The valley erupted, an ocean of gray spirits boiling skyward, their wails coiling together until the air itself seemed to sob. Thousands burst from ruins, bone piles, even the ragged seams of space.
Some retained twisted human shapes, others rolled like fetid mist, all bearing emerald flames where eyes once lived. They did not fly so much as swim, bodies rippling through the air and leaving rings of colorless ripples in their wake.
“Set up the array!” Winslow barked as he swung his cane outward. Silver threads erupted from the tip and expanded into a vast shining web that snapped shut around the party like a celestial net. Azure runes flowed along every strand, exuding the tranquil force of the Clearheart Soul-Guarding Array, the bane of all malevolent entities.
The first spirits struck. Sizzling echoed as their pallid forms melted away, evaporating like frost under midday sun. Yet the horde was endless. Impact after impact rocked the web. It quivered, dimmed. Winslow’s face blanched beneath the strain.
“Master!” Leopold and Selina sprang forward, swords and ringing bells flaring to reinforce the faltering shield.
Behind Leopold, the coarse-wrapped longsword gave a startling ring as it flew from its sheath. Light burst like a scarlet rainbow, multiplying into thirty-six gleaming sword shadows that locked themselves around the light-weave in a perfect sword array. Each sword shadow cut with merciless precision. Wherever it passed, wraiths were sliced clean in two, viridian sword energy coiling along the wounds to bar the severed souls from knitting themselves whole again.
Selina folded her legs, settled into stillness, and unhooked the silver bell at her hip. With a gentle flick, she sent its chime across the darkness. Clear, crystalline rings blossomed into visible ripples, and every wraith they touched slowed, ghost-fire in their eyes guttering as though thought itself had been shaken.
But the respite would last only a heartbeat.
From every quarter, new wraiths surged, and among them loomed several whose auras dwarfed the rest—true Wraith Kings, tyrants of the dead tide.
One giant wraith, more than ten yards tall and stitched from countless bones, threw back its skull and roared, dark-red flame blazing inside hollow sockets. Each ponderous step cracked the earth into spider-web fissures, releasing waves of putrid death-mist that rolled like storm surf.
Opposite it drifted a pale woman in tattered court robes, beautiful yet bloodless, cradling a broken jade hairpin while she hummed an age-old, heartsick lullaby. The melody threaded straight into the mind, swaying one’s very soul, drowning courage in sorrow.
Vermilion Demon Lord snorted. “Hmph! Pitiful soul remnants… How dare you swagger in my sight!”
Scarlet light flooded his pupils, and a demonic aura erupted around him like a breaking dam. He strode beyond Leopold’s light-web, curled his right hand, and drew from empty air a longsword wrought entirely of dark-crimson flame.
“Demonic Flame! Soul Sever!” he roared.
The blade swept wide. Air tore apart, and dozens of wraiths disintegrated to ash before they could even scream. The bone titan raked at him with a claw the size of a carriage, but Vermilion Demon Lord met it head-on, blade flashing upward.
A thunderous, metal-on-metal detonation rang out. The explosion of sound rolled through the valley like a gong struck inside a cathedral of stone. The monster’s talon sheared clean away. Vermilion Demon Lord’s demonic flames licked along the stump and raced over its rib-cage.
The titan shrieked, battering itself frantically with the remaining claw, but no mundane strike could quench that flame. Then again, how could it when Vermilion Demon Lord’s demonic flame was fused with Ninefold Nether Demonic Aura to produce a powerful fire born to consume all souls?
Three breaths later, the colossus collapsed, a heap of charred powder scattered to the wind.
“That’s it? Pathetic,” Vermilion murmured. He sheathed the fiery sword and stood tall, crimson pupils sweeping the field with undisguised contempt.
Jared offered a quick laugh beneath the thunder of distant walls. “Mr. Vermilion, I’d wager you’ve reached Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Eight, haven’t you? Your rise is nothing short of staggering!”
The praise brought a rare flush to the demon lord’s cheeks. “Well… Compared to you, I’m still far behind.”
At that instant, the female wraith’s lament turned suddenly sharp. In the air, countless translucent blades of sound materialized and hurled toward Vermilion Demon Lord like a hailstorm. Strangely, the blades did not fly straight; they writhed like living serpents, twisting to seal every avenue of escape.
Vermilion Demon Lord’s brow creased, yet before he could brace himself, a curtain of blazing gold unfurled between him and the storm.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The air itself convulsed beneath the triple detonation. Edges of invisible sound, honed to killing sharpness, slammed against the shimmering barrier. Every strike birthed a fresh shockwave, making the shield shudder but never shatter.
Vermilion Demon Lord wheeled around just in time to see Gerald ghost to his side, skeletal fingers splayed, stopping inches from the void. Suspended above that palm bloomed a slow-spinning fire lotus of molten gold and scarlet. The barrier quivering before them was no simple light screen at all; it was the lotus’s own fire, a sheath of living flame woven for protection.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Gerald warned, voice rusted with centuries of ash. “These resentful shades hail from antiquity. In life, they were at least Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Eight, some even grazed the High Immortal Realm. Time has leeched nine-tenths of their power, yet the instincts and special abilities they forged in blood have not left them.”
The female wraith’s spectral humming suddenly cut off mid-note. She lifted her hollow gaze, those empty sockets fixing on Gerald with chilling purpose. Without a sound, she tapped her broken hairpin toward him.
Space split itself into a strand no wider than a hair, an ink-black fissure racing faster than thought straight for the center of Gerald’s brow.
