“What is it?” Celestial Metal Venerable’s eyes narrowed to twin sword points, as though they could slice straight through Jared’s assumed face.
Jared closed the gap with two measured steps, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “It’s about the recent disturbances along the Heaven-Ascending Path. The Grand Venerable has issued a secret order; we are to hasten the gathering of soul crystals, especially those carrying an unusual aura.”
He dangled those names deliberately, knowing only the Five Venerables shared that level of knowledge. A flicker crossed Celestial Metal Venerable’s gaze, yet wariness held firm. “Where is this order? Why have I not received it?”
“Here is the order…” Jared lifted his hand; a jade slip, softly gilded with light, floated above his palm. The ripple it gave off matched the signature the Grand Venerable had used—an echo Jared had copied from Glacier’s memories.
Celestial Metal Venerable fixed on the slip. An exploratory thread of spirit sense drifted out to verify it. The instant that thread brushed the surface, the air twisted; the expected quiet inspection flipped into raw chaos. The jade slip burst apart with a dull crack. Instead of shards, it dissolved into a storm of hair-fine, ash-gray Needles of Chaos that tore toward his face like rain blown sideways.
In the same breath, Jared sprang forward, chaotic force roaring to full power. His palms multiplied into a blur, each strike homing on a different vital spot around Celestial Metal Venerable.
“I knew there was treachery!” Surprised but not flustered, Celestial Metal Venerable moved as though he had rehearsed this attack. The twin swords on his back rang free, spinning into two streaks of silver-white sword aura. One swept into the oncoming needles, the other cleaved straight for Jared’s brow. At the same moment, his Celestial Metal Divine Armor flared alive, runes racing across the plates until his defense spiked to its peak.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
A barrage of impacts followed, so fast they blurred into one continuous roar. Most of the Needles of Chaos shredded under the sword aura, yet several slipped through and pinged against the Divine Armor. Each impact gouged a tiny crater, gray corrosion spreading across the glow. The arc aimed at Jared met a gray, chaos-forged palm and skidded off course with a shriek of torn space.
“You’re not Glacier! Who are you?!” Rage boiled in Celestial Metal Venerable’s shout; certainty hardened the edge in his eyes. That suffocating gray force shared nothing with Glacier’s frigid laws; it reeked of pure erasure.
“The one who has come to claim your life!” Jared dropped the last trace of disguise. A bolt of motion, he crashed into Celestial Metal Venerable, fists and palms weaving a net of chaos.
In an instant, the hall drowned in overlapping sword light and writhing gray turbulence. The silver-white sword aura stayed impossibly keen, shearing through pillars, walls, and air alike. The murky chaos answered by dissolving whatever it touched, even the underlying laws that gave form to the hall. Their duel tore from indoors to open sky; each clash toppled another section of palace, split the earth wide, and shredded defensive arrays.
True to his reputation as the strongest of the Five, Celestial Metal Venerable’s offense stayed relentless, every sword stroke carrying the authority to sever laws themselves. Jared pushed chaotic force to its limits, spawning wall after wall of gray barriers, palm prints, and fist shadows that met each sword beam head-on, grinding away its edge.
The battle eclipsed every prior fight, each exchange staked on narrower margins and higher stakes. The longer they traded blows, the deeper the shock carved into Celestial Metal Venerable’s mind. The adversary sat only at the pinnacle of Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine. Yet that gray power stood on another tier; every time his sword aura bit in, it lost sharpness far too fast, its might bleeding away.
Celestial Metal Venerable’s slash should have ripped the air wide open. Yet the gray-robed intruder slid half a step to the side, and the blade whistled past empty space. Before the ringing stopped, another thrust whiffed against a thin gray barrier that winked out the instant it met steel. The man’s sense for danger was razor sharp; every time Celestial Metal pressed in with maximum force, the counter arrived from the smallest angle and at the cheapest cost.
A hard warning beat inside Celestial Metal’s chest. Dragging this duel out only gave the stranger more room to pull tricks. He bared his teeth and growled, “This can’t go on. End it fast! Now!”
Resolve hit like a hammer. He snapped forward, bit through his own tongue, and spat a hot rope of blood across the two hovering swords. Scarlet sizzled against silver, and both blades quivered as though tasting fresh fuel. His voice boomed through the torn courtyard: “Celestial Metal Grand Path! Slay immortals, wipe out gods!”
Each word rang like an iron bell, syncing with the swords’ rising pitch. The twin weapons shuddered, collided, and fused. Sparks welded them into a single silver-white column that punched from ground to clouds. The shaft of light felt cold enough to cut bare skin from yards away. Ancient runes crawled across the pillar. Within the glowing script, phantom gods toppled and shattered stars bled fire—a mute prophecy of what the swing could do.
Lifetime cultivation, pure blood, every law insight he owned—Celestial Metal poured them all into that one stroke. It was deadly enough to butcher anyone at his level and even frighten an eighth-tier Upper Celestial. The sword column locked onto Jared like a giant spear of frost. With a thunderless lurch, it dropped, seeking to cleave man and earth in a single pass. Where it passed, sky and stone fractured like thin panes of glass. Layer after layer peeled away, exposing swirling black currents beneath the shattered space.
Gray light washed across Jared’s eyes. For the first time tonight, weight settled on his features. That falling pillar would not be shrugged off. He accepted the fact in a heartbeat. Holding back was no longer an option. He drew a deep breath. Inside his body, chaotic force spun faster than any wheel he had ever risked. Ash-colored radiance surged over his limbs until he looked more statue than flesh—a living avatar of primordial dusk.
Both hands rose, palms facing, as though he cradled an invisible globe. In that empty gap, a tiny gray bead swelled, dense enough to feel like it dragged the horizon toward itself. His voice slipped out, low and even: “Chaos… Reversion… Cataclysm.”
The bead ballooned into a whirlpool the size of a small room. It spun forward, straight into the descending silver pillar. No crash followed. Better to say every sound vanished. The arena fell under a blanket of absolute hush. The silver blade sank into the vortex the way a stone sinks into fog. Not a ripple escaped. God-slaying power, space-rending edge, all of it unraveled, chewed away, and swallowed by gray oblivion.
Several breaths later, the sword light was simply gone. The vortex rippled once, then thinned into nothing, as placid as a pond after a skipped pebble. Celestial Metal Venerable’s face turned paper white. His aura guttered, leaving him hollow-chested, eyes round with dread he could not mask. His ultimate attack had dissolved like sugar in water. The realization hammered his mind harder than any physical wound.
A rasp tore from his throat. “No… Impossible… What kind of power is that…”
The words bled out with his confidence; the steel core of his Dao heart crumbled into gravel. Jared’s cheeks lacked color as well. The Chaos Reversion Cataclysm had emptied deep wells inside him. Even so, he gave his foe no window.
One gray blur and he was before Celestial Metal Venerable, his palm settling on the crown of the man’s head like an executioner’s weight. Chaotic force surged in, locking every meridian and sealing every wisp of strength the instant it met resistance.
