Jared let the aura of Human Immortal Realm Level Five seep from his pores, an insignificant ripple beside the Heavenly Immortal titans already trading blows.
A few blood-mad cultivators glanced his way, sensed only a low-level opponent, and sneered before charging after richer prey. *Good… The harder they fight, the better for me.*
Jared sneered inwardly. In that stolen calm, he circulated the Ninefold Pill’s medicine, steadying his freshly mended core while studying the four stone lions and the formation they powered.
Sharp-eyed cultivators finally spotted him crouched there and could not resist a barb.
“Hey, kid hiding in the corner, Human Immortal Realm Level Five, and you dare wade into this mess? Courting death, aren’t you?!”
“Run home, little whelp! This place isn’t for the likes of you!”
“Useless trash, your face alone offends me!”
Jared did not so much as lift an eyelid; the insults flew past like bees that had lost their stingers.
Most of his focus drifted inward, tracing the faint thread that bound the draconic essence on his chest to the distant tower.
In his sea of consciousness, the Vermilion Demon Lord gave a rasping laugh. “Idiots, all of them. Death is a breath away, yet they remain blind. You, boy, you are calm.”
Jared answered the ancient voice without moving his lips. “Arguing with fools wastes air. Let the sandpiper and the clam bleed each other dry, then the fisherman profits. Either they cripple themselves, or… I learn how to enter.”
Heat surged behind his sternum; the draconic essence burned hotter, as though an unseen corridor now linked it to the tower’s heart.
The four stone lions responded, the spatial pressure they exuded softening around him, less a barrier now, almost inviting. So the slaughter raged on for nearly an hour, a storm that bought Jared every precious second he needed.
The gorge reeked of spent power. Corpses, shattered blades, and discarded talismans littered the broken earth, while the few still breathing, regardless of banner or creed, clutched bleeding wounds and swayed on their feet.
Even those lofty cultivators of the Heavenly Immortal Realm, once considered untouchable pillars, now gasped for air, faces chalk-white after trading strike for strike until their reserves ran dry.
Above them, the protective array around the tower continued to hold, yet every fresh impact sent violent rings of light skating across its surface like ripples across a storm-tossed lake.
Exhaustion chained every combatant in place. Swords hovered, spells flickered half-formed, and war-scarred eyes measured one another, each mind racing to solve the same question: how, at last, to break that stubborn array?
That was the moment Jared moved.
He sprang forward like a leopard loosed from its blind, his outline thinning to a faint blur that almost melted into the air itself. Rather than charging straight for the gate, he traced an elegant, unknowable curve, circling the four stone lions in a single breath.
As he skimmed past, the lions’ eyes gleamed with ghostly light. The invisible barrier, so merciless a moment ago, parted for him with the soft hush of water splitting for a diving swan.
“Huh? What’s that kid doing?”
“How did he get that close to the array?”
“No, he’s going in!”
A hoarse voice finally understood the danger and tore at the air with a roar of mingled fury and alarm.
It was too late. Jared’s figure flickered once at the tower’s gate, then vanished, like a raindrop sinking into the sea, leaving nothing but silence where he had stood.
The barrier snapped shut an instant later, catching a flurry of hastily cast spells and pinning them harmlessly outside, sparks sliding down its flawless face.
The battlefield froze. Every gaze locked on the sealed doors of the tower and the four stone lions that still radiated silent, chilling authority.
That nobody, dismissed as mere filler, a cultivator only at Human Immortal Realm Level Five, had walked inside as though the tower itself had invited him.
“How in the realms did he pull that off?”
“Did he find a flaw in the formation?”
“D*mn it! We spill blood for hours, and a gnat reaps the prize!”
“When he comes out, we’ll tear him limb from limb!” Anger, regret, and raw jealousy echoed through Nullrift Gorge, but rage was all they had left; the tower offered them no other answer.
