The skirmish in the gorge altered Clara’s attitude overnight. Her doubts vanished, replaced by respect. She now sought Jared’s opinion first, allowing herself to act only after a small approving nod from him.
Interrogation proved swift. Under the twin pressures of Jared’s silent presence and the Mystic Sky Sword Sect’s interrogation methods honed for war, the captured Demon Sect disciples and Melded Beastkin warriors spilled their secrets like cracked jars.
“Spare us, sir!” one demon disciple stammered, sweat streaking the grime on his face. “We were ordered to sweep this sector for stragglers of the Myriad Beast Sect, especially Master Paxton and his aides… Oh, and any scouts from the Mystic Sky Sword Sect. If we spotted them, we were to fire a signal flare. Elite squads would move in at once!”
Clara’s tone was ice. “How many patrols in this sector? Where are the elites stationed? Speak…”
“I… I only know our unit,” the man whimpered. “Elder Rhys commanded with Captain Fangtooth at his side.”
“Master Thornscale sits at the Myriad Beast Sect headquarters with certain Infinite Soul Demon Sect leaders. Mixed squads of our clans and demon disciples comb the perimeter.”
“Rumor says they’ve ordered special sweeps of old hunting grounds and abandoned mines to the northwest and southwest; claim those mines hide fugitives,” another Melded Beastkin fighter muttered, clutching a splinted arm. “It’s a good hiding place, they said.”
Jared listened without a word, filing every detail.
Northwest… Southwest… Those might be the escape lines Paxton would favor…
After the prisoners were secured and the squad had rested, Jared studied the map spread across a fallen shield. “We move southwest. Keep low, mask every trace. If Master Paxton truly fled that way, we’ll find his trail, and we avoid every patrol route we now know.”
“Understood, Mr. Chance,” Clara answered at once. She ordered the disciples to weave concealment spells, suppress their auras, and follow the path Jared’s fingertip had traced across the parchment night.
***
For the next two days, Jared and his small party moved through the Myriad Beast Mountains like phantoms, skimming over ridges, slipping beneath thorny arches, never once rustling a single fallen leaf.
Three sizable patrols prowled the range, yet Jared steered everyone clear of them. They passed scorched clearings, shattered trees, and the unmistakable gouges of recent combat, but Paxton’s trail remained cold.
Each hour deepened Jared’s frown.
The range sprawled far beyond sight, and Paxton, wounded, wary, clearly masked every footprint. Searching like this felt no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.
Inside Jared’s chest, an unspoken clock began to tick. He could sense invisible nets hunting for Paxton and the others tightening from all sides.
No one knew these peaks better than the beast folk, and the Demon Sect had laced its own sorcery through the hunt. Paxton’s window for survival was shrinking by the minute.
Clara edged closer, reading the tension in Jared’s eyes. “Mr. Chance, we can’t keep searching like this. Shouldn’t we…”
Jared lifted one hand for quiet, shoulders rigid, gaze snapping toward a grove of ancient timber to the left.
A heartbeat later, the faintest sigh of movement stirred the ferns—so light Clara might have blamed the wind had Jared’s spiritual sense not confirmed life.
Two figures eased out of the shadows, their pelts and skins mottled to match bark and moss so perfectly that the forest itself seemed to peel away and stand upright.
Beast folk, two of them.
Both lingered in half-shifted forms, one wolf, one leopard. Fresh gashes streaked their hides, their breathing shallow, their eyes blinking with guarded exhaustion.
At the sight of strangers, especially Jared and Clara, they bristled, claws half-raised. Then the wolf’s gaze locked on Jared’s face, and raw, impossible relief flared behind yellow irises.
“M-Mr. Chance?!”
The name escaped in a quiver, his joy strangled to a hush even as it shook his frame.
Jared recognized him: Wilder Kaze, a wolf elder who usually shadowed Paxton’s flank, a Level Four Heavenly Immortal.
“Elder Wilder?” Jared stepped forward, voice low, urgent. “Where is Sect Master Paxton? Where is everyone else?!”
Wilder’s eyes rimmed crimson. “It really is you! Mr. Riftclaw is holed up in a hidden valley just ahead. Many of us are down; Mr. Riftclaw is hurt worst of all. We were scouting for medicine and a clear path out.”
“Show us to him!” Jared didn’t hesitate.
Guided by Wilder, the team crept onward, threading between natural illusions and skirting a swamp that slept like glass but reeked of lethal Qi beneath.
They reached a cliff face drowned in vines and broken boulders. Behind it, a slit barely wide enough for one body pulsed with faint array-light—hasty illusions paired with a warning seal.
Wilder flashed a sequence of claw-shaped signs. The mirage rippled, parted, and accepted them one by one. They slipped inside.
The valley proved narrow yet winding, a stone throat that swallowed sound and sunlight alike.
Roughly twenty sect disciples lay within, some propped against walls, others sprawled on grass-matted stone, every chest wrapped in stained bandages. The air reeked of mingled blood and crushed herbs.
Strangers triggered instinct. Injured beast folk lurched upright, teeth bared, until familiar eyes spotted Jared. Recognition rippled through the wounded like wind across tall wheat.
“Mr. Chance!”
“He’s here!”
Deep inside the ravine, a lone monolith jutted like an altar from the earth.
Paxton slumped against the stone. Bandages, layer upon layer, wrapped his broad chest. New blood oozed through the linen in dark wells, and the bronze in his complexion had drained to the brittle hue of old parchment.
“Sir… You’re here… At last!” Paxton’s eyes ignited. He clawed at the rock, desperate to stand, every muscle trembling in protest.
In a blur, Jared appeared beside him, one palm settling firm and gentle on the wounded shoulder. “Don’t move…”
A thread of Jared’s spiritual sense swept through Paxton’s body like a lantern in a cavern.
Tendons were frayed, organs pounded loose, meridians torn in several places. Worst of all, shadows of demonic essence clung to the wounds, dark fingerprints left by a battle fought far too close to death.
