A World Worth Protecting

<span style="font-weight: bold">Chapter 610: Return and Breakthrough</span>

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Chen Qing’s voice wasn’t overbearing or authoritative. Regardless, the entire world fell silent as soon as his words rang out… The Star Fang Beast King trembled. Incredulity and shock—rare emotions for a creature as powerful as it was—flickered in its eyes. It seemed to have lost the power of speech.

The remaining Star Fang Beasts fared no better. Chen Qing’s casual words formed an overpowering force that weighed down on all living creatures. The ability to think fled the creatures.

It was the same for Wang Baole. His mind seemed to be suffering from a relentless assault of deafening thunder. He might have lived through a Dark Dream, and his master in the dream might have cautioned him about Chen Qing. He might even have wondered about the true relationship between himself and his senior brother, Chen Qing.

Nevertheless, he had only thought about it. He wasn’t prepared at all for this meeting. In fact, he had never thought that he would meet this person, who had been in his dreams, so soon!

His memories of the Dark Dream merged with reality at that instant. The image of his senior brother, who had smiled at him in his dream and told him he had found his Dao partner in his next life, gradually merged with the face hovering in the sky before him. Everything seemed clearer now. Wang Baole could only feel a complex myriad of emotions growing inside him. He wanted to speak but was at a loss for words. The familiar and the foreign had crossed paths, and that only made him silent.

Chen Qing’s appearance stabilized the teleportation’s energy waves. The spell grew stronger amidst Wang Baole’s silence until it reached its peak and erupted. Wang Baole began to fade from view.

The Star Fang Beasts watched Wang Baole leave. None of them dared to stop him. They trembled and gazed at their Beast King, but the Beast King could only pretend that it hadn’t seen their stares. Shaking with anxiety and fear, it tried waiting for reinforcements from other Beast Clans.

Wang Baole’s silhouette grew blurrier amidst his growing silence. He didn’t notice how Little Missy had also fallen silent after Chen Qing revealed his identity. She seemed to have been shocked severely by the declaration.

The teleportation was almost complete. It was then that Chen Qing smiled faintly. He seemed to understand what Wang Baole was thinking. He said gently, “Junior Brother Baole, the Dao awaits you. You don’t have much time left. Settle your affairs after you return… After I’m done with mine, I’ll make for your galaxy and bring you away!”

Wang Baole’s heart trembled when he heard what Chen Qing said. He was about to question him when the teleportation became fully activated. Wang Baole vanished from the planet amidst deafening rumbling. When he reappeared again, he was back on the ancient greenish-bronze sword. He had returned to the Worship Palace Pavilion and stood before the grand halls of the seventh palace!

The residual energies of the teleportation surged outwards, whipping up a storm around him. Strong winds swept out in all directions. Wang Baole stumbled. His face had turned pale due to the distance he had teleported, and his breathing had quickened significantly. The expression on his face showed the mixed feelings he was experiencing as Chen Qing’s last words echoed in his head.

“The Dao awaits me? What does that mean? He said… he’ll be taking me away?” Wang Baole was confused. Their meeting had been too sudden and their parting too abrupt. There were too many unknowns.

The only thing that he knew was that Chen Qing had clearly been pulling the strings behind this trial. There was also Chen Qing’s identity as an Divine King of the Never-Ending Clan—one of the main reasons for his earlier silence.

“The first Divine King…” Wang Baole muttered. He recalled what Little Missy had said earlier, about a mysterious and powerful figure in the Never-Ending Clan who was, in fact, a member of the Dark Sect. He hadn’t believed her words then and had thought she had been spinning wild tales. It seemed that she had spoken the truth.

Wang Baole couldn’t help but feel doubtful though. He still felt that something wasn’t right. Little Missy had claimed that she had been this person’s disciple. After analyzing the facts, Wang Baole concluded that while Little Missy might have somewhat exaggerated the truth, she clearly knew part of what had truly happened.

“Little Missy, you… knew a long time ago that the first Divine King was Chen Qing, who had been from the Dark Sect, didn’t you?” Wang Baole sighed, then said softly.

“…” Little Missy opened her mouth, but she couldn’t find the right words. Earlier, on the planet where the Star Fang Beasts resided, countless ancient curse words had flashed across her mind when Chen Qing had revealed his identity. They would be the equivalent of “what the hell” in the Federation.

She was in a complete daze now. It was partly because of Chen Qing’s identity, and partly because of what she had said to Wang Baole. Her words seemed imbued with a strange, miraculous power. Whatever she said would come true. It was incredulous.

The second reason was the greater shock to her. She had a feeling that her cultivation must have advanced yet again, as there was no other explanation for her earlier bluff coming true in such a short period of time. She never knew she had such great power—to transform mere words into reality…

Fortunately, Little Missy had mastered the art of shamelessness during her time with Wang Baole. She took a deep breath, then, with a tinge of arrogance in her voice, said coolly, “Due to certain reasons, which I couldn’t explain to you, I could only hide the truth in between the lines. If you know it… you know it. If you don’t, then you’ll likely never know in this lifetime.” Little Missy spoke with the voice of experience, her tone vaguely bragging. She was secretly pleased with her quick mind. She wasn’t lying to him. She had her reasons, and she hadn’t known how to spell them out to him. Her reason was… she herself hadn’t known how to spin a plausible tale then.

Wang Baole grew solemn. Little Missy’s words seemed deep with meaning. He calmed down and pushed aside the shock he had felt from meeting his senior brother, Chen Qing, on the Star Fang Beasts’ home planet. Then, he lifted his head and stared at the seventh palace before him. After some thought, he pulled out the two beast cores in his storage bracelet.

Heavy waves of Spirit Qi exuded from the cores instantly, flooding the area and sending Wang Baole’s heart racing. He knew that his standing here meant that he had successfully completed the trial in the sixth palace. However, he wasn’t missing any beast cores.

The thought flashed across Wang Baole’s mind momentarily. He didn’t think too much about the matter though. Even an idiot could have guessed that his powerful senior brother must have been the cause of this. Presently, he was considering how best to use the beast core for his maximum benefit.

“Little Missy, can this be eaten?” Wang Baole asked after some thought.

“Of course. You’ll just go ‘boom’ after that… Your body will just blow up, and your spirit will be utterly destroyed. If you don’t want to die young, you’ll have to slowly absorb its nutrients with your devouring seed. You and I aren’t the same. I ate a God’s Body Fruit when I was a kid, which gave me an indestructible physical body. I had these Spirit Immortal grade beast cores as candy when I was three years old. They’re the tiniest of all the sweets I ate!” Little Missy said casually, stressing heavily on the word “boom”.

Wang Baole blinked and immediately abandoned the idea of eating both beast cores. He sat down and placed the cores before him. Then, after some thought, he activated the devouring seed inside his body. An immense suction force erupted from his body suddenly and enveloped the beast cores.

Within the blink of an eye, incredible Spirit Qi began to emanate from the beast cores. Wang Baole’s devouring seed was like a black hole, sucking every bit of the Spirit Qi into his body. As it churned, Wang Baole’s cultivation began to advance rapidly. He broke through the late-stage Core Formation realm and attained the perfected stage in an instant.

That wasn’t the end of it. As the devouring seed continued its absorption, Wang Baole’s cultivation grew, like an expanding balloon. Time passed in a blur. Wang Baole could feel himself filled to the brim. It was as if his body was being pushed to its limits. He opened his eyes then and assessed his cultivation. Excitement filled him.

“The perfected Core Formation realm!”

He had a breakthrough in cultivation in such a short span of time. Even Little Missy grew slightly envious of his good fortune. The two beast cores hadn’t even been drained of many nutrients. They were like Spirit Stones filled with infinite energy and would be able to provide him with the Spirit Qi he needed on his path of cultivation.

It was clear that this was half of the gift Wang Baole’s senior brother had left him after their first meeting!

The other half would be the two Star Fang Beasts’ corpses. Wang Baole knew that the body of a beast at the Spirit Immortal realm—down to its skin and bones—was a treasure trove. He had other plans for the corpses though. He planned to find a way to use the bodies in their entirety, refining them and turning them into puppets!

Should he succeed, Wang Baole had a feeling he would be able to have his way in the Solar System.

“That should take quite a bit of time. I’ll study how to get it done when I return. If there’s really no way of doing it, it’s still not too late to strip the bodies down to their skin and bones!” Wang Baole perked up at the thought. It was great to have such a powerful senior brother.