The Grand Discussion Assembly had been organized to find a suitor for Qu Huashang. Every warrior who came to participate harbored at least a sliver of hope—that they might claim the top spot and win the beauty's hand.
Here they were, ready to fight tooth and nail for that chance, only to watch Qu Huashang throw herself into the arms of one of the participants, looking every bit like a woman who had already given her heart away.
Such feelings were impossible to put into words. In that moment, quite a few people stared at Yang Kai with eyes full of hostility and rage. But even more simply averted their gaze, turning away and charging onto the Rainbow Bridge to be transported into the Sin Star.
"Junior Brother, be careful!" Qu Huashang didn't linger in the embrace. She quickly let go, took two steps back, and gave Yang Kai a wink.
Yang Kai nodded slightly, turned around, and strode toward the Rainbow Bridge.
"Senior Brother Yang, wait for me!" Lu Jing had finally snapped out of his daze and hurried to catch up with Yang Kai's pace, channeling his own power to wrap around the latter.
Although Yang Kai noticed the maneuver, he didn't resist. Once both of them set foot on the Rainbow Bridge, a dizzying sensation washed over him, and in the next instant his vision blurred—he had been transported to an entirely different world.
Enormous pressure crushed in from every direction. Yang Kai's body sank involuntarily, and he felt as though his own Small Universe had been sealed, its power circulating sluggishly.
"Forgive me, Senior Brother Yang—the teleportation to the Sin Star is randomized. If I hadn't done that, we would have been scattered, and finding you afterward would have been nearly impossible." Lu Jing explained his earlier action.
A look of surprise crossed Yang Kai's face. "This place… is rather peculiar!"
Lu Jing said, "Please be patient, Senior Brother. This Sin Star…"
He was about to explain further when a shrill scream suddenly pierced the air nearby. He turned to look and saw, in a patch of grass not far away, a burly man straddling a woman, snickering under his breath as his hands tore recklessly at her clothing. Her porcelain-white skin was exposed in large swaths, until only a thin layer of intimate undergarments remained to cover the most vital areas.
The woman kicked and punched, weeping and begging for mercy, but it only made the man more frenzied, his movements growing ever rougher.
"Stop! To commit such a vile act in broad daylight!" Lu Jing bellowed, his blood boiling with righteous fury.
He hadn't expected that the very first thing he and Yang Kai would see upon arriving on the Sin Star would be such a revolting scene.
The shout startled the man, who had been just about to have his way. He turned his head, looked Lu Jing up and down, and bared his teeth in a savage grin. "Where'd this little brat come from, daring to ruin my fun? If you don't want to die, get lost!"
Lu Jing seethed. "The people of the Sin Star really are as vicious as they're rumored to be. Since I've seen it with my own eyes, I won't let you off." As he spoke, he reached out and grasped at the void—a longsword materialized in his palm—and he thrust it straight at the man.
The power of his Small Universe surged. The man's expression shifted. "Fourth-Order Open Heaven?"
His face turned grave. He was only Third-Order. This kid who had just appeared out of nowhere was Fourth-Order—he couldn't afford to be careless. Abandoning the woman beneath him, he hastily mobilized his World Force, and the two clashed fiercely.
Yang Kai glanced over at the fight but didn't pay it much more attention. One was Third-Order, the other Fourth-Order—there was no suspense in a battle like that. Lu Jing might not amount to much in his eyes, but a Fourth-Order Open Heaven cultivator was still a mid-tier powerhouse, with a solid foothold in the Three Thousand Worlds.
He lowered his gaze to the jade slip in his hand and immersed his consciousness in it, examining its contents carefully.
This jade slip was precisely what Qu Huashang had secretly slipped to him during the earlier embrace. Yang Kai had no idea what information it contained, but given that Qu Huashang had been willing to throw caution to the wind at the Grand Discussion Assembly—sacrificing her own reputation just to pass it to him—it had to be of paramount importance.
Over there, the battle between Lu Jing and the burly man was nearing its end. With the gap in their ranks, Lu Jing held an overwhelming advantage. In barely a dozen breaths, the man had been beaten into utter helplessness. Blade after blade of sword light flashed, carving deep gashes across his body until he was drenched in blood.
Terrified, the burly man immediately begged for mercy.
A flicker of hesitation crossed Lu Jing's eyes, but it quickly solidified into resolve. "Those who prey on the weak deserve death!" He flicked his longsword, and a curtain of sword light descended upon the man.
The light faded. Lu Jing snorted softly and flicked the blood from his blade. The burly man stood frozen in place, unmoving.
A breeze swept past. The man's body toppled like a stack of wooden blocks, crashing apart into a heap of bloody fragments.
Lu Jing glanced—whether intentionally or not—toward Yang Kai, seemingly wanting to show that he wasn't entirely useless. But Yang Kai was still bent over the jade slip, examining it closely, and Lu Jing's expression fell with disappointment.
After the man died, a beam of pitch-black light suddenly emanated from one of his body fragments. It split in two—one portion surged into the golden band on Lu Jing's wrist, the other shot into the golden band on Yang Kai's wrist nearby.
"Oh?" Lu Jing exclaimed in surprise. "So this is how our scores are recorded?"
He had heard Xu Linggong explain earlier that anyone who killed a criminal would receive a share of the points as long as a participant was nearby. He hadn't quite understood how the sharing worked before, but after witnessing what just happened, it all made sense.
He examined the golden band on his wrist and noticed that a section of the previously blank surface had been slightly darkened—part of what appeared to be a pattern. But because the score he had earned was so meager, the pattern hadn't fully revealed itself.
There was no time to dwell on it. He sheathed his sword and walked over to the woman. "Are you alright, miss?"
The woman was nearly bare, with only a few scraps of lacy undergarment left to cover her. Her skin, white as mutton-fat jade, gleamed with a porcelain-like luster. She curled up in place, trembling from head to foot, and as she looked at Lu Jing approaching her, her eyes were filled with sheer terror. She shook her head over and over, crying out, "No, no, please…"