The Weird Tide Beckons Westward

The Heavenly Sword stood by the incense burner, flicking black pus and blood off its blade with a casual swing, a grin spreading across its face.

"First one."

Second, third, fourth—more and more aberrations surfaced from the depths of the South Sea, surging wildly toward the tiny island.

Level six, level seven, even level eight—every aberration that caught the scent of the Soul-Luring Incense lost all reason. They no longer heeded the commands of higher-ranked aberrations, no longer cared about the living aura emanating from the shore. Only one thought burned in their minds: reach that island, find the source of the scent.

Within less than an hour, over ten thousand aberrations had gathered on the sea surface around the island.

They thrashed, bit, and devoured one another—not an organized assault, but a frenzied, chaotic, self-destructive riot.

The Soul-Luring Incense robbed them of their senses while simultaneously driving them into a savagery so intense that they attacked even their own kind.

"Almost there." Wang Hao stood atop the island's highest rock, overlooking the seething black tide writhing across the water.

Behind him stood over a hundred Spirit-Sovereign realm experts, and beneath their feet were pre-arranged rune arrays—not the complex formations like the Ninefold Aberration-Slaying Array that required massive quantities of spirit stones and talismans, but a simple, crude array specifically designed for dense targets.

The simplified Aberration-Slaying Array.

The principle was simple: compress spirit energy from spirit stones to the extreme, then release it all at once, forming a massive area-of-effect spiritual shockwave.

Spirit energy naturally countered aberrations—low-tier aberrations caught in the shockwave would be purified outright, and even high-tier ones would suffer severe damage.

The downside was obvious: it required an enormous amount of spirit energy to effectively harm a level eight aberration, and compressing that much energy took at least the time of one incense stick to prepare—in a real battle, that was enough time for aberrations to storm the island and tear everyone apart.

But today was different. The Soul-Luring Incense had driven the aberrations mad; they wouldn't attack Wang Hao and his men, only chase the incense burner in a frenzy.

The burner sat at the island's highest point. Wang Hao and the Spirit-Sovereign experts stood right around it, yet the aberrations paid them no mind—they only swirled, bit, and slaughtered each other around the burner's perimeter.

"Activate the array," Wang Hao commanded.

Over a hundred Spirit-Sovereign experts simultaneously channeled power into the rune arrays beneath their feet. The arrays lit up with a deep blue glow, light surging from every formation and converging at a central point above the island.

Spirit energy compression began.

The aberrations on the sea sensed the fluctuation of spirit energy, but they only chased the incense burner more frantically—not a single one noticed the death-light condensing in the sky above.

One incense stick's time later, compression was complete.

A sphere of deep blue light, a hundred zhang in diameter, hung in the sky, its surface crackling with devastating spirit energy fluctuations—so powerful that the ambient spiritual energy of heaven and earth within a hundred li began to destabilize.

"Release."

The sphere fell.

The blue light detonated above the island, like a blue sun rising over the open sea. The radiance was so blinding that even the garrison soldiers on the town's southern wall, tens of li away, had to shut their eyes.

The shockwave expanded in all directions from the sphere's center, and wherever it passed, the aberrations on the sea dissolved like frost beneath the morning sun.

Level six aberrations vaporized instantly in the wave's path; level seven bodies were torn into shreds; level eight aberrations thrashed in agony as countless hairline fractures crawled across their forms.

The shockwave lasted a full ten breaths.

When the light faded, the sea around the island was empty.

The once-dense tide of aberrations was gone, leaving only fragments of their remains floating on water stained black with pus and blood. But the aberrations themselves—the thousands upon thousands of frenzied, rabid monsters—had all been reduced to nothing in the blast.

Only three level eight aberrations remained alive.

Their bodies were riddled with wounds torn open by the shockwave, black pus oozing from every gash, their auras depleted by at least half.

But they didn't flee—the Soul-Luring Incense still burned, still drew them, still made them claw desperately toward the burner.

"Sword-bitch, clean up," Wang Hao said, patting the Heavenly Sword's scabbard.

The Heavenly Sword materialized into human form. Three slashes of black sword-light crossed the sea.

All three level eight aberrations had their cores shattered in the same instant. Their massive bodies crashed down, hurling columns of black water skyward across the surface.

The Heavenly Sword reached out, snatched all three cores from the air, and without even a glance, shoved them into his mouth.

Crunch, crunch.

"Not bad. Level eight tastes better than last time. Probably because the shockwave crippled them first—the aberration energy in their cores got partially purified by the spirit energy, so it's not as gamey."

Wang Hao's mouth twitched. "You're picky about flavor when you eat?"

"Of course. I rank one hundred and fourteenth among high-tier mystic weapons—I'm not some scrap metal picked up off the roadside."

"...Say one more word and I'll seal your mouth shut."

"Can you, though?"

Wang Hao ignored him and turned his gaze toward the direction of the town's southern wall.

The garrison soldiers were cheering.

They had seen the blue sun rise over the sea, seen the aberration tide vanish in its wake, seen their emperor standing on the island—over a hundred Spirit-Sovereign experts behind him, a purified stretch of ocean before him.

"Hail the Emperor! Hail Great Xia!" The cries spread from the southern wall to the harbor city, from the harbor city to the coastal county, from the coastal county to the southern capital.

Listening to those cheers, wearing his ever-present dazzling smile, Wang Hao was quietly calculating a different sum.

This wave of the Aberration-Slaying Array's spirit shockwave had consumed an entire fifty billion spirit stones' worth of reserves.

Adding the past five days' expenditures, his spirit stone reserves were down nearly forty percent.

If he fought three more battles on this scale, the reserves would run dry.

He had to think of a cheaper way.

He glanced down at the Soul-Luring Incense in his sleeve.

The burner's incense stick had burned less than half—it had at least three hours left. In three hours, more aberrations would keep coming. But Great Xia no longer had enough spirit stones to fire the array even once more.

"Your Majesty, what's the plan now?" The Demon Lord flew in from the wall and landed on the island, vortex-black eyes heavy with exhaustion. "We don't have enough spirit stones for another array blast."

"No array needed." Wang Hao took the incense from the burner, pinched out the burning tip, and tucked it carefully back into his sleeve. "I've got a new idea."

"What idea?"

Wang Hao didn't answer right away. Instead, he looked south, toward that pitch-black stretch of sea.

That half-tenth-step aberration was out there.

It was recuperating in the deep, driving low-tier aberrations to bleed Great Xia's defenses. It was waiting for the spirit stones to run dry and the soldiers to grow weary, then it would strike in person—devour the five million souls of the southern capital and complete its final evolution.

"Demon Lord," Wang Hao said, "what do you think would happen if I carried the Soul-Luring Incense to the Central Province?"

The Demon Lord froze.

"To the Central Province?"

"That's right." Wang Hao's smile was as radiant as a child who had just thought of a trick to play on someone. "Didn't the Sixteen Holy Lands of the Central Province try to backstab me? They removed the Demon-Suppressing Array, lured the aberrations to the Eastern Wasteland, and let me fight them to mutual destruction. So why can't I lure the aberrations right back to them?"

The Demon Lord's pupils contracted sharply, then slowly dilated.

He understood what Wang Hao meant.

The Aberration-Alluring Incense could draw every aberration within a hundred li.

If Wang Hao brought the incense to the Central Province, lit it, and placed it at the core territory of the Sixteen Holy Lands—

Those aberrations drawn by the incense would surge madly toward the Central Province, toward the mountain gates of the Sixteen Holy Lands, toward those immortal old bastards, the Martial Gods.

And Wang Hao? He would simply stand off in the distance and enjoy the show.

"Your Majesty." The Demon Lord's voice was trembling. "This is—inviting wolves into the house."

"Wolves?" Wang Hao raised an eyebrow. "I'm inviting aberrations. Aberrations aren't wolves. Aberrations have no intelligence, no reasoning, no negotiation. They only follow their instinct to chase the scent of the incense, then crazily attack every living thing around the incense burner."

"Those Martial Gods of the Sixteen Holy Lands are supposed to be so powerful, aren't they? Let them fight. I'd like to see—forty Martial Gods against one Half-Step Tenth-Order Aberration. Who wins, who loses?"

The Demon Lord opened his mouth, wanting to say "Your Majesty, you've lost your mind," but the words died in his throat.

He looked at Wang Hao's brilliant smile, at the ice-cold calculation hidden behind that smile, and suddenly felt—that the most correct decision he'd ever made in his life was signing that merger agreement.

Offend anyone you want—but never offend this emperor.

And the Sixteen Holy Lands of the Central Province were about to pay the price.

Wang Hao's plan unfolded quietly in the lull between aberration surges.

The war council hall at Zhennan Pass blazed with lantern light. Wang Hao sat on a stone chair, a map of the Central Province spread out before him.

Red cinnabar marked the positions of the Sixteen Holy Lands—Chixiao Sacred Land, Heavenly Sword Mountain, Myriad Methods Holy Sect, Danxia Sacred Land, Biluo Palace, Taixu Temple, Star Hall, and so on—sixteen red dots scattered across the Central Province like sixteen nails hammered into the map.

"The effective range of the Aberration-Alluring Incense is a hundred li in all directions." Wang Hao traced circles on the map with his finger. "Within a hundred li of each Holy Land's mountain gate, there are large numbers of low-tier aberrations. The Central Province has been suppressing aberrations with the Demon-Suppressing Array for years, but the array can only suppress, not eliminate. The aberrations are crushed into deep mountains, wild forests, desolate fields, underground caverns—and their numbers are greater than those in the South Sea, not fewer."

"If I lure all these aberrations out, right to the front gates of the Sixteen Holy Lands—"

He didn't finish the sentence, but everyone present understood.

The Demon Lord's black, vortex-like eyes churned with complex light. "Your Majesty, are you certain you want to do this? Luring aberrations into the Central Province won't just destroy the Sixteen Holy Lands. The common folk of the Central Province will also be caught in the chaos—"

"So I won't place the incense right in the center of the Holy Lands' mountain gates." Wang Hao cut him off. "I'll place it on the outer perimeter, far enough from where the common people live. The aberrations will be drawn to the incense, but their first target will be the closest living beings to the burner—which means the outer defense lines of the Sixteen Holy Lands, not ordinary civilians."

"Of course, aberrations won't distinguish between Holy Land disciples and common folk." Wang Hao's voice dropped low. "But once drawn by the incense, aberrations lose all reason and chase the scent purely on instinct. As long as the incense burner's position is chosen well, the aberrations won't actively attack the people—because all their attention is fixed on that burner."

Yue Ji's death-pale eyes flickered with understanding. "Your Majesty wants to—use the aberrations to pin down the forces of the Sixteen Holy Lands?"

"Not just pin down." There was a cold edge in Wang Hao's smile. "I want to make the Sixteen Holy Lands so busy with their own mess that they have no time to trouble me. Li Cangming wants to launch a joint attack in three months? Then I'll make sure he's run off his feet for those three months—wave after wave of aberrations surging at his mountain gate. Will he still have the energy to worry about me?"

He paused, then added: "I'm a fair man. He stabbed me once, so I'll stab him once. To return a favor is only proper."

Silence fell in the war council hall for a moment—and then Xue Wuhen was the first to laugh.