“Not bad…” The two words came out easy, almost careless. But anyone who knew Skylar knew what that meant. When he said that, he was finally taking it seriously.
Jared said nothing. He knew that sword just now had only been a probe. He drew in a deep breath. Inside him, the Golden Dragon Bloodline boiled over completely, and the dragon’s blood rushed through his veins like molten fire. Every inch of muscle seemed to burn. Every bone shook with it. The Dragon Sovereign Bloodline was answering his will.
He attacked again. This time, there was no testing in it. The blade-light streaked out like a rainbow, one wave after another without a break.
The first sword strike sent its blade-flare surging into the golden wyrm. Claws spread and fangs bared, it lunged straight at Skylar. The dragon threw its jaws wide, fangs bared in a brutal row, like it meant to swallow Skylar whole, body and soul together.
Skylar turned sideways and slipped past it. In the same motion, he drove a backhand punch straight into the dragon’s head and blew the raging dragon apart into a sky full of golden radiance.
Jared’s second sword came right on the heels of the first, the tip stabbing straight for Skylar’s throat. That strike had reached the absolute limit of speed. It was so fast the blade-light couldn’t even leave a trace in the air, so fast that even the Elders at Top Level High Immortal Realm on Saintlight Peak couldn’t make out the path of the sword at all.
Skylar lifted a hand and caught the sword tip cleanly between two fingers. A sharp metal shriek burst out on impact, and fire sparks sprayed in every direction. Where his fingers met the sword tip, the air itself compressed into a transparent sphere visible to the naked eye, and a piercing hum ripped out of it.
Then came the third sword, the fourth, the fifth, and so on.
Jared’s assault crashed down like a storm. Every sword came faster than the last, and every sword hit harder. He didn’t need any flashy techniques. He just kept driving the sword forward again and again, each strike carrying that carved-deep hatred, carrying that all-or-nothing resolve, pressing Skylar without a break.
Every sword held enough force to wreck heaven and earth. Every sword had enough power to shave a mountain peak flat. Where the blade-light passed, the ground was plowed open into deep trenches several yards down. A scorched reek spread through the air, the leftover trace from sword aura crashing against demonic aura.
Skylar neither dodged nor gave ground. He met it head-on, one punch after another. His boxing had nothing fancy in it, no showy shifts, no wasted changes, but every punch landed with a precision so exact it bordered on the absurd. No matter what angle Jared’s sword came from, no matter how terrifyingly fast it drove in, Skylar’s fist always arrived at exactly the right spot and slammed into the blade itself, breaking Jared’s offense apart before it could take hold.
The two of them kept getting faster and faster. They moved so fast the disciples on Saintlight Peak couldn’t track a single motion. All they could see was one streak of golden radiance and one streak of black smashing into each other again and again, each impact breaking out in a deafening boom. Golden radiance and demonic aura tangled together until the whole sky turned a strange, dark gold.
They moved so fast that even the Elders in the True Immortal Realm could only barely catch the afterimages. Their eyes widened, and the look on their faces stiffened. None of them could believe this was a fight between two High Immortal cultivators. A clash at this level would have counted as top-tier even among those in the True Immortal Realm.
Skylar was one of those freaks who could fight above his level too. He was only at High Immortal Realm Level Nine right now, but in a real fight, he could wipe out someone at True Immortal Realm Level Two in an instant.
The clash between blade-light and fist force kept getting fiercer. It kept getting tighter too, one collision packed right on top of the next. In just a few breaths, the two of them had already traded hundreds of moves. Every collision kicked out a terrifying shockwave that blasted the ground around them into craters and broken pits.
Within a few miles, there wasn’t a single patch of earth left intact. Broken stones shot into the air, then got shredded into powder by the next wave before they could even fall. Dust roared up and swallowed the sky. But the instant any of it got close to the center of their fight, the violent energy burned it away on the spot, leaving nothing behind.
Up on Saintlight Peak, Aurelius watched the scene with his face turning worse by the second. The hand gripping the railing had gone so tight the veins stood out.
These two… They’re monsters!
He had originally thought Jared killing Order Master Vale with one palm strike was already the limit. But now he saw he had been wrong. Jared was far more terrifying than he’d imagined. That kind of monstrous battle instinct, that bloodline power that kept rising the longer he fought, was on a completely different level from someone like Order Master Vale.
And Skylar was even harder to read. He had been trading blows with Jared this long, yet he still looked completely at ease. He even had spare attention to keep watching everything around him. That kind of strength, that kind of composure, made a chill crawl up from the bottom of Aurelius’ chest.
What shook him even more was the fight looked savage, but neither of them had gone all out yet. They were testing each other. Testing where the other’s limit was. Hunting for a flaw.
“Hall Master, should we…” a Guardian Elder asked under his breath, the words tight with strain.
Aurelius lifted a hand and cut him off. A sharp gleam passed through his eyes. “Not yet. Let them fight. Best case, they both come out crippled, and we take everything without lifting a finger…” He paused, then added, “Pass the order. Every Elder gets ready. The moment they’re spent, we move. Neither of these two can be left alive.”
The Guardian Elder nodded and turned to carry out the order.
At the mountain foot, Jared and Skylar were still fighting. They tore up from the ground into the air, then crashed back down from the air to the ground again. Golden radiance tangled with demonic aura. Sword intent slammed into astral fist. Every exchange carried enough force to instantly kill a True Immortal Realm Level Two cultivator.
Jared’s sword kept getting faster and heavier. His eyes were no longer just following Skylar’s movements. He was sensing every shift in him, every motion, every single circulation of demonic aura inside his body. The golden dragon sigils running along the Dragonslayer Sword burned brighter and brighter, like they were about to tear free of the blade and take flight. Its sword-cry turned sharper and faster, one note after another, as if the weapon itself were answering its master’s will and burning through every last bit of strength it had.
Skylar’s fists grew heavier too. A layer of black demonic flame wrapped around them. It was no ordinary fire, but a condensed demonic aura, so hot that even the space around it warped from the heat. Every punch he threw carved a black mark through the air, and each one hung there without fading for a long time.
Boom!
They crashed into each other again in a savage collision.
Jared was blasted back dozens of yards. His feet plowed two deep trenches through the ground, his palms went numb from the shock, and the Dragonslayer Sword nearly flew out of his hands. A thin line of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth, and the golden radiance around him dimmed by a few shades.
Skylar took three steps back, then locked himself in place. His chest rose and fell once. Several cuts had been torn open in his black clothes by the sword aura, exposing lean muscle underneath, tight and packed with explosive force.
He didn’t chase after him. He only looked at Jared with a cold gaze. “Give it up, Jared. The way you are right now, you’re not my match. Keep fighting, and you’ll die.”
Jared steadied himself, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and smiled. There was no fear in that smile, no retreat in it. It held only a refusal to bend and a battle hunger that hadn’t dropped a bit.
“Give up? Skylar, when have you ever seen me surrender?” Jared pulled in a deep breath. The dragon’s blood inside him boiled again.
He could feel it. In those hundreds of exchanges just now, the bottleneck that had held him back for so long had finally started to loosen. That was the threshold of High Immortal Realm Level Five! That was the chance to break through he had been searching for all along.
