Inside, warm lamplight softened carved beams, banishing the martial chill that ruled the courtyard.
The room breathed of incense and quiet heartbeat instead of drawn blades.
Rania’s first sobs had dried; rose flush returned to her cheeks as she drifted in the safety of Jared’s arm.
The earlier terror already read like a distant rumor to her. To her mind, Julian’s retreat proved everything; fathers, like storms, growl and pass. Love, she believed, had won its first skirmish. That conviction brightened her smile until it hurt to look at directly.
Rania lifted her head, voice low, “Jared, don’t be scared. With me here, Father won‘t truly harm you.”
Nestling closer, her slender fingers traced the faint crease between his brows, smoothing it as though erasing worry.
“When his anger fades, I’ll beg him to acknowledge you,” she promised, eyes shining. “You’re brilliant, he has to see it.”
Jared angled his hand to clasp hers, letting gratitude soften his face. “You shoulder the burden, Rania… Because of me you and your father…”
Her palm covered his mouth before the sentence could finish. “Hush! Don’t speak like that…”
She drew back just enough to meet his gaze. Tears refracted lamplight, but her voice steadied. “For you I’d do anything. And… Father… These years have weighed on him… Whenever the celestial envoy arrives, he has to tread on eggshells. I can tell it makes him miserable.”
The repeated mention of the celestials rang like a chime in Jared’s ear, a hint he refused to miss. He tilted his head, letting curiosity soften his tone. “Are the celestials truly that dreadful? Even a power like Jade Immortal Manor bows to them?”
Rania sighed, shoulders drooping.
“More than bow…” she murmured, darkness clouding her eyes. “Father may wear the title of Manor Lord, but countless matters are decreed by the celestials… Each time the envoy visits, he floats above us, and Father, the elders, everyone stands with heads lowered…”
“They demand tributes, issue commands… The moment someone hesitates, their rage falls like lightning,” she whispered. “I once heard of several mid-tier clans wiped out in one night by Purging Enforcers for refusing… Not even dogs were spared.”
She laid her cheek to Jared’s chest, voice muffled. “Sometimes I wish Father were like the legends—free, answerable to no one… But the celestials are simply too strong… Just the four venerables stationed at the Eastern Region Divine Punishment Hall, they say each is top tier level seven. Together, no one on the Azure Firmament Immortal Continent can face them. Father is only one man…”
Jared answered with another calming rub across her back, but a colder light gathered in his eyes.
Four level-seven giants, breath-stealing power…
The thought tightened the air, yet it sharpened his resolve.
“But every mountain has a fault line,” Jared mused, sensing the familiar thrum of chaotic force in his core.
Cards remained hidden up his sleeve, each forged from chaotic force and the climbs he had made, perhaps enough to test the so-called invincibles. Besides, the greater the foe, the more crucial the secret the Morse couple had uncovered, and the sweeter the coming reckoning.
The next dawn found Jared and Rania hunched over a silk scroll, ink staining their sleeves while verses flowed between them like playful sparring.
By afternoon, he guided her through a breathing cycle, twin streams of essence spiraling until insights flared behind their closed lids.
At night, under curtained moonlight, they blended energies again, cultivation disguised as lovers’ whispers.
Now and then he asked for modest herbs or jade slips; with her token the storeroom opened easily. Through it all, Jared let occasional laughter leak past the shutters, careful to keep every exchange tender, harmless.
He felt the probing auras drift by, pause, then move on, satisfied with the image of two besotted youths.
Once, a distant rumble of shattered stone rolled from the Manor’s core. Jared raised an eyebrow, guessing Julian’s temper had found a wall to break.
***
In the Hall of Infinity secret chamber, lantern-flames flickered against the black-iron walls while Julian sat rigid upon the star-steel throne, each report from his confidants dropping like cold water into a forge.
The intelligence elder finished his bow. “We scoured every ascension log and level thirteen registry for a Jared matching that description. Nothing…”
The words hung, heavy with implication.
“Which means…” the elder added, “He slipped up from the lower worlds by unsanctioned routes, recently…”
A ripple of unease circled the chamber. His graveled voice carried the weight of certainty that chilled even the torchlight.
A second elder stepped forward, brow knit. “How could a mere level-eight heaven cultivator breach those layers, slip past the Sky-Patrol Envoys, and land in our courtyard?”
“That…” the intelligence elder conceded, “Is exactly the puzzle.”
The intelligence elder cleared his throat. “Based on what Elder Wood saw that day and our covert watch afterward, that young man’s true strength is far above the Heavenly-Immortal realm…”
He lowered his voice. “He brushed off the Manor Lord’s pressure and took his strike like nothing. I fear his true level is… No lower than a sixth grade Upper Immortal.”
A hard silence settled over the chamber.
Julian felt every elder’s gaze hang in the cold lamplight while the words echoed in his ears; his fingertips tingled.
Prodigies who punched above their level existed, but an entire major realm—even he had never heard of such a gap being crossed so calmly.
Another elder leaned in, worry creasing his brow. “His technique and the energy he wields are strange, nothing we can identify.”
A third elder chimed in. “It’s gray, laced with annihilation, as if it can dissolve anything. We’ve scoured countless tomes yet found no match. Someone mighty is behind him, or he gained a world-shaking legacy.”
Julian’s index finger tapped the star-iron armrest, steady, deliberate. The faint thunk-thunk cut through the hush. Behind the calm mask, his thoughts spun, each loop faster than the last.
A stranger from below, armed with bizarre strength, priceless secrets, and a clear reason to cozy up to my daughter… Every detail lined up like a row of knives…
Quentin’s disappearance, the Turner brothers‘ gruesome end…
Julian could almost see Jared’s shadow stitched through both events.
Was the boy aiming at Jade Immortal Manor itself?
Or did he want the secret buried under Soulfall Slope?
Or, worse, was he after the celestials?
If it was the manor, the game was simple: blood debt or profit… If it was the slope or the celestials, the ripples could swallow cities…
Deep inside, Julian tasted his own fear of the celestials, mixed with a resentment he never dared voice.
Years of building Jade Immortal City, bending knee, paying tribute, and even handing over the finest soul crystals just to punish petty criminals—none of that was what he’d envisioned for himself.
He’d once dreamed bigger, of shaking their chains off and ruling outright. Yet the celestials’ power hovered like a sword over his skull, daring him to twitch. He had seen those four celestial venerables in person; their depth felt bottomless.
Next to them, Jade Immortal Manor glimmered like a firefly under a harvest moon.
Now Jared had cannonballed into the still pond, sending rings outward that no one could stop. That eerie strength, that terrifying potential—Julian saw, for the first time in years, a genuine variable.
What if Jared, or whoever stood behind him, could really stand toe-to-toe with the celestials?
Even the faintest chance is worth watching… Maybe even nudging…
Once born, the thought spread through him like wildfire. Calling this council was less about crushing Jared than about weighing these elders and scouting the road ahead.
