“W-What?” Soulbane blurted out. Color drained from his face as the power inside his vaunted Soulbane Palm was briskly peeled apart, swallowed, and snuffed out. He sensed, with rising horror, that the domain before him behaved like a bottomless pit, devouring every shred of energy he fed it. Nothing he hurled inside lasted more than a breath; it was annihilation dressed as emptiness.
“Break…” Jared spoke the single syllable, then closed his fist, still as casually as one might tighten a glove before a stroll.
Crack! The scarlet palm burst apart, dissolving into a mist of blood that was promptly consumed by the Chaotic Fire Domain, leaving no ripple behind. Silence crashed over the arena. Every spectator gaped, frozen between disbelief and awe.
Ignatius stood slack-jawed, mouth working soundlessly for a long, embarrassed moment. The disciples of Earthfire Pavilion blinked, realized what had happened, and then erupted in a roar that rattled the rafters.
“Yes! Way to go, Mr. Chance!” “You’re amazing, Mr. Chance!”
The cultivators of Malevolent Path Hall traded looks, their earlier bravado drowned beneath a tide of raw, uncomprehending shock.
“How is that possible? Mr. Soulbane’s Soulbane Palm shattered just like that?” “What kind of domain is that? It swallowed the entire force of the Soulbane Palm!” “That man… Something about him is downright eerie!”
The next second, a hush rippled across the battlefield. All three deputy leaders stared at the young man in grim, disbelieving silence.
Bonefiend narrowed his crimson-rimmed eyes. “No wonder Mr. Vayne wants him taken alive. That man’s hiding a secret of immense value.”
Annihilum fixed a blazing gaze on the swirling Chaotic Fire Domain that cocooned Jared. “There’s something odd about this domain… Chaos fused with flame? A power attribute like that is unheard of…”
Soulbane’s face darkened to the color of dried blood. Moments ago, he had dismissed Jared as an ant he could crush between two fingers, yet the young man had just dismantled his signature attack in public, leaving his pride in tatters.
“Kid… You’re pretty good,” he uttered, every word dripping venom. “But I used only seventy percent of my strength just now. Your luck ends here.”
With that, he wove a rapid flurry of seals. Soul-black aura roiled around him, and dense blood-red runes crawled across his skin like living centipedes.
“Endless Bloodsea!”
Boom! From empty air, a tidal ocean of blood erupted, blotting out half the sky. Within the crimson waves, thousands of twisted spirits bared fangs and shrieked, each howl sharper than steel. The sheer might, without a doubt, eclipsed his earlier Soulbane Palm many times over. That was Soulbane’s infamous killing strike—the same technique he had once used to annihilate a city and turn a million lives into food for his sea of gore.
“Jared, watch out!” Ignatius warned. “That’s his ultimate killing move!”
Almost immediately, hope that had just stirred inside the ranks of Earthfire Pavilion guttered beneath the shadow of the monstrous blood tide. Jared, however, faced the oncoming cataclysm with unwavering calm. He even managed a lazy yawn.
“That’s it?”
Two soft words, heavy with contempt. Before the echo faded, Jared lifted his left hand, two fingers held straight like a sword, and tapped the churning sea as if critiquing a map rather than facing annihilation.
“Earthfire True Flame! Heavenburn!”
Boom! Inside the Chaotic Fire Domain, a pillar of scarlet-gold Earthfire True Flame burst skyward. It twisted, lengthened, and solidified into a fire dragon one hundred yards long. Every scale gleamed bright as molten metal. In each colossal eye burned a sun-bright blaze.
The fire dragon threw back its head and reared. Heaven shook. Then it plunged toward the blood-red ocean, a living comet of fire and fury.
Hiss!
Like a red-hot iron bar plunged through fresh snow, the Earthfire True Flame roared forward. Wherever it passed, the bloody tide vanished in a heartbeat, boiled into nothing. Spectral wraiths that lurked beneath the waves had no time to scream; the barest touch of that primordial fire reduced them to drifting blue smoke.
In just three seconds, an ocean vast enough to blot out the heavens was reduced to ash beneath a hundred-yard column of living flame, without even a single drop of blood-mist left behind.
“N-No… This is impossible!” Soulbane shouted as he stumbled backward. All color drained from his face. That was my strongest technique, yet it was shattered in an instant?! The realization tore at his mind, ripping apart everything he thought he understood.
Jared withdrew the fire dragon. Hands clasped behind his back, white robes floating, he looked untouched, as though incinerating a blood ocean were a minor chore. His gaze drifted toward the three deputy leaders.
“Why don’t the three of you come at me together? It will save me time…”
“Arrogant!” “You’re courting death!” “You’ve gone too far!”
Rage flared in all three deputy leaders at once. As deputy leaders of Malevolent Path Hall and Top Level Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Nine cultivators, they walked unchallenged in level twelve. Never had anyone treated them with such disdain—especially a mere Level Two!
“Since you clearly have a death wish, don’t blame us for ganging up on you!” Bonefiend said with a sinister grin. “All together now. Take him down!”
The trio exchanged a single glance, then moved as one. This time, they held nothing back.
Soulbane summoned Endless Bloodsea once more, its might swelled by another third. Bonefiend raised a bone staff a hundred yards long, launching ten thousand bone spikes steeped in death.
Annihilum blurred into a billowing gray fog, launching invisible Soul Spikes straight for the center of Jared’s mind.
Their combined malice churned the heavens. Blood-red, bone-white, and soul-gray clouds fused into a single vault overhead, pressing downward like a grinding millstone. Across the plain, cultivators gasped for breath; the weaker ones simply folded, coughing blood before consciousness slipped away.
