Back at the Myriad Sword Mountains, the gates of the Mystic Sky Sword Sect lay in ruins. Once a sanctuary brimming with sacred sword energy, the mountain cradle now lay drowned in carnage, a grim purgatory where every stone carried the taste of iron and ash.
Clouds black as split ink rolled across the heavens, blotting out every last hint of daylight. From beyond the peaks came the roar of beasts—raw, primeval, a sound so huge it seemed to tear the very sky in half.
A luminous curtain, the last vestige of the Big Dipper Demon-Suppressing Array, flickered beneath the assault of endless demonic aura and brute force. It had thinned to the frailty of a moth’s wing, sputtering on the verge of collapse with a brittle, wrenching creak that made hearts seize.
Each of the seven sword peaks now glimmered dully. Jagged cracks scored their faces, as though one more tremor would shatter them into rubble.
Inside and outside the gate, corpses lay strewn like fallen timber. Rivers of blood carved steaming channels through broken stone.
Torn uniforms of Mystic Sky Sword Sect disciples mixed with charred bones of Demon Sect warriors and the hulking carcasses of Melded Beastkin fighters—one indistinguishable heap of death.
The air reeked of iron, burnt flesh, and something colder: the hush that followed the extinction of souls.
Surviving swordsmen, bandaged and blood-soaked, still gripped their blades and held their stations with unblinking resolve. Yet deep in their eyes crept a fatigue, an unavoidable, rising tide of despair they could no longer hide.
The defense formation that guarded their sect had reached its absolute limit.
Linden Cloudridge stood upon the wobbling summit, his Mystic Sky Sword no longer dazzling but spider-webbed with hairline cracks. He looked bloodless, his robe across the chest soaked dark, and his breathing ragged. He was nearing his limit.
Even so, he held his back straight, the immovable spine of a mountain, and fixed his gaze beyond the array on two figures cloaked in murderous majesty: Sheldon Soulsby and Garth Thornscale.
“Hahaha! Linden, must you keep flailing like a cornered beast?!” Sheldon shouted as he hovered in mid-air, demonic mist writhing around him. The cheek Jared once slapped still twitched with venomous glee.
“Tell me! How many more strikes can that battered defense formation endure?!” he taunted, voice oozing relish. “When it breaks, I will rip out your soul, burn your sect’s ten-thousand-year legacy to ash, and hunt down that b*stard Jared Chance until nothing remains but dust!”
Beside him, Garth loomed like a walking volcano, dark-red scales glinting under the dim sky. He swung a flame-wreathed war axe and bellowed in a voice like a cracked bell.
“Lackeys of Paxton and Jared, today your blood shall pave the rise of the Melded Beastkin Sacred Sect. Kill them all! Leave none breathing!” His roar shook the peaks, the frenzy of a beast gone mad.
Within the failing array, disciples heard the challenge. Grief flared in their eyes, but not a single step wavered.
They understood perfectly: there would be no retreat, only death in battle.
Linden drew a ragged breath, swallowed the copper tang rising in his throat, and, voice broken yet unyielding, commanded, “Disciples of Mystic Sky Sword Sect, heed me! Activate the Seven-Star Doomblade with me. We will give our all and perish with our foes!”
“Perish with our foes!” the remaining swordsmen roared together, a tragic tide that seemed to pierce the heavens.
They poured the last of their sword essence into the array’s foundation; some even burned their blood essence to buy one final burst of power.
The seven peaks convulsed. Stone split apart as ancient, razor-keen sword intent, long buried in the bedrock, was hauled to the surface like dragons unchained, racing toward each summit.
This was the sect’s final reservoir, a swan-song meant to drag every enemy into oblivion.
Seeing it, Sheldon and Garth did not flinch; their smiles only sharpened. This was precisely the outcome they craved. Force Mystic Sky Sword Sect to torch its own roots, and the threat would vanish from Level Ten at minimal cost.
At that crucial moment, when the sect’s last blaze of glory and its final destruction were about to become one, an explosion suddenly rang out.
Boom!
The detonation landed like the very first hammer-blow of creation, cracking open the silence and driving a concussion through heaven and earth.
From far beyond the battlefield, somewhere in the unreachable blue above, a roar without language, without mercy, rolled downward in swelling waves of sound.
As if it were the first thunder of a newborn universe, or the waking sigh of a giant forged from chaos, that roar drowned every clash of steel, every battle-cry, every shrieking array. Then, abruptly, a pressure beyond description—an invisible vault of heaven itself—descended and pinned the world beneath it.
It was not merely strength, it was supremacy, an ancient, sovereign breath that ruled life, death, and everything trembling between.
Under that breath, the churning demonic clouds froze, beastly roars snapped silent, and even the volatile sword intent from the Seven-Star Doomblade went limp, stilled by an unseen palm.
Everyone, from Demon Sect marauders to Melded Beastkin brutes to the Mystic Sky Sword Sect disciples, found their bodies betraying them—movements halted, necks craned upward by instinctual dread.
High overhead, the cloud-sheathed sky tore open without warning, revealing a cavernous vortex that swallowed daylight.
Along its ragged rim, the air shattered like colored glass, each crack exposing a backdrop of fathomless black void. From that wound in space, a single figure strode forward, unhurried, as though time parted to accommodate his pace.
He wore a plain green robe whose hem snapped in the riotous energy currents, yet gathered not a speck of dust. In his hand rested an austere longsword, its darkened steel devouring every stray glimmer as if starving for light.
Most unsettling, however, were his eyes: calm, remote, ancient pools of winter ice layered atop a map of endless stars.
He surveyed the infernal battlefield below with no anger, no murderous intent, only the detached curiosity a god might lavish upon squabbling inferior beings.
It was Jared Chance. Yet this Jared differed utterly from the man seen on Blood-Scar Plains only days ago.
Back then, formidable though he was, embers of mortal warmth had still flickered in his breath. Now, an indescribable resonance, true ultimate energy, flowed around him; he inhaled with the world and exhaled through its laws.
Even though he merely stood in silence, he felt heavier than mountains, vaster than night, and deeper than the bottomless seas. He was utterly terrifying.
Ghostly halos of shifting gray-gold light coiled around him, and within them flared phantom lotus-blossoms of flame that made every sensitive soul quake.
