Venomshade’s jaws parted. A column of inky-green poison roared forth, twisting mid-air into a gigantic serpent, its translucent fangs slavering for Jared’s flesh.
The vapor had not yet struck, yet its stench alone muddled minds and made stomachs churn, proof that one breath could cripple.
Jared did not step aside. He did not even glance at the Dragonslayer Sword sheathed across his back. He simply watched the oncoming toxin as if observing a painted scroll.
“Child’s play…” With a low grunt, he let loose the tide within. Spiritual energy, tempered in Heavenly Spirit Liquid, surged like floodwaters breaking a dam.
In both purity and volume, his essence already dwarfed most early Heavenly Immortals, a river turned to molten gold. He pressed two fingers together, raised them like a blade, and sliced the air.
Rip!
A sword-light, razor-fine and pale gold, flashed into being. It parted the serpent-shaped mist as though hot steel through butter, leaving the poison beast cleft and dissolving into harmless mist.
The moment Jared’s blade of light carved through the poisonous haze, the miasma lost all cohesion, unraveling into wisps that fled the air like frightened spirits.
He did not bother to watch it fade. With a casual twist of his waist, he flung his left arm backward and hammered a fist toward a stretch of empty darkness beside him, an apparently reckless blow, yet driven by an instinct honed sharper than steel.
“Holy Light Fist!”
A golden fist print roared into existence, radiant and vast, its surface swirling with characters that looked carved from living sunlight.
The air trembled beneath that sacred brilliance, majestic, solemn, born to banish all evil.
Bang!
The impact ripped a silhouette out of hiding, dragging Shadowshade from the folds of the void and hurling him into the open like some captured phantom.
Terror flooded Shadowshade’s narrow eyes.
He had counted on darkness, on stealth, on the damp silence of shadow, yet Jared’s senses were too sharp, his strength too savage, and, worst of all, the technique was blessed by holy doctrine that burned through shadow arts like the morning sun.
Shadowshade crossed his twin black daggers in a frantic guard, but the fist still punched through. Blood thundered in his ears as he was blasted backward, ribs rattling, lungs aflame.
“Divine technique? What on earth are you?”
High on the platform, the Soul Devourer lurched to his feet, the first spark of alarm breaking through his predatory calm. Few things unsettled the demonic cultivators more than a power this pure, this divine, this blisteringly bright.
Jared offered no reply. He became motion itself, feet sliding into Arcane Footwork, torso rippling like a housed dragon.
In a breath, he closed the gap on the reeling Shadowshade and on Venomshade, who was already summoning fresh clouds of toxin.
“Five-Element Sword Force!”
Two fingers flicked, and five streams of sword energy—gold, emerald, sapphire, crimson, and ocher—screamed from his hand.
They wove around one another in an endless cycle of creation and destruction, layering their might until retreat itself ceased to exist.
Shadowshade tried once more to melt into darkness, but the rainbow blades locked to his breath, tracing him wherever he slipped.
Venomshade spat a denser wall of noxious fog, yet every billow was shredded as if made of brittle paper.
Pfft! Pfft!
Two quiet, surgical punctures. Both assassins froze, eyes wide, as tiny wells of blood blossomed at the center of their brows. Life deserted them in a single dimming heartbeat, and they toppled to the stones like felled statues.
In little more than an eye-blink, the dreaded Five Shade Demons, legends whispered to chill the bravest hearts, had lost three of their number and seen a fourth crippled, Jared’s assault cutting through them like a scythe through dry reed.
Only Bloodshade remained, lips chalk-white, staring at Jared’s lone figure with the helpless awe one might offer a war god descending from storm clouds.
The legacy Jared had seized within the ruins of Heaven Gate Mountain was clearly nothing to trifle with.
Silence swept the grand hall once more, heavy and complete. Every member of the Nethergate Sect, Neville, Sylvia, the disciples, the elders, gazed at Jared as though witnessing a miracle etched into living flesh.
They had known he was formidable, but this was beyond their maps of possibility: a cultivator at Human Immortal Realm Level Five slaughtering opponents in the Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Two as though snapping twigs.
This was not merely fighting above one’s rank. It was unrestrained domination!
Jared clasped his hands behind his back. The robe fluttered in the lingering shockwaves, yet his eyes, fixed on the Soul Devourer atop the platform, remained calm, even indifferent.
“It’s your turn…”
His words were soft, yet they rode an unseen tide that swept through every hall of Nethergate Sect and struck each heart like a bell hammered in the dark.
“I thought only the Heaven Gate Sect commanded the Five-Element Sword Force,” the Soul Devourer murmured, his brows knotting as suspicion crawled across his scarred face.
“Master Hawksley entrusted it to me,” Jared answered with a chill-edged smile. “Strange… The traitor himself still recognizes the technique.”
