Jared’s gaze hardened to flint. He lifted two fingers, aligned them, and traced a single, indifferent line through the air. The hiss of severed flesh cut the wind, a wet whistle that still rang as the sword completed its arc.
Malcolm’s head spun upward, haloed by his own blood, while the torso dropped like a stone through the misted air. Even in death, that face clung to its deranged grin, as if refusing to accept the verdict Jared had just pronounced. A High Immortal Level Three, Lord of the Malevolent Path Hall, gone—severed by a single stroke that still trembled in Jared’s wrist.
The mountain gate hovered inside a silence so thick Jared almost mistook it for deafness. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, as if the world waited to see whether its own heart still beat. Below, more than ten thousand cultivators stared at the drifting ash and the headless corpse, then at Jared’s floating silhouette, their eyes glazed with the shock of animals watching fire for the first time.
Someone mouthed a question, barely more than breath. “D-Dead?”
The syllable fluttered upward and vanished. Then the realization ran through the crowd like lightning through dry timber: two High Immortal overlords, Malevolent Path Hall and Ninefold Nether Palace both, wiped away by a youth still short of the highest realm. They could see and feel that this was no duel; it was slaughter—a higher order crushing a lower, the way a heel meets dust.
One figure folded to his knees, palms slapped against the stone. That single collapse triggered a ripple; in the span of a heartbeat, the field became a sea of bent backs, bodies dropping like dominoes knocked by an unseen hand. Stench rose as terror loosened bowels; some shook so violently their teeth rattled, the noise tiny and pathetic against the vast quiet.
“Spare us, Senior, spare us!” voices overlapped until words became a single wail. “Malevolent Path forced us! We will turn, we swear! Mercy, Senior, mercy!”
The air vibrated with sobs, each plea scraping Jared’s skin like grit. The hall’s remaining elders wore faces bleached of color; one collapsed where he stood, others drifted backward, toes searching for any path away from this waking nightmare.
Only then did Aurelian, Blaine, and Oswald recover enough to breathe. They stared at Jared’s back the way sailors stare at a horizon they once believed unreachable, eyes bright with awe and wild with a sudden, unearned hope. Joy wrestled with disbelief inside each of them. Barely a month ago, Jared had hidden behind them, counting breaths while Gerald burned his life to shield him. Now he stood on the twelfth level’s summit, and with a casual flick, erased the giants they once looked up to.
The pace of his growth had outrun their old equations; he could almost hear their certainties cracking.
The Vermilion Demon Lord drifted to Jared’s side, fangs bared in a grin. “So, what do we do with these fence-sitters?”
Jared’s gaze swept the crushed lines of cultivators, indifferent. “Their ringleaders are dead. The rest may live if they abandon every technique tied to the Door of Reincarnation and leave the Nether Mountain Range. Anyone resisting dies.”
His voice was no louder than conversation, yet it threaded every ear like a verdict carved in stone.
“Mercy, Senior! Mercy!” the valley echoed. More than ten thousand crashed to their knees, foreheads punching the dirt like pestles working garlic. Jared let their clamor fade behind him and lifted his eyes to Reincarnation Peak. The stone altar still hissed with leftover power, and above it, the phantom Door of Reincarnation quivered, unwilling to vanish even after Malcolm’s death.
“The Door of Reincarnation… The souls of the Flaxseed clan…” The words crawled from his throat, meant for no one. Frost light flickered across his pupils, cold enough to burn. Malcolm and Morven had fallen, but that was only the first stone thrown. The true hand waited behind the door, calling itself the Lord of Reincarnation. And the stolen souls of his Flaxseed bloodline—those he would pry back, whatever screamed on the other side.
A slow breath emptied the heat from his chest, leaving resolve behind. The Door tangled with the world’s core laws; charging in now would be blindness masquerading as bravery. He needed deeper command of the Primal Unity Refinement Tome, a higher tier in the Chaotic Domain, more blades sharpened within.
Soon, he promised himself. Not decades—soon.
Turning, he found Aurelian and the others still pinned by awe. A thin smile crossed his mouth. “Seniors, Malevolent Path Hall is dust. The hierarchy of level twelve will be rewritten.”
Aurelian drew a breath and bowed stiffly. “Jared… No, Senior Jared! From this day, level twelve follows you. We will rebuild order and erase the remnants!”
Blaine, Oswald, and the rest folded at the waist, allegiance plain in their lowered eyes. Jared shook his head. “Forget the titles. I remain Jared Chance. The future of level twelve rests with all of you, not a throne.”
His sight stretched past cloud, stone, and sky, as though another, vaster realm had whispered open. “I’m entering the Door of Reincarnation to meet its master.”
The choice settled inside him like iron cooling in water—final, ringing, inevitable.
