“Next stop, Greenwood Sect. I want every shard of their ten-millennium Spirit-Nurturing Tree,” Jared said, his voice quiet yet sharp enough to draw blood.
The Draconian army arrived like a summer squall and departed just as quickly, leaving the Netherfrost Sect in smoking silence. Their radiant, crimson-robed sect master stood amid broken pillars, her expression a tangle of humiliation, lingering dread, and, though she would never admit it, relief.
At the very least, the sect still stood, and her people still breathed. Across the Ninefold Heavens, those uneasy breaths soon morphed into open panic.
Jared’s legion marched as an iron flood, unstoppable and unhurried, drowning one skybound realm after another in its wake.
They descended upon sects, ancient citadels, and hidden sanctuaries alike, cracking gates, toppling wards, and leaving the taste of dragon fire in every breeze.
Greenwood Sect chose courtesy. Though their master bled at the mouth, handing over three segments of the Spirit-Nurturing Tree, recent memories of the Skyfiend and Netherfrost disasters kept him humble.
True to his word, Jared spared them. He even traced a fingertip through their sect defense formation, pointing out hairline flaws the elders had never seen.
Relief washed through the mountain like summer rain; grateful disciples knelt until their robes soaked through.
By contrast, the Hundred Herb Pavilion tried to stall, pressing forward a mere five-thousand-year Rebirth Herb as if it might fool a dragon.
Coall slammed one taloned paw through their gate plaque; dragon breath scorched half their medicinal mountain. The pavilion master scrambled through ash and ember, thrusting his entire trove of ten-millennium Rebirth Herb stamens into Jared’s waiting hand.
Then there were the obstinate, Blaze Soul Sect, whose creed rang, “While the Soul Stele stands, the sect endures!”
They refused to surrender the monument that anchored their lineage.
Jared did not hesitate. His order cut through the wind like a falling blade. “Kill…”
The Draconian army surged forward.
Within the time it took a single incense stick to burn, a millennia-old mountain gate lay in shards, its disciples scattered as corpses and cinders.
The Soul Stele was torn from its altar, and the proud Blaze Soul Sect became nothing more than smoldering rubble.
Word raced outward, faster than sound on dragon wings. Every faction beneath the Ninefold Heaven shuddered.
Jared’s will, branded in dragon flame, seared itself into the mind of every patriarch and matriarch from cloud-tipped peak to sunken marsh.
“Serve me and prosper. Defy me and vanish!”
It was no slogan anymore. It was marrow-deep reality, dripping crimson.
Vault doors groaned open across the skies. Centuries-hoarded treasures were hauled into daylight by shaking hands, offered up in hopes the calamity might pass them by.
Yet in shadowed chambers, anxious whispers intertwined. Alliances formed, schemes unfurled, only to crumble the moment their planners measured themselves against that remorseless, sky-darkening power.
In the face of such absolute might, every coalition felt as fragile as paper on a funeral pyre.
Jared barely spared a thought for the whirlpools of intrigue swirling behind him. To him, every stratagem, every whispered conspiracy, melted like frost beneath the noonday sun whenever true, unquestionable might stepped onto the field.
He advanced without pause, sweeping aside resistance the way a tidal wave shears through driftwood, gathering trophies, resources, and territory with the practiced ease of a reaper harvesting ripened grain.
***
Deep within the hovering Bloodsoul Orb, the soul fire of the Vermilion Demon Lord flared brighter than ever. Each fresh offering of Nascence Soul Liquid caused the flame to thicken, solidify, and, most unsettling of all, pulse with a faint, unmistakable throb of life.
Yet even amid conquest, he honored his word. Jared had promised Sylvia, and Jared’s promises were iron.
He chose Skyreach Cliff, an ancient sanctuary said to have once pinned the mortal realm to the celestial realm, as her foundation. The cliff face bristled with raw energy, its ledges knife-edged, its summit lost in swirling cloud.
First, he expelled the demon brood that had squatted there, then ordered every newly subjugated sect to send workers, stonecutters, and spirit-smiths. Hammers rang, runes glittered, and a new Heaven Gate Sect began to rise, unshakeable, resplendent, worthy of Sylvia’s future throne.
Across the Ninefold Heaven, mountains, palaces, and entire dynasties quaked beneath Jared’s will. Some knelt, some crumbled, but all felt the pressure.
Rivers of treasure—ore, pills, arcane tomes—flowed toward his banners like a hundred tributaries feeding a single sea. Fed by this abundance and tempered by constant battle, the Draconian army grew deadlier by the hour, its collective aura now a stormfront of scaled fury.
Nor did he forget his comrades in the distant Nethergate Sect. Couriers streaked eastward with crates of spirit crystals and healing elixirs, ensuring Zevon and the others could leverage their Pentacarna Tower’s time-dilation without ever running dry.
With those matters settled, Jared mounted a dragon and led the Draconians to the final holdout among the great sects: the Myriad Arts Sect, the last bastion whose ancestor statue still stood and whose elders had yet to bow.
Revered as the cradle of magecraft, the Myriad Arts Sect enshrined a milky-white effigy said to contain a sliver of its founder’s soul. Their prestige ranked just below the notorious Skyfiend Sect and comfortably above Nethergate Sect.
