High Martial: I Grind Professions

"I’ve finally found you."

The frigid voice that came from Li Wen’s mouth was devoid of any warmth, carrying only pure, ice-cold killing intent.

The moment he was locked onto, every one of the Wujing Demon Saint’s demonic scales stood on end!

A fatal premonition erupted from the depths of his soul like a volcano!

He didn’t hesitate for a second! He couldn’t even be bothered to investigate the source of the voice. The instinct for survival overrode everything else.

His massive demonic body, carrying the power to shatter mountains and split seas, slammed viciously into the rock wall at the top of the cave dwelling.

BOOM! With a deafening roar, the solid rock layer, along with a part of the Array’s light screen, was instantly pierced through, revealing the dark, cold heavy water outside, and...

a spatial rift, forcibly torn open and flickering with an unstable, eerie light.

His enormous body transformed into a streak of black light and plunged into it without a moment’s hesitation.

’Escape!’

’I have to escape this deathtrap immediately!’

He didn’t even dare to look back to see who or what had locked onto him.

...

"You can’t escape."

Above the abyss, the seawater parted.

Li Wen’s figure appeared without a sound.

His gaze pierced through the vast expanse of the ocean, looking at the traces of the recently closed spatial rift below, his tone indifferent.

Having mastered the core of Blue Star, the entire planet held no more secrets for him. Every single corner was clearly reflected in his mind.

In his eyes, the trajectory of the Wujing Demon Saint’s spatial escape was as conspicuous as a meteor streaking across the night sky.

Li Wen didn’t even bother to track the spatial tunnel that had just vanished.

He simply raised his hand calmly and made a gentle slash in the empty air before him.

SHIIIIING—!

In an instant, a spatial rift formed. It was far more stable than the one torn by the Wujing Demon Saint, its edges flowing with faint golden runes of Law.

Inside the rift was not violent turbulence, but rather the strange sight of a stable tunnel.

This was a manifestation of the new heights Li Wen had reached in his comprehension and application of spatial rules, now that his Primordial Spirit was at the eighth layer and he controlled the very origin of Blue Star’s core.

He stepped inside, and the rift closed instantly, as if it had never been there.

「Thousands of miles away, over a desolate Gobi Desert on the Western Continent.」

Space twisted violently, and a disheveled black figure was spat out by a powerful repulsive force from the void. It was none other than the Wujing Demon Saint, his soul still trembling with fear.

His massive demonic body tumbled through the air several times before he managed to stabilize himself. Many of his scales were broken, and his aura was in disarray.

This hasty long-distance teleportation had taken a huge toll on him.

Tearing through the void to teleport required immense strength. He had only recovered his Demon Saint power a few years ago, so the distance he could travel was limited.

’I have to go again! The farther the better!’

He roared wildly in his heart, not daring to linger for even a moment.

His massive claws once again gathered immense Demon Power, preparing to tear open the space before him for another desperate jump.

However, just as his claws were about to touch the void—

HUMMM!

A terrifying pressure, as heavy as an Ancient Divine Mountain and as vast as the boundless Star Sea, suddenly descended!

This pressure was so strong that it instantly froze the space for dozens of miles around. Even the howling wind and sand came to a standstill!

The Demon Power the Wujing Demon Saint had gathered was forcibly suppressed back into his body.

He felt as if every bone and every scale was groaning under the unbearable weight. Even his thoughts became sluggish.

What terrified him to his very core was that a spatial rift, its edges flowing with a faint golden light, silently opened less than a hundred feet away from him.

A young, upright figure strode out from it unhurriedly. His black eyes, like ancient frost, locked firmly onto him.

"N-No... Impossible!!" The moment the Wujing Demon Saint saw the newcomer’s face, his pupils shrank to pinpricks. He shook his massive head violently, letting out a roar bordering on a total breakdown.

That familiar yet unfamiliar young face belonged to the one from his intelligence reports—the rapidly rising human, who should never have appeared here, and who certainly shouldn’t possess such terrifying power—Li Wen!

What made his very soul tremble was the pressure emanating from the other party!

’This is no ordinary Venerable!’

’This immense will, which seems to have merged with heaven and earth itself, holding the power of life and death...’

’This pure, terrifying sense of oppression... I have only ever felt it from one person—His Majesty, the Demon Emperor, who resided deep within the Demon Realm and shook the cosmos with his might.’

This realization exploded in his mind like a billion bolts of lightning.

’Didn’t he just break through to the Ultimate Venerable Realm? How can he already possess Demon Emperor Level combat strength?’

’How could a human possibly reach a level comparable to a Demon Emperor in such a short amount of time?!’

This completely overturned his understanding of the world and shattered any lingering hope he had.

The shock lasted only for a moment before the instinct for survival once again took over.

’The dignity of a Demon Saint? The great cause of my race? In the face of absolute power and death, it’s all a joke!’

"My lord! Honored lord!" With a THUD, the Wujing Demon Saint actually fell to his knees in mid-air, bowing his head so low his posture was as humble as dust.

His voice trembled and distorted from extreme fear:

"Venerable... Venerable Li Wen! No... Your Majesty Li Wen! Spare me! Spare my life!"

"A misunderstanding! This is all a misunderstanding! I, Wujing, am willing to serve you as my master, to be your slave for all eternity! I know all of the Demon Realm’s arrangements on Blue Star!

I know which other Demon Kings are in hiding, I know all the strongholds of ’Shadow’, and I have the list of traitors to the Human Race!

I am willing to become your most loyal spy in the Demon Realm! The Demon Emperor’s plans, the Demon Realm’s military deployments—I can find out everything for you!"

"I’m begging you! Let me live this worthless life! I can be of great use to you! I’m willing to make the most vicious soul oath! I only ask... I only ask that you show mercy!

I’m willing to offer you all of my treasures, including the countless artifacts I’ve accumulated in the Demon Realm! As long as you let me live, I’ll do anything!"

Tears and snot streamed down the Wujing Demon Saint’s face as he kowtowed like a man possessed, without a shred of a Demon Saint’s dignity remaining.

He threw out every bargaining chip he could think of, putting on a masterful performance of betrayal, all just to trade for a sliver of a chance at survival.

However, faced with this tail-wagging, begging Demon Saint, Li Wen’s expression didn’t flicker in the slightest from beginning to end.

His gaze was that of someone looking at a noisy ant.

"Perish."

The single, cold word, like a final judgment, echoed over the wasteland.

He simply raised a single finger calmly and, with a gentle tap, pointed it at the humbly begging Wujing Demon Saint in the air.

BOOM—!

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no dazzlingly brilliant flash of light.

There was only a formless, intangible, yet immense power of the Primordial Spirit that seemed to contain the will of the entire Blue Star.

Like an invisible, celestial hammer, it instantly struck the very source of the Wujing Demon Saint’s soul.

"NO—!!!" The Wujing Demon Saint only had time to let out a blood-curdling shriek filled with endless despair, indignation, and disbelief.

The next moment, the light in his vertical pupils, which were filled with terror and pleading, dimmed and extinguished in an instant, like a candle flame blown out by a fierce gust of wind.

His massive demonic body suddenly stiffened, losing all signs of life.

Like a leather sack with all its bones removed, it fell limply from the sky.

A Demon Saint of his generation, one who had hidden on Blue Star for over a hundred years, had been unable to even put up a decent fight.

And so, above this barren Gobi, his soul was utterly annihilated, and he fell completely.

Li Wen watched the massive demonic corpse fall with a blank expression, then made a beckoning gesture.

An invisible force steadily pulled the Wujing Demon Saint’s soulless shell, along with the storage space he carried on him, over to his hand.

Without even a glance, he casually put it away.

After sweeping his gaze over the silent wasteland, Li Wen raised his hand again and made a gentle slash in the empty air.

The faint golden spatial rift opened silently. He stepped into it, and his figure vanished without a trace.

The vast wasteland returned to a deathly silence.

Only the spatial ripples, not yet fully subsided, silently told the tale of the brief but deadly hunt that had just occurred.

...

Annihilating the Wujing Demon Saint did not quell the killing intent in Li Wen’s heart.

The cancerous tumors festering beneath Blue Star’s surface were not just the hidden members of the Demon Race, but also that group of ’Shadow’ traitors who had betrayed their own bloodline to become the Demon Race’s willing pawns!

Their existence was even more nauseating than that of the Demon Race.

His consciousness sank into the control core of Blue Star, and the entire planet’s network appeared before his eyes in perfect detail.

His powerful Perception Power, like the most precise of scanners, instantly covered the entire globe.

It precisely sifted for the unique, faint demonic aura that came from cultivating the Demon Race’s techniques.

Soon, a set of coordinates was locked onto—an old, long-abandoned urban district far from any major city.

With a slight shift in his thoughts, Li Wen’s consciousness instantly descended upon that area.

The scene that appeared before his "eyes" was not the desolate wasteland he had imagined. Instead, it exuded a tenacious yet suppressed vitality.

Amidst the crumbling ruins, structures had been crudely reinforced and partitioned into homes that barely offered shelter from the elements.

Rusted pipes were exposed to the open air. Long lines formed at a few public water collection points, where people carefully collected dripping, murky water in buckets and basins.

There was no stable power supply, only a few scattered solar panels struggling to provide faint illumination.

When night fell, most of the area would be plunged into darkness.

The air was filled with the smell of dampness, mold, and the faint, sour odor of chronic malnutrition.

Figures on the street were sparse. Everyone moved with hurried steps.

Their eyes darted around warily, scanning their surroundings and the sky, as if danger could descend at any moment.

The children didn’t play or laugh. Most walked quietly beside the adults, their eyes holding a caution that belied their age.

In a corner, outside a simple shack built from scrap metal and torn cloth, someone was tending a small fire with collected twigs.

Over it, they were roasting some unknown food, clearly not enough to be a full meal.

The wind whistled through a broken window frame, making a whimpering sound that caused nearby people to shrink back nervously.

The people living here were those who couldn’t afford the exorbitant fees to move into the major cities, or those who couldn’t bear to leave their homeland, or who feared that the dense populations of big cities made them easier targets for the Demon Race. For various reasons, they had chosen to remain in this corner of the world, forgotten by mainstream society.

They lived with extreme caution, like ants walking along the edge of a cliff, where any slight disturbance could spell utter disaster.

As Li Wen watched all this, an indescribable feeling of heaviness and sorrow welled up in his heart.

These were his kinsmen, people of the Human Race who should have been enjoying peace and tranquility.

They were enduring hardships they should never have had to face, struggling to survive in the cracks of despair.

’This kind of life... this life of constant fear, of never knowing if you’ll see tomorrow...’

’But... it’s about to end.’

A low sigh, audible only to himself, echoed in his sea of consciousness, carrying with it an ironclad resolve.