The Demon Blade's suggestion to form a force of his own made Feng Qi think of Mo Yue.
Same situation—facing future challenges against a powerful enemy while at a disadvantage.
Mo Yue's strategy had been to find potential powerhouses before that day arrived, signing cooperative contracts. Back then, Mu Yan had still been trapped on the relic island, totally unaware of Mo Yue's plan and unable to defend against it.
That was one of the reasons Mu Yan lost.
So… could he copy Mo Yue's strategy?
Could he also prepare early—nurture a few useful followers—and lead them into battle against Jian Ji?
Jian Ji's power was beyond question. Even with the Demon Blade in hand, Feng Qi couldn't guarantee victory in the next hundred years. It might be a long, drawn-out fight.
But with help from loyal followers, maybe the timeline could be shortened.
As for why he wouldn't ask Star City to back him in that battle… he'd already thought about it.
The reality was that humanity was still too weak. Even if they sent everything they had, it wouldn't change the outcome against Jian Ji.
Humanity needed several generations of effort to unlock their full racial potential—bloodline potential.
Without miracle items, there was no way they could produce true high-end powerhouses.
Taking Star City into a battle against Jian Ji would be dragging them into the abyss ahead of schedule.
His goal in developing Star City was to test the upper limits of humanity.
By seeing what kind of state human civilization would be in fifteen hundred years from now, he could identify the detours taken and the missteps in development.
If he needed top-tier combat power, he could focus all efforts on cultivating Mu Qing.
But that would only treat the symptoms, not the root cause. In the end, it might just repeat the outcome of the previous sacrificial timeline—Mu Qing reaching the peak fifteen hundred years later, while Star City's people struggled to keep up. They'd survive only under Mu Qing's protection.
And once Mu Qing could no longer fight, human civilization would start its countdown to extinction.
That's why he chose to grow Star City as a whole instead of raising individual combat power.
When it came to fighting Jian Ji, Star City's humans couldn't be involved.
That battle would derail Star City's future plans and growth.
But the Demon Blade's suggestion gave him another option—train up talented individuals from other races and form a force similar to a weak-race alliance.
But how to implement this plan… he had no clue.
Just then, the Demon Blade's voice echoed in his mind:
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about forming some loose, weak alliance like the Domain Weak Tribe Alliance. If we're going to build a force, then build an elite one—quality over quantity. The key is strength and potential."
"Why bring this up now?"
Feng Qi lowered the Demon Blade from his shoulder, held it in front of him, and looked at the blade with curiosity.
"Because I sensed a promising one up ahead… You know this—over the past thousand-plus years, every time I fought Jian Ji, I'd go looking for talented people to wield me. My sense for potential is sharp. Just a moment ago, I detected a little one with excellent bloodline potential."
"I see."
Feng Qi nodded, then frowned slightly.
"Training people isn't hard. But I don't have any binding contract like Mo Yue had. How can I make sure these followers won't betray me?"
"I can't answer that. This idea came to me partly because I sensed someone with potential, and partly from reading your memories—learning about Mo's setup gave me the inspiration."
"But if you want loyal followers, starting with children might be best. Mature warriors already have fixed worldviews and thinking patterns. They're not ideal. Kids are easier to shape."
Feng Qi scratched his head awkwardly.
So that's where this sudden inspiration came from—the Demon Blade was copying Mo too.
He slung the Demon Blade back onto his shoulder and started heading in the direction it indicated.
If you want to turn a plan into reality, you've got to move.
First, he had to check out just how strong this "potential" child really was.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking when a shimmering blue domain barrier appeared in his sight.
At the center of this barrier was a clear entrance—a swirling space vortex.
On both sides of the vortex stood hundreds of ghost-type warriors, each holding a blue energy spear.
Though they were ghost-type lifeforms, they looked more like something between solid and phantom.
Through their translucent blue energy bodies, Feng Qi could see their rotting skeletons inside. It was like someone had wrapped glowing energy around a pile of bones to serve as flesh.
According to the Demon Blade, the promising child was inside that barrier.
And as Feng Qi noticed them, those ghost-type beings spotted him too.
Their gazes met.
Feng Qi shifted the Demon Blade off his shoulder and held it in front of him.
He'd decided to go in hard.
Right now, the ghost-type army was still busy on the battlefield. Reinforcements wouldn't arrive anytime soon.
He was going to take out this group of ghost-type guards and seize the child inside.
According to the Demon Blade's perception, the child inside had a body of flesh and blood—clearly not a descendant of ghost-type lifeforms. That meant this child was special. Most likely, just like how he had raised little Mu Qing, this one was secretly cultivated by the ghost-type faction as a future weapon.
Feng Qi pushed off with his feet and charged toward the space vortex, carrying the Demon Blade.
As soon as they saw Feng Qi coming, hundreds of ghost warriors raised their blue energy spears.
Their spear tips glowed, releasing hundreds of streams of ghostly blue flames that shot into the air and came crashing down like meteors toward Feng Qi's position.
Facing this area-of-effect attack, Feng Qi halted abruptly. His momentum carried him forward more than twenty meters, then he raised the Demon Blade and slashed at the sky.
It looked like a simple upward strike.
But the moment the blade cut upward, it let out a sonic boom, kicking up a wild gust that surged into the sky.
The ghostly blue flames were instantly extinguished by the blast. Those nearby were pushed off course and missed their mark entirely.
As he retracted the Demon Blade, explosions erupted around him one after another.
He slung the Demon Blade back onto his shoulder, grinning brightly. Then, crouching low, he shot forward like a tiger breaking free from its cage, heading straight for the entrance.
The ghost warriors seemed to realize he wasn't someone they could handle lightly. They quickly shifted positions, and beneath their feet, a large ghostly blue formation emerged.
Whoosh!
The formation fully lit up. The sound of wind tearing echoed, and hundreds of ghost warriors simultaneously raised their ghost-blue spears.
The spear tips spewed out thick ghost-blue matter that quickly fused together under the formation's activation.
A distorted monster made entirely of energy emerged above the array.
Its long hair writhed like venomous snakes. Its upper body was slender, but its lower half was bloated and massive. Its feet were dozens of thick tentacles.
As it let out a sharp, eerie screech, the creature's limbs extended outward, and in an instant, the sky was blotted out by countless falling tentacles, all crashing toward Feng Qi.
Hah!
Feng Qi gathered power as he charged, veins bulging across the hand gripping his blade.
"Dao-ge, charge with me... First move of the Advanced Blade Art—Dump Truck Slam!"
As his arms powered up, he slashed the Demon Blade forward with full force. At that moment, all the internal nodes of the blade lit up, activating a blessing formation.
The blade instantly swelled several times in size, transforming into a jet-black, tyrannical battle axe that slammed forward with terrifying force.
The barricade of intertwined tentacles didn't even last a second before it was shredded to pieces by the sheer impact.
Then, a wave of black energy shot forward and crashed directly into the distorted energy beast hovering above the formation.
The scene froze.
A few seconds later—
Boom!
Blue energy burst everywhere, scattering like a rain of glowing particles carried by the wind.
The formation beneath the ghost warriors shattered, and their energy-formed bodies flickered violently, clearly having suffered major damage.
Feng Qi still held his blade mid-swing. His tightly coiled muscles resembled a beast ready to pounce, and his aura continued to climb.
"This is a whole new kind of fighting style. Not bad at all."
The Demon Blade's voice echoed in Feng Qi's mind.
"I used to resist this kind of brute-force style, but once I really tried it, I realized—this is what real men should fight like. Raw passion. A way to let out all the battle lust and fury."
"I get what you're saying," Feng Qi replied, "but I don't get why you have to yell out the name of the move when you swing."
"That's how the narrator taught me. When you're burning with passion, you gotta shout it out. Holding it in just feels wrong. Being cringey isn't the problem—being weak is the real sin."
As those words fell, Feng Qi hoisted the Demon Blade and charged again.
The ghost warriors, faced with his approach, quickly regrouped and began forming another battle array.
But before they could summon that distorted monster again, Feng Qi leapt into the air, bringing the Demon Blade down like Mount Hua splitting the heavens.
Boom!
The ground cracked and collapsed, forming a pit over a hundred meters wide and sinking more than ten meters deep.
With just a basic strike, he delivered area-level devastation.
In an instant, over ten ghost warriors were reduced to energy dust, vanishing where they stood.
Then he launched into a full offensive. Inside the pit, he transformed into a reaper of death. The heavy Demon Blade was like a death knell ringing on the Road to the Underworld—each thunderous strike exorcised dozens of ghost warriors on the spot.
Under this overwhelming assault, the battle ended quickly.
The Demon Blade trembled, and all the scattered ghost-blue energy swiftly surged toward it, being absorbed entirely.
As the energy was refined and converted, a cool sensation flowed through Feng Qi's body.
His aching muscles instantly felt some relief.
Then Feng Qi began to climb out of the pit.
Jumping more than ten meters was nothing to him, but the real difficulty lay in the fact that he was still carrying the Demon Blade—its weight didn't allow him to go wild.
Once out of the pit, he arrived at the swirling vortex before the energy barrier.
Without hesitation, he stepped in.
After a brief daze, he found himself in a wide-open field.
"Dao-ge, that kid is definitely here, right?"
"Definitely."
With the Demon Blade's confirmation, he relaxed a bit and started running deeper into the area.
The territory of the Underworld Spirit Clan—Garden of Life and Death.
It was a vast plain blooming with white and bright red flowers.
Unlike the blooms outside, the flowers here were especially lush, each roughly three times the size of the ones in the outer fields.
At that moment, a little girl around six or seven years old was running through the sea of flowers. She wore a dirty dress and had a tattered straw hat on her head.
She looked similar to a human child, but with some differences—her hair was gray, and her forehead was marked with three small claw-like prints. Her eyes were a silent gray, shimmering faintly like ripples on a still lake. She seemed small and pitiful.
A gust of wind swept across the flower field, sending waves through the blooms like ocean surf. Countless petals lifted with the breeze and scattered into the air.
The little girl immediately crouched down and pressed her hands on her straw hat to stop it from flying off.
Once the wind passed, she looked down at the basket overflowing with petals in her hands and smiled in a simple, honest way.
Just then, a bright light flickered from a floating building in the distance, catching her attention.
She stood up right away and began running toward the structure.
The building had a strange design—like a pavilion hanging in midair, made entirely from energy, suspended above the ground. A slanted energy staircase extended from it, connecting to the plains below.
All around the building, countless energy channels spread outward, threading through the plains and vanishing into the horizon.
The entire building swayed gently in the wind, like a cradle floating in the sky.
Soon, the little girl arrived in front of the structure.
She followed the stairs and climbed up. Reaching the top, she pushed open the half-ajar energy door beside the main entrance.
Inside, the room was filled with flower petals. Amid the pile, a skeleton was partially buried, its form just barely visible.
She gently poured the petals from her basket into the room, then took a long look at the skeletal remains before quietly closing the door and leaving.
Next, she pushed open the actual main door beside it.
Inside, three beings made purely of energy floated above an altar-like platform. When they saw her enter, the one in front waved at her.
She responded with a bright smile and nodded hard before running up the steps to the altar and sitting down in the center.
The three ghost-type beings raised their palms and formed a triangular stance. The previously dim altar lit up instantly.
She sat obediently in the middle, but her expression gradually twisted in pain.
Faint gray energy began to rise from her small body, getting drawn into the pipes above the altar. That energy was then redirected outward through conduits connected to the outside of the building.
Her pain grew more obvious. As it did, the amount of gray energy being extracted also increased.
After a long while, the altar's glow faded. The girl collapsed onto the floor, her face showing a kind of weary relief.
She looked up at the three ghostly figures with hopeful eyes, like she was waiting for praise.
But the three figures ignored her.
Just as they were about to leave, a new image flickered in front of them—it showed someone approaching their location.
The leader's expression changed at once.
With a wave of its hand, a streak of light floated out from its body and shot into the energy channels above the altar.
In an instant, that light disappeared.
Moments later, a glimmer reappeared within the altar's teleportation array.
The leading ghost figure caught it and glanced down at the exhausted girl, then nodded.
It looked at the other two and said:
"Activate the final sacrifice early. Drain all the despair power inside her. My lord can't arrive in time, and the plan must not fail."
After a quick exchange, the three raised their hands again.
The ritual, which should have ended, resumed.
The little girl, already drenched in sweat, curled up and let out a stifled cry of pain.
...
Outside.
To get to the mysterious child as fast as possible, Feng Qi had been sprinting nonstop. He was already panting hard.
The Demon Blade on his back felt like a mountain weighing him down.
Just then, the old voice of the Demon Blade sounded in his mind:
"Qi brat, hurry up. That kid's life force is dropping fast. I also sensed a sacrificial array. If I'm right, the little one's being used as a sacrifice."
"Why now of all times?" Feng Qi growled. "Why wait till I'm almost there to start?"
"Maybe your approach spooked them."
Feng Qi stopped wasting time with complaints and picked up his pace again.
After a long run, the floating pavilion finally came into view.
"The kid's about to die!"
The Demon Blade's warning lit a fire in him. Feng Qi gathered all his strength. While running, he gripped the blade with both hands and unleashed his most powerful strike:
"Break for me—Dump Truck Slam!"
Black light surged across the blade's surface, forming a roaring black dragon. It soared into the sky with a deafening howl and charged straight at the energy pavilion.