“Move…” Jared’s voice was soft, yet the lone word sliced through the frozen stillness like cold steel. He strode forward without a backward glance at the grotesque ice statues they had left behind. Each step was measured, almost leisurely, as though the slaughter moments earlier had been no more than a brisk evening stroll.
Behind him, Vermilion Demon Lord and Clara Cloudridge traded a glance, and in that fleeting exchange, both tasted the same emotion: reverence so deep it brushed the edge of fear.
With the ease of a lifted hand, he had crushed and erased twelve Heavenly Immortal experts, two of them Level Six elites.
Power of that magnitude hovered beyond anything the pair, or anyone they knew, could truly comprehend.
When the trio emerged from the canyon, only twelve blinding, blood-red ice blossoms remained, scattered beside the shattered bones of the Ice Explosion Array.
The silent tableau testified to how brief, and how brutal, the conflict had been. Beyond the ravine, the land unfurled into a vast glacial basin, a pale-blue mirror beneath a sky the color of raw steel.
At the basin’s heart rose a sparse grove of Ice-Crystal Ironwood, trunks tall and clear as hammered diamond. Though they glittered like sculpture, each gleaming bole was many times harder than tempered steel, prized for forging cold-element artifacts.
Tonight, that grove had become a murder ground. As Jared and his companions stepped onto the basin’s rim, a rolling chorus of low snarls drifted from among the trees. The sound oozed hunger and violence, the promise of predators that left no survivors.
Clara’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Frostsoul Wolves and Mystic Ice Giant Bears! Out here, each adult of those beasts rivals a Level Five Heavenly Immortal, and their alphas touch Level Seven… Judging by that uproar, there are plenty. Since when could the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan control such brutes?”
Jared swept the grove with his spiritual sense, piecing the scene together in an instant.
More than three hundred Frostsoul Wolves crouched beneath the grove, each twice the size of a common wolf, pelts glimmering blue, fangs like daggers, claws flashing with hoarfrost.
Three among them loomed larger still, single horns jutting from their brows—wolf-kings whose very breath roared at Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven.
Behind the lupine tide lumbered eight Mystic Ice Giant Bears, each a moving cliff. Reared upright, they towered five stories high, muscles knotted beneath plates of ice-thick armor.
One silver-furred behemoth at the column’s center radiated power at the very peak of Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven: the Alpha Bear.
Even the grand sects on Level Ten would flinch before a legion of fang and claw like this. Worse, every beast had been pushed past reason. Crimson eyes blazed, breaths hissed with madness; they would not stop until nothing living remained.
Jared spoke evenly, his gaze never leaving the trees. “They didn’t tame them. Someone enraged, or lured, the pack, herding it onto our road. Better to let animals bleed us than face us themselves.”
His words had scarcely faded when a razor-edged howl tore through the timber, chased by a thunderous ursine bellow.
Wolf-song knifed through the air, shrill and savage. An answering bear roar shook snow from the branches.
Three hundred wolves burst from the wood, a cobalt tide skimming the ice and flinging clouds of powdered snow skyward.
Eight bears thundered after them; every footfall sent tremors skating across the frozen crust.
A beast tide. A true, unstoppable beast tide. Even a Level Eight Heavenly Immortal would think twice, choosing to harry from the flanks rather than meet that charging wall head-on.
Vermilion’s complexion bleached to the color of old parchment. Before them stretched a living tide of fanged monsters, and he knew, even if Jared could stand against it, he and Clara would be little more than drifting leaves in that storm.
Clara inhaled sharply. Her blade whispered from its sheath, and a ribbon of chill, silver sword-energy gathered before her like autumn frost creeping across a windowpane.
Jared’s mouth curved into an irrepressible, almost careless smile.
“Perfect…” he murmured, his voice low yet vibrant. “Let’s see what this new insight can really do.”
He stepped forward, only one deliberate pace—and placed himself alone between the onrushing horde and his two companions.
Hundreds of beasts loomed behind him, a writhing backdrop of claws and muscle that made his solitary frame seem fragile, yet he stood unbowed, rooted like a mountain that had forgotten how to move.
Slowly, he lifted both hands. His left palm cradled invisible weight, his right hand pressed two fingers upright against his chest, quiet as a priest beginning prayer.
A single scarlet spark flickered in his left palm, swelling into a fire lotus, each petal rotating gently within a haze of chaotic energy.
Deep in that flaming blossom slithered a thread of dark-gold flame shaped like a dragon, and the heat that bled from it threatened to scorch the very memory of cold from the world.
It was the fabled Chaotic Dragon Fire, born of Chaotic Origin Flame and draconic energy, now obeying Jared’s silent will.
At the tip of his right fingers bloomed an ice-blue light, no simple frost, but the essence of a law that could freeze motion itself and force time to hesitate. The Law of Freezing!
He had pushed his chaotic celestial energy to mimic the power of ice nascence, refining it until nothing colder could exist.
Fire and ice, bitter rivals since creation, now coexisted in his hands, drifting closer until their edges kissed, shimmered, and began to mingle.
“Chaos Origin! Ice-Fire Duality!” Jared’s shout rang like a gong, shaking dust from unseen rafters of the sky.
Both palms slammed forward, releasing everything in a single, unanswerable gesture.
The world split along an invisible fault, the sound deeper than thunder and longer than an earthquake’s groan. To his left, heaven and earth ignited into a roiling crimson sea, each wave forged from dragon fire that could char sorcery and melt metal before thought could form.
A mere ember from that sea could devour enchanted artifacts and blister the soul that wielded them.
Dragon shapes flickered through the flames. Even the distant grove, hardened by centuries of cold, started to sag and drip like wax in an oven.
To his right, the world became a cathedral of perfect frost, air itself crystallizing until motion slowed and silence rang. Space froze so completely that thin black fractures spidered across the sky, as though reality’s glass pane could no longer bear the strain.
Such ruptures only appeared when the Law of Freezing touched its highest summit.
Thirty meters before him, fire and ice swirled yet stayed distinct, twining into a hundred-yard disk, a colossal Ice-Fire Duality Array, rotating with deliberate majesty.
The foremost beasts crashed against that duality array. A hiss like searing metal on snow split the air.
Wolves that leapt into the fire half vanished in silent puffs of smoke, carcasses gone before a cry could form. Their once-glittering blue pelts and shields of frigid light shriveled against the Chaotic Dragon Fire as if they’d been painted on paper.
Those that sprinted into the frozen half became perfect ice sculptures mid-stride, only to shatter under the charge of the pack behind.
The extreme cold arrested heartbeat and soul alike, ending existence without a mark of blood.
The Ice-Fire Duality Array rolled forward, and every creature, wolf or bear, fang or claw, melted away like snow meeting the noon sun.
The three-headed Alpha Wolf tried to skirt the array, but Jared lifted one hand and flicked three threads of primordial sword light. Each beam of chaos cut through a skull as if it were parchment.
The massive carcass slammed onto the ice, the earth shuddering beneath its weight.
The silver-furred Alpha Bear, fiercest of the pack, answered with a roar that shook snow from distant ridges. Plates of glacial mail flashed across its hulking frame, and, ignoring the crushing heat and cold at the edge of the diagram, it charged like a living siege engine straight at Jared.
Every time the beast’s paws struck, the frozen lake cratered outward, chips of sapphire ice spraying sky-high. Its momentum felt unstoppable, its presence terrifying.
