“Understood!” Maurice answered, his tone as sharp as clashing steel. “Wait!” Marius lifted a hand. From the shimmering space of his storage ring, produced a flat black message token and pressed it into the elder’s palm. “If trouble exceeds your grasp, crush this. I will come at once…”
“My thanks, Mr. Blackstone,” Maurice said, tucking the token away as though it were fragile glass. Moments later, Maurice summoned twenty hand-picked Enforcement Squad disciples, each a middle-phase Immortal Realm cultivator.
“Listen well,” instructed, voice carrying over the rush of gathering wind. “Quarry No.7 has fallen silent. We fly immediately to investigate. Any suspicious intruder you meet, eliminate without hesitation!”
“Yes!” the Enforcement Squad disciples roared in unison. A gust of spiritual force erupted, and the team streaked toward the distant horizon. In the blink of an eye, they were little more than glints of silver vanishing Into the clouds.
Deep within the rugged gorge of Quarry No. 7, Jared stood at the very center of the excavation, surrounded by men and women whose shackles had only moments ago fallen away.
“Benefactor, we cannot thank you enough,” the middle-aged cultivator said, voice quavering with raw emotion. “Without your intervention, we might have to suffer here forever.”
He had barely brushed the dust from his sleeves when the quarry’s newly liberated cultivators crowded toward him, gratitude shining so bright in their eyes it almost eclipsed the hard-edged sunlight bouncing off the shattered stone.
“Enough formalities,” Jared said, flicking his fingers as though brushing away a cobweb. “I simply couldn’t stomach the way those Demonic Cultivators treated you.”
The middle-aged cultivator bowed until his forehead nearly kissed the gravel. “Benefactor, your grace will live with us for as long as we draw breath.”
Jared gave a small, companionable smile. “And you are?”
He straightened, palm over heart. “I’m Quincy Lee, once an elder of the alliance of the human race.”
“Quincy Lee,” Jared repeated, tasting the syllables. “Good name. Tell me, do you know where Obsidian Stone Sect Headquarters hides?”
“It crowns a mountain far from here,” Quincy said quickly. “It is ringed by guards and a barrierthat the Celestial Immortal himself etched into the air. Ordinary folk can’t even approach the gate.”
Jared gave a low chuckle. “A barrier? Barriers are decoration, nothing more.”
Above them, the sky split with a sharp, whistling roar, like iron spears tearing the wind. Quincy Lee’s face drained of color. “Obsidian Stone Sect people are here!”
All heads snapped upward; on the distant blue, a swarm of black dots arrowed toward the quarry. Jared brushed a speck of grit from his sleeve. I must have made too much noise tearing down their little seal. Good… Now they spare me the trip.
“Sir, they’ve brought half the sect. The one in front is Maurice Shadowmere, the grand elder, and he’s terrifyingly strong.”
Jared smiled, thin and cold. “Maurice Shadowmere? At Immortal Realm Level Nine, he’s still a child playing with wooden swords.”
Moments later, Maurice descended with his enforcers, their robes thrashing like dark banners above the quarry pit.
They hovered there, staring, mouths half-open, as though the scene below were a mural they could not make sense of. Where shackled slaves once toiled, free men now stood tall, of their Demonic Cultivators, not a single figure remained.
“W-What happened here?” Maurice growled, brow knitting. His gaze swept the crowd and locked on Jared, the only unfamiliar face.
“Who are you? Why have you invaded our territory?” The question cracked like ice.
Maurice unleashed his aura, a black tide meant to crush the stranger’s spine where stood. Yet Jared did not so much as blink, the pressure broke against like waves against a cliff.
