They understood with chilling clarity that the strike they had just traded had drained most of their remaining immortal power and forced them to reveal every hidden trump.
Now each was little more than a spent bow. The first to falter would be condemned to eternal ruin. All across the battleground, combat slowed as every eye fell upon the weary pair, waiting to see whose strength would break first.
Well… Now! In the upper reaches of the void, Jared’s eyes flashed like twin stars. He had waited precisely for this moment, when both titans hung on the edge of collapse, and their vigilance slipped beneath the weight of fatigue. He stepped forward once. The rippling distortions of space around him flattened out, fading like rings on a pond.
A lone figure in a plain robe appeared, without warning, at the very heart of the scarred battlefield, in the narrow vacuum carved by the last collision, squarely between the two exhausted sect masters.
“Who’s there?!”
Sheldon and Linden jerked as one, horror snapping them fully alert. Even their formidable spiritual senses had detected nothing until the instant the stranger arrived.
Their startled gazes swept over Jared and registered only the faint ripple of a Human Immortal Realm Level Seven aura.
A junior, barely Level Seven of the Human Immortal Realm, had slipped through chaotic void currents, bypassed every raging energy field, and materialized between them without a sound.
Disbelief flickered to outright shock.
Who is he?
How did he pierce the chaotic energy perimeter and come all the way here?
Below, the clashing disciples of both sects broke off mid-strike, heads tilting upward in unison as the impossible newcomer claimed the stage.
The instant Jared glided into view, every cultivator on the gore-stained plain looked up. A thousand startled eyes fixed on the youth who floated in mid-air like a brushstroke spilled across the wrong canvas.
Jared’s gaze fell first on Linden.
The old swordsman’s face was ash-gray, his breath a ragged whistle. Jared offered a small, almost courteous nod—no more than a ripple in still water.
That nod carried neither sympathy nor scorn. Its unbroken calm made several onlookers shiver, as though the young man had peeled the heat from the day itself.
Then Jared’s attention locked onto Sheldon, whose expression flickered between fury and disbelief, as though some lowly insect dared examine a tyrant.
A faint, mocking curve tugged at Jared’s mouth. He spoke quietly, yet the sound seemed forged of bell-metal. His words rolled across the suddenly silent battlefield, slipping into every warrior’s ear as clearly as a whispered secret.
“Infinite Soul Demon Sect’s Sheldon Soulsby… I hear you’ve been looking for me.”
That casual question detonated inside Sheldon’s skull like thunder trapped in a bottle.
For a heartbeat, he merely stared, his mind sluggish from drained reserves and too much killing.
Then the hated name, Jared Chance, fused with the blurred figure he had once pursued through blood-soaked memories using his secret technique.
“You… You! You are Jared Chance? The runt who looted my Blackflame Gorge, leveled my Wraith Herb Garden, and sabotaged the sect at every turn?!” Sheldon’s pupils shrank to needle-points. Shock, humiliation, and a volcanic rage howled inside him.
Reason, already frayed by exhaustion, snapped. He had halted an entire campaign against the Myriad Beast Sect because of this single troublemaker. That meddling hand had even steered today’s massacre.
And now the culprit floated before him, wearing nothing but a Human Immortal Realm Level Seven aura—an insult carved in daylight. For a demonic sovereign of Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven, the very sight felt like chains hammered onto his pride!
“Guilty as charged,” Jared admitted, a playful glint in his eyes. “Impressive memory, Sheldon. Looks like rage hasn’t clouded you, yet…”
“Still, I’m puzzled.” He swept his gaze over the corpse-strewn earth, then at the two battered leaders facing him. “You rallied the full strength of your sect, yet you’re not storming the Myriad Beast Sect. Instead, you and Master Cloudridge seem locked in a passionate duel here…”
“Is the Myriad Beast Sect too small to hold your magnificence? Or is sparring with the Mystic Sky Sword Sect simply more entertaining than avenging yourself on me?”
Each taunting syllable slid into Sheldon’s chest like a needle of ice, puncturing the last veneer of composure he possessed.
