Cold creek spray pricked his face. He blinked and found himself once more beside the water in Peach Blossom Haven, the dream of stone pavilions already dissolving. Yet the resonance lingered.
Deep within, the four entwined forces sat more snugly than before, and the impression of nascent chaos pulsed against his soul like a fresh brand. The Vermilion Demon Lord cocked his head, crimson curls dancing over one horn. “What just happened? You shut your eyes for a breath, and the old man waved you through.”
“Hard to unravel,” Jared said, still tasting the hush of that vanished board. “Call it an insight.”
He let the questions hang. His gaze traveled to the farthest reach of the haven where fog curled around the mouth of an ancient cave, lines of time etched in its shadowy arch. “That should be the final dwelling,” he murmured. “The third trial waits at its door.”
He and the demon lord moved, the hush of peach petals giving way to the crunch of gravel as anticipation nudged them forward. Ahead, the mountain wall folded inward and revealed a cavern mouth nearly a hundred feet high, too sudden to be anything but nature’s own doorway. A liquid curtain of seven colors draped the opening. Light rippled like water, and within the ripples drifted sigils far more intricate than the ones Jared had studied on the stone board.
On the left stood a statue: a human face atop a serpent’s coils, a measuring rod balanced in slender hands, its carved gaze cool and exacting. On the right towered another—a broad human torso, tiger’s head, stone axe lifted as if one swing might split the unborn world. Time had eroded nothing of its menace.
Jared and the Vermilion Demon Lord had barely crossed within a hundred paces when both statues‘ eyes flared, bright and sudden. The glow was not inert gemstone light; it moved, alive, and for one breath Jared felt as though something inside the stone had awakened and fixed on him.
“Children of the after-times, stay your steps. This retreat belongs to my master. Only those of fate, virtue, and capability may pass… The first two gates weighed your strength and perception. The third will measure your heart, your purpose, and the breadth of what you can bear…”
“Break these bodies we guard or earn our approval,” the tiger-headed statue thundered. “But fail, and body and soul alike will shatter beyond the wheel of rebirth. Do you dare the trial?”
The air thickened. Pressure dropped onto Jared’s chest like a falling cliff, stealing half a breath before he forced his lungs to move again. That single moment of weight eclipsed the strain he had felt under the three shadow guardians and the old man at the game board combined. Beside him, the Demon Lord’s pupils burned crimson.
A grin split the fiend’s face. “Finally—something with teeth. Jared, straight through or…”
Jared let his glance travel from the statues to the shifting barrier, mind spinning through options the way a gambler palms dice. Force a way in? The two guardians shared one current of power, an unseen formation humming between them and the multicolored screen. Even victory would likely leave him too drained to breach the barrier itself.
Earn their approval, then… But how? He remembered Sidney’s warning. Ancient Energy Refiners cut straight to essence. The test strikes at heart, will, and the space within a soul that can hold the world. A reckless thought took shape, bold enough to quicken his pulse…
“Seniors,” Jared said, stepping forward with palms pressed together in formal salute, “I, Jared Chance, seek to fuse the alien force within me and grow strong enough to resist the devouring evil… I mean no disrespect to ancient wisdom. The earlier gates taught me how vast your path is. For this third, I offer my own way for your judgment…”
Jared did not lift his fists. Instead, he allowed his eyelids to fall, shutting out the guardians, the Demon Lord, even the wavering colors ahead. Within the hush of his body, the Origin Star in his core began to turn. Light welled outward, pulse on pulse, each surge louder than words.
He let the surge carry everything he was—the years of clawing upward, the vow to protect, the need to avenge, the restless hunger for truth. Every memory spilled into the pulse that fanned outward. It felt nothing like an attack. It was a bare-souled introduction, a hand stretched open so the world could read the lines on his palm.
A dim grey breath coiled first, patient, primordial, big enough to swallow quarrels. In its haze, anything could begin again. Then color stirred: five interlocking bands—metal feeding water, water feeding wood—the old rhythm of creation arguing with itself inside a spinning prism. Earthfire True Flame rose through the weave, scarlet at the core, white at the tips, promising to burn everything down and seed the ash with unborn gardens. Across it glided a pale-gold dragon shape, its voice stretched into a long brass note, unyielding, hungry for horizons no one else dared to chart.
None of them stayed separate. Chaos herded them together—awkward, stubborn, but inch by inch they resonated, knitting a field still raw at the edges yet aching with possibility. Heat flashed across the sigil on Jared’s hand. A ghost of the same pattern shimmered on his brow, four colors joined by threads too fine to name.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the Vermilion Demon Lord gaping. The man tasted the air like someone hearing a language unknown yet older than bone. Farther ahead, the two stone sentinels’ pupils flickered, their severities thawing as light coursed behind the granite. They were watching him.
“Chaos as guide, four forces entwined… Your path is steep, without precedent,” the Serpentine Guardian murmured, the note inside its stone throat shaded with emotions Jared could not pin to one name.
“Yet in its change and creation I hear an echo of our master‘s final truth: all phenomena return to source, and source births all things. Your mind is steady, untempted by corruption. You guard what matters and break ground where none exists… Your capacity is acceptable,” the Tiger Guardian pronounced.
As the last word fell, the two guardians turned to each other, shared a single, flinty nod, then faced him again.
“You may enter,” the Serpentine Guardian said. “Inside, fortune answers only to itself. Conduct yourself wisely,” the Tiger Guardian added.
The brilliance drained from their eyes, leaving plain stone again. The Seven-Colored Light Screen rippled outward like rain-rings on still water, then vanished, baring a tunnel that breathed cold dark.
“That… That actually worked?” Behind him, the Vermilion Demon Lord sounded betrayed by the absence of spectacular violence.
