Warmth erupted inside him, a tidal river both gentle and immense, rushing through limbs, bones, and marrow. Pure medicinal power stitched torn meridians, mended bruised organs, even brushed his weary soul with a balm of light.
Mist-thick aura pooled through the cavern; Jared’s aura swelled, forging itself into something dense and inexorable.
Cuts knitted shut, pallor blossomed into color, and the once-ragged cadence of his breath steadied like a drum at parade. Power climbed higher still, brushing the threshold of Human Immortal Realm Level Five.
Several days later, he opened his eyes. They shone like tempered steel. He closed a fist, the cave quaked. A thin, wintry smile curved his lips.
“Time to move…”
He raised the sect token, slid his spiritual sense inside, and at once sensed a mountain gate leagues away, drowned in sinister miasma.
With a flex of will he became a streak of light, vanishing toward the Mystic Fiend Sect, silent, swift, and utterly unstoppable.
***
The Mystic Fiend Sect squatted in a sun-starved canyon where every buried vein of yin converged.
Gray-black clouds, thick with malice, clung to the peaks year-round, dripping the scent of rot and an everlasting chill into the air.
Disciples patrolled the grounds with predatory stares, thin coils of ghostly vapor snaking around their shoulders like pet vipers. Yet Jared drifted through the array as though it were morning mist, rising until he hovered high above the sect’s dark, crooked halls.
He stopped mid-sky and looked down, eyes cold, then unshackled his aura. A formless mountain of pressure plummeted.
Boom!
Tiles shattered, weak cultivators collapsed like puppets with cut strings, and the entire Mystic Fiend Sect erupted into frantic screams.
“Who dares violate the Mystic Fiend Sect!”
Several sharp auras burst from the inner compound.
Brendan Nightshade and four elders, each at the opening tier of the Heavenly Immortal Realm, rose in a tight wedge.
Brendan’s face was bloodless, his gaze poisonous.
Seeing only one intruder, and sensing he was merely Human Immortal Realm Level Five, they exhaled in relief, then burned with anger at being looked down.
“Boy, name yourself!” Brendan barked, signaling his elders to fan out and encircle the lone figure.
Jared regarded them the way one might observe ants. Without a word, he produced the token, taken from the woman he had met earlier, and let it tumble toward the courtyard.
The token landed with a metallic clang at Brendan’s feet.
Brendan glanced down and stiffened. “That is… Lilac‘s token. What have you done with her?!”
Lilac had been a favored inner sect disciple.
“I killed her.” Jared’s tone was flat, as though announcing he had swatted a fly.
“You killed my disciple?” An elderly crone behind Brendan shrieked, her voice slicing the air. Lilac had been her apprentice.
“Sir, kill him, avenge my Lilac!”
Brendan’s eyes blazed. “Why slaughter a disciple of our sect?”
“She had a sharp tongue,” Jared said, his voice as calm as falling snow. “I dragged her back from the brink, yet she repaid me with mockery and spite, so I ended her. Ending her was no harder than crushing an ant.”
Brendan‘s eyes flashed with murderous frost. “Very well… A mere Human Immortal Realm Level Five dares to slaughter my disciple and then stroll through my gates? Today I shall rip out your soul, refine your spirit, and condemn you to eternal misery. Form the array!”
At once, the attending elders slid to the four cardinal points.
Shadows leaked from their robes like ink in water, swirling together until a towering Ghastly Array, its surface a screaming phantom mask, lunged toward Jared, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow a mountain.
Brendan himself joined the assault. He swung a bone staff wreathed in wailing green phantoms; the weapon burst into a sickly emerald streak and speared straight for Jared’s brow as if to nail his soul in place.
