship full of energy ripples, they could slide smoothly through the dangerous spatial path without a hint of risk.

  "A cunning plan," Ruo Xianxue hissed, her laughter now full of boiling hatred. "They sacrifice thousands of these ant lives just so their silk robes don't get touched by stardust. Zhi Xuan, should I go out and crush that tiny ship into splinters?"

  "It is not yet time for us to show fangs that are too large," Zhi Xuan replied internally, his voice calm but containing an undeniable threat. "However, letting them leave without paying a price is an error in my calculations."

  Zhi Xuan raised his index finger. In the darkness of the lower deck, a speck of grey light as small as a grain of sand appeared at his fingertip, forming a black hole. He flicked it toward the departing golden ship.

  "Go, Eternal Star," Zhi Xuan whispered calmly, as if setting a boat adrift in a peaceful river.

  The speck of grey light shot off like a tiny meteor hidden behind the chaos, piercing the frozen hull gap without a single ripple. Within seconds, the luxury ship that had been gliding smoothly suddenly seemed to falter. Its pure golden light shield rippled violently as the dust-sized black hole made contact with the vessel.

  WHUMP! WHIRL!

  Instantly, the ship warped slightly with irresistible force; the creaking of the ship's wood felt haunting as the tiny black hole expanded, as if to devour everything. Zhi Xuan, on the other side, spread his palm and then closed it slowly as the black hole grew.

  "Swallow." The echo of Zhi Xuan's mental command seemed to stop time within that spatial corridor.

  The dust-sized black hole Zhi Xuan released suddenly pulsed, sucking the abundant spiritual essence from the luxury ship’s golden shield as fuel. In the blink of an eye, the space around the ship seemed to twist like wrung-out cloth. Screams that had been unheard now burst out from the golden ship's pavilion—the screams of nobles who suddenly realized their luxury was being torn apart by a bottomless void.

  "What's happening?! Our shield is collapsing!" screamed an elder from the deck of the golden ship, his voice hoarse with absolute terror.

  However, the only answer he received was the silence of the black hole, which had now expanded to the size of a fist. The grey speck slipped inside, piercing the luxury ship's hull without resistance, heading straight for the room housing thousands of high-grade spiritual stones. Once it reached the energy center, the pressure generated by Zhi Xuan’s Eternal Star technique forced all those spiritual stones to explode at a single point.

  BOOOOMMM—!

  The explosion was not red like mortal fire, but a blinding white that dissected the darkness of the spatial path. The luxury ship that had looked so graceful and authoritative exploded from within, shredded into thousands of pieces of golden wood and silk burning with inner essence. The shockwave hit the large ark where Zhi Xuan stood, creating a jolt more violent than any before.

  "Arrrghhh!" the passengers on the lower deck were thrown against the walls, some falling unconscious due to the sudden surge of pressure.

  Zhi Xuan remained standing firm, his feet seemingly rooted to the core of the earth. He stared at the glow of the explosion’s aftermath with flat sapphire eyes. The fragments of that luxury ship were now being sucked into the dimensional crevice, vanishing forever in the embrace of nothingness. Not a single soul remained from that ship; their greed had been paid in full with total annihilation.

  "Beautiful," Ruo Xianxue murmured, her voice trembling with wicked joy. "A flick of the finger, and their arrogance becomes dust in the middle of a storm."

  "They wanted to use this ark as a sacrifice," Zhi Xuan said while lowering his hand, letting the remaining grey essence at his fingertip fade. "And I do not wish to be someone considered a sacrifice."

  Due to the explosion, the remaining Void Crevice Dwellers around the spatial path suddenly scattered, terrified by the lingering killing intent within Zhi Xuan's energy wave. The large ark’s shield slowly began to stabilize again, and the mental lamps on the lower deck flickered dimly, revealing the sight of humans trembling and grateful to still be breathing.

  Zhi Xuan sat back down in his dark corner. The ice crystals that had previously frozen the hull gap now began to melt slowly, replaced by the automatic repair of the ship's formation just triggered by the guards on the upper deck.

  The mental lamps on the lower deck blinked, as if trying to gather the remains of lives nearly snatched away. Amidst the wisps of thin smoke and the scent of burnt wood, a suffocating silence enveloped the hundreds of passengers who were still stunned.

  "Dead... they all died in an instant," the scarred youth whispered, his eyes bulging as he stared toward the hull hole that now only showed the emptiness of the spatial path. "That golden ship... the ship carrying those grand experts... exploded like a crushed firework!"

  "What kind of God just passed by?" the hunter girl sobbed, her hand holding the dagger still shaking violently. She looked around, searching for the figure who might have frozen the spatial beasts earlier, but she found only darkness and pale faces just as terrified as herself.

  In another corner of the lower deck, the drunken old man laughed hoarsely—a laugh that sounded extremely bitter amidst the grief. "Greed... greed indeed has a sharp tail! They wanted us to be the shield, but it seems the heavens weren't in the mood for jokes today. Hahahaha! Feel that, you silk-robed rats!"

  However, the commotion on the lower deck was but a small ripple compared to the storm of panic hitting the upper pavilion deck. There, in the main control room lined with silk carpets and the scent of sandalwood, the atmosphere was like a cold hell.

  A middle-aged man in grand attire embroidered with silver thread—Great Lord Yun, leader of the remnants of the Yun Noble Clan—stood with a face as white as paper. His hands, adorned with expensive jade rings, gripped the edge of the star map table until his knuckles turned white.

  "How can this be?! How is it possible?!" Great Lord Yun roared, his voice shrill with hysteria. "That was our main escort ship! Half of the clan's treasury and our Great Elder were on it! Who attacked them?!"

  "W-we don't know, Great Lord!" a ship captain with tattered armor kowtowed at his feet. "There was no warning of great energy! No high-level spells! There was only a tiny speck of grey light, and then... they were seemingly wrung out by a giant hand!"