Beneath that light, the patriarch of Skyfiend Sect felt smaller than a mite staring up at a sky-piercing pillar. No — Smaller than dust.
The gulf between their essences was absolute. His soul body, forged by ten millennia of forbidden rites, sizzled beneath the brilliance, melting like frost at noon. Primal, wordless terror drowned every trace of greed and madness he had ever known.
“No, no! What is this? What unfathomable artifact is that? Mercy, Lord, have mercy!” His new scream made the earlier howl sound like a sigh, high enough to shatter crystal.
Seizing a body, rising again—such dreams vanished. Only the raw fear of oblivion remained. He curled into a tiny knot, shrinking from the light, his voice fluttering like a dying flame in the wind.
“S-Sir, I was blind! Spare me. I will serve you forever—hound, slave, anything—only let this wretched spark live!”
Jared’s will condensed above the inner sea, a tall figure carved from starlight, his gaze winter-cold as it rested on the trembling blot below.
“Begging now, are you? Too late…”
“No! There is still time, sir! I possess secrets of the ancient heavens, hidden hoards across Level Nine, treasures beyond imagination. Hear me out!” Panic clawed at every word; the specter flung promises like coins, praying one might purchase its life.
“You will speak only when prompted. Now tell me: this blood pearl. What exactly is it?”
Sensing Jared’s killing intent ease by the faintest breath, the shredded soul clutched that sliver of hope the way a drowning man clings to drifting wood in a black, endless sea.
“Sir, forgive my haste! The gem is called the Myriad-Blood Soul Orb. It is an artifact from ages so old that the constellations have shifted since its forging. Its greatest miracle? It nurtures fragmented souls—yes, even the thinnest shred of consciousness—and, when the time is ripe, forges a fresh, perfectly attuned body around that soul!”
“A new body?” Jared asked, his voice low, disbelief flickering across his eyes like lightning behind a cloud.
A single heartbeat later, the thought struck Jared so hard it rang in his skull.
*If that is true, the boundaries of death itself might be bent…*
“Yes! Think of it: if a broken spirit is not yet erased, if even one spark of its essence remains, it can enter the orb, drink deep of Nascence Soul Liquid, and slumber. As the elixir gathers strength, the liquid becomes the clay, the orb the kiln, and out of that furnace arises a new vessel of flesh and blood. Limitless potential. An immaculate rebirth!”
“Nascence Soul Liquid… you mentioned that term. What is it exactly, and where can one find it?”
The patriarch dared not hide anything from Jared.
“The elixir is no gift of nature,” he said, voice trembling like dry reeds. “It must be refined, drawn from treasures steeped in primal soul power. The heartwood of a ten-thousand-year Spirit-Nurturing Tree, the stamens of a Rebirth Herb, the seeds of a Nether-Lotus, and, yes, even the faith-laden soul force crystallized inside the ancestral monuments and statues long venerated by the great sects…”
“These relics hold the purest, most thunderous reservoirs of soul energy. But every one of those materials is a sect’s crown jewel, the marrow of its legacy. Especially those ancestral monuments; they bear an entire lineage’s karmic fortune. To seize them, you would have to storm the gates and wrest them away by force.”
The confession made Jared’s eyes flare with a cold, calculating light, as though a silent map of conquest unfolded behind his gaze.
In that instant, he grasped the true worth of the Myriad-Blood Soul Orb, and finally understood how this tattered ghost of a sect founder had managed to linger on the edge of oblivion for so long.
A plan—bold, ruthless, dazzling—took shape inside him, the way a blade forms inside the smith’s mind before the first hammer falls.
Then, in his consciousness field, a voice erupted, shaking, ecstatic, almost weeping.
“Boy! Did you hear? Nascence Soul Liquid! The Myriad-Blood Soul Orb! At last, at last I might walk the world in flesh again!”
The speaker was the Vermilion Demon Lord. To him, the promise of a reborn body, of breathing air, tasting wine, and staining his fingers with real blood, was a dream so fierce it bordered on madness.
