That killing intent hung so thick it seemed to leech warmth from the very stones beneath their knees. The Soul Urn had always been the beating black heart of the Malevolent Path Hall. Inside that bone-white vessel drifted nearly a thousand shimmering soul threads, each one a captive whisper torn from some unlucky cultivator, each one refined into raw power the hall intended to swallow and wield.
Now the urn lay in smoking shards, and the harvest of souls had scattered like ash on the wind. For Stebarin, the loss struck like a hammer to the ribs, his grand design staggered, and fury rushed in to fill the gap.
Worse still, his people had already paid the Celestial Palace in mountains of celestial gems to keep the urn fed. It had been days, perhaps hours, from reaching capacity, and then, at the very brink of success, everything had gone catastrophically, irreversibly wrong.
Back on level six, the moment Stebarin sensed the Soul Devourer’s defeat, slipped into the shadows and fled up to level seven without a sound.
He had consoled himself with the thought that Jared would need weeks, months, even, to breach this higher realm. Yet here the man stood, arriving like a thunderclap far sooner than any calculation should have allowed, turning every one of Stebarin’s careful estimates into dust.
“Sir, Jared Chance didn’t just smash the Soul Urn. He absorbed every last soul thread inside it to fuel his own cultivation!” The kneeling cultivator’s voice shook so violently that it scraped the air. Terror hollowed out his face, as though Jared were already at his back, blade raised for the kill.
“What?” Stebarin’s single word crashed through the hall like a falling mountain.
He surged to his feet. Oily black mist poured from his pores, twisting into tendrils that clawed across the vaulted ceiling like the arms of some waking demon.
The notion of siphoning souls for personal ascension was a secret art even most Demonic Cultivators dared not attempt, an abomination whispered about in night-hushed corridors.
That Jared could wield it proved the man hid more forbidden mysteries than Stebarin could count. A tremor of unease slid beneath his rage.
How many other secrets does that man carry under his skin?
“Spread my command! Turn level seven upside down if you must, but bring me Jared Chance. Alive if possible, dead if necessary, but I will lay eyes on either way!”
The command boomed through the chamber, thunder echoing off stone.
“Yes, sir!” the gathered cultivators roared, eyes flaring with ruthless resolve, every one of them suddenly a soldier marching toward war.
Boots hammered the marble floor as they whirled and vanished into the outer corridors, their retreating footsteps a volley of urgent drumbeats that faded into silence.
Stebarin drew his cloak around his shoulders and strode after them. He had a visit to pay to Drystan of the Sixth Hall. Jared was a shared thorn in both their sides, and with the Soul Urn destroyed, every term of their clandestine bargain would have to be written anew, this time in sterner ink.
***
“Jared, where do we head next? I’d wager the Celestial Palace and the Malevolent Path Hall are combing every inch of this realm for us right about now.”
A barren plain stretched beneath a slate-gray sky. Wind hissed across cracked earth as Flaxseed hurried to keep pace with Jared Chance, dusty robes snapping at his ankles.
They had slipped out of Blackwind City before dawn. By now, the streets they’d left behind would be a tangle of panic and rumor, every alley echoing with their names.
“First, we find the Sixth Hall’s stronghold,” Jared said, eyes fixed on the horizon. “We burn it to the ground, and only then do we pay Sinister Path Hall a visit.”
His voice carried the calm certainty of a man announcing the weather. At Earthly Immortal Realm Level Five, Jared considered Drystan little more than an inconvenience, a candle to be snuffed with a breath.
Across all of level seven, few cultivators nudged past Human Immortal Realm Level Three, and those who did would still flinch before the Dragonslayer Sword, the Divine Bow, or the fire unicorn that answered Jared’s call.
But treasure, not merely conquest, lured toward the Sixth Hall. If the Malevolent Path Hall traded the art of refining spiritual stones into celestial gems, then Drystan’s vaults had to be brimming with finished gems ready for barter, wealth that could shorten years of cultivation to mere days.
That trade had flourished, hidden in the dark, fora full century. Who could guess how many lower worlds lay shackled, their people forced to mine and refine so the Celestial Palace and the Malevolent Path Hall might grow fat on stolen brilliance?
Jared’s jaw tightened at the thought.
I’ll see those chains broken, or melted down into blades…
Jared had long since realized that power alone would never be enough. Every new plateau reached inside the Pentacarna Tower devoured resources the way a raging furnace swallows coal.
For an ordinary cultivator, a pouch of spiritual stones might last months. Jared burned through entire hoards in one sitting, each advance multiplying his appetite a thousandfold. So had made himself a single, unshakable promise: whatever the price, would keep the furnace fed.
Here on level seven, few could challenge him. That made gathering supplies almost easy, almost. But once stepped into level eight, maybe even nine, danger would chew at his heels day and night. There, scavenging would mean gambling with his life, and wasting precious time did not have.
