Jared shot the Vermilion Demon Lord a long, flat stare—the kind reserved for old friends who refused to behave. Then he exhaled through his nose; any protest would only feed the demon lord’s theatrics.
A harsh voice cracked across the clearing, slicing through the momentary lull. “Brats, you’re far too cocky. Today the Shadowkill Trio will teach you how real assassins play.”
Jared angled his shoulders toward the sound, skin prickling at the threat yet oddly calm inside the pulse of coming violence. Before he could blink, three silhouettes broke from the treeline and shot forward in the same breath. They moved as though drawn by one wire—no stagger, no pause. Space hiccupped: no trailing blur, no warning.
In the next heartbeat, the trio materialized at Jared’s flank, six toxin-coated blade arcs flicking toward every vital inch like serpent tongues. Not even the rush of air announced them; whatever secret art they used swallowed the wind itself. Against ordinary cultivators, that silence would have been a death sentence delivered before the victim knew a trial was underway. *Too bad for them,* Jared thought, *they had chosen the wrong audience.*
“Party tricks,” the Vermilion Demon Lord cackled. “Jared, don’t finish them too quick! Draw it out! I want a good show!” His delight flared in Jared’s peripheral vision like a torch.
Jared dipped his chin once—the smallest promise. Then the ground bent beneath his step and he broke forward, his body loosening into motion the way ink spreads through water. He let his sword rest, raised only his right hand, and extended his forefinger toward the dark.
A speck of colorless light bloomed at the fingertip, so faint it could have been dust catching a stray beam. Yet the moment it appeared, Jared felt the world tilt around it, as if every nearby thing suddenly remembered a hunger to be devoured. Light, sound, even the Qi in the air bent inward, funneling toward that grain of gray. The six poisoned arcs lost their aim, veering helplessly toward the point like iron filings dragged by a hidden magnet.
“What in the abyss is that?” the lead attacker shrieked, awe strangling his voice. He had never witnessed a technique that warped trajectory itself; terror spat lines of cold sweat down his neck.
Jared did not bother to answer; his body was already an afterimage chasing itself. The finger dropped; his palm turned over, five fingers curling as if seizing an invisible sphere.
“Chaos Origin… Return to the Void!” The words left him quietly—less a shout than a verdict.
A dull thunder answered, pounding the air flat. Centered on the gray mote, a whirl of ashen light a dozen feet wide tore open and drank greedily. The stolen blade light vanished first, shredded to nothing, then the three black-robed men lurched, their protective aura strobing as the vortex tugged at bone and soul.
“Form the Nether Shadow Triad Array! Now!” the lead figure barked, terror sharpening into discipline. Their outlines blurred into three ropes of black mist, weaving around one another, trading places in a frantic attempt to outrun the pull.
Jared caught the hiss first, then the air turned into a glittering storm—needles no thicker than a strand of hair, all of them slick and black, all of them coming for every exposed inch of him.
“Inventive,” Jared murmured, letting the mockery hang in the poisoned air. He pinched a quick seal with his left hand; the half-formed chaotic force inside him surged forward, pouring through his palm until it fanned out in front of him as a translucent shield laced with four shifting colors.
The incoming needles met the barrier with a sizzling hiss that scraped across his teeth. Each dart sank into the shield as if into deep water; not even a ripple escaped before the chaotic aura chewed them apart and swallowed the shards.
“My turn,” he said, the words clicking like ice between his teeth. Frosted light flashed in his eyes as he uncurled his right hand, fingers peeling away from an invisible grip.
The gray vortex hovering there didn’t explode outward; it snapped inward, collapsing until it became a pitch-black point no larger than a clenched knuckle. A low, bone-deep hum rattled the air. The singularity winked out, and an unseen wave sheared across the arena faster than thought—faster even than spirit sense could track.
A ragged scream tore from somewhere inside the black smoke. Wet coughing followed, too thick not to be blood. The smoke unraveled, leaving three figures in tattered black robes stumbling into view. Their masks had shattered; crimson dripped from their lips while naked terror widened their eyes. Jared watched their defensive light flicker uselessly around them, as if whatever hit them had skipped the armor altogether and struck marrow and soul in the same heartbeat.
The foremost one choked, “Damn it! He’s no Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Five!” He staggered back, shock and fury wrestling across the blood-smeared half of his face.
The Vermilion Demon Lord barked a laugh. “Realization comes late, doesn’t it?”
Then, the other party screamed, “Nether Shadow Escape!” The trio, elites of the Ghostspring Sect, dissolved back into smoke and shot off in three desperate directions.
“Running already?” Jared snorted. He stamped lightly, as if testing the ground instead of condemning it. Another deep hum answered—this time under their feet. A visible gray ripple spread from him, swallowing a hundred-yard circle in the blink of an eye. Where the ripple passed, space itself looked smeared, thick and reluctant to let anything move.
The gray veil he wove over the clearing thickened, pressing against his ears like cotton. When the three streaks of black vapor crossed its edge, their frantic whirl became a sluggish crawl, as if invisible resin clamped around them.
“A Domain? Impossible!” one of them rasped, the words straining through the tar-colored haze. The voice broke again, higher—the leader’s outline thrashing inside the mist like a hooked eel, fury already curdling into panic.
Of course they were terrified; only a High-Realm ascendant should bend space this way. They still thought Jared stood in their tier—a mere Heavenly adept who ought to trade polite sparks instead of suffocating them. Since merging with the Chaos Source Seed, every current of power felt mapped beneath his skin, as if law itself had left faint guidelines for his fingers to trace. This Stasis Domain was no true Immortal crown yet, only a sketch, but a sketch is enough to trap men who still measure strength by noise.
“We’re finished here…” Jared’s two fingers aligned, weightless, ready.
Jared cut three invisible marks through the air, each stroke cleaner than thought. Threads of compressed chaos unspooled, leapt beyond distance, and slammed toward the crawling shadows before they could flinch. Three wet pops cracked inside the fog, sharp as knuckles rapping glass. The vapor coats fell away, revealing torsos bored clean through—a bowl-wide emptiness polished to mirror sheen, too absolute for blood to remember where to flow.
Life, meat, spirit—everything had been swallowed in the heartbeat between one breath and the next. What remained collapsed, thudding through the mist like sacks of dry parchment.
Jared flicked his wrist; their storage rings snapped into his palm with the quiet compliance of a coin accepting a purse. A sweep of sense sketched their inventories in his mind: piles of spirit-stones, glistening pills, daggers dipped in friendly-looking poisons. Then a folded scrap tugged harder at his thoughts—an ancient map stitched onto some material neither hide nor silk, the edges bruised with burn scars. One symbol near the corner mirrored the sigil on Sidney’s guiding talisman—the same crooked geometry, only smudged and missing the arrows that tell a traveler where to stand.
“So they did have a lead,” Jared murmured, rolling the map tight. “Not the whole path, though. No wonder they were dogging our heels…”
The Vermilion Demon Lord rose, joints cracking like fireworks. “Kid, you finished them too fast. I barely got a good look.” He knelt over the leader, rummaged, and fished out a jet-black jade tile etched with a snarling skull. “Ghostspring distress talisman,” he said. “The fellow shattered it while we were trading blows. Then the rest of the Ghostspring crew will soon know their scouts are dead, and exactly where it happened.”
His brow tightened. “We need to reach the Eye of the Return-to-Void before their response wave hits.”
Jared shifted his weight and pushed off the trembling stone platform. The howling pressure of the Void Gale Belt slapped against his face before he could catch a full breath. Behind the roar, his own pulse sounded thin and distant.
To his right, the Vermilion Demon Lord cut forward, his crimson aura flickering like sparks torn from iron. They dove deeper, the wind sharpening from gale to knives.
