Vessel of Worlds

Andy committed the barren island and the hidden cave's entrance firmly to memory, then departed and began a new round of beast hunting.

Across those waters, hardly a single deserted island escaped Andy's footprints.

Five years later, he returned to Island Five with a full harvest.

In those five years he had slain beasts of ranks three through five numbering in the thousands—including several dozen species absent from the texts, which threw him into brief confusion each time before he found their weaknesses and cut them down one by one.

Not everything went smoothly. Some beasts had ferociously unyielding temperaments and, the moment they came under heavy attack, self-destructed on the spot. Andy gained neither core nor materials from these—and the tremendous force of their self-destruction cost him formations and puppets besides.

Fortunately he himself rarely faced the beasts directly; caught in such a blast, he could hardly have escaped grave injury.

Twice, too, he finally encountered rank-six beasts. On those occasions all he could do was use the time his puppets and formations bought to swiftly strike and pack away the Heavenly Fragrance Beguiling Formation, abandon a few formations and puppets to delay the beast—and flee for his life.

So after five years, though Andy's gains were enormous, the better part of his formations and puppets had been lost. Mercifully, the Heavenly Fragrance Beguiling Formation had come through intact—everything else could be repurchased or reforged in time.

A thousand-odd beast cores filled more than a hundred wooden boxes, and the beast materials were beyond counting.

His storage pouches being finite, toward the end Andy stopped bothering with common rank-three and rank-four materials entirely, destroying them outright and keeping only what was rare or greatly useful. Even so, what remained was a staggering hoard.

As Andy neared Island Five, the cultivators he inevitably met along the way brought him a measure of trouble.

Perhaps because both storage pouches at his waist bulged so conspicuously, two parties in succession developed designs on him.

The first was a late-stage Foundation Establishment old man who didn't know death when he saw it—one look at Andy's mid-stage cultivation and murder-for-treasure bloomed in his heart.

Andy couldn't be bothered with him and simply fled at the Wind-Treader Dragon's full speed. But as luck had it, the old man's flying artifact was no slouch either, and he clung to the pursuit.

After thousands of kilometers failed to shake him, Andy's patience snapped. He set down on a deserted island, waited for the old man to catch up, deployed the Blazing Heaven Blade outright, annihilated him in a single thunderbolt stroke—and pocketed his storage pouch for the trouble.

The second party was a small team of three Foundation Establishment cultivators, who took an equally keen interest in the lone traveler. The three jointly piloted an iron-winged flying artifact whose speed exceeded even the Wind-Treader Dragon's.

Seeing himself outnumbered, unable to shake them, and losing ground by the moment, Andy again chose a small island and set down.

But this time his predicament was far thornier. If he brought out the Blazing Heaven Blade and failed to kill all three at once, word that he possessed high-grade spirit stones and a high-grade spirit tool would run on its own legs—and then every Core Formation old monster in the seas would take a burning interest in him.

Without certainty of killing all three, he could only resort to weapons more conventional—less "hair-raising."

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In one breath he deployed all thirteen flying needles, arraying them into a needle formation of formidable menace.

Only after breaking through to mid-stage Foundation Establishment, with the great growth in his spiritual sense, had he finally become able to control all thirteen Red Cloud Needles at once.

And with all thirteen deployed together, he could lay down the Cloud-Piercing Needle Formation—needles attacking in relays, darting left and flickering right, impossible to guard against.

The power Andy now displayed with the needles was several times what it had been at early-stage.

Even at early-stage, a handful of needles had let him match the mid-stage Xun San. Now, with the full Cloud-Piercing Needle Formation deployed against two mid-stage cultivators and one late-stage, he yielded no ground at all.

Seeing their quarry's strength—that three together could gain no advantage, and that one of them, failing to fend off the needles' chain attacks, had taken no light wound—fear crept into them. In the end the three gave Andy up and departed in bitter resentment.

Andy, wanting no further complications, let them flee before his eyes.

Their faces and voices, of course, he engraved in memory. Should he meet those three again in the right circumstances, he would not neglect to remove them in passing.

Whether by good luck or because the beast tide had not come early after all, he met not a single Core Formation cultivator the entire way.

Otherwise, in open battle with a Core Formation senior—even with every card played—escaping with his life would be fortune enough, never mind killing the man; and his secrets would inevitably be laid bare.

Still, so long as he kept his head down, why would a Core Formation senior fix his designs on a mere mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator?

After a journey of strung nerves and constant care, Andy at last reached Island Five and let out a long breath.

Here, under the vast shadow of the Outer Sea Merchant Alliance, even Core Formation cultivators dared not kill for treasure.

Following his usual practice, he exchanged some beast cores on the island—trading surplus cores of one kind for the kinds his alchemy required, settling the difference in stones.

With his reserves he could simply have bought them outright, of course—but deploying that many spirit stones at once would draw too much notice. Exchange was by far the quieter path.

Even so, he dared not exchange too many cores in a single visit.

Then he went to a materials shop and exchanged for the beast materials he needed in the same fashion.

From the shopkeeper, his inquiries confirmed it: in recent years, beast density in the waters around Island Five had shown no marked change. The rumored beast tide had been delayed for reasons unknown—in any case, no eruption was possible within the coming decades. The waters around the other Outer Star Sea islands told the same story.

Core Formation cultivators had accordingly all but vanished from Island Five, hunting instead around Island Six. For an early-stage Core Formation cultivator, only beasts of rank five and above held any real value; rank-threes and rank-fours were scarcely worth the effort.

Walking through the market, Andy suddenly caught sight of a familiar slender figure—and cried out in utter astonishment: "Fairy Hongchen!"

"Fifth Brother! You're alive after all—thank heavens!" At the sight of Andy, the girl's face lit with wild joy.

Whether through her cultivation technique or beauty-preserving pills, though a dozen-odd years had passed, her face was unchanged—still that of a girl of eighteen or nineteen. But a careful look found a shade of weathering in her eyes. Even when she smiled with open delight, Andy sensed a thread of sorrow that would not disperse.

It was a far cry from the vivid, radiant girl of more than a decade ago. Much, clearly, had happened to her in the years between.

"Fifth Brother—have you seen Big Brother Xi? Is he well?" she asked urgently, joy bright on her face. But in those expectant eyes lurked a worry she could not hide—the fear of hearing the one answer she could not bear.

At that expression, Andy sighed inwardly. How could he not understand her heart? Twenty years ago he had already seen it: this girl's feelings for Xi Feng ran root-deep. She had hidden them fiercely, but after years in close company, even the dullest observer would have understood. Xi Feng in those days, though, had seemed to fix his whole heart on the great matter of Core Formation, deaf and blind to romance, treating the girl only ever as a younger sister.

Who could have thought that after nearly twenty years her devotion would stand unchanged—that the raw anxiety in her voice at Xi Feng's name would cut so hard at Andy, who knew exactly what had become of him?

"Big Brother Xi? No—I haven't seen him. His strength is a full cut above ours; he's surely fine," Andy said, deflecting.

Then he turned the subject. "Fairy Hongchen, what are you doing on Island Five alone? Hunting beasts as well?"

"I... ah." The girl gave a long sigh, her brow knitting, and said slowly: "The truth is—since I escaped the Demon Gate cultivators eighteen years ago, I have never once returned to the Inner Star Sea."

"Never went back? You mean—you've been waiting here for Big Brother Xi all this time?" Andy was stunned. Her devotion ran beyond anything he had imagined.