Chapter 1039: Plundering the Dragon Vein

The twelve pairs of heavy, pitch-black iron boots did not kick up a single cloud of silt as they marched out from the deep shadows of the canyon walls. Forged from Nine-Folded Profound Iron and powered by Peak Grade 6 Demon Beast cores, the twelve Profound Iron Dao Soldiers moved with synchronized, mechanical precision. Each construct stood nine feet tall, holding a tower shield in its left hand and a rune-etched halberd in its right, forming an unbroken iron cordon around the six-thousand-foot basin of the Dragon-Spine Trench.

Atop the flat, horned skull of the slain Grade 7 Abyssal Chimera-Wyrm, Ye Fan froze. His bruised left hand remained extended inches away from the six-foot gap between the hundred-foot stone doors of the Primal Dragon Grotto.

His heart hammered against his bruised ribs. Even with less than ten percent of the Liquid True Essence and Core Fire remaining within his energy reservoir, his sharp combat instincts screamed that the sudden drop in water temperature was no natural deep-sea current.

"Who goes there?!" Daoist Cang Song wheezed from the black silt below, struggling to prop himself up on his chipped Azure Wave Spirit Sword. Across the basin, the one-armed Daoist Mo Jue and the surviving elders of the Holy Nether Sea Organization tried to raise their bone-shields, their faces pale with dread as they stared at the twelve towering iron constructs sealing their only path of retreat.

No voice answered Daoist Cang Song’s challenge. Instead, the dark water three hundred feet above the sunken threshold parted with a low, humming vibration.

Two female figures descended slowly from the pitch-black abyss above, flanked by a silent retinue of veiled guards.

On the left floated Su Binglan. Draped in floor-length, translucent glacial-silk that fluttered gently in the deep currents, her tall, curvaceous frame radiated a blinding, lunar-white frost light. Behind her alabaster shoulders, the phantom image of an ethereal, three-inch Infant Soul sat cross-legged within a blooming lotus of pure blue ice—the unmistakable manifestation of an Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grandmaster.

On the right descended Mu Lianhua. Dressed in flowing crimson-and-gold alchemical robes that hugged her ripe, mature figure, she held a wisp of the Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame upon her open palm. Despite the six-thousand-foot ocean depth, the surrounding seawater within ten rods of her body boiled into shimmering silver vapor, pushed back by the vast, suffocating spiritual pressure of a second Early-Stage Nascent Soul sovereign.

"Nascent... Nascent Soul Seniors!" Daoist Mo Jue’s remaining hand went limp, his bone-shield clattering onto the basalt floor as his teeth chattered uncontrollably. "Two of them?!"

Before a single Core Formation elder on the seabed could bow or beg for mercy, Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua extended their jade-white hands downward in unison.

Neither woman chanted a long incantation. They simply released the coiled weight of their Nascent Soul spiritual domains, overlapping extreme glacial cold with searing phoenix heat across the three-hundred-yard basin.

HUMMMMM—CRACK!

A sound like a mountain range settling into the earth echoed through the water. The ambient Spiritual Energy across the seabed locked into a solid, unyielding crystal cage.

Down in the silt, Daoist Cang Song, Deacon Lin Feng, Daoist Mo Jue, and the other surviving Core Formation cultivators did not even have time to gasp. The overlapping Nascent Soul pressure slammed down upon their shoulders with the crushing weight of ten thousand catties of star-iron. Every single cultivator in the basin was driven flat onto their stomachs in the black mud. Their protective water-parting barriers froze into solid blue ice shells that pinned their limbs to the stone, and the revolving Golden Cores inside their lower energy reservoirs ground to a dead halt.

Atop the skull of the dead Abyssal Chimera-Wyrm, Ye Fan gritted his teeth until his gums bled, locking both hands around the hilt of his heavy black broadsword as he tried to keep one knee raised off the beast’s scales. Inside his chest, the Temporal Jade Bead grew icy cold, shielding his mind from passing out, while the hidden golden flame inside his Dantian flickered wildly against the invading frost.

Yet the chasm between the Mid-Stage Core Formation Realm and two genuine Nascent Soul Grandmasters was as wide as the heavens and earth.

CRACK.

The frozen scales beneath Ye Fan’s boots fractured. With a muffled groan, Ye Fan’s supporting knee buckled under the immense spatial pressure, slamming his chest and chin down against the horned skull of the dead wyrm. Frost crept over his salt-stained leather armor, freezing his fingers to the hilt of his broadsword so he could not twitch a single knuckle, leaving only his neck free enough to look up toward the descending shadow above the gate.

From the parted waters between the two Nascent Soul Grandmasters, a tall, broad-shouldered man in dark, gold-trimmed robes drifted down to the threshold of the Primal Dragon Grotto.

Wang Jian did not wear a mask or a bamboo hat. His handsome, chiseled face was calm, his dark eyes holding a cold, ancient indifference as his boots touched the stone steps before the hundred-foot gateway. Walking half a pace behind his left shoulder were Shangguan Wan’er and Lin Wanyue, both wearing dark, identity-concealing cloaks woven from spirit-baffling silk.

Walking directly at Wang Jian’s right side, however, was a woman who wore no veil at all.

She was dressed in a form-fitting, high-slitted gown of midnight-black silk that left her snow-white shoulders bare and clung tightly to the lush, heavy swell of her breasts and the wide, rounded curve of her hips. Her long raven hair was pinned up with a familiar jade sword-hairpin, and her delicate, breathtakingly beautiful face glowed with a rosy, humid flush.

Pinned atop the wyrm’s skull ten paces away, Ye Fan’s eyes widened until the blood vessels in his sclera burst red.

He recognized that face. He had seen it in his dreams every single night for the past two years as he bled and fought through the outer waste oceans. He had sworn a blood oath upon his Golden Core to return to Abyssal Pearl City, rebuild the fallen Silver Gale Sect, and rescue her from whatever dark fate had befallen Azure Peak.

"Tea... Teacher...?" Ye Fan forced the hoarse, strangled word out through his frozen throat, his voice carried across the short gap by a trembling thread of spiritual sense. "Teacher Shen Mengqi...?"

At the sound of his voice, Shen Mengqi paused on the stone steps.

She turned her head slowly, looking down at the battered, blood-stained young man pinned to the beast’s skull. Recognizing the familiar spiritual fluctuations of the heavy black broadsword and the fierce eyes beneath the crushed bamboo hat, a flicker of surprise crossed her delicate brows—followed instantly by a cold, haughty disdain that pierced Ye Fan’s chest deeper than any demonic bone-spear.

Shen Mengqi did not rush to help him. Instead, she stepped closer to Wang Jian, wrapping both of her slender, pale arms around Wang Jian’s muscular right arm and pressing the heavy, soft weight of her large breasts directly against his bicep for warmth.

"Master," Shen Mengqi spoke, her voice—once as crisp and aloof as mountain snow when she lectured the disciples of the Silver Gale Sect—now dripping with a sweet, sultry, and unmistakably submissive devotion. "This filthy rogue on the beast’s skull is Ye Fan, that former outer-court disciple of mine who fled Azure Peak like a frightened rat. I did not expect him to still be alive, much less hiding beneath a fake face to do the manual labor of breaking this gate for you."

"Teacher...!" Ye Fan stared at the way Shen Mengqi pressed her lush, half-exposed breasts against the dark-robed man’s arm, his mind reeling as if struck by a celestial lightning bolt. "What... what has this bastard done to you?! Did he poison your soul?! Wake up, Teacher! It’s me, Ye Fan! I forged a Golden Core to save you!"

Shen Mengqi let out a soft, mocking laugh, tilting her head to rest her flushed cheek against Wang Jian’s broad shoulder while looking down at Ye Fan as though he were a worm wriggling in the mud.

"Save me?" Shen Mengqi purred, her right hand sliding down to caress the front of Wang Jian’s muscular chest with intimate familiarity. "You delusional little boy. When I was the sword fairy of the Silver Gale Sect, I wasted decades cultivating a flawed wind manual in a barren pond. It was Master Wang Jian who opened my eyes, shattered my foolish pride, and bestowed upon me the supreme Nine-Turn Profound Yin Scripture. Every inch of my body, my Golden Core, and my soul belongs to my Master. Who asked a pathetic street rat like you to save me?"

To prove her words, Shen Mengqi raised herself onto her tiptoes right in front of Ye Fan’s horrified gaze, pressing her soft, crimson lips against the side of Wang Jian’s jaw in a lingering, worshipful kiss while arching her back so her wide, curvy hips brushed against Wang Jian’s thigh.

"No... impossible..." Ye Fan’s vision swam with crimson blood-tears, a suffocating agony tearing at his heart that hurt ten times worse than the horn wound in his ribs. The pure, untouchable goddess he had worshiped in his heart—the very anchor of his martial path—was rubbing her voluptuous body against the man who had orchestrated this entire abyssal trap, looking at him with the glazed, lovesick eyes of a thoroughly conquered woman.

Wang Jian did not even spare Ye Fan a glance. He reached his right hand around Shen Mengqi’s narrow waist, his large, calloused palm resting possessively upon the round, firm swell of her silk-clad backside, giving the lush flesh a slow, deliberate squeeze that made Shen Mengqi let out a breathy, shameless sigh in front of her former disciple.

"Hold the outer perimeter for two quarters of an hour, Binglan," Wang Jian said calmly, addressing the silver-haired Nascent Soul Grandmaster hovering above the basin. "Do not let a single fish enter or leave this canyon. Lianhua, Wan’er, Mengqi—with me."

Leaving Ye Fan pinned to the freezing skull with his world shattering around him, Wang Jian walked unhindered through the six-foot gap in the hundred-foot stone doors, stepping into the golden-lit interior of the Primal Dragon Grotto.

The moment Wang Jian’s boots crossed the carved stone threshold, a prehistoric water-repelling barrier hummed overhead, holding back the six-thousand-foot ocean depth and keeping the cavernous interior completely dry.

The air inside the Primal Dragon Grotto was warm, heavy, and saturated with a misty white fog of pure Spiritual Energy that smelled of aged ambergris and ten-thousand-year stalactites. The grotto was shaped like a vast, vaulted dome carved out of crimson seabed jasper, supported by eight pillars formed from the calcified rib bones of ancient flood-dragons.

Along the outer stone walls stood three rows of corroded bronze weapon racks and carved jade alchemy shelves. Upon those outer shelves sat a dozen sealed porcelain bottles containing Rank 3 Core Formation pills, five chests overflowing with roughly twenty thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones, and seven glowing herb boxes holding Three-Thousand-Year Blood Coral and Purple Sea-Ginseng.

Shangguan Wan’er paused beside the outer shelves, her pale blue eyes scanning the open chests. "Master, these outer racks hold roughly three hundred thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones worth of Rank 3 elixirs and Spirit Herbs, along with four intact Magic Treasures. Shall I sweep them into my Storage Ring?"

"Leave every single coin and herb on the outer shelves untouched," Wang Jian instructed without breaking his stride, his boots echoing across the dry jasper flagstones toward the raised altar at the far end of the dome. "Only sweep three of the herb boxes onto the floor and smash two empty pill bottles by the doorway so it looks as though someone looted the entrance in a frantic hurry while injured."

Shangguan Wan’er’s eyes lit up with immediate comprehension. "You intend to leave these secondary spoils for the survivors outside. When the investigators from the Myriad Ocean Palace and the Holy Nether Sea Organization arrive and perform a spiritual audit of the basin, the lingering aura of the broken gate and the missing outer herbs will point straight to the mercenary Han Feng."

"A hunting dog only runs well when you toss him a meaty bone to carry in his jaws," Wang Jian said calmly. "If the grotto were swept clean down to the dust, the old monsters of the Myriad Ocean Palace would immediately suspect a hidden Nascent Soul faction with massive spatial storage capacity. Leaving three hundred thousand Spirit Stones worth of Rank 3 resources scattered around the entrance matches the exact appetite of a desperate, wounded Mid-Stage Core Formation rogue."

Mu Lianhua walked beside him, her crimson robes fluttering as she waved her hand, sending two controlled wisps of her Phoenix Flame to crack two empty jade vials near the threshold without leaving any trace of her high-tier fire aura.

Wang Jian ascended the nine steps of the inner sanctum’s central dais.

Carved from the massive, petrified skull of a Grade 9 Deep-Sea Flood Dragon, the central altar sat directly over an open, six-foot-wide fissure in the jasper floor. From that deep-earth fissure surged a blinding, viscous river of liquid silver-white Spiritual Energy—the exposed heart of the Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein.

Hovering three feet above the flood-dragon skull, cradled in a vortex of condensed earth and water essence, was a fist-sized sphere that shone like a miniature full moon: the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl.

Directly beneath the floating pearl, pooled inside a concave basin carved into the forehead of the flood-dragon skull, sat roughly thirty catties of thick, golden-red liquid that radiated a vigorous, booming heartbeat and a rich, medicinal fragrance: Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow. Flanking the basin rested a pair of dark, curved bracers forged from overlapping dragon scales—a complete set of defensive Ancient Treasures known as the Twin Abyssal Scale Guards.

"A natural Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl formed over ten millennia, alongside uncorrupted Golden Dragon Marrow," Mu Lianhua breathed, her mature face flushing with alchemical excitement as she examined the golden-red liquid. "Master, this Golden Dragon Marrow possesses the physical vitality of a Grade 8 Demon Beast without a shred of beastly madness! If I combine half of this marrow with the nine-thousand-year Spirit-Condensing Lotus from our island gardens, I can refine three Peak-Grade Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pills complete with Pill Veins!"

"And the remaining half of the marrow, combined with the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl, will allow my Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture to complete the final compression of my Golden Core," Wang Jian said, a dark, satisfied gleam appearing in his eyes.

He did not carelessly grab the floating pearl with his bare hand. Reaching into his Storage Ring, Wang Jian withdrew a pair of rune-inscribed jade tongs, a flat carving knife made of five-hundred-year cold-jade, and three heavy sealing boxes carved from Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Frost-Jade.

Step by step, Wang Jian circulated his Verdant Eternal Spring Essence into his palms, coating the cold-jade knife in a soothing, verdant green glow that mimicked the natural vitality of the earth vein. He slid the flat jade blade beneath the floating Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl, severing the eight invisible threads of spiritual suction linking the pearl to the deep-earth fissure below without causing the vein to backlash.

As the fist-sized pearl settled onto the jade blade, the ambient glow inside the grotto dimmed by half. Wang Jian lowered the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl into the first Profound Frost-Jade box, slapping three gold-ink Five-Element Sealing Talismans across the lid to lock its aura inside.

Next, Mu Lianhua stepped forward with two wide-mouthed jade gourds. Using a gentle stream of her mental awareness, she lifted the thirty catties of viscous, golden-red Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow from the skull basin in a single continuous ribbon, funneling every last drop into the gourds before stoppering them with red wax. Wang Jian swept the Twin Abyssal Scale Guards into his Storage Ring with a flick of his sleeve.

With the primary harvest secured in less than a quarter of an hour, Wang Jian turned around atop the raised flood-dragon altar.

Standing at the base of the steps was Shen Mengqi. Watching Wang Jian effortlessly claim treasures that could cause Nascent Soul sects to wage war for a century, and still buzzing from the cruel thrill of humiliating her former disciple outside, Shen Mengqi’s breathing had grown shallow and rapid. Her Nine-Turn Profound Yin Scripture was circulating automatically, causing a visible, misty frost-aroma to rise from the deep cleavage of her black silk dress as her thighs pressed tightly together.

Wang Jian looked down at her flushed, breathtaking face, then glanced toward the six-foot gap in the stone doors fifty yards away—through which the pinned, immobilized back of Ye Fan’s head was clearly visible atop the dead wyrm’s skull.

"Come up here, Mengqi," Wang Jian ordered softly.

Shen Mengqi shivered, her eyes glazing with instant, hungry obedience. She walked quickly up the nine steps of the dragon-bone altar, sinking to her knees right before him.

"You performed well outside," Wang Jian said, his large right hand reaching down to cup her delicate chin, tilting her face up before his fingers slid down her slender throat and hooked into the tight collar of her midnight-black silk gown. With a sharp tug, he pulled the silk bodice down below her ribs, freeing her massive, snow-white breasts with their stiff, rosy-pink peaks into the warm grotto air. "Did it feel good letting your former disciple see who owns you now?"

"Yes, Master...!" Shen Mengqi whimpered, leaning her chest forward to press her heavy, cool breasts directly against Wang Jian’s palms as he kneaded the firm, abundant flesh with rough, possessive fingers. "Seeing him stare at me while you squeezed my backside made my lower reservoir soak right through my undergarments... Please, Master, we still have half a quarter-hour before the siphon stakes are laid. Bend me over this dragon altar right here where he lies just outside the door!"

Wang Jian let out a low, dark chuckle. Without a word of hesitation, he spun the former righteous sword fairy around, pushing her upper body down across the warm, smooth bone of the flood-dragon skull altar so she was facing directly toward the parted stone gateway fifty yards away.

He flipped the high-slitted panels of her black silk dress up over her lower back, exposing her wide, curvy, porcelain-white hips and the soaked black lace thong clinging between her plump cheeks. Ripping the thin lace aside, Wang Jian unfastened his lower robe, gripped Shen Mengqi’s lush, juicy hips with both hands, and drove his thick, scorching manhood straight to the hilt inside her freezing, soaking Yin core in a single, merciless thrust.

"Hnnngh—!" Shen Mengqi bit down hard on the back of her own hand to keep her scream from echoing past the water-repelling barrier at the doorway, though her eyes rolled back in sheer, mind-melting pleasure as Wang Jian’s Heavenly Yang Divine Physique filled her to the brim.

Standing quietly at the base of the altar steps, Mu Lianhua and Shangguan Wan’er watched with flushed cheeks and heavy breathing, rubbing their own thighs together as Wang Jian ruthlessly pounded Shen Mengqi over the ancient dragon skull.

Every brutal, heavy snap of Wang Jian’s hips produced a loud, wet smack against Shen Mengqi’s round, wobbling backside, driving her heavy breasts to slide back and forth across the polished bone surface. Wang Jian did not show a shred of gentleness; he grabbed a fistful of her raven hair—pulling the jade sword-hairpin loose so her hair tumbled over her shoulders—and arched her spine backward while his left hand mauled her swinging left breast, pinching the stiff nipple hard as he hammered into her deepest core.

"Look toward the gate while I take you, Mengqi," Wang Jian growled against her ear, his hips pistoning at a relentless, punishing pace as her pure Heavenly Yin essence rushed into his meridians to nourish his Demonic Qi. "Your beloved disciple spent two years nearly dying in the outer seas just to see your face, and right now you’re taking my seed fifty paces behind his back."

"Aaaah... Master...!" Shen Mengqi sobbed breathlessly, her gaze fixed through the six-foot gap in the stone doors upon the motionless silhouette of Ye Fan pinned in the dark water outside. The perverse contrast between her former sacred status as his revered Teacher and her current reality—being bent over an altar and bred like a shameless slut by his worst enemy just yards away—pushed her arousal over the edge. Her inner walls spasmed violently around Wang Jian’s thick shaft, squirting hot Yin essence down her trembling thighs as he drove three final, bone-rattling thrusts deep into her womb and flooded her energy reservoir with a scorching torrent of Yang essence.

When Wang Jian pulled out of her quivering core a few minutes later, Shen Mengqi slumped momentarily against the dragon skull, her legs shaking uncontrollably before she hastily wiped her thighs and pulled her black silk bodice back up over her heavy breasts, her face glowing with a radiant, thoroughly satisfied flush.

Outside on the freezing basalt seabed, the fifteen minutes had felt like fifteen years of slow torture for Ye Fan.

Pinned chest-down upon the horned skull of the dead Abyssal Chimera-Wyrm, unable to see what was happening inside the golden-lit grotto behind him, Ye Fan had spent every second staring at the black silt while his Teacher’s cold, mocking words echoed endlessly in his ears.

Then, the sound of calm footsteps approached from the parted stone doors behind him.

Wang Jian stepped back out through the threshold into the six-thousand-foot water, flanked by Mu Lianhua, Shangguan Wan’er, and Shen Mengqi.

Wang Jian walked to the side of the dead wyrm’s skull and stopped two paces in front of Ye Fan’s lowered head. Standing right beside Wang Jian’s leg, Shen Mengqi smoothed the front of her black silk dress; her raven hair was now slightly loose around her flushed cheeks, her lips were visibly swollen from rough kissing, and the unmistakable, rich scent of newly harmonized Yin-Yang dual cultivation lingered around her waist.

Seeing the disheveled hair, the rosy flush on his Teacher’s neck, and the submissive way her fingers stayed hooked in Wang Jian’s belt sash, Ye Fan instantly understood what had just occurred inside that grotto over the past quarter-hour.

"Khhhh—!"

A sound like grinding iron tore from Ye Fan’s throat. Pure, incandescent rage erupted in his chest, causing the veins on his forehead and neck to bulge like thick earthworms as his Golden Core strained against Su Binglan’s Nascent Soul frost lock, trying to ignite his golden flame even if it ruptured his own meridians.

Before Ye Fan could detonate a single drop of his True Essence, Wang Jian casually drew Shen Mengqi’s life-bound weapon—the Gale-Severing Frostblade—from the scabbard at her waist.

Wang Jian leaned down and pressed the flat, cold side of Shen Mengqi’s sword against Ye Fan’s right cheek, tapping the metal lightly against his jaw twice while driving a thread of sealing Qi into Ye Fan’s shoulder acupoint to snuff out the boy’s suicidal meridian surge.

For five silent seconds, Wang Jian looked down into Ye Fan’s bloodshot, furious eyes.

Wang Jian did not gloat. He did not introduce himself. With a flick of the sword tip, Wang Jian sliced the leather cord holding a secondary, unencrypted Storage Pouch at Ye Fan’s waist—the pouch containing the two blood-tokens of the slain Blood Shark Hall elders Tuoba and Huan—and tossed one of those crimson tokens into the silt beside Daoist Mo Jue, while leaving the threeboxes of scattered Rank 3 herbs from the grotto right beside Ye Fan’s knee.

"Why spare the insect, Master?" Mu Lianhua asked softly behind him, her voice carrying across the immediate ten-foot radius so that only Ye Fan and Wang Jian’s inner circle heard it.

"Because the Myriad Ocean Palace and the Holy Nether Sea Organization have six Nascent Soul ancestors converging on this trench within forty-eight hours," Wang Jian replied in a calm, conversational tone, sliding the Gale-Severing Frostblade back into the scabbard at Shen Mengqi’s curvy hip before patting her round backside. "When they find the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl gone and the Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein drained, they will demand a culprit. An unknown mercenary who butchered two Blood Shark Hall elders, took command of the Azure Wave Sword Sect vanguard, broke open the grotto doors, and fled with three hundred thousand Spirit Stones worth of Rank 3 herbs is the finest lightning rod we could ask for."

Wang Jian turned his back on the immobilized protagonist without another glance.

"Let him run across the outer seas with both superpowers hunting his head," Wang Jian said, signaling the twelve Profound Iron Dao Soldiers to march back toward the canyon shadows. "Withdraw to the outer ridge and summon Lingshan’s formation team."

Within thirty breaths, Wang Jian, Shen Mengqi, Shangguan Wan’er, Lin Wanyue, Mu Lianhua, and Su Binglan ascended into the dark water, returning to the hidden shelf eight hundred yards above. Only after the other women had donned their formal sect cloaks and retired to the rear chambers did Wang Jian summon his virtuous wife, Yue Lingshan, from the forward array spire to lead the deep-earth engineering crew down to the trench floor.

As Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua withdrew seventy percent of their Nascent Soul frost domain—leaving just enough residual numbness to keep Ye Fan and the nineteen Core Formation elders paralyzed for another six hours while the siphon was anchored—Yue Lingshan descended to the southern fault line half a league behind the grotto mountain.

Working with meticulous precision over the next two weeks inside a concealed deep-earth rock pocket behind the grotto, Yue Lingshan and Wang Jian drove six ten-foot-long Abyssal Star-Iron Siphon Stakes directly into the lower root of the Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein.

By weaving forty-eight deep-sea formation flags along a natural tectonic fault line that ran westward beneath the ocean floor, Yue Lingshan established an invisible, deep-earth spiritual conduit. The moment Wang Jian activated the central node with a High-Grade Spirit Stone, seventy percent of the Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein’s rich, liquid essence stopped flowing into the Dragon-Spine Trench—diverting instead through the deep-earth bedrock straight toward the four outer islands of Abyssal Pearl City, three thousand miles away.

Once the deep-earth siphon was sealed beneath ten thousand tons of collapsed basalt, the three Abyssal Stealth Galleons turned their prows westward, beginning a slow, three-week submerged voyage along the abyssal plains back toward Sea-Moon Island.

Because guiding the deep-earth spiritual flow across three thousand miles required constant monitoring from the forward astrolabe spire, Yue Lingshan remained stationed at the bow alongside twenty formation disciples from the Ice Heart Palace, resting in shifts inside the forward meditation cabins and feeling deeply proud of how her array mastery had secured another vital vein for her husband’s alliance.

Meanwhile, behind the triple-layered soundproofing barriers at the stern of the flagship, the three-week return voyage became an uninterrupted, hedonistic banquet of carnal indulgence.

The sprawling rear pleasure hall had been heated to a balmy spring warmth by embedded fire-jade tiles, its floor covered entirely in thick white snow-bear furs and silk pillows.

Having acquired the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl and humiliated the Son of Luck, Wang Jian’s Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture and his Heavenly Yang Divine Physique burned with an insatiable, primal heat that no single woman could possibly quell. For twenty-one consecutive days and nights as the dreadnought glided through the dark depths, Wang Jian kept ten of his most stunning, mature beauties locked inside the pleasure hall at once, rotating through their voluptuous bodies with tireless, aggressive dominance.

On the tenth day of the voyage, the air inside the pleasure hall was so thick with sweet incense and the musky aroma of female juices that a pink mist seemed to hang below the pearl lanterns.

Across the wide central fur mattress, Wang Jian had arranged a shameless, writhing feast of flesh.

He had dressed every woman according to her unique stature and temperament—only with garments stripped down to sheer, erotic essentials that highlighted their massive breasts and wide, curvy hips.

Su Binglan, the haughty former Palace Mistress of the Ice Heart Palace, and her silver-haired High Elder, Bing Yun, knelt side by side at the head of the mattress. Both icy beauties wore matching sets of transparent white frost-lace stockings and open-cup silver underwire bras that pushed their heavy, snow-white breasts up like twin pairs of pale melons, topped with stiff, dark-pink nipples.

Right beside them knelt Mu Lianhua and Liu Ruyan, the two alchemists of the harem, clad only in thin gold waist-chains and sheer crimson silk aprons that covered the front of their stomachs while leaving their huge, swaying breasts and round, fleshy backsides completely bare.

At the center of the mattress, Wang Jian was currently engaged with his favorite mother-and-daughter pair—Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er—alongside Shen Mengqi, Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, and the quiet, lethal assassin Chen Ying.

Hua Yimei lay flat on her back upon a pile of red velvet cushions, her mature, curvaceous legs lifted high into the air and held wide apart by Shangguan Wan’er and Lin Wanyue, who knelt on either side of her hips in tight, crotchless satin corsets. Directly on top of Hua Yimei’s body, lying chest-to-chest with her own mother so that their four massive, sweat-slicked breasts squished together, was Hua Ling’er—who was folded onto her hands and knees with her plump, round backside stacked directly above her mother’s dripping core!

Wang Jian knelt behind the stacked mother-and-daughter duo, his heavily muscled thighs flexed as he gripped Hua Ling’er’s narrow waist with his left hand and Hua Yimei’s wide, juicy hip with his right hand.

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

For the past half hour, Wang Jian had been alternating his savage, bone-deep thrusts between the daughter’s tight core on top and the mother’s mature, velvety-hot passage directly beneath her.

"Aaaah! Master! Too deep—you’re hitting my womb!" Hua Ling’er wailed, her pretty face buried in the crook of her mother’s neck as Wang Jian buried his thick, pulsing shaft all the way to the hilt inside her, his heavy pelvis slamming brutally against her upturned buttocks ten times in rapid succession before he wrenched himself out with a wet pop and plunged straight down into Hua Yimei’s soaking core three inches lower!

"Hnnngh—! Yes, Master! Give it to me!" Hua Yimei arched her neck back, her mature, sultry voice breaking into a shameless moan as she wrapped her arms around her daughter’s trembling back, her gold-pierced nipples rubbing furiously against Hua Ling’er’s stiff peaks between their squished chests. "Ling’er’s tight little hole can barely take half your strength, Master! Look how well my mature walls wrap around you... pound me harder! Make my foolish daughter watch how a real woman milks your Yang essence!"

"Mother, you’re cheating!" Hua Ling’er sobbed in breathless, competitive lust, reaching one hand back to spread her own wet cheeks wider as she looked over her shoulder at Wang Jian with pleading, tear-rimmed eyes. "Master, don’t stay inside Mother’s greedy core! Put it back in me! Ling’er has been practicing the pelvic clamping art with Aunt Bing Yun all week—I can squeeze you tighter than Mother can!"

Wang Jian laughed darkly, the deep vibration rumbling in his chest as he slapped both women’s bare backsides hard enough to leave matching crimson handprints across their pale skin.

"Both of your holes are greedy little furnaces," Wang Jian growled, driving five brutal, rapid thrusts into Hua Yimei until the mature Sect Leader screamed and squirted hot juices across his thighs, before pulling out and slamming straight back up into Hua Ling’er’s spasming passage without missing a single beat. "Wan’er, Wanyue—stop just holding Yimei’s legs. Get your mouths down there and lick their clits while I switch between them."

"Yes, Master!" Shangguan Wan’er and City Lord Lin Wanyue answered eagerly.

Dropping their noble public poise without a second thought, the Commercial Queen and the City Lord buried their faces between the thighs of the mother-and-daughter duo. Lin Wanyue’s hot tongue lapped furiously at Hua Yimei’s swollen pearl while Wang Jian’s thick shaft slid in and out inches below her chin, and Shangguan Wan’er sucked on Hua Ling’er’s clitoris while her massive breasts rested heavily against Wang Jian’s muscular knees.

To Wang Jian’s left, Chen Ying—dressed in a sleek, cutout black assassin’s bodysuit that left her firm, perky breasts and toned, curvy hips exposed—pressed her cool body against his side. Always quieter than the sect leaders, the devoted shadow-assassin showed her affection through attentive physical service: she kissed the sweat from Wang Jian’s broad shoulder while guiding his left hand to fondle her stiff nipple, her dark eyes shining with quiet adoration whenever he gave her breast a rough, bruising squeeze.

"And what about my newly enlightened Yin cauldron?" Wang Jian asked, turning his dark gaze toward his right side while his hips continued their relentless, thunderous assault on Hua Ling’er and Hua Yimei.

There, Shen Mengqi was kneeling astride the face of Liu Ruyan, who was happily licking the former sword fairy’s dripping core to prepare her. Upon hearing Wang Jian’s voice, Shen Mengqi immediately climbed off Liu Ruyan and crawled eagerly to Wang Jian’s right flank, pressing her massive, porcelain-white breasts against his ribs.

"Master, Mengqi has been waiting for over an hour!" Shen Mengqi whimpered, her cheeks burning scarlet as she took Wang Jian’s right hand from Hua Yimei’s hip and pressed his palm directly against her own soaking wet labia. "Ever since you took me on the flood-dragon altar in front of that idiot Ye Fan, my Nine-Turn Profound Yin Scripture hasn’t stopped boiling! Every time I think about how I threw away my thirty years of righteous reputation to become your personal plaything, my core gets so wet it drips down my legs... Please, Master, throw Yimei and Ling’er aside and breed me!"

"Look at how shameless the Silver Gale Sect’s untouchable sword fairy has become," Mu Lianhua teased huskily from the head of the bed, crawling forward on her hands and knees so her huge, crimson-apron-draped breasts swayed heavily beneath her chest. "Two months ago she still blushed when Master made her strip in front of us, and now she begs for his rod louder than Wanyue."

"Come here, Mengqi," Wang Jian commanded.

With a final, savage thrust deep into Hua Yimei’s core that left both mother and daughter collapsing in a tangled, quivering heap of sweat-soaked limbs and heaving breasts, Wang Jian pulled out and grabbed Shen Mengqi by the back of her neck and her curvy thigh.

With effortless physical strength, Wang Jian lifted Shen Mengqi off the mattress, folding her long, slender legs behind her back in a standing cradle position while she wrapped her arms around his neck—and slammed her down onto his rock-hard, glistening shaft in mid-air!

"AAAAAH! MASTER!" Shen Mengqi threw her head back, her scream echoing off the gilded ceiling of the pleasure hall as gravity and Wang Jian’s upward thrusts drove him deeper into her than ever before.

Holding her lush, curvy backside in both large hands, Wang Jian walked across the fur mattress toward the two Nascent Soul beauties, Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua, bouncing Shen Mengqi up and down on his pulsing manhood with every heavy step. Shen Mengqi’s massive white breasts bounced wildly in front of Wang Jian’s face; he leaned forward and bit down roughly on her stiff left nipple, sucking hard on the soft flesh while she sobbed and ground her hips frantically against his pelvis.

"Binglan, Lianhua—on your backs, heads together," Wang Jian ordered through a mouthful of Shen Mengqi’s soft breastflesh. "I’m going to finish inside Mengqi, and then the two of you are going to drain the rest of the Dragon-Vein heat from my meridians until we reach Sea-Moon Island."

Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua exchanged a heated, competitive glance, their Nascent Soul spiritual seas rippling with eager arousal as they lay back upon the snow-bear furs, spreading their long, luscious thighs wide to welcome their sovereign.

While the three Abyssal Stealth Galleons slipped undetected back into the hidden deep-water dry docks beneath the four outer islands of Abyssal Pearl City, the geopolitical storm unleashed by the plundering of the Dragon-Spine Trench tore across the Myriad Reefs Sea Region over the next three months.

Forty-eight hours after Wang Jian’s fleet vanished from the trench, three warships from the Myriad Ocean Palace—led by an Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grand Elder named Daoist Canghai—and four bone-dreadnoughts from the Holy Nether Sea Organization arrived above the Dragon-Spine Trench simultaneously.

When the Nascent Soul ancestors descended six thousand feet to the seabed basin, what they discovered drove both superpowers into a state of volcanic fury.

The hundred-foot stone doors of the Primal Dragon Grotto stood wide open, their bronze dragon-lock cleaved cleanly in two by a heavy, broad-edged blade. The carcass of the Grade 7 Peak Abyssal Chimera-Wyrm lay dead on the basalt floor, its spinal cord incinerated from the inside by a concentrated burst of fire and frost. Inside the grotto, the priceless Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl and the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow were gone, several empty herb boxes lay smashed by the door, and worst of all, the Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein beneath the altar had collapsed to less than thirty percent of its natural output—appearing as though the violent removal of the Spirit Pearl had permanently crippled the earth vein!

As for the culprit, the nineteen surviving Core Formation elders who had awakened six hours after the freeze—including Daoist Cang Song of the Azure Wave Sword Sect and Daoist Mo Jue of the Blood Shark Hall—all gave identical, soul-searched testimonies:

Only one man had possessed the monstrous physical strength and the mysterious blue-cloaked flame capable of slaying the Half-Step Nascent Soul wyrm and splitting the bronze dragon-lock: the auxiliary mercenary "Han Feng."

Furthermore, when Daoist Canghai and the demonic inquisitors inspected the shattered fragments of Elder Tuoba’s cleavers and used a blood-tracing mirror on the residual golden ash inside Elder Huan’s cauterized chest wound, the blue glacial disguise was stripped away. The purifying golden flame signature matched the exact outlaw who had slaughtered demonic patrols across the outer seas and stolen the legacy of the Abyssal Zephyr Lord: Ye Fan.

And when the Nascent Soul ancestors woke from their six-hour paralysis on the seabed, Ye Fan had already vanished—having used the Temporal Jade Bead and a last-resort blood-escape scroll the instant his limbs thawed to flee into the chaotic southern archipelagos before the surviving elders could question him, taking the scattered Rank 3 herbs at his knee just to keep himself alive!

Within three weeks, a joint crimson warrant—the highest bounty issued in two centuries—was posted across every port, island, and auction house in the Myriad Reefs Sea Region:

One hundred thousand High-Grade Spirit Stones and a Peak-Grade Rank 3 Core-Tempering Elixir for the head or living Dantian of the thief of the Dragon-Spine Trench, Ye Fan!

Three thousand miles to the south, inside a damp, storm-lashed sea cave on an uninhabited volcanic rock, Ye Fan sat coughing up blood, wrapping dirty bandages around the festering horn-wound in his ribs. Outside in the pouring rain, three hunting squadrons of the Myriad Ocean Palace and five packs of Blood Shark Hall trackers were combing the surrounding reefs for his scent.

Yet as Ye Fan stared into his small, smokeless fire, he barely felt the pain in his ribs or the terror of the Nascent Soul dragnet closing around him. His eyes were hollow, haunted by the indelible image of his beloved Teacher, Shen Mengqi, pressing her half-naked breasts against that dark-robed sovereign’s arm and kissing his jaw while looking down at Ye Fan like garbage.

’Who is he...?’ Ye Fan dug his fingernails into the volcanic rock until his knuckles bled, his heart twisted by hatred, confusion, and a bone-deep chill. ’Two Nascent Soul women obey his casual orders... Teacher gave him her body and soul willingly... and he used me from the moment I bought that stone on Coral Cloud Island to break open the grotto and take the blame for the entire sea region...’

For the first time since obtaining the Temporal Jade Bead, the Son of Luck realized he was not the hunter rising through the world—he was a pawn dancing on the palm of an unseen monster whose shadow covered the entire sea domain.

While Ye Fan ran for his life through the outer storms, the deep-earth sanctum carved beneath the second outer island of Abyssal Pearl City had transformed into an immortal paradise.

Over the past twelve weeks, the six Abyssal Star-Iron Siphon Stakes buried beneath the Dragon-Spine Trench had channeled a ceaseless, roaring river of Fourth-Grade Spiritual Energy through the deep-earth fault line straight into the island’s root vein. Combined with the forty percent already siphoned from Abyssal Pearl City’s municipal vein, the spiritual density inside the circular Frost-Jade Meditation Chamber had reached liquid saturation.

Thick, milky-white spiritual rain drizzled continuously from the vaulted ceiling, gathering into a three-foot-deep pool of glowing liquid essence across the floor.

At the absolute center of the chamber, the flood-dragon skull altar plundered from the Primal Dragon Grotto had been reassembled atop a raised dais.

Wang Jian sat cross-legged upon the dragon-bone altar, dressed in simple, loose black silk trousers, his muscular upper body bare and gleaming with a dark, diamond-like luster.

Standing in a protective, reverent circle around the outer rim of the liquid essence pool were the pillars of his hidden empire: the two Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grandmasters, Mu Lianhua and Su Binglan; his virtuous wife Yue Lingshan, holding the master control plate of the Grade-4 Void-Shrouding Sanctuary Formation; City Lord Lin Wanyue; Commercial Queen Shangguan Wan’er; Sect Leader Hua Yimei and her daughter Hua Ling’er; High Elder Bing Yun; Liu Ruyan; Chen Ying; and Shen Mengqi.

Every single woman gazed up at the man on the altar with breathless reverence.

Over the past three months, while Mu Lianhua refined the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow into three flawless, Peak-Grade Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pills etched with glowing golden Pill Veins, Wang Jian had spent nine weeks absorbing the remaining fifteen catties of raw Golden Dragon Marrow alongside the pure Yin essences of Su Binglan, Mu Lianhua, and Shen Mengqi. His physical vessel had reached the pinnacle of body refinement below the ascendant realms, and the revolving black-gold sphere inside his lower energy reservoir—his Stellar Demonic Core—had swollen to the size of a clenched fist, humming so loudly that the surrounding liquid essence pool rippled in concentric rings.

"Lingshan," Wang Jian’s calm, resonant voice echoed through the mist-filled vault. "Is the upper sky-veil locked?"

"All forty-eight Profound Iron Array Anchors are running at full capacity, Husband," Yue Lingshan answered, her eyes shining with love and pride as she channeled the power of the dual Fourth-Grade Spiritual Veins into the upper dome. "And Sisters Binglan and Lianhua have woven a dual glacial-fire dampening curtain above the island peaks. Even when the Heavenly Thunder descends, not a single spark or rumble will leak past our waters toward the main city."

Wang Jian nodded. He opened the Profound Frost-Jade box resting across his knees, lifting out the fist-sized, moon-bright Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl in his left hand, and picked up a warm, fragrant Peak-Grade Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pill in his right hand.

He did not hesitate. He tossed the Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pill into his mouth, swallowing it straight down into his lower energy reservoir, and pressed the glowing Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl directly against his bare solar plexus, unleashing the devouring suction of the Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture!

BOOOOOOM!

A vortex of pitch-black stellar light erupted around Wang Jian’s torso, whipping the three-foot-deep pool of liquid spiritual essence into a hundred-foot waterspout that funneled straight into his pores.

Inside his lower energy reservoir, the vast, uncorrupted vitality of the Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pill and the ten-thousand-year essence of the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl crashed like twin tidal waves against his fist-sized Stellar Demonic Core.

Wang Jian locked his hands into the supreme origin seal of his scripture and forced the massive black-gold sphere to reverse its rotation at ten times its normal speed.

CRACK—SHATTER!

Across the deep-earth vault, the air pressure dropped to a suffocating vacuum as nine dazzling cracks of violet-black starlight split the surface of Wang Jian’s Golden Core from pole to pole. The time for patient accumulation in the shadows was over; the ancient sovereign was breaking his shell to step onto the summit of the Nascent Soul Realm.