To belong to Jared, Onneas had come to believe that was a kind of blessed state. There had been a time he barely glanced her way. When his needs arose, he would send Isabel to ease them, shrugging it off as beneath his notice.
Now Jared filled her mind until the night air itself smelled of him. She ached for him to favor her the way he favored the others, just once. But she would never dare ask. Shyness chained her tongue, and Jared was already surrounded by women. So, she watched Lyra with wistful eyes.
“You want to be with Jared, too, don’t you?” Lyra’s smile was gentle, almost conspiratorial. “If you like, I’ll carry the message. I know you’re dying to speak, but pride keeps the words locked behind your teeth.”
Women, after all, read one another like open pages.
Even from a field away, Lyra could feel the storm of pheromones that crashed off Onneas whenever Jared’s name surfaced.
She remembered her own first glimpse of him, how her body had turned restless, fevered with wanting. None of them could mock the other; desire leveled every woman the same.
Onneas lowered her eyes, cheeks glowing wine-red. Without another word, she swept a palm through the air, tearing open a glimmering fissure of void and stepping through before the blush cooled.
Flaxseed, standing to one side, whistled under his breath, a grin stretching his weather-lined face.
Why are Jared’s women all so understanding?
They even recruited more companions for him and never tasted a drop of jealousy!
***
Several days later, the stone doors of Pentacarna Tower groaned open, and Jared emerged. He now stood at Human Immortal Realm Level Two, every scrap of stored resource burned to ash inside him.
Lyra and Flaxseed lit up at the sight of his breakthrough, joy flashing across their faces like sunrise over steel.
“While you were secluded, Ms. Dusko came looking for you,” Flaxseed reported. “She said it’s urgent. The moment you stepped out, you were to meet her at the Celestial King Palace.”
Jared’s brow tightened at once. Onneas never traveled from level eight to level five without reason, trouble must be stirring.
“Mr. Flaxseed, stay here for now,” Jared said, voice steady but brisk. “Help Lyra watch over Sword Sect. The instant you discover where your clan‘s lost souls drift, send word and I’ll come.”
He was leaving for level eight, a realm far too perilous for Flaxseed’s current strength.
“Understood. Take care of yourself,” Flaxseed replied, clasping his hands. “If you can recover my people’s souls, wonderful, if not, don’t bleed yourself dry trying. Malevolent Path Hall is monstrously strong, do your best to avoid it.”
Flaxseed’s weathered face tightened with quiet resolve. He could not bear the thought of Jared risking his life yet again on behalf of the Flaxseed clan.
“Even if I stopped investigating, they would still hunt me down,” Jared murmured with a smile, his tone oddly calm, as though he were simply stating the color of the sky.
Turning to Lyra, he spoke with a softness reserved only for her. “Lyra, take care of yourself. If trouble comes knocking, seek out Mr. Flaxseed, he’ll be close.”
By now, Flaxseed’s power had grown so formidable that, within level five, no rival remained.
“You look after yourself, too,” Lyra said, her eyes reflecting equal parts pride and worry. “When you reach level eight, be good to Ms. Dusko. I can see it in her eyes, she cares for you. If it feels right, give her your time… She’s a woman, alone at the top. Loneliness clings to her like frost. She needs a man’s company more than she’ll ever admit.”
Lyra understood all too well that Jared’s departure could stretch into years, perhaps lifetimes, before fate would wind him back to her doorstep.
With Jared gone, she feared the emptiness that would shadow her if no woman stood at his side. That fear drove her blunt honesty.
Caught off guard, Jared blinked, then laughed. “You’re teasing me, Lyra. All right. I’m off…”
Before the final syllable finished echoing, his figure shattered into a streak of gold and vanished, as though the universe itself had whisked him away.
He did not pry open a void passage this time. Instead, he chose the older, harder road, leaping star-field to star-field toward level eight.
After his last brush with a collapsing void passage, he dared not gamble on such passage again.
Moments later, he burst from level five into a velvet sea of stars, each one pulsing like a silent drum in the dark.
“Boy, you truly mean to cross the heavens like this?” The Vermilion Demon Lord’s voice echoed in Jared’s skull, smooth yet threaded with admonition. “A void passage may be dangerous, but tearing through spacetime one layer at a time is far worse.”
The demon lord’s wary counsel rang on inside Jared’s thoughts like a distant bell.
