“But…” Skylar turned the sentence with easy calm, like he was mentioning something too trivial to matter. “Trash like you isn’t worth me doing it myself. I’d only dirty my hands.”
He turned his head toward Josephine beside him. His voice changed at once—soft and gentle—with the kind of certainty that didn’t leave room to refuse, like he was assigning the most ordinary thing in the world. “Senior Josephine, trouble yourself for me. Teach this fool who doesn’t know his place a lesson, and let him learn who he can afford to provoke and who he can’t,” Skylar said.
The second those words landed, the entire place fell silent. It was like time locked in place. The howling wind cut off. The demonic aura stopped rolling. Every other sound vanished until all that remained was the sharp, hurried breathing of the people standing there. The cultivators of Cloudhaven City stared with their eyes wide open, disbelief written all over their faces. None of them had expected Skylar to call on Josephine to make a move against Jared.
Jared went rigid where he stood, like a thunderbolt had crashed straight into him. His body wouldn’t move. The Dragonslayer Sword nearly slipped from his hand, and the draconic energy around him broke into wild, violent disorder.
He looked at Skylar as if he could tear him apart on the spot. Then he whipped toward Josephine, and whatever was left in him seemed to drop from the highest point straight into a bottomless pit. The shock on his face cracked wide open into something worse, and even the spirit inside him seemed to shake.
“Skylar! You actually dare send Josephine against me?!” Jared roared, his voice shredded raw and on the edge of breaking. “You filthy bastard! You despicable piece of trash! Are you even human?!”
Skylar only smiled faintly, like he hadn’t heard Jared’s roar at all. His eyes stayed flat, with a trace of amusement in them, and he went on speaking to Josephine in a soft voice. “Senior Josephine, go on. This man is nothing. Just an irrelevant ant, a pathetic clown. You don’t need to hold back. Just cripple him.”
Josephine’s brows pulled tight, and the resistance in her kept building. She looked at Jared, frozen below. She looked at that face gone white as paper, drained of all color. She looked at the pain and despair in his eyes, so thick it wouldn’t break apart.
She looked at the way his whole body shook, and that resistance inside her surged harder. It was the kind of pushback that came from somewhere deeper than thought. It made her unwilling to take even one step—unwilling to raise a hand against him.
She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t know why. There was no reason she could grab onto, nothing she could name, but she simply did not want to strike that man. Even with Skylar giving the order, she still wouldn’t.
“Senior Josephine?” Skylar’s voice came again—still warm, but a faint chill ran under it—and a thin threat spread through the air. “What is it? Is there a problem? Or… are you reluctant to lay a hand on him?”
Josephine turned and looked at Skylar. He still wore that same gentle, harmless smile. But deep in those dark eyes, there was something she couldn’t make sense of—something shadowed and stubborn. The moment it touched her, her body went taut.
“I…” Josephine parted her lips. She was about to refuse—about to say she didn’t want to make a move—but before the words could leave her mouth, Skylar cut in lightly. “Senior Josephine, trust me…”
Skylar’s voice stayed gentle and certain, carrying a soothing force that pressed in before it could be pushed away, like he was coaxing a child who refused to listen. “That man isn’t worth your hesitation. He’s our enemy.
He bears hostility toward both of us. Go on. Just treat it as… helping me vent this. For all these years, he’s been pressing me down at every turn. I’ve been sick of him for a long time. If master were here, master would tell you to make a move too.”
Josephine fell silent for a moment. Everything in her head was a mess. With that blank stretch in her memory, she had nothing to judge by. In the end, she gave a small nod. She didn’t even know why she had agreed.
Maybe it was because, ever since that emptiness had taken her memories, Skylar had been the only one by her side—the only junior she trusted. Maybe it was because somewhere deep down, she also wanted to understand why that man could throw her so badly off balance—why he mattered to her this much.
Or maybe it was because Skylar had brought up their master, the Inferno Devil, and she didn’t dare refuse. The master’s authority had been carved deep into her soul. Even with her memory torn away, that reverence was still there.
She drew in a deep breath and forced down the turmoil and resistance pressing inside her. Then she slowly raised her right hand. A red flash burst out. A longsword appeared in her hand out of nowhere—crimson from end to end—with dark-red flame patterns flowing across the blade.
The blade had been forged from a demon’s ultimate fire. Heat rolled outward at once. The air around it twisted under the burn. The tip of the sword trembled slightly, letting out a sharp, blazing cry that carried a killing force fierce enough to burn through anything.
This was her sword, the Worldfire Blade. It held the purest, most blazing demon flame—something that could burn the spirit and reduce all things to ash. Josephine tightened her grip on the sword. Her fingertips pressed harder until her knuckles turned pale.
The heat of the blade seeped through her palm, but it did nothing to warm the cold, tangled weight sitting inside her. Her gaze settled on Jared again. Something extremely complicated flickered in her eyes—confusion, resistance, blank uncertainty.
Then it all hardened into resolve. She told herself this was nothing more than following her junior’s order and dealing with an enemy. Then she moved. Her purple robes flared as she moved, red flames coiling around her. She came through the air like a fire god stepping down from the highest heavens—light and graceful to the eye—but carrying the kind of killing force that looked ready to burn everything in its path.
In a blink, she crossed a hundred yards and shot straight at Jared. She was so fast the eye could barely hold her. All that remained behind her was a streak of purple and crimson tangled together. The flames on the Worldfire Blade ripped across the sky, blazing with heat fierce enough to scorch the spirit, and the sword drove straight for Jared’s throat.
Jared stood where he was and did not move. He looked almost like a man stunned senseless, and the draconic energy around him had gone completely still. He only watched that purple figure rushing at him. He watched that face that had haunted him day and night—the one he had never stopped thinking about.
He watched those eyes that had once been full of love for him and now held nothing but distance and killing intent. His heart took it like countless blades were driving through it again and again. The force of it seemed to tear him apart from the inside, crushing the air out of him, until even the spirit inside him seemed to be crying out.
Even then, he still did not move. He even lowered the Dragonslayer Sword in his hand, slow and deliberate, letting the tip sink down. There was no sign of defense in him—no sign that he meant to strike back.
“Jared!” Vivian’s cry tore out beside him, rough and breaking apart. She tried to rush over—tried to shove Jared away—tried to take that sword for him instead. But an invisible pressure had already locked onto her body. She could not move at all and could only stand there and watch that crimson flame stab toward Jared.
But Jared could no longer hear her. In his world, there was only that purple figure left—only that face he had loved down to the bone. The sword light arrived in an instant. The burning tip, wrapped in flames that looked ready to consume everything, thrust straight at his throat. It only needed to move one more inch to punch through his neck, burn his spirit with hellfire, and take his life.
