“What cursed art is this? Fall back!” The Great Elder’s voice squeaked at the edges, already losing substance. He clawed at the air, flooding himself with power, yet the drag answered laws beyond sheer force. The Third Elder‘s charm snapped first.
Jared heard nine sharp pops, each skull bead cracking open. The gray spirits caged inside wailed once before the invisible funnel drank them down and spun their shrieks into raw, hungry power.
“No! My treasure!” The Third Elder‘s voice cracked, slicing through the roar. He folded around the empty chain, ribs heaving as though the loss had torn something inside him that even blood could not reach.
“Still worried about trinkets when your pulse is minutes from stopping?” The taunt rolled across the chamber, oily and amused.
A rasping laugh followed, and Jared‘s neck prickled; the Vermilion Demon Lord had slipped behind them without stirring a single mote of dust. Dark talons ballooned to the width of millstones, nails curving like sickles that scraped sparks from the air as they scythed toward the elders’ unguarded spines. Suction still yanked at their chests from the front; death now streaked in from the rear. Boxed in, the Great Elder and his junior looked suddenly very small.
“Then we go together!” Spittle flew as the Great Elder bared his teeth. Instead of resisting the pull, he poured every drop—essence, blood, even shards of soul—into the Whitebone Staff and hurled it at Jared like a comet of spite.
Once free, the staff mushroomed to a hundred-foot giant, awful white flames blooming along its length and radiating an ache that promised to unmake everything it touched. Jared tasted iron; a relic nurtured for uncounted years by a High Immortal Realm Level Two cultivator was about to detonate at kissing distance, enough force to peel mountains.
“Careful!” The Demon Lord’s bravado slipped, the word cracking like old timber. Yet Jared felt no rush of alarm, only a stillness that collected behind his breastbone like held breath.
“Still.” The single word left his lips soft as dust settling. A low hum answered, deeper than stone under ocean. Power rippled outward from him; the world thickened, syrup-slow, every heartbeat stretched into a thousand. The blazing titan of bone, the green sparks, the lunging Demon Lord, even the panic carved into both elders’ faces—all of it crawled like insects pinned in amber.
Only Jared moved freely. He lifted his left hand, a single finger glowing with flecks of star-colored dusk, and touched a spot halfway down the staff’s spine. He had felt the lattice there, thin as old ice.
Crack!
The tiny sound rang absurdly loud inside the slowed moment. The flames snuffed, the bloated staff shrank, dulled, and dropped with a hollow thunk—nothing more than a dusty bone rod deprived of every flicker of will.
Time snapped back to its ordinary drumbeat. The Great Elder stared at the inert stick; whatever light had kept him upright guttered and went out. A ribbon of black blood, laced with shredded organs, burst from the man’s mouth. The sound hit Jared before the smell; he felt the life beneath his fingertips sag, as though the body had given up in a single exhale.
Two wet pops followed, sharp and obscene, echoing between the bamboo trunks like nails against glass. Beside him, the Vermilion Demon Lord drove his claws clean through both elders‘ spines. The talons burst from their chests, each hand cradling a heart still fluttering like a trapped bird. A shredded whisper escaped their throats, more breath than word, and died.
The Great Elder lowered his gaze to the hole yawning through his robes. Disbelief collided with despair in his pupils; then the light behind them guttered and the body folded. The Third Elder followed a heartbeat later, crumpling against the bamboo roots like empty cloth. Beyond them, the ten remaining black-cloaked zealots lay tangled in splintered stalks, throats sawn open by the forest‘s hidden snares.
Jared exhaled, flicking two fingers. The rings, pouches, and the bleached Whitebone Staff tore free of the corpses and zipped into his sleeve. Even the cracked Skull Bead Chain rattled after them like obedient bones. His awareness skimmed the haul. Ghostspring Sect had lived up to its rotten legend; the depth of greed glimmering inside those artifacts made his own pulse stumble.
Almost a million high-grade spirit stones stacked themselves inside the spatial rings, bright as cracked ice. Mountains of rare ore, elixirs, and jade scriptures—many steeped in curses so foul Jared’s brow tightened just reading their names. Beside him, the Vermilion Demon Lord pawed through the spoils like a jackdaw spotting mirrors. Anything that promised to toughen flesh or sharpen spirit vanished into the demon’s cloak with a pleased hum.
Together they raised a silent pyre. Crimson flame folded the corpses inward until only charcoal bones remained, then those too were ash. The moment the last skull cracked, the world blinked.
Peach Blossom Haven peeled away like stage scenery, leaving them perched on the ragged lip of a cosmic landfill. All around, shattered continents drifted in silence; broken pagodas clung to the rock like barnacles remembering a drowned empire. Typhoons of multicolored energy screamed between the islands, collisions booming so hard Jared’s ribs vibrated. Space itself warped, folded, then tore open a darkness that swallowed anything foolish enough to exist nearby.
“Turns out you were right. That little paradise was a lie,” the Vermilion Demon Lord muttered, awe leaking through the bravado.
“From here on, we make our own trail,” Jared said, frown tightening. A prickle of regret crawled up his spine; he might have needed one of those Ghostspring zealots alive.
The real threat now was the wind that wasn’t wind at all. It carried the taste of shattered space, razor laws woven into empty air. Invisible until it sat upon the body, it chilled the marrow with a silence that promised nothing would survive its touch. Jared watched a boulder of black iron, wider than a house, drift into a pale gust and dissolve to powder without a sigh.
“Damn this treacherous breeze! Here one moment, chewing on your heels the next!” the demon snarled. He shaped a shield of roiling crimson mist; the gale kissed it once and peppered it with holes, draining his aura like blood from a slit throat.
Gray currents bucked against Jared’s shield, cold needles scraping across his cheeks before the energy skin softened them. Every pulse of chaotic celestial energy tugged at his core, as though someone kept twisting a knife behind his navel. He could feel spirit-power burning away faster than breath.
Thin lines—five interlocking sigils and a flicker of earthfire—glimmered across the back of his hand. They sucked at the chaos around him, drawing crumbs of five-element essence and the fading warmth of subterranean flame into his starving meridians.
The Guiding Talisman hovered ahead like a nervous firefly, its halo tilting toward a quiet swirl deeper inside the lethal expanse. Even from here, Jared saw columns of air calm near the vortex. Yet the very beams of light reached that pocket and snapped sideways, as if space there had forgotten straight lines.
