Jared’s voice cooled to bare steel. “Now we can have a real conversation.” His gaze never blinked. “Tell me everything you know… Celestials, soul crystals, the Heaven-Ascending Path, the Grand Venerable, Primal Origin Breath—leave nothing out.”
Celestial Metal Venerable answered with a broken laugh. “Go ahead and kill me. The moment I touch those secrets, the seal in my soul triggers. Body and spirit together, gone. You’ll get nothing!”
Jared’s lip bent into a chill curve. “We’ll see…” He summoned a thread of chaotic force, finer than silk yet purer than molten ore, and guided it into the hidden chambers of Celestial Metal Venerable’s soul toward the dim golden sigil lurking there. The instant gray met gold, the sigil flared, ready to blow. Gray light blazed in Jared’s pupils. The single thread split into a lattice of countless filaments, wrapping the rune the way fresh leaves wrap sticky rice.
Zip! Zip! Zip!
Pale gray nibbled at fierce gold. The rune thrashed, tried to erupt, but the net of chaos pressed tighter, grinding each stroke of golden script. A muffled groan punched from Celestial Metal Venerable’s chest. Thin golden blood trickled from nose, ears, and eyes. Only after the long span of an incense stick did time feel ready to move again.
A faint pop snapped through the charged hush, brief as a bubble bursting. A beat later, the air quivered with a barely audible crackle—the exact note of a thin film giving way. Deep inside Celestial Metal Venerable’s soul, the golden seal rune dimmed, fissured, and collapsed into dust-gray motes. The chaotic force kept grinding, refusing to let go until every last trace of the sigil lay erased.
“The seal… It’s gone?” Celestial Metal Venerable’s voice slipped out as a thin rasp, more breath than sound. He felt the phantom blade that had hovered over his spirit vanish, and the hollow it left chilled him even deeper. Someone standing before him had just unraveled a soul lock planted personally by the Grand Venerable—an impossibility he could neither grasp nor deny.
Opposite him, Jared’s face turned a shade paler, exhaustion flickering beneath eyes that still cut like blades. He held that glare steady. “Now, talk…”
Strength drained away, and Celestial Metal Venerable folded onto the floorboards. The fight in him was gone. “What… What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Jared answered with a single, unyielding syllable.
After a fraught pause, Celestial Metal Venerable began, his voice raw. “The Eastern Region Divine Punishment Hall is only one of five strongholds the celestials raised on level thirteen. East, south, west, north, and center—each domain keeps its own hall with a Grand Venerable in command… The five of us were merely the Eastern hall’s enforcers. The Grand Venerable lives deep within the Divine Punishment Sanctuary on the Central Heaven-Origin Sacred Continent. There, an entrance to the Heaven-Ascending Path is kept under guard…”
“The Heaven-Ascending Path…” Awe and dread twitched across his eyes. “That corridor connects the world above to level thirteen. The celestials rule here and harvest soul crystals for one reason: keeping that passage stable and delivering periodic offerings upward.”
“Offerings?” Jared pressed. “What exactly lies above? Is it only your clan chief? If resources are needed, why not carry them up directly instead of feeding that path?”
Celestial Metal Venerable shook his head. “I don’t know. Only the Grand Venerable holds that secret. We simply enforce, suppress resistance, gather high-grade soul crystals! Soul crystals are refined from special spirits. The stronger or rarer the soul, the higher the crystal’s grade and the better it sustains the path and the tribute. Materials can’t be ferried straight to higher realms. The laws forbid it; if anyone could strip lower worlds at will, those worlds would perish.”
“There’s a loophole…” he added, a bleak laugh catching in his throat. “The Heaven-Ascending Path slips past those laws and their scrutiny.”
Hearing that, Jared froze. He had never pictured the celestials, so proud of their purity, using a crack in the rules to pull off petty theft. They were funneling resources from level thirteen upward in secret. And to keep the corridor alive, they were turning living people into soul crystals. That was no different from the rites of demonic cults. After that, how could they still call themselves celestials?
Jared forced the issue again. “The Primal Origin Breath, what is it?”
Celestial Metal Venerable shook his head once more. “Forbidden… I’ve only heard whispers—a primal power from the dawn of creation, tied to chaos… The celestial upper ranks fear it. Whenever they detect it, they erase all trace. The Morse couple may have stumbled on something that carried that breath downworld…”
The claim punched straight through Jared’s composure. Chaos, the primal, his own Chaotic Scripture—the threads converged. Brows knitting, he wondered whether the Morse couple’s link to him had painted a target on their backs upon returning to level thirteen.
Jared pursued the line. “Across the Five Domains, how strong are the other Venerables? And inside the Central hall, apart from the Grand Venerable, who else stands guard?”
“All five Venerables are High Immortal Realm Level Seven, same realm as us, though strength varies… The Grand Venerable sits at the peak of Level Eight. He can crush the five of us together without effort… As for the Central Divine Punishment Hall, I can’t say how many elites serve him. A Divine Envoy from above might even be present…”
His words faded to a whisper, eyes swimming with terror. Jared turned the revelations over and over, weighing each one. The situation was grimmer than he had imagined. He flexed blood-streaked fingers, tasting copper on his tongue. The Eastern Region Divine Punishment Hall suddenly felt small, no more than a guard post. The real storm waited on the Central Heaven-Origin Sacred Continent, in the hands of the Grand Venerable.
A chill threaded beneath his ribs. If the Grand Venerable kept one of those aloof Divine Envoys beside him, Jared’s current strength would snap like damp wood. A moment ago, bold certainty had carried him. Now that same certainty wavered and cracked, leaving a sting of doubt burning behind his sternum.
Jared steadied his voice despite the toll. “Does the Grand Venerable stay inside the Central Divine Punishment Hall all year round?” he asked.
The Celestial Metal Venerable gave a tiny nod, golden blood still drying at the corners of his eyes. “The Grand Venerable sits there through the years, guarding the Heaven-Ascending Path. He seldom leaves…” The words scraped out of the man’s throat. “You… You killed four of us in a row. The Grand Venerable may already sense something wrong. Our life sigils rest in his hands…”
The warning had not even finished echoing when the entire Divine Punishment Hall shuddered like a beast roused from sleep! Overhead, a vast, merciless voice, grand as the law of heaven itself, rolled across the rafters and open courts.
“Which wretch dares trespass in my Divine Punishment Hall and butcher my Venerables?!” the voice boomed.
The pressure folded air into iron. Every celestial attendant dropped, knees and foreheads slamming the tiles, their bodies quivering against the unseen weight. The Grand Venerable had awakened!
Jared’s gaze sharpened like drawn steel; this was no time for lingering. He cast a last glance at the Celestial Metal Venerable, whose face had faded to ash, then slammed a palm onto the man’s crown. Chaotic force detonated. The body jerked once, the light inside those eyes guttered out, and soul and flesh were erased together.
Jared swept up the drifting godforce and scattered treasures. In the same breath, his figure blurred into a gray streak, racing toward the outer gates of the hall.
