“They shall receive no mercy. Their lines will be wiped out, their halls ground to dust, their treasures seized. Ninefold Heaven has limped along without order long enough. Obey and flourish. Bend or perish.”
Roar! Hundreds of dragons answered, their chorus a gale that cracked distant peaks. Dragon’s power rolled out in waves, thick with killing intent, declaring to every horizon that a new sovereign had risen.
Coall trembled, every scale on his body quivering in elation. In that instant, he grasped the breadth of Jared’s design.
This was more than vengeance, more than a hunt for rare herbs. It was a tide meant to sweep across Ninefold Heaven. The entire Ninefold Heaven would soon bow beneath Jared’s will.
“Yes, Mr. Chance! Let me lead the vanguard! I will crush every obstacle in your path!” Coall’s voice boomed like a war drum, and flames of fervor blazed inside his golden eyes.
Jared dipped his chin once, the gesture colder and firmer than forged iron.
He had never lusted for a throne. Yet the hour had come, and circumstance itself shoved a crown of storm clouds onto his brow.
Hidden somewhere in the dark was Soul Devourer, forever scheming.
The Draconian army under Jared’s banner devoured resources at a terrifying rate, the Vermilion Demon Lord still needed a new physical body, and Sylvia’s shattered Heaven Gate Sect cried out to be rebuilt.
Every promise, every debt, every lingering threat pointed to a single answer: overwhelming power held in a single, unbreakable fist.
So Jared stopped pretending to be polite. He would seize the entire Ninefold Heaven and make it his personal war chest. Only then, when he finally left this lower world for realms even higher, would the empire in his wake be sealed tight like an iron fortress.
***
Half a day later, the Draconian army had finished licking its wounds. Fresh bloodlust crackled around the ranks as they lifted off, hauling the mountains of loot pillaged from Skyfiend Sect.
This time, their target was not a single enemy. Their orders were simple. Every sect in the Ninefold Heaven that possessed even a drop of Nascence Soul Liquid materials would submit, or burn.
Jared stood on the foremost dragon’s massive head, a slip in hand, listing every ingredient they needed. Eyes narrowed, he surveyed the rivers and ridges sliding beneath like a chessboard already lost.
The first stop lay just ahead: Netherfrost Sect, famed for the thousand-year Nether Flower that bloomed in its glacial tarns.
The sect occupied an enormous, mist-shrouded lake whose ink-black waters exhaled hoarfrost. Every disciple practiced arts steeped in venomous cold.
When the Draconian legion rolled across the sky like a living storm front, the entire Netherfrost Sect froze in collective terror beneath the tangible weight of dragons’ power.
Their sect defense formation sprang up in panic, swirling with ghostly vapors and plates of blue-white ice.
A stunning woman, Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Two, forced a brittle smile and rose to meet Jared, bowing in mid-air. “Esteemed guest, to what do we owe the honor?”
Without wasting a single heartbeat, Jared tossed her the slip. “Deliver ten stalks of Nether Flower at least ten thousand years old, with every last seed intact. Do that, and your sect survives.”
One glance at the list drained all color from her face.
Those Nether Flowers were the Netherfrost Sect’s very foundation. Ten of the oldest would gut almost the entire heritage they had hoarded across millennia—and the seeds were rarer still.
“S-Sir, surely that demand is…” she tried to haggle, voice trembling.
Jared’s eyes cooled a fraction. He never spoke. Beside him, Coall released a single rumble of irritation, a dragon’s growl that felt like a mountain tipping over.
Crack!
The protective shield below was webbed with fractures in an instant. Hundreds of dragons bared a sliver of killing intent that braided together and hung overhead like a glacial guillotine poised above every disciple’s neck.
The sect leader’s composure shattered. Words died in her throat; even her beauty seemed to wilt under that crushing dread.
She harbored no doubt: the next refusal would doom Netherfrost Sect to the same smoking ruin that had once called itself Skyfiend Sect.
“Take them, take everything!” Weeping openly, she spun and screamed for her disciples to empty the treasury at once.
Before absolute power, even the fiercest struggle was no more than a child’s fists thrown at a cliff.
A moment later, ten emerald caskets, chilled from the inside by an ancient frost, were carried to Jared with trembling reverence.
Each box cradled a flawless Nether Flower. Its ebony petals curved like polished onyx, its heart glimmering with a dusky light. Hundreds of fat, midnight-green seeds lay beside the blooms, cold as river stones.
Jared inspected the harvest with a single sweep of his gaze, shut the lead casket, and turned away without a vestige of sentiment.
