“Enough!” Jared shouted. His voice carried an authority that brooked no argument. After observing with cool indifference, he finally moved. He did not erupt in blinding light or trumpet his power. He simply placed one foot forward.
That step folded the distance like cloth. In the span of a blink, he crossed over one hundred meters and set himself between Neville‘s back and Boneshade’s descending fist.
He lifted a single finger, slender, pale, almost delicate, and tapped toward the blow capable of pulverizing mountains. Every eye, including the distant, lofty gaze of the Soul Devourer, contracted to pinpoints.
“Die, whelp!” Boneshade snarled, lips peeling from cracked teeth as he poured more weight into the strike, determined to smash both Jared and his finger to pulp.
Instead of thunder, only the soft pop of a soap bubble sounded when fingertip met knuckle.
Time froze, then shattered. Boneshade’s cruel grin turned to stone. A force, needle-sharp and tyrannical, knifed from Jared’s finger through Boneshade’s arm and detonated inside every bone he owned.
Cracks rippled, a hail of splintering echoes that made onlookers’ teeth ache.
Boneshade screamed, a jagged, inhuman wall. His massive frame shot backward faster than it had charged, as though an unseen titan swatted him away.
While airborne, bone after bone snapped until he was a rag-doll of shattered sticks. He slammed into the distant crowd, kicked up a curtain of dust, then lay utterly still.
One finger. With only one finger, Jared had erased a Heavenly Immortal Level Two famed for strength and indestructible flesh.
Silence swallowed the grand hall; even the torches seemed to forget how to crackle.
Every gaze in the grand hall froze on the young man.
Fingers still half-curled, Jared looked as though he had merely brushed aside a passing gnat, yet the echo of his gesture rang like thunder in their hearts.
Bloodshade’s blood-red claw hung uselessly in mid-air.
The demon froze, eyes wide with a terror he had never tasted, the realization dawning that his killing strike had been dismissed as casually as dust.
Even Neville, who knew Jared’s strength had soared since Heaven Gate Mountain, felt his breath snag. He had expected improvement. He had not expected the impossible.
Sylvia’s dark lashes fluttered, silver light glinting in her pupils. She had wagered on Jared’s potential. Still, this level of dominance shattered every prediction she had dared to make.
On the high throne, the Soul Devourer finally sat upright. The customary sneer slid from his face, replaced by a heaviness that made the very air feel thicker.
“Human Immortal Realm Level Five… And you can already snuff out my champions? Interesting… Something uncanny festers in your flesh, boy, and I will rip it free to see what secrets bleed out.”
Jared gave his wrist a dismissive shake, as though flicking venom from his fingertips. The gesture made the silence crack.
“Soul Devourer, your subordinates break far too easily. Why not honor me with your own hands? Come down, if you dare, and play!” Arrogance, naked, blazing arrogance.
A Human Immortal Realm Level Five cultivator had just called out a fiend whose legend had cowed continents for a millennium.
Across the floor, disciples of the Nethergate Sect felt blood surge through their veins. Their shouts died in their throats, replaced by a reverence that bordered on worship.
“Hahaha! Splendid! Let us see what gives this insect such gall!” The Soul Devourer did not move from his throne. Instead, he snapped an order at the two silent figures behind him. “Shadowshade, Venomshade, no mercy. Tear him apart!”
At the command, the final pair of the Five Shade Demons stepped forward, a storm about to break.
Shadowshade’s outline blurred and melted into darkness itself, his presence thinning to a whisper only sharp senses could track. Beside the shadow, Venomshade appeared as a squat silhouette wreathed in rolling toxic mist. Where the vapor drifted, the very air hissed in agony.
One was mystery, the other pure malice—both perched at the pinnacle of Heavenly Immortal Level Two and, worse, far trickier than the fiends Jared had already crushed.
Shadowshade flickered, and vanished. Space swallowed him like a candle blown out.
