A faint pulse flickered in the Illusion Origin Star deep within his private realm, answering the scene before him. After a heartbeat, Jared shook his head.
“This one is real… Thank the void!” the Demon Lord barked, relief cracking through his harsh voice. “The Eye of Return-to-Void really does hide a world,” he said, pulling in a measured breath. “But it’s quiet… So quiet it hurts my ears.”
Jared nodded, the same unease needled beneath his ribs. The beauty was skin-deep: the cranes’ eyes held no spark, and the deer moved like winding clockwork. Beneath it all, he could taste an immense, nearly invisible field—part prison, part rulebook—woven through every inch of sky and soil.
Jared slipped the Guiding Talisman out of his sleeve again. Instead of pointing, it throbbed with a feverish pulse; the shifting runes blinked on and off, as if something in this valley was answering it.
“The sanctum must be tucked deeper inside this peach-blossom paradise. Stay sharp; nothing here is what it seems.”
After pocketing the talisman, Jared wrapped his fingers around the Dragonslayer Sword and stepped ahead, following the ribbon of water toward the heart of the grove. The Vermilion Demon Lord glided behind him, demonic senses stretched thin like wires, testing every shadow for a hidden barb.
At first, the path behaved: no ambush, no stutter in the air, only scenery so flawless it felt manufactured. When venerable-looking herbs shimmered beside the rocks, rich with ambient breath, Jared still harvested them, every motion cautious and measured. A stand of bamboo, leaves jade-bright and trunks glass-smooth, rose ahead. Both men stopped at its edge.
This was exactly where the Ghostspring Sect had been jumped a day ago. Their attackers then had been smoke and suggestion, not the true Eye of the Return-to-Void. Even knowing that, unease seeped beneath Jared’s ribs.
“Jared, tell me we’re not about to get the same welcome…” the Demon Lord asked.
“Unlikely… This isn’t an illusion, it’s the real Eye. If…”
A thunderous blast swallowed the rest of his words. Vision lurched; everything around Jared wrinkled and peeled away. The bamboo vanished, and the green mountainside bled out of color. Sudden, endless starlight replaced it, and beneath his boots lay a cold, iron-hard meteor plain. Silence pressed in. Broken asteroids drifted nearby; farther off, remote suns blinked like distant eyes.
“Illusion?” the Demon Lord muttered.
For proof, he slashed a claw; a floating stone shattered, fragments skittering across Jared’s boots—solid, undeniable.
“Not just mirage…” Jared rasped. The veins of power that usually threaded the sky were faint, his own energy dragging like wet sand. “It feels like a displacement, someone‘s domain. We’ve been hauled into a special trial space.”
If this were mere glamour, his command of the Essence of Illusion would have rung alarms. It hadn‘t twitched. That left one conclusion: some hidden engine had dragged the two of them wholesale into another pocket of reality. Perhaps this pocket overlapped the Eye itself, like two rooms briefly sharing the same walls before one collapsed and the other showed through.
Pinpricks of silver drifted across the black, sliding toward one another as if some hidden magnet had been switched on. Jared felt the small hairs on his arms stiffen before his mind found an explanation. Within the shifting glow, three outlines bled into existence, too blurred yet to own a face. Only a breath later, the haze receded.
They wore rough hemp robes cinched at the waist, their hair knotted high the way old scroll-paintings showed forgotten sages. The features refused to settle, as though the starfield itself kept them from choosing a single form. No blades hung from their sleeves. They simply stood, perfectly still, yet Jared’s lungs shrank as if the entire night sky had leaned onto his chest.
Could these be after-images left by the Ancient Energy Refiners, or had some hidden ward finally shown its fangs? Jared had crossed paths with Heavenly Immortals before; the raw power here felt comparable. What chilled him was the texture of the force—the way it folded back to childhood simplicity, wasting nothing.
The figure in the center raised a languid hand, index finger resting, unhurried, on Jared’s heart. A voice older than stone unfurled inside his mind, vast and indifferent: “Posterity who would enter our dwelling must endure three trials. This first gate measures your command of force and your talent for adaptation… Shatter our after-images, or survive the time of one incense stick without defeat, and you may proceed.”
The final syllable had not faded when all three moved at once. No flaring sigils, no roar of heaven. Just motion: clean, deliberate, terrifying.
The phantom on Jared’s left stepped forward. A dead rock under his heel sifted to dust, then the man shot toward the Vermilion Demon Lord like a cannonball. He drove one fist out. Wind compacted so tight it became a white shockwave, the passing air making space itself quiver.
On the opposite side, the right-hand phantom shaped a cradle with both palms. Starlight slid in, weaving itself into a glittering whip whose tail shivered like a snake tasting the wind, fixed on Jared. Its course bent at impossible angles, each twist hinting at a net meant to seal the very room around him.
Strangest of all, the center phantom did not attack. He folded himself into a seated posture, fingers locking into an ancient seal Jared had never studied. The moment the seal closed, weight crashed onto Jared’s shoulders—tenfold, then twentyfold. Beside him, the Demon Lord’s knees flexed under the same invisible burden. Then the pull tipped sideways, yanking down one instant, left the next, like a vicious child shaking a toy. Balance fractured; every step threatened to betray its own intent.
“Clever trick!” the Vermilion Demon Lord roared, muscle and smoke swelling around him as he met the incoming fist head-on. A sound like a mountain collapsing cracked across the void. Fist and crimson talon struck, the concussion rippling outward in rings that made the stars tremble. To Jared‘s shock, the Demon Lord stumbled three full paces, dark ichor scoring his armored arm where the shockwave had kissed him.
He bared his fangs. “Such power… And condensed hard enough to rend steel!”
Jared slashed the Dragonslayer Sword in a rising arc, blades of light licking off the edge. The whip answered with serpentine grace, coiling along the blade instead of meeting it, siphoning the force and directing it past Jared’s ribs. Every cut left him feeling as though his strength had missed the world entirely. The shifting gravity shoved at his boots, driving him sideways mid-stroke so the next swing veered wide.
“This can’t go on…” Jared’s throat tore the words free before he felt them form. A hard flicker skimmed across his eyes. The three phantom fighters shifted around him; none of their force spilled outward, yet the air itself strained and folded like wet cloth. They were pulling energy inward, knitting it tight, then letting the world do the rest.
Modern sword work suddenly felt gaudy—all glare and shapes, no spine. He leveled his voice, low and steady. “If you want control, taste mine.”
He filled his lungs and forced the hunger for spectacle out with the breath. Attention slid inward, past muscle and marrow, until the quiet well of his core gleamed. The Origin Star pulsed there, four newborn streams of power humming along its rim. He didn’t stack them; he listened, searching for the single note they might share.
