Those eyes were calm—unnaturally calm, like quiet water that could drown a city. The chieftain understood, with dawning dread, that Jared was looking at him the way a man looks at an ant. He roared, trying to shatter the fear with sound alone.
Muscles knotted beneath his hide as he swung his hammer, large enough to break mountains. The air buckled around the descending weapon. He meant to smash this eerie human into nothing but pulp.
Jared did not bother to draw the sword at his hip. He did not even take a stance. He merely lifted his left hand—pale, slender, almost delicate—and spread his fingers toward the howling hammer. Then he closed them.
Crack!
A sound like glaciers splitting echoed.
The hammer, forged from an unknown monster’s spine and said to be unbreakable, splintered as though it were rotten wood. One heartbeat later, it exploded into a cloud of ivory shards that glittered in the sun.
The shrapnel never reached Jared. Instead, unseen force raced back along the handle.
The Melded Beastkin leader’s arms cracked, bent, and he shot backward as if flung by an invisible giant, screaming blood into the wind before slamming against distant rock. Bones snapped; he would not rise again.
All of it happened between one flash of lightning and the next.
From Jared’s arrival, to the elder of the Demon Sect falling, to the Melded Beastkin leader’s destruction—no more than three seconds.
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
Every surviving Infinite Soul Demon Sect disciple and Melded Beastkin warrior froze as though time itself had bound them. Their two mightiest leaders, one dead, one crippled, had fallen before they truly understood the fight had begun.
Across the shattered ground, swordsmen of the Mystic Sky Sword Sect stood open-mouthed. Their hands trembled.
Rumor had told them Jared was formidable; rumor had lacked the imagination to describe this.
Clara’s crimson blade now pointed at the earth. She stared at Jared’s back, that plain robe she once mocked suddenly towering in her eyes, an unfathomable cliff.
Memories rushed in—her father’s warnings, Jared’s mild smile, her own dismissive words. A hot tide of shame threatened to drown her.
So… So, Father was telling the truth… I’m so ignorant… Who in the world is this man?
Jared paid the swirling emotions no heed. His gaze swept the remaining enemy ranks, measuring, deciding.
“Surrender, or die!”
Simple words, yet they landed like hammers on every quaking heart, leaving no space for doubt, only a choice between kneeling and oblivion.
Steel rasped against stone, then fell silent. One by one, the last surviving enemy fighters, barely a dozen, stared at the elder’s body sprawled in the dirt and at their beast-fusion leader writhing and howling a short distance away.
Whatever courage still smoldered in them guttered out.
Clang! Clang!
Swords, axes, and spears slipped from numb fingers and rang against the ground. Pale-faced, they dropped to their knees, shoulders shaking like leaves in a storm.
Only then did Jared turn. His calm gaze settled on Clara, who was still reeling from what she had just witnessed.
The moment their eyes met, a tremor ran through her slender frame. Heat rushed into her cheeks, and she looked away, swallowing the swirl of relief, gratitude, and mortification tightening in her chest.
“Ms. Cloudridge,” he said, voice as even as if he had not just shattered a strike force in a heartbeat. “Clear the field. Have the disciples clear the corpses, question the prisoners, and map every patrol pattern they know, especially where Paxton and the others might have fled to.”
“Y-Yes… Mr. Chance!”
Head bowed, voice no louder than a mosquito’s buzz, Clara forced herself to breathe. She rallied the still-dazed disciples, barking crisp orders that steadied her own nerves as much as theirs.
When she dared another glance at the young man in the robe, hands folded behind him, staring toward the distant haze of the Myriad Beast Mountains, her eyes had changed.
The last spark of disdain was gone, replaced by reverence and a curious, unbidden urge to understand the mystery standing before her.
Who in heaven’s name is this Jared Chance?
