“You have angered me…” Oronin’s voice dropped to glacial calm as black miasma roared around him, congealing into dozens of razor-edged demonic blades that flew toward Jared like midnight rain.
Jared did not flinch. Golden aura flared outward, forging a luminous shield that wrapped in unbreakable light. Each demonic blade rang against the barrier, tinny, relentless, then shattered to motes of smoke that hissed away on the wind.
Riding that momentum, Jared vaulted high, his right leg arcing out with mountain-crushing force aimed straight at Oronin’s ribs.
Oronin threw up his arms. The kick landed with a thunderous crack, numbing his bones and launching across the field until his back smashed through a boulder that burst apart in a shower of rock dust.
“Impossible!” Gasps rippled among the Demonic Cultivators. Never had they imagined the youthful prodigy, capable of felling Half-Beast King Imorn, could be beaten back so decisively.
High on his lion mount, Soul Devourer’s hollow sockets flickered with fleeting surprise before freezing over once more. “Do not hurry. The real spectacle is yet to come.”
Oronin rose from the rubble. dusting stone chips from his cloak. Blood traced the corner of his mouth, yet his eyes burned with a wildfire hunger for the fight still ahead.
Oronin lifted his chin, a crooked smile stretching beneath eyes that glittered with malice. “Looks like I’ll have to show some real skill before I can grind you into the dust.”
His hands rose, slow, deliberate, and the air itself folded like soft metal around him. Mountain boulders tore free from the slopes, levitating and spinning in widening orbits as heavier, darker ripples of spatial energy bled outward in every direction.
Someone gasped from the ridge, “Space nascence again!”
Thastrum’s face blanched. He cupped his hands and shouted, “Mr. Chance, watch yourself!”
Jared, however, remained motionless. Calm lit his features in a faint, almost playful smile, the sort men wear when the outcome had already been decided.
With both arms resting behind his back, regarded Oronin with the tranquil focus of a scholar studying a page already familiar. That quiet confidence seeped across the weary cultivator ranks, steadying breaths and spines alike.
“Space Prison!” Oronin barked. He slammed both palms forward, and the command detonated through the ravine like a judicial hammer.
Instantly, the world crystallized around Jared. The atmosphere iced into glassy strata, his golden shield froze mid-pulse, and every muscle, every eyelash, locked in place as though welded by invisible chains.
“Hahaha! He’s pinned! Let’s see swagger now!” a chorus from the demon camp roared. Wild cheers thundered across the black-armored ranks, boots drumming the ground in savage approval.
Yuliana’s heart surged into throat. She lunged, but Aurelius caught wrist with a single word, “Trust him…”
Oronin strolled toward the immobilized Jared, victory already curling his lips. “Where’s that bravado you flaunted a moment ago? Now you squat like a mongrel in my cage!”
A black demonic sword condensed in his right hand, its edge dripping a violet haze. He leveled the blade at Jared’s brow. “Die!”
The tip hovered inches away when Jared laughed, rich, confident, utterly unafraid. “That’s the best trick you’ve got? You’d lecture a master mason on bricks?”
Flames poured beneath his boots. In a single, swaying step, light as willow down, traced an impossible arc, slipping through the frozen space as though it were mist.
“Blazing Stride…” someone breathed, awe hanging on the word. Drawing on Blazing Stride’s built-in spatial surge, Jared slipped past every invisible shackle.
A burst of gold, then re-materialized several yards away. The empty Space Prison snapped shut on nothing but wind.
“W-What…” Oronin’s eyes bulged, his earlier grin shattering. “How can you break a Space Prison?”
Halfway up the slope, onlookers sucked in a collective breath so cold it frosted the evening air.
“What did we just see? An interspatial travel?” Leonel muttered, wonder softening his usually gruff tone. He blinked as though feared the scene might vanish if stared too long. Flaxseed slapped his thigh and cackled. “Knew the kid had a hidden ace!”
Jared rolled his wrists, joints snapping softly like firecrackers beneath the distant rumble of combat. “Space nascence? Child’s play. Everyone here can do that.”
He lunged, one step, then another, vanishing, reappearing, carving the battlefield with streaking mirages. Each ghost image blossomed precisely outside Oronin’s narrowing field of vision.
Color drained from Oronin’s face. He flooded his senses with space nascence, yet every coordinate came back empty.
