Caution stirred beneath Malcolm’s anger; Jared’s swift recovery from the last battle hinted at some hidden fortune. After a breath, he let sarcasm bleed through a thin smile. “Still, his timing is perfect. The Supreme Master gifted three Reincarnation Guardians; we need live trials… Sound the order!
Raise the Mountain-Guarding Grand Array. Have every cultivator who pledged to us gather outside the gate. I will grind these traitors into dust while the whole level twelve watches!”
A chorus of aides bowed. “Yes!” Half an hour later, Malcolm hovered above the mountain gate, wind tugging at his hair, the chill satisfying in its promise of violence. Below, a dark tide of cultivators—more than ten thousand by his rough glance—pressed together, forming a living wall at his command.
Behind him, the three pale Guardians floated in silence along with the surviving hall elders, their combined aura amplified by the gray sheen leaking from the Door of Reincarnation’s phantom above the altar.
A ripple in the sky announced them. Jared stepped from the air at the head of perhaps thirty allies, each presence compressed and steady, yet all attention snagged on the young man himself. Though his cultivation hovered only at Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven, the world‘s lines of force bent toward him—light, sound, even the subtle whisper of law—all tilting as if eager to serve.
The name tore through the stale air: Jared Chance!
He didn’t flinch. The syllables scattered against his ribs like dry gravel and fell away. Malcolm’s voice followed, thin and slick—the sound of a viper tasting the wind. “I didn’t think you’d dare crawl back to die,” Malcolm hissed. “The Divine Bow’s backlash should have buried you, yet you cling to fantasies.”
Jared exhaled, tasting iron on the back of his tongue. The accusation slid past him like cold water. Morven stepped closer, smile carved wide, red seams glinting where flesh and metal met. “Kid, my new arm needs a sacrifice. Your head fits the socket perfectly.”
Jared noted the mechanical joints grinding under Morven’s skin, but the words floated by, weightless. Nothing inside him stirred; the calm felt too large, like standing in an abandoned hall. He kept his gaze lowered, refusing the hook in their eyes. His attention slipped past the two men. Beyond their shoulders waited three Reincarnation Guardians—hulking, stone-white mannequins chained to silence. Farther still, the altar shimmered, and above it the phantom Door of Reincarnation flickered like a torn veil catching moonlight.
“Only three puppets? Hmm… Seems even the Lord of Reincarnation doesn’t think much of you…” Jared spoke as if remarking on weather, offering them nothing of himself.
“Insolent!” Malcolm’s face darkened. “At death’s door and still boasting? Today you’ll taste the Supreme Master‘s gift firsthand. Reincarnation Guardians! Kill!”
His arm swept outward, a casual crescent that left the air ringing. A low hum blossomed, like a hive waking all at once. Light, the color of dead smoke, ignited in the guardians’ hollow eyes. Jared felt the ground tick as their intent locked onto him. The other party did not roar; they simply advanced one measured step, stone joints grinding like distant thunder. The earth buckled with the impact, a blunt report that punched up through Jared‘s soles. Three ash-white pillars burst from their bodies and speared the sky.
High above, the beams wove themselves into a vast triangular lattice, humming with intent. Within the lattice, reincarnation aura churned like a stormy tide. Chains, swords, and phantom hammers assembled from the mist and cascaded toward him, a collapsing heaven of gray. Each blow carried the heavy pressure of High Immortal Realm Level Two—power meant to crush mountains and quicken rot. Worse, the aura itself wanted to seep into flesh and rewrite bone.
He remembered stories of cultivators who touched that mist; their eyes went dim, their wills drowned, and their bodies jerked like puppets. A collective gasp rose from the ridge below, sharp and ragged. It washed over his back, insignificant as wind through tall grass.
“So that’s a Reincarnation Guardian’s strength?” The disbelief trembled in a stranger’s throat. Jared filed it away without interest.
“Too terrifying!”
“No wonder the Malevolent Path Hall struts around!”
Voices stacked atop one another like falling tiles. The shout was half awe, half resentment. Even Aurelian, normally unshakable, tightened his grip on the jade blade at his hip. Their combined strike, someone whispered, neared High Immortal Realm Level Four.
Jared let the number drift by, an irrelevant measurement. He lifted his right hand, palm open, as though greeting rain. The world seemed to pause, curious what such a small gesture intended. Jared let his fingers uncurl. In the hollow of his palm, the Chaos Vortex Mark breathed—just one muted wink of ash-colored light.
He breathed the command, “Scatter…”
The syllable barely stirred the dust around his boots, yet the air tilted, listening. Nothing thundered. No banners of light blazed overhead. Instead, a ripple, thinner than breath and the color of dying charcoal, spread outward from his palm. Where that ripple touched, the world forgot its shapes.
Chains, swords, and phantom hammers, once racing toward him, melted like frost struck by noon sun, leaving only blank air. They were not shattered or deflected, but simply erased, as though someone had torn them from the page. Even the reincarnation aura boiling inside the triangular array thinned, then shredded into nothing under the ripple‘s lazy sweep.
“What?!” Malcolm and Morven shouted in the same cracked breath.
They had heard the rumors: three High Immortal Realm Level Two Reincarnation Guardians moving in unison could bury continents. Yet his single, casual breath had unmade their charge as though it had never existed. Below, thousands of cultivators stared upward, mouths small and round. The arena fell so silent Jared could hear his own pulse. Confidence that had once blazed in their eyes began to gutter, chased by a quiet, contagious dread.
Jared let his hand fall and finally granted Malcolm and Morven his full attention. “If that was your trump card,” he said, voice still even, “then we’re finished here.”
His body shifted before thought could intervene. Two fingers snapped straight, slicing the air as cleanly as any forged blade. “Chaos Origin… Light Severance!”
The name dropped quieter than rainfall. A thread of gray light leapt from his fingertips, thin as a hair. At first it seemed lazy, almost drifting, yet bodies and thought alike lagged behind its true speed. Where it passed, the sky split—a black wound refusing to close, chaotic currents swirling around the torn edges.
Aurelian felt the air contract as the three Reincarnation Guardians stiffened. A rolling tide of reincarnation aura burst from their plated chests, piling pale screens one over another in front of them. Silver-green light jittered inside their eye slots, strobing so fast it made Aurelian’s vision swim. He sensed their focus tighten, as if the beam could be hunted the way a beast is cornered.
The air answered with a silence that felt like mockery. The thread of gray light drifted forward and kissed the outermost screen. A damp pop echoed, soft as wet paper tearing. The shield folded inward, weightless, already dust before it remembered to resist. Another, then another; each layer surrendered with the same subdued cough.
The beam gathered speed—a needle turned hammer—boring straight through the remaining veils. It drifted on, almost lazy, and drew a single line through the torsos of all three guardians. For a heartbeat, the courtyard stopped breathing with them. Then, reality snapped back.
The first fracture rang out like ice splitting underfoot. A second answered from the left. A third, higher, thinner. All three constructs froze mid-step, arms half raised in forgotten defense. Their helmed heads dipped. Aurelian followed their gaze to a hair-fine gray fissure running from brow to belly on each of them.
The line widened, hungry. With a hollow boom, the first guardian disintegrated. Another boom chased it a breath later. Then the third. Power enough to match High Immortal Realm Level Two vanished in three breaths. They did not explode so much as crumble, like sandcastles kissed by an unseen tide of chaotic force. The pale grains rose, twinkled, and were gone—no ash, no echo.
Silence folded over the mountain gate. Dead silence, deeper than night. Ten thousand cultivators ringed the courtyard, mouths unhinged, sound lost somewhere between lungs and tongue. Among them stood the Elders of Malevolent Path Hall and Aurelian himself, equally mute.
Three Reincarnation Guardians at High Immortal Realm Level Two, erased… Was that even possible?
Jared caught the rasping whisper, “One move?”
Another voice stumbled after it, “N-No, it wasn‘t even a move, just… a lazy flick?”
The air quivered with the unspoken question: What kind of power could do that?
