“So… The boy hides quite the secret,” the Soul Devourer murmured, the rasp now edged with ice, and a glimmer of hunger no mortal ear could miss.
Power enough for a Human Immortal to sever a Heavenly Immortal Level Seven… That is no ordinary stroke of luck… Perhaps the youth bore some heaven-defying legacy… Perhaps he carried a treasure even the ancient void had never revealed…
Whatever the answer, the crimson eyes dimmed, and in that moment the vast hall felt smaller, as if the world itself had begun to narrow around a single, predatory intention.
“My Lord, that swaggering Jared Chance behaves as though you did not exist. He must be hunting for you this very moment. Please, emerge from seclusion, wield your supreme arts, crush him in your grasp, rip out his soul, refine it, and wipe away this insult.”
Catching the faint spark of murder in his lord’s eyes, Sheldon Soulsby pressed harder, hammering at that spark like iron on an anvil.
Soul Devourer offered no reply. Twin pinpricks of crimson light burned inside his hood, sweeping across Sheldon for a single heartbeat. The glance dropped Sheldon into an instant, glacial abyss.
“Do I require your counsel on how to act?”
The iciness of that question rattled through the hall; Sheldon’s knees knocked against the black flagstones.
“N-Never…” he stammered, forehead thudding against the floor. “I would never presume, my Lord!”
“Hmph. Jared Chance will be dealt with, by me alone… But not yet.”
Slowly, the Soul Devourer rose from the throne. As his sable robes lifted, the very miasma within the grand hall began to churn and bow, as though the darkness itself worshipped him.
A pressure deeper and broader than anything Elder Bonewick had ever radiated spilled outward. It reeked of devouring, chaos, decay, and despair, as though every wicked thought and every shard of suffering in creation had gathered to crown this single figure.
“My injuries are already ninety percent healed. Once I drain the final living essence from this Ten-Thousand-Soul Blood Pool, my strength will return in full, perhaps even surpass what it once was… Then, not merely Jared Chance, but even lords of Level Twelve will crawl at my feet, trembling.”
Delight flashed across Sheldon’s pallid face. “Congratulations, my lord! Your invincible power will rule the world!”
He had barely finished the last syllable when a thunderous detonation rocked the fortress, shaking pillars and showering dust from the vaulted ceiling.
Shockwaves rolled inward from the perimeter of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect’s citadel; walls crumbled, towers split, screams ignited. The Sect-Guarding Grand Array shrieked like a dying beast as ribbons of light were ripped away and scattered into nothing.
“What’s happening?” Color drained from Sheldon’s face; terror surged in to fill the void.
The crimson embers in the Soul Devourer’s hood narrowed, snapping toward the shattered doorway.
A deacon, drenched in blood, one arm severed, scrambled across the threshold, slipping in his own gore.
“M-Mr. Soulsby… My Lord… It’s terrible! Jared Chance has breached the fortress! He cleaved the outer array with a single sword-stroke; patrol disciples lie in heaps. He is marching straight for the Infinite Soul Hall!”
“W-What? How dare he? How did he find us so quickly?” Sheldon’s soul nearly fled his body; instinctively, he looked to the Soul Devourer for direction.
Without a breath of wind, the Soul Devourer’s cloak billowed. Red eyes flared into scorching suns, and an even colder wave of murderous intent slammed through the hall.
“Excellent… Truly excellent… I had not yet sought him out, and already, he walks into my claws. Since he is so desperate for death, I shall oblige him. Sheldon, activate every restriction in the headquarters. Rally the remaining disciples. No matter the cost, hold him long enough for me to arrive. Once my strength is complete, I will emerge and snuff out that buzzing fly with my own hand.”
“At once, my lord!” Sheldon stammered, scrambling from the throne room on hands and knees before sprinting off to make the preparations.
Terror still coiled around Sheldon’s heart, yet the certainty that Soul Devourer would soon be whole rekindled a frail ember of hope.
Behind him, the Soul Devourer blurred into a streak of ebony, dissolving into the gloom until his phantom silhouette sank into the Ten-Thousand-Soul Blood Pool, a pit that glowed with iron-scented mist and the howls of the damned.
He intended to break through the final barrier before Jared arrived!
***
Meanwhile, outside the Infinite Soul Demon Sect headquarters, the once-foreboding outskirts looked as if a primeval beast had ploughed straight through; charred wreckage and shattered stone lay everywhere.
More than half of the grim buildings lay in heaps, the ground carved by sword-gouged ravines and scorched by unholy fire.
Corpses of Demon Sect disciples sprawled in grotesque angles—some sliced clean apart by sword energy, others burned to brittle charcoal, still others shriveled to husks as if their very souls had been drained away.
Jared advanced at an unhurried pace, the Dragonslayer Sword resting loosely in his palm as he stepped across rubble and ruin toward the sect’s head.
A veil of pale, chaotic radiance drifted around him; every wisp of demonic aura, every lurking curse or hidden lightning trap simply disintegrated one meter before they even touched him.
True resistance never formed; those who had survived his first three strokes at the gate were still crippled by terror and fled the moment they glimpsed his silhouette.
On the rare occasion when a cornered elder tried to trigger a forbidden seal or explode in martyrdom, a casual flick of Jared’s chaotic sword energy erased them before their screams could start.
Soon, he stepped into the sect’s innermost ring, facing the jagged facade of the Infinite Soul Hall and, before it, a glistening Ten-Thousand-Soul Blood Pool where viscous crimson frothed and faces contorted in endless agony.
Beside that pool, Sheldon had marshalled his last trusted elders and elite disciples into a ragged Ten-Thousand-Soul Grand Array, standing rigid, every face ashen.
Their eyes showed naked dread, the array’s light flickering like a candle in wind; faith had already abandoned them.
“Jared Chance!” Sheldon’s voice cracked, yet he forced it to boom. “You trespass upon our sacred ground, our lord’s retreat! You’ve butchered countless disciples. Your crime deserves death! Leave now, or when our lord is disturbed, you will die without a grave!”
Jared did not spare Sheldon a glance. He looked straight past the trembling defenders toward the pool’s center, to the thickest knot of swirling demonic aura.
There, a soul aura he knew too well—immense, vile, hateful—surged upward, gathering for rebirth. “Soul Devourer, enough hiding… I know you’re there. Come out. We have unfinished accounts to settle.”
