“Let’s move,” Flaxseed murmured, voice thin against the wind. Jared answered with a curt nod. Together, they leaned into the gale that ruled the wastes and set off.
Across the open flats, the storm howled like a pride of starving beasts. Sand, sharp as needle-thin silver, slapped their faces until the skin throbbed and their lips tasted iron.
They had hardly left Blackwind City by five hundred kilometers when the wind carried a new sound-steel ringing, men cursing, throats roaring for blood.
“Someone’s fighting up ahead…” Flaxseed squinted into the blur, pupils narrowing like a predator scenting fresh kill.
Following the racket, his gaze settled on a shallow bowl-shaped hollow just beyond a ragged rise. Two rival bands of cultivators tore at one another in that natural arena, their skirmish so fierce the air quivered.
On one side, warriors in slate-blue jackets swung long blades that hissed through the gloom, every stroke born to kill. Opposite them, men in rough black tunics answered with iron fists that cracked like battering rams.
Both groups circled a small spring shrouded in drifting white mist, eyes glittering with the hunger of wolves.
The spring was scarcely a few feet across, yet a pearly glow pulsed beneath the surface, bright as starlight caught in liquid glass. Threads of pure, thin celestial energy curled through the air, a fragrance no cultivator could mistake.
“Perfect,” Jared said, almost to himself. “I happen to need celestial energy…” A brief, confident smile played across his face, as though fate itself had booked this meeting on his behalf.
Without another word, strode toward the hollow, each step steady, claiming the ground as if it belonged to and always had. Flaxseed hurried to match his pace, knew exactly what that quiet smile meant.
The celestial spring‘s energy was gentler than what flowed from celestial gems, yet far cleaner, ideal for mending the power Jared had burned in Blackwind City.
They had barely reached the mouth of the hollow when half a dozen combatants wheeled to face them. A blue-jacketed fighter, blade raised high, barked, “Where do you strays think you’re going? This spring is ours! Turn around or die!”
His shout cracked through the bowl like thunderclap after thunderclap. Opposite him, a broad-shouldered man in soot-black garb lowered his fists and ran a slow, contemptuous gaze over the newcomers.
Sensing Jared hovered only at Human Immortal Realm Level Five, while Flaxseed lingered barely at Level One, sneered, certain they were insects beneath his boots.
“With toys like your cultivation, you really want a seat at this table?” jeered. “Walk away now, before our blood splashes over those nice clothes of yours!”
The burly man in black let his words drip with lazy contempt, as though Jared and Flaxseed were no more than two insects might crush beneath a wandering boot heel.
Jared stopped where the path narrowed, his gaze sliding toward the spring that shimmered at the hollow’s heart.
The spring itself was little more than a fist-sized eye in the stone, yet curls of silver mist drifted upward like weightless ribbons, dancing across the air in slow, hypnotic swirls.
One draft of that essence will anchor Earthly Immortal Realm Level Five so completely that not even a storm of voidfire could shake me…
As calculated, the thought was cool and precise behind steady eyes.
“Two whole squads slaughtering each other over one celestial spring feels tragically small-minded. Yield it to me instead. No need for more broken bones-agreed?”
His tone was water-still, yet an iron gravity rolled beneath each syllable, as if the words themselves were royal decree.
