The Infinite Soul Demon Sect members brandished foul relics, unleashing legions of howling specters that congealed into a sky-black canopy, clawing at every strand of sword-light in an attempt to devour and corrupt it.
When demonic energy slammed against sword energy, the plain thundered with explosions. Energy storms ripped outward, carving bottomless ravines across the dark-red earth of the Blood-Scar Plains. From the outset, the fight was nothing short of savage.
Low-rank disciples fell like wheat beneath a scythe, blood soaking the soil in seconds while severed limbs spun through the air.
High-tier elders of the Heavenly Immortal Realm sought equals, locking into brutal duels the moment their eyes met.
Sword gales split the sky, demonic flames towered high, and colliding artifacts burst like stars; roars, screams, blasts, and clashing steel blending into a single, merciless symphony.
The entire Blood-Scar Plains had become a monstrous grinder, devouring life with every passing heartbeat. And yet, the architect of this carnage, Jared, lingered at the battlefield’s edge inside a fold of near-invisible void.
Space wavered around him, shaping a perfect veil that erased his scent, his power, even the memory of his presence. He hovered there, part detached deity, part meticulous spectator, gazing upon the maelstrom of flesh and energy beneath him.
When the two armies first collided, two flood-tides smashing together, Jared’s eyes had flickered with a spark of admiration.
“Quite the spectacle…” he murmured, his words no louder than thought.
That clash of sword aura and demonic energy is nearing peak intensity. Cultivators at Level Ten really do have a talent for turning power and formation into one seamless blade…
As bodies piled and the earth ran red, the glimmer in Jared’s eyes faded back to placid stillness, even a hint of detachment.
“War is the same everywhere—brutal, ugly,” he mused. “Resources, ideology, profit—life is always the coin that pays the bill. Each of these cultivators may hold different flags and creeds, yet before death, they stand equally small…”
He paused when a Mystic Sky Sword Sect elder, wielding his peerless Splitting-Light Sword Technique, slew three demon stewards in succession, only to cough blood as old wounds tore open.
Fine swordplay, but too obsessed with offense…
Jared noted, lips barely moving.
His guard leaks, and his core pulse betrays an unhealed injury. So, the Mystic Sky Sword Sect isn’t forged of seamless iron after all. Fissures show…
Like a chess master surveying the board, Jared weighed every strength, every weakness on both sides, filing them away for the twists yet to come. Then, on the demon flank, an elder raised a Ten-Thousand Soul Banner.
Wraiths, by the tens of thousands, erupted, knitting a ghostly realm that snared a sword squad. As those spirits began to feast, Jared’s eyebrows drew together, the only sign of discomfort breaking his marble calm.
Soul-refinement, stripping spirits from living flesh, violates everything the heavens once wrote into stone… By mortal morality, it warrants utter destruction, yet here, amid demonic law, the atrocity is treated as nothing more than daily custom.
Jared’s expression remained unchanged. No tremor, no flicker of outrage, only the measured stillness of a man who chose to watch rather than be watched.
Beneath that calm, he tallied expenditures on both sides, weighed the stamina of each Heavenly Immortal combatant, and rehearsed a dozen possible endings to the war already roaring across the blood-red plains.
Fight, then. Fight to the death. The heavier the losses, the better… When both armies lie in tatters, when the victor can scarcely stand, Myriad Beast Sect will get a chance to breathe again… Perhaps even pluck the spoils while no one is looking…
For several unforgiving days, the slaughter rolled on. More than a dozen Heavenly Immortal elders fell like dimmed stars, their disciples piling around them in mangled drifts.
At last, the wildfire of battle licked its way to the heart of Blood-Scar Plains, right up to the outer walls of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect citadel.
