Sword-shaped flames, flower-shaped flames, and roaming ember-clouds tore through the sealed space. Perception warped under the blistering heat. Razor-keen sword intent pressed from every direction, crushing and scorching whatever dared remain inside the domain.
That blistering tempest of blades was none other than Reiner’s famed domain, a scorching nightmare he had ridden across Level Ten of the heavens, crushing every challenger as though the sky itself belonged to him. Paxton shouted, his throat raw. “Sir!”
Clara’s voice overlapped his, sharper, higher. “Mr. Chance!” The others staggered back, horror blanching their faces. Beneath that hellish domain, they could scarcely defend themselves, let alone lend the slightest aid.
Jared gazed into the roaring inferno and sighed, the sound soft, almost regretful.
“So reason is off the table after all,” he murmured, the words as calm as falling snow. He reached behind him and closed his fingers around a long, time-worn hilt.
A single, clear hum rose—like a dragon’s cry, like the first note struck when creation split the void.
The tone knifed through the raging flames, pierced the shrieking sword intent, and rang in every ear. Even the fire itself paused, as if listening. Jared drew his blade.
The Dragonslayer Sword left its sheath. No mountains toppled, no clouds tore apart. Its steel was a dark chaos, swallowing the light that touched it. He gave an almost casual flick of the wrist.
In that instant, an indescribable intent flooded outward. It was neither heat nor frost, neither edge nor weight, but something beyond the five elements—a union of ruin and rebirth. It felt like the first split of both sides of the world at the dawn of everything.
Against that intent, the Sky Scorching Sword Domain, once proud to incinerate all, now looked petty, almost hollow.
“What?” Reiner’s face paled.
The sword intent he had cultivated for millennia bowed like a vassal before a king, trembling on the verge of collapse.
Impossible!
That blazing intent had been forged beside the Inextinguishable Ember for thousands of years—his supreme fire.
How could the sword will of a mere Human Immortal suppress it?
“Break…” Jared whispered.
The Dragonslayer Sword slid forward along a trajectory too profound for words—so slow it seemed languid, yet so fast it ignored both space and flame, spearing straight toward the heart of the inferno.
Reiner watched the incoming strike. No swirling typhoon of sword energy, no blinding flare of light, only the quiet gleam of Jared’s blade. Yet wherever that needle-thin tip drifted, the roaring firestorm that made up his Sky Scorching Sword Domain melted away like frost beneath noon sun.
Tongues of flame faded to wisps, then nothing at all. A brittle, glassy crackling rose from the very fabric of the domain, as though an enormous pane of colored crystal had been tapped by a finger and now spider-webbed with hairline fractures.
Crack!
The sound rang through the gorge—sharp, final!
In that heartbeat, Reiner’s once-impenetrable domain, famed for trapping and burning cultivators of his own realm, shattered under what looked like an absent-minded flick of Jared’s wrist.
Shards of ember-red light scattered across the sky, falling as glowing cinders that winked out the moment they touched open air.
Urgh!
The collapsed domain ripped across Reiner’s spirit. He staggered, a dark groan caught in his throat.
Blood threaded from the corner of his mouth while astonishment, pure and undiluted, stormed through his eyes. Even his hand, holding the sword, began to quiver.
This was not a gap in raw power. It was annihilation delivered from a loftier level.
Jared’s single stroke contained an intent toward blade, and toward flame, that dwarfed everything Reiner believed he understood. It was the very gateway to a dimension of swordsmanship he had yearned for but never touched.
Jared lowered the Dragonslayer Sword until the point brushed loose gravel. The chaotic glow sheathing the blade receded like sunset, leaving only dull steel and quiet confidence.
“So…” he said, voice mild, “can we head inside now?”
Reiner’s breathing turned uneven. His gaze flitted from Jared’s steady face to the ancient sword resting at the man’s side.
That slash overturned everything I knew!
The youth stood at Level Seven of the Human Immortal Realm. Yet the eerie intent, that strange weapon, even the names he had tossed out—Fire Demon Lord, Fire Spirit Lord—all whispered of legacies far beyond Reiner’s imagining.
Should I keep fighting him?
Confidence slipped through his fingers like sand.
Jared’s intent smothered Reiner’s fire-aligned sword art, and a prickle in the veteran’s gut warned that single blow had not been delivered at full strength.
The silence stretched for a dozen long breaths. At last, the towering aura that normally raged around Reiner ebbed, and the furnace-hot edge in his sword intent retreated like a tide from shore.
He drew one slow lungful of air and exhaled, as though forcing shock and frustration from his chest. Then, he pivoted aside, clearing the path toward the wall of burning rock behind him.
His voice emerged hoarse, scraped raw: “Go on!”
He asked nothing further. Some answers, he decided, were better left unlearned.
Relief loosened Jared’s shoulders. Facing Reiner again would have crushed him.
If not for Maxwell’s inheritance, and the pure sword intent I tempered inside that void tunnel amid the flame meteors, I wouldn’t have survived even one direct hit…
He pushed stray thoughts aside and motioned to Paxton, Gavin, Yvette, and the others behind him. “Let’s go.”
Jared lifted the talisman that Clara had pressed into his palm earlier that day.
A silent command, nothing more than a flicker of will, and a thread of chaotic energy flowed from his core into the artifact.
Crimson light burst across the talisman’s facets. At the same instant, his fingers shaped the esoteric hand-seal Clara had taught him. The rune slid from his knuckles and sank into the cliff face ahead.
This time, they were allowed entry.
The crystal wall convulsed. Flame roared, parted, and re-formed as a gateway three full stories high, its threshold lined with molten gold fire.
Beyond, a rippling curtain of red and amber shimmered like liquid glass while unbearably pure fire-type power crashed over the group in waves.
“Move.”
Jared stepped through first, swallowed whole by the flaming veil. Gavin and Yvette hurried after him, half-carrying the grievously wounded Clara.
Behind them, Paxton snapped orders, shepherding the dazed survivors of the Myriad Beast Sect toward the blazing passage one by one.
Reiner remained outside. He stared at the vanishing silhouettes, Jared’s most of all, until his own resolve crumbled into a long, complicated sigh.
Crimson Rift Gorge fell quiet once more, its air hot enough to warp steel, its lone cliff still cloaked in tireless, whispering flame.
