Up on Saintlight Peak, Aurelius saw that scene, and his pupils tightened again. Jared? He… Came too? A bad feeling rose hard in Aurelius’ chest. Skylar alone had already been enough to give him a pounding headache. Now Jared was here too—the same Jared who could kill a True Immortal with a single palm strike. If those two joined forces…
No… This wasn’t right! Aurelius caught it at once. The air between Jared and Skylar didn’t look anything like an alliance. What hung there was something carved down to the bone. The kind of hatred that only ended when one side died. It was so thick that even through the Mountain-Guarding Grand Array, he could still feel it clearly.
They’re… Enemies? Something shifted in Aurelius. The fear in his eyes slowly drained away, and in its place came a flicker of anticipation, along with the look of an old fox starting to scheme. The enemy of his enemy was his friend.
If he could use Jared to keep Skylar tied down, or use Skylar to get rid of Jared, either outcome would do nothing but benefit the Celestial Basilica. And if the two of them tore each other apart, that would be even better. He could sit back, reap the reward, and wipe out both of these major threats in one sweep.
He pressed those calculations down and kept his gaze fixed on the mountain foot below. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. At the mountain foot, Skylar looked at Jared, and the smile at his mouth deepened.
“Jared, we meet again…” His tone stayed easy, casual, like he was greeting an old friend. There was even a trace of leisure in it. “Your injuries healed? Good. Faster than I expected.”
Jared stared at Skylar. The look in his eyes cut like blades, sharp enough to strip flesh from bone if a glare alone could do it. “Skylar, where’s Josephine?”
He didn’t circle around it. His voice came out cold, each word slow and hard, like he was forcing it through clenched teeth.
Skylar smiled. There was something in it that toyed with him, something that mocked him, and something else underneath it that refused to show itself clearly. “Josephine? She’s my senior sister, so of course she’s with me. What, you want to see her? You want her to stab you a few more times with that fire sword?”
Jared’s fist tightened until the knuckles turned white. His nails sank deep into his palm, and blood slipped through his fingers and dripped down. “What did you do to Josephine? Why doesn’t she remember me?”
Skylar tilted his head. His tone stayed light, but a chill flashed through his eyes. “I didn’t do anything. She just… Finally woke up. She stopped letting a mortal insect like you cloud her mind, and she found her real self again. You should be happy for her. After all, she finally got rid of dead weight like you.”
The gold around Jared churned harder, his golden draconic energy rolling off him like a mad dragon about to tear free.
“Skylar, I don’t care what game you’re playing, but listen to me. I will help Josephine get her memories back. And everything you put on her, I’ll pay back a hundredfold!” Jared roared.
Skylar shook his head and let out a sigh. He looked exactly like someone watching a child too stubborn to turn back, with pity in it and contempt right beside it.
“Jared, you’re still this naive. You think anything changes if she remembers you? You think those so-called feelings between you really matter that much?” He paused. When he spoke again, his gaze had gone cold, like ice that had never once seen thaw. “In front of absolute power, feelings are a joke. You can’t even beat me, so what are you going to use to protect her? What are you going to use to bring back her memories?”
Every word out of Skylar’s mouth landed in Jared like another blade driven in deeper. Jared said nothing more. He slowly raised his right hand and curled his five fingers in the air, as if closing them around something that wasn’t there yet.
The Dragonslayer Sword appeared out of nowhere. Its blade was black as ink, threaded with fine golden dragon sigils that flowed across the steel like living things, and a low sword-cry rolled off it. That sword-cry carried the weight of the Draconians, the pride of the Dragon Emperor, and a resolve that wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead. The blade gave a slight tremor, like it was answering its master’s fury.
“Then let me see what you’ve really got…”
Before the last word fully left his mouth, he stepped forward. It looked like an ordinary step. But the instant his foot hit the ground, the earth for 100 yards around him blew apart with a thunderous blast. Broken rock shot into the air, then got shredded into dust a heartbeat later by the raging draconic energy.
Golden radiance exploded outward, like a second sun rising beneath Saintlight Peak, and the glare was so sharp the disciples on the mountain shut their eyes on instinct. A dragon’s roar shook the sky. It wasn’t the low murmur of the phantom anymore. This was a real dragon’s bellow.
The phantom of the Five-Clawed Golden Dragon burst out behind Jared. Its 100-yard golden body coiled in midair, its eyes blazing, its draconic pressure rolling outward so hard even the Mountain Guarding Grand Array over all of Saintlight Peak started trembling violently.
Wrapped in towering sword intent, the Dragonslayer Sword came down at Skylar’s head in one savage strike. That one sword strike carried every bit of his power. At that moment, the peak of High Immortal Realm Level Four erupted from him completely, without holding back a single thing.
The blade-flare swelled into a hundred-yard streak of golden radiance, like a bolt of lightning crashing down from the sky. It tore through the void as it fell, and wherever it passed, space itself split open into a black crack with a harsh, ripping scream.
A flicker of approval crossed Skylar’s eyes. Then it vanished under a heavier, sharper hunger for the fight.
He lifted a hand and threw a punch. It looked casual. But the instant his fist moved, heaven and earth changed color. Demonic aura came rushing in from every direction. It gathered in front of his fist and condensed into a massive black vortex. The vortex spun faster and faster, tighter and harder, until the air around it, the light around it, even the sound around it all got swallowed in. What it left behind was dead black silence. Then the astral fist burst out of the center of the vortex, black as ink.
Boom!
Fist and sword crashed together, and the impact detonated with a sound that shook the sky. By that point, “loud” wasn’t enough to describe it. Everything within a hundred miles lost sound in that instant. Not because there was no sound, but because it was too huge, too far past what any ear could take.
Everyone’s ears were left with nothing but a blank, endless ringing. Even their thoughts stalled for a beat. A terrifying shockwave exploded out from the point of impact and swept across the land. The ground looked like it had been ripped open by a giant plow. Dirt, broken stone, and vegetation all got hurled to the air, then shredded apart inside the violent energy.
The Mountain-Guarding Grand Array around Saintlight Peak shuddered under the force of the shockwave. Ripples spread across the golden barrier like boulders had been thrown into the lake’s surface, one wave after another, with no end.
Jared was driven back three steps. Each step stamped a footprint more than a foot deep into the ground. At the edges, the dirt had been scorched black by the heat, and thin streams of smoke curled up from it.
Skylar didn’t move an inch. But at the cuff of his sleeve, the sword aura had torn a clean slit through the fabric. A light breeze passed over him. The ripped piece of cloth stirred softly, exposing the lean wrist underneath, tight and packed with strength. He lowered his eyes and glanced at it. Then the corner of his mouth lifted.
That smile carried surprise. It carried approval too. And under both of them, there was something else that had not shown itself in a long time.
