The attack could have crushed an ordinary Heavenly Immortal, yet Jared only lifted the Dragonslayer Sword, calm, unhurried, almost curious.
“An ant toppling an elephant,” he mumbled, unimpressed. Five-Element Nascence Power, newly restored, roared through his meridians and into the blade. A faint ripple of the Time Law shimmered around him, bending every second to his will.
“Slay!” A plain, color-striped flash—Prismatic Sword Aura—shot forth. It sliced the phantom mask like cheap silk, leaving the once-formidable array in tatters that dissolved into smoke.
The aura did not slow. It skimmed across the screeching crone who had led the chant. Her twisted sneer froze. A heartbeat later, she, and the magical item she clutched, fell apart in two silent, clean halves.
“W-What…” Terror glazed every elder’s face. None of them had imagined Jared’s power could rise to such impossible heights.
“Quick! Activate the sect defense formation!” Brendan screamed, the command cracking with panic.
Unfortunately, he was already too late.
Jared blurred. Time Acceleration wrapped him in invisible wind, rendering him faster than divine sense could track.
Each silver flash of the sword ended a life; with every heartbeat, another elder collapsed, their bodies falling before they understood they had been struck.
“No, spare me, sir! It was Lilac who offended you, not us!” one elder shrieked, voice breaking. He dropped to his knees, sobbing for mercy.
Jared’s gaze remained icy, unmoved. The Dragonslayer Sword whispered through the air; the plea ended mid-syllable.
In the span of a breath, only Brendan remained, stranded amid the corpses of his order. His limbs shook uncontrollably.
Staring at Jared, who looked more reaper than man, Brendan tasted a bitterness made of regret and raw, animal fear.
Never, even in nightmares, had he imagined that a sect with a millennium of legacy would be snuffed out because one inner court disciple had spoken carelessly.
“W-Why?” he rasped, the question shredded by disbelief.
Jared eyed Brendan with an unmoved calm. “If a child grows wild, blame the father. If a student strays, blame the teacher. Your Mystic Fiend Sect rotted from roof-beam to foundation. Today’s ruin is simply the bill come due.”
As the last word left his lips, the Dragonslayer Sword sprang forward, one silver streak that pierced straight through Brendan’s brow.
The man’s eyes widened. His body toppled in slow motion, and the final image burned into those lifeless pupils was Jared sliding the blade home without a flicker of emotion.
Only in that dying heartbeat did he understand: the sect’s destruction began with his own corruption, and with elders who had pampered disciples into the same decay.
Jared spared the corpses no glance. A sweep of his spiritual sense emptied every vault the Mystic Fiend Sect had filled across centuries. Then he turned, became a streak of gold, and vanished into the unending sky. Behind him lay a blood-soaked sect, once proud, now forever silent.
Not even the sect’s distant forebears, peering down from whatever afterlife they occupied, could have imagined that their legacy would unravel because one arrogant disciple mocked a stranger who chose to intervene.
“Kid, where to next?” the Vermilion Demon Lord rumbled, crimson smoke curling from the seams of his armor.
“Back to Nethergate Sect,” Jared replied, voice steady. “I’ll refine these spoils first, then we plan the real war.”
With that, he angled south, a comet streaking toward Nethergate’s distant peaks.
Moments into the flight, a fierce tremor jolted his chest. Beneath his ribs, Cyanna’s draconic essence pulsed and flared with frantic light.
Jared halted midair; excitement blazed across his eyes. “The Demon Seal Tower—it’s surfaced in Level Nine!”
He wheeled on the spot, arrowing toward the beacon blazing within the crystal.
Guided by the crystal’s blistering heat, he dove into Nullrift Gorge, a labyrinth of fractured space buried within Level Nine, until the tower he both coveted and feared loomed once more.
Its dark spine speared through cloud and storm, stitching earth to sky. At its base, four stone lions etched with celestial lord runes now glimmered with fresh ferocity, their presence crueler than before.
