“What… What kind of sorcery is that?” The question ripped from Morven, the night-black whirl of his pupils shuddered with naked fear.
“Chaotic celestial energy…” Malcolm‘s voice cracked, “It… It can smother reincarnation aura this completely?”
Ash color crawled across his face, draining every hint of defiance. Jared closed his fingers, the pearl winked out of sight beneath his sleeve. When Jared lifted his head, the two remaining Ghost Kings found themselves under the full, unblinking weight of his stare.
A tremor ran through their spectral armor. Without meaning to, both retreated a single step, as if the gravel between them and Jared had turned molten.
“Cowards!” Morven roared, the word cracking like a whip. He lunged, intent on finishing what his subordinates could not.
“Morven, your quarrel is with me!” Oswald’s sword slid between them again, its edge humming the promise of injury.
Jared had already turned away, attention drifting toward the battlefields far rim. There, the Witherbone Demon and the Great Elder Bloodsea hammered the Five-Element Barrier, each strike scattering cracks like frantic lightning. The weave of elements wobbled, minutes from collapse.
“Let’s finish this…” Jared’s breath left his lips in a low promise. He drew a long breath; deep inside, the spinning Origin Star accelerated until it was nothing but a silver blur. Chaotic celestial energy, five-element power, Golden Dragon blood, even the searing Earthfire True Flame, every current braided into one unstoppable torrent.
His hands rose, wrists steady, fingers weaving a seal so intricate even the air seemed to hesitate, waiting to understand the pattern. Within that lattice flickered the birth of worlds, mountains rising, seas drying, civilizations blinking out and in again, an entire cycle playing behind his knuckles.
“Chaos… Genesis…” The words crashed outward.
Skies, soil, even sound itself bent, battlefield laws rewritten on the spot. This was no tidy permission like those granted by the Lord of Reincarnation, it was a deeper intrusion, a ripping up and re-coding of existence. From Jared’s center, a hundred-mile circle ignited. Reincarnation aura, Ninefold Nether Demonic Aura, soul mist, and death chill unraveled, threads falling away into nothing.
In their place, five-element power, sword intent, even beast-soul strength flared brighter, sharpening every allied blade and claw.
“Impossible!” Malcolm’s scream carried raw panic. “You’re only in the Heavenly Immortal Realm! How can you twist reality like this?!”
“The Heavenly Immortal label is a distraction,” Jared said, voice steady but edged with fatigue. “Real strength comes from understanding the Dao itself…”
“You, Morven, all of you kneeling to the Door of Reincarnation, your so-called Dao is counterfeit, a palace raised on theft and lies… Today…” Jared said, letting each syllable fall like a warning drum, “I’ll let you all see… What the true way really is!”
The battlefield noise slipped into the background of his hearing; inside his chest, only a single, steady note of purpose remained. Jared slammed his palms together, fingers folding into the pattern that lived in his bones. Power surged up his arms, hot, granular, as though the very grains of reality were grinding against his skin.
The clap of his seal detonated throughout the sky, a shattering roar that made even the clouds blanch. Daylight lurched, draining into bruised purples and sick greens, as if the horizon itself had forgotten how to breathe.
The instant his knuckles kissed, a second concussion punched outward, bigger than sound, something ancient enough to bruise the marrow of space. It was not a blast, Jared realized, but a chord, heavy, newborn, the kind that might have rung across the first morning when nothing yet had a name.
The note carried a will too old for language, and every creature within reach felt it press against the wet underside of their souls. Space around Jared shrugged, then twisted, as though the battlefield were clay on an invisible potter’s wheel spinning out of control. Hills bent, banners warped; a hundred-mile ring sagged toward him, ready to be remade.
Rifts veined the air, jagged, black, innumerable. From each wound bled a thick, pewter mist, the raw, first-draft substance of creation itself. It smelled of metal and rain that has never touched ground. Unlike the pale reincarnation aura Jared had battled before, this current sank with the weight of molten lead. It moved slowly, viscous as fresh pitch, yet its passage growled like a river in flood. Wherever the mist flowed, seconds stretched thin.
Light bent inward, swallowed, leaving only the dim, coppery glow of ending days. The whole field took on the hush of a doomed winter morning. Faces across the line blanched, even through the storm Jared could feel their pulses buckle. Instinct, older than thought, told every living thing to crawl away or die.
The reincarnation aura evaporated like frost under noon sun, the Ninefold Nether Demonic Aura boiled off in frantic curls. Every crooked art they trusted crumbled, sand castles meeting the tide of origin.
“Fall back, now!” a voice shrieked, cracking with animal terror.
Witherbone Demon screeched, skin splitting into a storm of ivory shards that scattered like startled birds. Each splinter carried a wisp of his spirit, racing for any crack in reality’s wall. Jared caught the desperation in that technique, it reeked of decades burned in an instant. The shards fled, but even they trembled under the mist.
Great Elder Bloodsea chose sheer violence, half his torso burst, releasing a crimson vapor the size of a cathedral nave. Ghost-voices walled inside the fog as it spun itself into a desperate escape route. In a heartbeat the blood cloud winked out, leaving only a foul, wet smear smeared across the torn sky.
The slower, the weaker, there was no mercy waiting for them. Closest were the Soul Hunters; their soul-forged armor peeled away in silvery flakes the moment the mist brushed it. Under the vanishing plates, flesh shriveled to paper, then to ash; many were gone before their minds gathered enough horror to scream.
The Ninefold Nether Palace disciples fared no better, their yin-laden aura ripped free like cloth in a storm. Without that balance, meridians snapped, mouths filled with blood, and bodies collapsed where they stood. Some ignited outright, black fire blooming from within, reducing them to charred husks in the span of three breaths.
Scattered cultivators and minor sect warriors broke next; their rag-tag arts offered no shelter, and the primal mist erased them as casually as the tide erases footprints. The sky over the ridge turned red as shredded armor, bone, and raw flesh arced past Morven like bloody hail.
Every scream felt sharpened, personal, as though each throat belonged to him. One pulse of Jared’s chaotic surge had shattered nearly a third of the Malevolent Path Hall coalition before Morven even blinked.
Five, maybe six thousand bodies hit the dirt in the same heartbeat. The ones still breathing staggered, clutching wounds that poured more doubt than blood. Their terror soaked the air, and it curdled Morven’s own resolve. The question tore through Morven’s skull: what kind of power could do that?
For the first time, the black mirrors of his eyes betrayed him, widening with a dread he could not leash. The Ninefold Nether Demonic Aura he possessed now buckled under Jared’s swirling chaos, fine cracks veining the surface. Deep inside, the core threads of the Ninefold Nether Demonic Technique, threads he had spun for tens of millennia, quivered, loosening.
The notion alone made his centuries of arrogance tilt toward panic. Impossible should have been a thought for lesser beings, yet the word pounded behind his teeth. He had ruled level twelve for thousands upon thousands of years, carving legends into its darkest strata.
Not even the death match with a Level Four High Immortal had threatened his roots the way this swirling madness just had. The chaotic torrent was not merely force; it gnawed at the concept of him, unweaving the very path he walked.
