High Martial: I Grind Professions

Chapter 443: Chapter 281: Star Lord Level Enemy

But at this moment, the faint gray light that occasionally flickered from the Jade Pendant had completely died out, leaving it as inert and lifeless as a common stone.

The faint yet incredibly familiar soul connection from within the Jade Pendant had been severed.

The golden soul-fire in Ashes’s eye sockets suddenly pulsed and contracted violently.

An indescribable grief and overwhelming killing intent swept through the entire cavern like a tangible, frigid tide.

A thick layer of frost instantly coated the incredibly sturdy cavern walls.

His clan was exceedingly rare, and they valued kinship far more than any other Demon Race.

He and his older brother, Hai Yan, had depended on each other for over a thousand years, and their bond was incredibly deep.

Only after breaking through to the Peak of Saint Realm did he reluctantly leave the Demon Realm, coming to the resource-rich Earth Spirit Star in pursuit of the higher Star Lord realm.

After countless hardships, he had finally broken through. Now, he was even a Tier Three Star Lord.

Not long ago, he had been eagerly planning to return to the Demon Realm as soon as his realm was fully stabilized.

He would bring his brother and their surviving clansmen to Earth Spirit Star to live in prosperity and share the path to eternal life.

Yet just a moment ago, the Jade Pendant that maintained the last shred of the soul-link between him and his brother had gone completely dark.

This meant his brother, Hai Yan, had fallen—his body and soul utterly obliterated.

”Brother...” Ashes’s low, hoarse voice echoed through the deathly silent cavern, filled with bone-deep anguish and endless cold.

His massive finger bones clenched tightly around the now-dull Jade Pendant, making a grating sound that set one’s teeth on edge.

”No matter who it was... no matter what it was!”

Ashes slowly raised his head, the golden soul-fire in his eyes burning to its absolute limit, revealing a venomous madness that could incinerate an entire Star River.

”Whoever killed my brother, I, Ashes, swear an oath! I will scour the Star Sea and traverse countless realms to find you!

”I will rip your very soul from your body and imprison it in my ’Soul-Devouring Bone Fire,’

”where you will burn for ten thousand ages, howling and repenting in eternal agony!

”I will make it so you can neither live nor die!!”

His oath, like the most vicious of curses, was branded into the very void.

Ashes was a Star Lord. His oath contained the power of Law, enough to make the very cosmos resonate.

After venting his monumental hatred, Ashes forced himself to calm down.

He stared again at the completely inert Jade Pendant in his palm, the golden flames in his eyes flickering.

This Jade Pendant was no ordinary object. It was one of a rare pair of Source-Tracing Pendants.

Besides allowing their bearers to sense each other’s spiritual state, their most important function was to roughly detect one another’s location.

Ashes surged his vast spiritual sense into the primary pendant in his hand without reservation.

The Jade Pendant trembled slightly, its surface revealing intricate runes of spatial coordinates that were so faint as to be nearly imperceptible.

The runes pointed toward an extremely distant Star Domain, one with completely unfamiliar coordinates and an energy signature that felt barren to his senses.

’Not the Demon Realm...’ Ashes’s thoughts were as sharp and cold as a blade.

’My brother fell over there... in some unfamiliar corner. No matter who you are, even if you flee to the ends of the universe, I will take your life!’

He slowly rose to his feet, his dark-gold bones clanging as the immense pressure of a Tier Three Star Lord erupted, like an awakened Ancient Fierce Beast.

It made the entire cavern, and even the mountains outside, tremble.

The flames of vengeance had ignited Ashes’s soul.

He would give everything to embark on a hunt across the endless Star Sea.

And his first target was the last known location of the secondary pendant.

...

「Trial Star.」

Just as Ashes was using the paired pendants to pinpoint the location, Li Wen took out the pitch-black Jade Pendant he had retrieved from the Bone-Eroding Demon Emperor’s Space Ring.

As he rubbed it with his fingertips, he felt a smooth, gentle texture. But beneath it, a sliver of indescribable cold and dissonance coiled silently around his Primordial Spirit like a venomous snake.

’Something’s wrong...’ Li Wen’s brow furrowed slightly.

The Jade Pendant was made of a strange material, neither gold nor jade. It was heavy in his hand, and a dark, almost imperceptible light seemed to flow across its surface.

The power of his mighty Primordial Spirit immediately surged forth like a tide, attempting to probe its internal structure.

BUZZ!

The Jade Pendant shook violently!

An invisible force of resistance forcefully repelled Li Wen’s Primordial Spirit.

Its interior seemed to contain a deep void, or perhaps it was connected to some vast, unimaginably distant source of will.

And from that source came a pure, cold malice, tinged with the intent to destroy.

”Seal!” Li Wen reacted in a flash. His Primordial Spirit’s power instantly formed into layered chains of runes, attempting to completely imprison the Jade Pendant.

However, the moment those exquisite and profound runes touched the Jade Pendant’s surface, they dimmed and dissipated like melting snow, unable to leave any lasting mark.

”Destroy!” A sharp glint flashed in Li Wen’s eyes. He gathered enough force at his fingertip to easily pierce a star and, without hesitation, tapped the Jade Pendant.

TCHSS—!

The strike, powerful enough to annihilate the treasured artifact of an ordinary Venerable, only stirred a faint ripple on the pendant’s surface, leaving it completely unharmed.

In fact, it began to tremble even more violently, and for a fleeting moment, the obscure fluctuation it emitted became sharp and clear.

It was like an invisible signal, impatiently piercing through endless space-time as it hurtled toward a specific coordinate.

The Bone-Eroding Demon Emperor’s venomous last words suddenly exploded in Li Wen’s mind:

”...My blood brother is a Star Lord Level being... He will surely avenge me...”

’Star Lord Level! A positioning beacon!’

Li Wen’s heart sank. An unprecedented sense of crisis enveloped him.

’The worst-case scenario... It’s happened!’

This Jade Pendant was the key that allowed the Bone-Eroding Demon Emperor’s Star Lord-level brother to lock onto his killer’s location!

’I have to deal with this immediately!’ Without the slightest hesitation, Li Wen clenched his fist around the Jade Pendant, tore open the space before him, and stepped inside.

「Torchbearer University, the back mountain of Enlightenment Peak.」

Inside a secret chamber shrouded by layers of spatial restrictions.

A spatial rift opened without a sound, and Li Wen’s figure stepped out.

Having already received his urgent spiritual message, the three Human Race Venerables—Ye Qin, Xingxuan, and Venerable Gu He—were waiting with grim expressions.

”Junior Brother Li, what is so urgent?” Venerable Ye Qin asked, his voice low. He could sense the unusually grave aura emanating from Li Wen.

Li Wen wasted no words. With a wave of his hand, a mountain of Primordial Stones appeared in a corner of the secret chamber, causing the pupils of the three Venerables to contract.

But what he took out next was the incessantly trembling, pitch-black Jade Pendant.

”The collection from the four Demon Emperors, especially the Primordial Stones, is astonishing. There are one hundred thousand Primordial Stones here, which should be more than enough for Blue Star’s development for many years to come.”

Li Wen spoke rapidly, pointing to the Jade Pendant. ”But the biggest problem is this!”

He quickly and concisely told them about the pendant’s strange properties, his failed attempts to probe it with his Primordial Spirit, seal it, and destroy it, and the Bone-Eroding Demon Emperor’s dying words about his Star Lord-level brother.

”Star Lord Level?! A positioning beacon?!” Venerable Xingxuan cried out, and Venerable Ye Qin’s face instantly turned deathly pale.

Even the ever-composed Venerable Gu He drew in a sharp, cold breath, immense horror rising from the depths of his eyes.

Star Lord Level! That was an existence far beyond the Saint Realm!

A realm that existed only in the legends of the Human Race!

The brilliant patriarch from Blue Star’s history who left behind their legacy was, according to legend, only a Tier Five Star Lord.

And even the weakest Tier One Star Lord possessed enough power to easily annihilate the entire Blue Star civilization.

With Blue Star’s current strength, facing such an enemy was like an ant trying to shake the heavens.

The air in the secret chamber seemed to freeze, becoming so heavy it was suffocating.

The shadow of a vengeful Star Lord, like a bottomless abyss, instantly swallowed the joy they had just felt from annihilating the Demon Realm.

”Senior Brothers, Senior Sister, there is no need to be overly alarmed.” Li Wen’s voice, carrying a strange, reassuring quality, broke the heavy silence.

”I’ve carefully examined the pendant’s tracking mechanism. Although it can send a signal, its accuracy is extremely vague across such vast cosmic distances.

”It’s more like it points in a general direction. As long as we don’t keep it within Blue Star’s space for a prolonged time, it can’t provide real-time, precise coordinates.”

He paused, looking at the three of them. Their expressions had relaxed slightly but were still fraught with worry.

”Our top priority is to move this Jade Pendant immediately and completely sever any possibility of it revealing Blue Star’s location.

”If we handle this correctly, finding us in the vastness of the universe will be no easy task. It would likely take an unimaginably long time.”

”How do you plan to deal with it, Junior Brother?” Venerable Ye Qin immediately asked, getting to the heart of the matter.

”I will take it back to the Demon Realm at once, find a place to bury it deep, and seal it away,” Li Wen said, a sharp light flashing in his eyes.

”At the same time, I will completely destroy the world projection and all the Stargates. Since the Demon Realm has become a dead domain and the source of this hidden danger, ℴℴ𝘮

”it must be completely cut off from Blue Star, severing all possible paths that could be used for tracking.”

”Sever the connection?!” Venerable Gu He was shaken, understanding the finality in Li Wen’s decision.

”Exactly!” Li Wen nodded. ”There’s no time to lose; I’ll move immediately. I leave the reconstruction of Blue Star and the reassurance of its people to the three of you. Use the Primordial Stones as you see fit.”

He said no more, tore through space once again, and vanished.

The next moment, Li Wen appeared in the chaotic, distorted region where the world projection met Blue Star’s realspace.

The enormous projection of the Demon Realm still hung in the sky, rendered exceptionally stable by the vast resources the Demon Race had poured into it.

Without a trace of sentimentality, Li Wen had a thought, and a Primordial Spirit clone, as solid as a physical body, stepped out from him. It took the pitch-black Jade Pendant from his true self.

Without hesitation, the clone transformed into a streak of light and plunged into the massive world projection.

「Demon Realm, on the silent, dead earth.」

Li Wen’s Primordial Spirit clone appeared. The Jade Pendant in its hand trembled even more violently, its tracking signal seemingly growing clearer as it neared the Demon Realm’s core.

The clone’s gaze was icy. Its Primordial Spirit swept across the barren land, randomly selecting a crevice in the crust that was tens of thousands of feet deep.

With a wave of its hand, the Jade Pendant was enveloped and compressed by a powerful spatial force, shrinking into a nearly imperceptible speck of black light.

The speck was driven into the deepest part of the crevice, after which the clone drew upon the power of the ley lines to cover and seal it under countless layers.

’There. Wait in this endless darkness for your unreachable master.’