Hearing this, something stirred in Jared’s heart. He asked, “Sir… Does that mean the Chaotic Origin Flame exists in more than just this one place?”
Reiner looked at him and nodded. “You carry a Chaotic Flame seed yourself, so there’s no harm in telling you… According to my senior, Lucas, when heaven and earth were first formed, when chaos was divided, there once existed a supreme Chaotic Origin Flame… At some point, it exploded, and its fragments scattered across the countless heavens and worlds, transforming into innumerable sources of flame.”
He continued calmly. “My senior once said that a single spark was left behind here, and from it, the core of the Blazefire Secret Realm was born…”
“As for the true, complete Chaotic Origin Flame…” Reiner paused briefly. “It may exist only in the legendary Place of Origin.”
A single spark, and yet it had given rise to the Blazefire Secret Realm, harboring such vast fire-element origins and laws that it had propelled Jared’s strength forward in leaps and bounds.
He had broken through to the peak of Human Immortal Realm Level Nine and had even formed the shape of the Chaotic Fire Lotus.
The realization left Jared deeply shaken.
If I could find a larger fragment, or even the complete origin flame…
A powerful urge to explore, along with an intense hunger for greater strength, quietly ignited within his heart.
Tears shimmering, Clara dropped to her knees before Reiner. The scorched stone hissed where her tears fell.
“Master, take care!” she cried, bowing. “I will miss you. May destiny guide you swiftly to your goal!”
Reiner lifted her gently, then gave Jared one final, approving glance.
Without another word, he dissolved into a roaring ribbon of crimson sword-light that slashed the heavens open and vanished into the yawning void.
Clara remained facing that torn horizon, her slim shoulders quivering, her silhouette frozen against the feverish red sky.
At last, she steadied herself and turned to Jared. “Sir Chance, I must return to the Mystic Sky Sword Sect. I will never forget the life you saved and the home you shielded. If ever you are free, our gates stand open for you.”
Jared inclined his head. “Safe travels, Clara…”
She exchanged quick farewells with Paxton and the other beast cultivators, then led her disciples away in a silver sweep of sword-light, departing the Blazefire Secret Realm.
Soon, Paxton rallied the shattered ranks of the Myriad Beast Sect, bowed deeply to Jared, and marched toward the Myriad Beast Sect Mountains, eyes blazing with renewed purpose.
In mere moments, the once-clamorous secret realm fell silent, leaving Jared alone amid the after-echo of swords and roars. He stood atop the Flame Crystal Mountain, surveying the landscape he had, by sheer presence, reshaped.
Within his elixir field, the nascent Chaotic Fire Lotus revolved slowly, each petal resonating with the realm’s lingering embers.
Jared exhaled a brittle whisper. “Infinite Soul Demon Sect… Soul Devourer…”
A cold gleam flashed through his eyes. It was time to finish what had begun on Level Six. He did not descend to help Paxton rebuild, nor detour to visit the Mystic Sky Sword Sect.
His purpose was razor-straight: to drive his blade into Soul Devourer and erase the threat that had shadowed him since Level Six. Yet curiosity tugged at him. A top-tier demon sect might guard fragments of the Chaotic Origin Flame, or treasures just as potent.
With no more hesitation, Jared blurred into a prismatic streak, a chaotic comet that burst from the Blazefire Secret Realm and raced toward the deepest reaches of the Blood-Scar Plains, where the Infinite Soul Demon Sect brooded.
***
Meanwhile, on the Blood-Scar Plains, in the Infinite Soul Demon Sect Headquarters, viscous black demonic miasma, thick as poured tar, swirled overhead in a ceaseless vortex that rumbled with mute thunder.
Even in that forsaken wasteland, the headquarters birthed a darker dread.
The ground glowed a bruised maroon, as though drunk on centuries of blood. Bleached bones, bestial and human, rose in jagged cairns, exhaling raw malice.
Between those ossuaries loomed structures forged from skulls, obsidian, and ghost-lit iron, their warped silhouettes clawing at the boiling sky.
The air reeked of copper, decay, and tainted magic. Any ordinary cultivator lingering here would soon find sanity and soul corroded, slipping toward madness.
At the very heart of the sect’s sprawling headquarters, the air lay frozen and bruised.
Towering columns of Netherworld Demon Iron, metal so black it seemed cut from a starless void, merged overhead to form the vaulted ceiling of the Infinite Soul Hall. Every stone in that cavernous chamber throbbed with muffled wails, as though the walls themselves remembered the agony of spirits long consumed.
On that frigid floor knelt Sheldon Soulsby. His shoulders quaked, tears and mucus streaking his face while the last threads of pride bled out of him. Each convulsive sob echoed like a cracked bell beneath the deathly hush.
“Lord Soul Devourer, please, you have to avenge us! That wretch Jared—Jared Chance—stumbled onto some cursed fortune, and his strength has skyrocketed beyond human reason!”
“With a single swing of his sword, he butchered Elder Frostgrave! Elder Frostgrave, my Lord, a Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven! Our elite elders and disciples lie in pieces; barely one in ten survived! He even shattered the Melded Beastkin Sacred Sect!”
“Garth Thornscale was captured alive—dead or breathing, I can’t tell which! The brat then told you to wait, because he’s coming for you! My Lord, if we do not answer this insult, how can the Infinite Soul Demon Sect endure on Level Ten? I… I simply cannot swallow this bitter shame!”
High above the plea, a throne woven from countless contorted spirits sat like a crown of nightmares.
Upon that throne lounged a silhouette shrouded in a robe so wide and dark that every stray beam of light vanished into it. Only two pinpoints of red, deep as abyssal stars, flickered beneath the hood, each languid pulse tugging at the soul of any who dared meet the gaze.
This was the Soul Devourer, the dread sovereign driven from Level Nine and forced to nurse his wounds in hiding here on Level Ten.
As Sheldon’s tear-soaked tale unraveled, those crimson embers wavered—subtle, almost lazy, yet enough to make the hall itself tense like flesh before a blade.
A voice rose, dry, rasping, like shards of soul-glass scraped together, and drifted through the chamber in a hush colder than the stone.
“Oh? A Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Seven felled by one sword stroke?”
No anger colored the words, yet the chill that seeped into Sheldon’s marrow made him feel as if his own soul might splinter.
“Y-Yes, my Lord… Every word is true! I watched it happen! Jared’s sword aura devoured everything! Elder Frostgrave’s bone shield, even his mastery of death law, it all melted like wax before a furnace!”
Soul Devourer offered no reply.
Silence gathered, thick as ash. The twin red lights blinked—once, twice—as if weighing impossible numbers.
He remembered the boy from Level Seven, a bothersome patch of glue he could never quite peel off. From Level Six onward, that pup snarled at my heels. Low cultivation, yet endless trouble…
On Level Nine, he wrecked my escape, forced me to sever hard-won strength, and flee here…
I thought Level Ten’s haze would smother his scent… Yet he followed… And now, he grows faster than sense allows. Cutting down a worn-out Heavenly Immortal Level Seven elder is still unsettling…
The thought ended in a faint hum, like steel deciding whether to sing or scream.
