High Martial: I Grind Professions

Ye Qin alone was enough to make him extremely cautious, not daring to risk his true body lightly.

'If I had advanced rashly back then, caught in a death trap laid by two top-tier Venerable Level experts, I have no doubt I would have been killed on the spot, with absolutely no chance of survival.'

The intelligence sent a chill down his spine in retrospect.

At this point, the situation was hopeless.

Wujing Demon Saint took a deep breath, suppressing the roiling anger and humiliation within him. His voice was ice-cold as he issued the final directive through a special communication channel:

"All members of the Demon Race, hear my command! Immediately abandon all surface operations. Retreat to... the deepest parts of the earth. Lie in wait for further orders. Without a decree from me, you are not to make a single move!"

After issuing the command, he shut off the projection screen.

The conference room fell into a deathly silence, the only sound his own heavy breathing.

'I have to face what's coming.'

He had to personally report this disastrous defeat to the high and mighty Talisman Emperor.

Wujing Demon Saint carefully retrieved an ancient, oval-shaped mirror, about the size of an egg, from within his robes.

The mirror's surface was neither gold nor jade. It was warm to the touch, yet it emanated an ancient and obscure spatial fluctuation.

He channeled his Demon Essence, slowly infusing the mirror with pure Demon Power.

The ancient mirror trembled slightly, its surface rippling like water. It then slipped from his grasp to float in mid-air, rapidly expanding until it became a full-length floor mirror as tall as a man.

Light flowed across the mirror's surface, but it did not reflect Wujing Demon Saint's image. Instead, it displayed a churning gray chaos, like the universe in its primordial state.

The chaos swirled like a vortex. A moment later, the image sharpened.

Appearing in the mirror was the Talisman Emperor himself, seated high upon a magnificent throne within the Celestial Fox Palace in the Demon Realm.

He was dressed in resplendent robes, his handsome face etched with the indifference of a ruler. His golden eyes seemed to pierce through the mirror, seeing straight into one's soul.

"Wujing," the Talisman Emperor's voice came through the mirror, clear and authoritative, tinged with a subtle note of expectation. "How goes the battle? Has the Human Race of Blue Star... been crushed?"

The corner of his mouth was even curved in what seemed to be a smile of assured victory.

Wujing Demon Saint instantly bowed his head. He clasped his fists, raised them high above his head, and his body trembled slightly. His voice was filled with deep, sorrowful anguish.

"Lord Talisman Emperor! I... I deserve to die a thousand deaths! I was incompetent and failed the great trust you placed in me!"

In the mirror, the trace of expectation on the Talisman Emperor's face instantly froze before vanishing completely.

In its place was a sudden, bone-chilling cold—a terrifying aura, vast as an abyss, that belonged only to a Demon Emperor.

Even across the barrier between realms, it pressed through the mirror with tangible force. The very air around the mirror seemed to freeze and twist.

Wujing Demon Saint's body shuddered violently. With a heavy THUD, his knees slammed onto the ground. He prostrated himself deeply before the mirror, pressing his forehead to the cold floor. His voice was choked with sobs.

"My crimes are worthy of a thousand deaths! I am ashamed to have failed the Talisman Emperor's trust and have betrayed the hopes of the entire Demon Race... I... I deserve death!"

The Talisman Emperor in the mirror was silent. A cold light glinted in his golden pupils, and the armrest of his throne let out a faint groan under his unconscious grip.

Even through the mirror, Wujing could feel a rage powerful enough to incinerate the heavens and boil the seas.

Ultimately, however, the terrifying aura slowly receded.

The Talisman Emperor knew full well that he couldn't truly punish Wujing from across the barrier between worlds. Besides, the defeat was already a fact, and nothing could be done to reverse it.

For several long minutes of silence, the air in the conference room seemed to have frozen solid.

Wujing Demon Saint remained prostrated on the floor, not daring to take a breath.

Finally, a heavy, cold sigh echoed from the mirror. "...Speak. Tell me the details."

Wujing Demon Saint didn't dare to hide the slightest detail, reporting the full, tragic extent of the devastating defeat.

Nearly ninety percent of the Demon Kings were lost. Thirty percent of the elite forces below the Demon King level were also eliminated. The strength they had spent years accumulating while infiltrating Blue Star was mostly wiped out in a single night. Each sentence he spoke seemed to add another layer of frost to the frigid air.

Listening to the shocking report of their losses, even though the Talisman Emperor had braced himself, his expression still turned impossibly grim, as if coated in a layer of frost.

He had meticulously planned, paid a great price, planted his agents, and waited for the perfect moment—all for it to end in such a complete and utter rout.

Sensing the oppressive atmosphere and the soul-freezing chill emanating from the Talisman Emperor, Wujing Demon Saint dared not delay any longer. He quickly revealed the crucial piece of information:

"Lord Talisman Emperor, please quell your anger! This disastrous defeat wasn't our fault in battle. The truth is... the Human Race's hidden strength far exceeds our estimations! They... they suddenly had nearly thirty new King-level masters appear out of nowhere!

"Furthermore, according to the confirmed intelligence that I risked my life to obtain, the Human Race... also has one more top-tier Venerable Level combatant!"

"Another top-tier Venerable?" The Talisman Emperor's golden pupils constricted, revealing genuine astonishment for the first time.

"Nearly thirty King Level masters? And a top-tier Venerable? Impossible! The Human Race on Blue Star couldn't have produced so many experts in just a few short years! Is your information solid?"

"It is absolutely certain!" Wujing Demon Saint declared adamantly. "I mobilized every one of our sleeper agents and paid a great price to confirm it!

"That Venerable, based on his techniques and a comparison with past top-secret intelligence... is very likely Venerable Gu He, who, according to the records of the Human Race... was said to have passed away over five hundred years ago!"

"Venerable Gu He... passed away five hundred years ago..." The Talisman Emperor's brow furrowed. His fingers tapped unconsciously on the armrest of his throne as he sank into contemplation.

This information was simply too unbelievable.

However, Wujing's intelligence sources were of the highest level; the chance of error was extremely low.

The Talisman Emperor in the mirror paced back and forth a few times, his gaze flickering with uncertainty. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks, a startling light erupting in his eyes.

'A man who died hundreds of years ago has reappeared... It's not just him, but those King Level masters too... people from centuries ago... Could it be...?'

A startling hypothesis began to form in his mind.

"A time treasure?!" the Talisman Emperor blurted out, his voice laced with incredulous fervor. "The Human Race has mastered some kind of... rare artifact that can interfere with time? Or... a special secret realm where the flow of time is anomalous?"

Once this idea took root, it spread through his mind like wildfire.

No one understood the supreme and untouchable nature of the Time Law better than the Talisman Emperor.

The value of an artifact that could influence time... was enough to drive any being who had reached his level of power into a frenzy.

Although the prostrated Wujing Demon Saint dared not lift his head to look, he keenly picked up on the crucial point just from the irrepressible excitement in the Talisman Emperor's tone and the shift in his aura.

Lord Talisman Emperor had developed an unprecedented and intense interest in the Human Race's potential "time treasure."

This interest had, for the moment, even overshadowed his anger at their defeat.

"I dare to speculate that is exactly the case!" Wujing Demon Saint quickly chimed in. "Without a time-related artifact, there is no other way to explain how these experts, who should have turned to dust centuries ago, could reappear in the world without any warning."

"A time treasure... a time treasure..." the Talisman Emperor repeated the two words, his eyes growing brighter and brighter.

His fundamental purpose in instigating the war between the two races had never been about securing new territory.

It was to plunder the unique treasures that might have been born on Blue Star, a young planet of origin brimming with potential.

An artifact that could touch upon the Time Law, in particular, was an immeasurable temptation for a Demon Emperor of his stature.

'The sacrifice of some low-level demons? That's just a necessary price.'

"It must be a time treasure..." the Talisman Emperor's voice was resolute, as if he was now completely convinced.

He began to pace again, his steps now carrying an almost euphoric rhythm. "Good! Excellent! What a Human Race! To think they were hiding such a heaven-defying treasure!"

After a moment, he spun around to face the prostrating Wujing in the mirror, his golden eyes shining with a resolute light.

"Blue Star's value... is far greater than I anticipated! Since the Stargate is insufficient to open a stable channel, and conventional methods can't crack its defenses... then it seems the only option left is to initiate a World Projection!"

"World Projection?!" Wujing Demon Saint snapped his head up, utter shock written all over his face.

He knew, of course, exactly what that meant.

It was a method of invasion far more advanced than the Stargate, but also far more tyrannical and brutal.

By consuming an unimaginable amount of energy and precious materials, it would forcibly distort spacetime and take a portion of a designated region in the Demon Realm and "project" it, like a giant scroll painting, onto the spatial coordinates of Blue Star. This would ultimately cause a brief, dimensional overlap with a region on Blue Star.

The resources consumed would be ten, even dozens of times greater than those needed for a Stargate.

Each activation placed an immense burden on the Demon Realm itself.

But the corresponding advantage was also abundantly clear. Once the projection successfully overlapped, the affected regions of the two worlds would be, for a time, physically "connected."

It would no longer be a matter of teleporting soldiers and commanders. Instead, an entire portion of the Demon Realm's territory—complete with its mountains, ley lines, demon lairs, and even... the Demon Emperor's palace—would descend directly into the skies of Blue Star.

At that point, Blue Star's defensive systems would be rendered useless. The Demon Race's armies would face no further obstacles, able to pour onto Blue Star continuously and in overwhelming numbers.

This was no longer a war, but a localized collision and consumption between the rules of two different worlds.

Its risks and costs would far exceed those of any prior invasion.

But in turn, if it succeeded, Blue Star would stand no chance, and the Human Race would face utter annihilation.

For the sake of that potential "time treasure," the Talisman Emperor was determined to bet everything on this one move.

The cold surface of the mirror reflected Wujing's horrified face, as well as the blazing fire of greed and conquest in the Talisman Emperor's eyes.

The two worlds on opposite ends of the mirror, because of a disastrous defeat and a startling hypothesis, were now being pushed toward an even more unpredictable abyss of destruction.

The blood-red snow of June drifted silently between the two realms, a quiet prelude to an even more terrifying catastrophe.

「 」

As the Demon Race receded like a tide into the depths of the earth and vanished without a trace, the various human fortress cities on Blue Star entered the difficult phase of post-war cleanup and repair.

Li Wen's figure reappeared in the skies above Changning City.

Looking down upon the city he protected, he was met with a heart-wrenching scene of devastation.

The once-sturdy city walls had collapsed in multiple places, their massive breaches exposing twisted rebar and shattered alloy plates.