“Dragonslayer Sword Technique Final Form! Chaotic Void!” Jared drove the blade upward, carving against the heavens.
There was no sound. There was no light. Only a hair-thin fissure of all-consuming night spilled from the sword’s point, rising to meet the crystal colossus. The instant that black scar touched the giant blade, time stopped.
Space froze. Then, the next heartbeat arrived. Ice cracked, bone by bone, then thunder ripped the silence apart. The crystal greatsword, taller than a city wall, began to fracture from its ice-blue tip.
Shards should have flown like shrapnel. Instead, every splinter slid noiselessly into the obsidian fissure yawning in the air, erased before the eye could blink. Within a single heartbeat, the ruin raced down the blade, devouring the guard and hilt alike.
Celadin’s eyes, once colder than the sword he wielded, now swam with raw terror. He had poured burning blood into that strike.
How could a power meant to freeze the world shatter like cheap glass?
“No… This isn’t happening…” he whispered, voice cracking like thin ice.
A soft hiss answered him. The obsidian fissure drifted forward, thin as a quill stroke, yet it carved through air and armor with a surgeon’s patience.
Celadin froze mid-breath. He lowered his gaze to find a hair-fine black line stretching across his breastplate.
The line spread like ink in water. Wherever it passed, steel, flesh, even the divine frost in his veins lost all color, then crumbled into gray dust that the fissure calmly drank.
“Chaos… Void…” The half-formed words slipped from his lips as the light in his eyes guttered out.
A lonely wind swept across the frozen expanse. Celadin’s remnants fluttered away, and the ice domain he had raised collapsed after him, vanishing into ordinary silence.
The swirling Chaos Domain shrank until it was no more than a dim pulse inside Jared’s chest.
Jared’s face had blanched to parchment. His sword hand trembled so badly that he stabbed the blade into the ice just to keep himself upright.
Unleashing the move he called Chaos Void had scoured every reserve he owned; even his soul quivered on the edge of collapse. Yet he had prevailed, slaying, from the very peak of Level One Heavenly Immortal Realm, a foe seven sub-realms higher: the Third Divine General of the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan.
The scene burned itself into the minds of the Vermilion Demon Lord and Clara Cloudridge, an image they knew would follow them for the rest of eternity.
“Jared!” Clara gasped, rushing forward to steady him.
The Vermilion Demon Lord arrived a heartbeat later, gratitude and awe warring behind his crimson eyes. He understood all too well that Jared had stepped into this deadly storm on his behalf.
“Don’t worry,” Jared said, waving them back. “I’m merely drained.”
He tipped a handful of recovery pills into his mouth, sat cross-legged on the glassy ice, and murmured, “Give me one hour. Guard me while I breathe.”
“Yes, sir!” Vermilion and Clara answered in unison, taking flanking positions and letting their senses rake the empty tundra.
***
An hour later, Jared’s aura had risen to more than half its strength. Not full, but enough to stand and meet another storm if it came.
He rose, eyes narrowing toward the deeper reaches of the icefield where three soaring peaks formed a distant trident of blue-white stone.
“The pool… It’s just ahead… And the Northern Abyss Palace shouldn’t be far either.”
The three pressed on, their steps steady and unhesitant.
After countless battles, especially the climactic fight against Celadin, their aura had transformed completely. It was the aura of survivors from a hundred battles—unyielding, confident, unstoppable. Even the eternal winds of the ice plains seemed to shift around them.
The Northern Abyss Celestial Clan’s interceptions hadn’t ceased with the fall of Celadin. On the contrary, they became more frenzied and desperate. But to a nearly fully restored Jared, these ambushes were like ants trying to stop a rolling boulder, crushed effortlessly.
By sunset, painting the ice plains with a mournful glow, they reached the depression encircled by three towering ice peaks. There lay the dark-red Blood-Soul Frostpool, and beside it, the Thousand-Year Frostblood Lotus, still in bud.
They also saw the Forbidden Area Protection Array spreading across the depression, its flowing light and intricate runes forming an impenetrable barrier.
Beyond the array, deep in the ice plains, loomed the magnificent Northern Abyss Palace—grand, majestic, exuding both authority and deadly intent.
The real challenge was only beginning. Yet Jared’s gaze had already passed over the cold pool and the protective array, fixed on the innermost part of the ice palace. Not only might it hold the key to breaking the forbidden formation, but perhaps other secrets of the clan as well.
Jared knew far too little about the clan.
“Northern Abyss Palace…” he muttered, his hand brushing the hilt of the Dragonslayer Sword, which trembled faintly, as if echoing its master’s resolve.
“I’m coming…”
