The Guiding Talisman rested between Jared’s fingers, its script pulsing like a distant heartbeat tugging him west. He and the Vermilion Demon Lord raced over broken ridgelines, letting the faint pull lead.
Level Twelve sprawled wider than imagination. Even with both travelers pouring power into flight, the horizon refused to yield; day after day bled away until the seventh sunset finally painted the dunes the map had promised. Jared felt grit between his teeth and anticipation under his ribs; both told him they were close.
The farther they pushed west, the thinner the breath of the world became. The familiar give-and-take of spiritual essence faded to a dry rasp in Jared’s lungs, as if even the air no longer remembered how to nourish. Overhead, a once-blue sky had curdled into sickly ochre. Jagged fissures—charcoal scars torn straight across the heavens—yawned open without warning, each one breathing a slow, predatory suction that prickled the back of his neck.
The wind stopped behaving like wind. It hammered from every direction at once, crammed with splinters of broken space and strange, skittering currents, scraping across his skin the way a dull blade worries bone. Even the body he had reforged through ordeal, and the Demon Lord’s crimson shell beside him, couldn’t shrug it off; pain kept blooming, sharp and deliberate, as if the storm enjoyed their flinch.
“Damn, this place is drier than a wasteland,” the Vermilion Demon Lord barked, scattering a blood-tinged wind blade with a casual swipe of his claw. “But the more a land looks forsaken, the fatter the treasures buried in its ribs. I can smell opportunity under all this rot.”
Jared kept his reply to himself; the Guiding Talisman nesting in his palm had begun to warm—a slow pulse that pushed against his skin like a heartbeat. Ancient runes stirred across the slip of paper, shedding a steady halo no wider than a firefly, yet unmistakable, always pointing toward that one quadrant where the wind howled loudest.
“That should be it, the outer rim of the Void Gale,” he muttered, eyes narrowing. A pulse of displacement rolled from ahead, deep enough to rattle his teeth. “Stay tight on me,” he warned, his voice low. “Those spatial eddies will tear you apart if they catch a sleeve.”
He and the Demon Lord dimmed their auras until only a translucent sheen clung to their skin, then edged toward the shrieking corridor ahead. Half a breath later, something slithered through his focus—wrong weight, wrong rhythm. He halted mid-air and angled a whisper toward his companion. “Tail…”
Vermilion blinked, then let his demonic sense unfurl like smoke. A beat later he chuckled. “Three fleas… Two at Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine, one at the pinnacle. If this wasteland weren’t so starved of essence, their escape art might have hidden them for good.” The Demon Lord looked almost disappointed, as if someone had promised him a duel and sent toddlers instead.
Jared knew the confidence wasn’t hollow; at his present tier, a High Immortal Realm Level Three would struggle to leave a bruise on him. So a handful of Heavenly Immortal Realm foot soldiers really were walking into their own funeral. Jared’s gaze skimmed a scatter of ruined stone mounds in the distance.
“They picked us up just after we left the canyon,” he said softly. “Could be Malevolent Path Hall scouts, or…”
“Chasing the same Ancient Energy Refiners’ Abode,” Vermilion supplied. “Exactly…”
A chill glimmer slipped across Jared’s eyes. “Let them follow. The Void Gale belt is perfect for taking out the trash.”
They exchanged no more words, schooling their expressions into empty patience as they drifted onward. Quietly, Jared widened the Talisman’s search net; the faint brush of three camouflaged auras surfaced, clinging to the wasteland’s texture like dust on dust.
“Not Malevolent Path Hall,” he noted, filing the detail away. He exhaled, tasting metal on the air. “Arts from the Malevolent Path Hall reek of reincarnation aura or that Ninefold Nether rot,” he said, his voice low. “Whoever trails us feels colder, more like a sect bred for shadows and knives.”
Beside him, the Vermilion Demon Lord rolled his thick shoulders. “Whoever tries to snatch my prize gets crushed, no exceptions!” he barked, white fangs flashing.
They drifted another mile through weightless dusk. Without warning, the horizon tore open like fabric yanked too hard. The sickly yellow sky showed a thousand slits, each one leaking gray-black void. Webbed cracks crawled outward while gale howls traveled even across the dozens of kilometers still between them.
The trembling line where normal space ended and the Void Gale Belt began now glimmered beneath their feet. Subtle prickles on Jared’s skin confirmed they had stepped into the zone itself, the air sharpening with hidden blades. He settled his breath. “We wait here and let them come to us.”
He guided their sword-light toward a broad, floating slab of rock, its underside glowing a dull red. With the boulder at their backs, they folded their legs and closed their eyes, feigning meditation yet counting heartbeats. Less than ten breaths later, three shadows seeped out of different directions, silent as oil on water. They drifted into a triangle, hemming the platform.
Each newcomer wore tight black robes and a strange metal mask that left only frozen, pitiless eyes exposed. The tallest of them twirled twin crescent blades, their obsidian edges pulsing with faint blue venom. His aura pressed against Jared’s lungs—Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine Pinnacle and still rising.
The flanking two gripped mismatched stabbing blades, one long, one short, moving in perfect mirror rhythm. Jared recognized a practiced three-point assault meant to choke space before a target could blink. A name slid across Jared’s memory: Ghostspring Sect, Shadowkill Trio.
The masked leader spoke, his voice scraping like blades on iron, “Hand over your clue to the Ancient Energy Refiners’ Abode, and we might leave whole corpses behind.”
Jared rose slowly, brushing dust from his knees. His face stayed calm. “Ghostspring Sect? Never heard of it. What makes you think we carry any clue? We were sightseeing, stumbled in by mistake.”
The Demon Lord snorted, red vapor curling from his nostrils. “Cut the lies. Everyone knows an ancient abode hides somewhere here; finding the exact door is the hard part.”
The left-hand killer barked a cold laugh. “You crossed ten thousand kilometers just to wander? Don’t insult our intelligence.”
The one on the right leaned forward, blade tip wobbling like a serpent’s tongue. “Hand over the clue, and maybe we let you crawl away.”
A quiet click sounded in Jared’s mind; the pieces lined up. He smiled. “So you’ve been tailing us all this time. And you think three scraps of trash can steal from a tiger’s maw?”
The leader cocked his head. “Tiger’s maw? One Level Five and one Level Eight dare call themselves tigers? I can kill you before the next breath,” he said, amused.
Jared laughed back, contempt thick as smoke. “A single Level Nine peak and two Level Nines? I can handle you alone.”
The Demon Lord clapped, talons clicking. “Works for me. I’ll watch the show from over here.”
The Vermilion Demon Lord ambled to the side and dropped onto a slab of rock as though the battlefield were a parlor. Jared watched him, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Some sunflower seeds and a drink would make this perfect,” the demon lord announced, utterly serious.
