Flaxseed finally revealed his hidden might. Charms flew from his fingers, each one birthing a violet thunderbolt that speared through a demon’s heart before the body even hit the ground. The massacre intensified. Both armies fought past pain or mercy, eyes glazed crimson with frenzy.
High above, Celestial Guards and demon generals drove their powers harder still. Gold and ebony wove into a blinding aurora, eclipsing moon and sun alike for one terrifying heartbeat.
Bodies of dark-cultivators lay piled high, a grotesque cairn that blotted out the trampled flags beneath. Blood soaked the shattered paving stones, spilling into gullies and gathering in sluggish crimson rills that crept toward the lowest ground.
Soul Devourer hovered above the carnage, black robes snapping in the wind, his yellowed eyes ablaze with a rage could scarcely cage.
He had never dreamed that the Celestial Guards Onneas brought could stand toe-to-toe with his demon generals, much less how formidable the Golden Armor Guards were.
Far ahead, Onneas’ teal robe cracked like a banner in the gale. At last, moved. Time seemed to flinch as made move.
With the barest sweep of one pale sleeve, sent no thunderclap, no blinding flare-only a silent, suffocating pressure that made the very horizon buckle.
Terror struck Soul Devourer so sharply his face blanched to ash. The power rolling off eclipsed every law understood. He tried to flee, yet his limbs locked in place, clamped by invisible irons that mocked his will.
“Impossible! How can you be this strong?” Soul Devourer shrieked. his voice tearing like rusted metal. Onneas regarded with wintered indifference, as though were no more than an ant that had wandered onto marble.
“Soul Devourer, your death is due.” Her tone held neither heat nor haste, only an authority that allowed no argument.
She lifted right hand, slight teal spiritual light gathering at the tip of fingers. The seemingly feeble spiritual light actually contained destructive power.
“Hahaha! Onneas, did you really think such tricks could finish me? How na’ive you are!” Soul Devourer abruptly turned around and shouted at the Demonic Cultivators behind him, “All demonic souls, all Demonic Cultivators, hear me! Spend your lives if you must, but bar their path. I head for the palace core to solidify my body in full!”
The sky blackened as two hundred thousand wailing demonic souls boiled into view. a storm of shadows that blotted out the sun.
Below, tens of thousands of crazed cultivators surged forward, their eyes lit by a suicidal zeal that promised blood for every step. Onneas’ brow tightened, this was frenzy beyond prediction.
That tide of two hundred thousand demonic souls and ten thousand Demonic Cultivators could not truly harm her, but breaking through it would steal precious moments, and moments were all Soul Devourer needed to vanish into the palace depths.
“No! We can’t let slip away!” Jared shouted, his Dragonslayer Sword humming like an iron horn in his grip.
“Hold the demonic souls and the Demonic Cultivators!” Onneas ordered the Golden Armor Guards and the Quartet Celestial Guards behind her. “Jared and the others will come with me-we pursue Soul Devourer now!”
“At once, Ms. Dusko!”
Across the shattered flagstones, the Golden Armor Guards and the Quartet Celestial Guards answered as one, their voices rolling like thunder through the ruined courtyard.
At their backs rose an invisible tide of force-each warrior losing every shred of cultivated power in readiness for the slaughter to come.
Onneas wheeled around, aqua cloak snapping in the ash-laden wind. “Jared, Aurelius, Artemis, Yuliana, move with me! We have to cut Soul Devourer down before his body fully congeals!”
She became a streak of pale light, darting toward the palace’s lightless heart. Jared and the others hurled themselves after her, sword-tips sparking against the night.
They had barely crossed the first broken arch when a wall of wraithlike shapes boiled out of the gloom, a living barricade of demonic souls that hissed and clawed at the path ahead.
