Jared shook his head, calm but immovable. “All of you go first.” Paxton and Clara froze mid-stride, startled by the quiet finality in his tone.
“Gavin and Yvette are still out there,” Jared said, eyes flaring with flint-hard resolve. “They didn’t come back on time, so trouble should’ve found them, and I will not abandon them.”
Clara’s breath caught. “But the patrols are everywhere now. Alone, you’ll be a beacon to them; please reconsider!”
Paxton added, voice low but insistent, “Those two youngsters are sharp. They might simply be hiding. If you walk into the open and…”
“There is no if.” Jared’s reply drifted out like steel drawn from a sheath—smooth, decisive, and beyond appeal. “They brought me here, so it is on me to see them out alive… Head to the secret realm. Send me the exact coordinates and the method to enter. Once I have them, I’ll meet you inside.”
Clara heard the certainty in his voice and knew further pleas would be of no use.
“Then take this.” She bit her lip, pulled a red feather-shaped talisman from inside her cloak, and pressed it into his palm. “The Blazefire Talisman is one of the keys to the realm.”
Her words flowed fast, each syllable a blueprint. “Travel southwest for roughly twenty thousand kilometers to Crimson Rift Gorge. Deepest inside stands a rock face that burns day and night. Channel fire-type power through the talisman and carve the seal I just shared into the air with your mind. That will pry open a temporary gate.”
The moment the intricate sigil flickered into Jared’s mind, he memorized it, slipped the talisman away, and gave a steady nod.
Clara’s voice cracked. “Be careful! We’ll wait for you inside the realm!”
Paxton and the remaining Myriad Beast disciples bowed deeply. Hope and gratitude gleamed behind battle-weary eyes. “Take care, Mr. Chance!”
Jared answered with a single nod. His figure blurred, then vanished as though the very air swallowed him. Not so much as a ripple of space remained.
For a heartbeat, Clara stared at the empty space he’d filled, then forced herself to turn back, swallowing the strange ache in her chest.
“Mr. Riftclaw, we leave now. Lightly wounded disciples, help the badly hurt. We move!”
Under her command, the mixed band of Mystic Sky Sword Sect elites and the battered remnants of the Myriad Beast Sect slipped from the hidden valley, ghosting southwest toward Crimson Rift Gorge.
***
Once alone, Jared pushed his mastery of spatial step and veiling art to their cruel limits. He became an unseen breath riding between leaf-shadow and stone.
He arrowed through forest, cliff, and dusk-lit hollows, a phantom whose senses fanned outward like an invisible radar dish, scouring every inch for the faintest echo of Gavin and Yvette while threading flawlessly between roaming search parties.
Following the route Paxton had provided, he veered toward the Mystic Sky Sword Sect’s last known perimeter, where dim residue of combat stained the air and covert clan markings of the Myriad Beast Sect glimmered on bark and stone.
Those markings pointed toward an obscure track snaking back toward the sect’s ruined headquarters.
Were they exposed when they headed back to the Myriad Beast Sect headquarters?
Jared veered at once, abandoning his original course and sprinting after the faintly glowing sigils he had left as furtive trail-markers.
The closer he drew to the forgotten outskirts of the Myriad Beast Sect’s ruins, the tighter the ring of patrols became. Beastren scouts stalked every ridge, and the very air seemed strung on a wire of dread.
Jared all but stopped breathing.
At times, he had to flatten himself beneath tangled scrub for long, punishing stretches, waiting until two patrol teams traded shifts before slipping through the gap.
Along the way, he stumbled across fresh gouges in bark and stone, and then the darker proof of violence—streaks of blood still wet enough to glisten.
A single inhale told him everything. Gavin’s and Yvette’s blood was among them.
Hold on…
The thought plunged like lead through his chest.
Roughly sixty kilometers from the sect’s core, a knife-edged ravine split the mountainside. Here, the soil reeked of energy discharge, the ground littered with pools of crimson that had barely begun to congeal.
Blades and spells had carved ragged furrows across both canyon walls. Rocks lay scattered like broken teeth, each one blackened by sorcery.
In the air clashed auras of Gavin and Yvette, at least half a dozen frenzied Melded Beastkin warriors, and two chilling currents that could belong only to Demon Sect cultivators.
Hmm… They were ambushed here…
Jared’s gaze frosted over. Every dent and scorch-mark told the same brutal tale: Gavin and Yvette had fought like cornered animals, but the enemy was numerous, prepared, and hungry for blood.
He combed the rocks until a torn scrap of black fabric caught his eye—a corner of Yvette‘s coat, still carrying her faint, familiar fragrance. Dried blood peppered the cloth.
His knuckles blanched as he clutched the shred of fabric.
Following wisps of residual aura and barely visible drag marks, he traced the captors’ path uphill. The tracks ended at a vine-choked cave mouth halfway up the slope.
A flimsy ward shimmered across the entrance, yet from within leaked coarse voices, and the soft, broken sob of a woman.
Yvette…
Jared’s gaze turned icy. Murderous intent thickened in the air around him until it felt almost solid. He became lightning, one blinding flicker, and slipped through the crude barrier without stirring a single leaf.
The cavern widened into a rough hall lit by sickly green soul-lamps.
Seven or eight fusion-beast brutes lounged around a spit, roaring with laughter, trading bites of roasted meat and pulls of liquor.
On the floor lay trinkets they had stripped from Gavin and Yvette—cracked talismans, a shattered wrist-guard, Yvette’s slender dagger.
Farther in, two squat stone pillars rose from the earth. Chains bit into the figures lashed to them. Gavin and Yvette.
Gavin hung limp, drenched in blood. Several wounds yawned to the bone, and one arm bent at a grotesque angle. His head sagged forward, breaths thready and fading.
Yvette’s condition ignited Jared’s fury. Her outer cloak had been ripped to ribbons, leaving blood-stained undergarments and pale skin marred by bruises and gashes.
A Melded Beastkin leader, goat horns curling from his temples, wine-stung grin smeared across a leering face, reached for what little cloth still covered her. “Quit squirming, pretty thing. Once I tire of you, perhaps I‘ll gift you to Master Thornscale as a pet! Hahaha!”
Yvette thrashed against the chains, eyes blazing with despair and shame, but her spiritual power was sealed, and her wounds sapped what strength remained.
Jared’s heartbeat became a war drum. Every drop of restraint hissed, cracked, and finally shattered.
