Color exploded and then bled out again. When the blur settled, Jared found himself floating in a wash of silent gray. There was no sky above and no ground below, only endless curtains of gray mist rolling in every direction.
Each ribbon of haze held nether aura so pure it stung his lungs. With every slow breath, Jared felt his cultivation inch upward as naturally as a heartbeat.
Luther drew a long breath, his chest rising like a bellows. “So this is the Nether Secret Realm… Worthy of its name!” he exclaimed, his voice trembling with a thrill. He turned to Jared, his pupils burning bright. “Mr. Jared, I‘m heading deeper to hunt for Nether Origin Energy and fix my core completely. What about you?”
Jared swept his eyes across the mist. “I’ll stay right here and push for a breakthrough. This nether aura feeds my study of the Chaos Grand Path.”
“Good! Then we split up! See you in thirty days!” Luther answered. His figure blurred into a streak of black and slipped into the deeper fog, gone in the span of a heartbeat.
Jared pulled the Pentacarna Tower from his ring; the miniature spire unfolded to its full height with a muted clang. He stepped inside, the door sealing behind him, and sat cross-legged before the inner array.
The Focus Technique began to cycle on its own as his breathing settled. Streams of nether aura slipped through the tower walls like smoke under a door and poured into his meridians. Inside, the chaotic force swallowed the energy whole and ground it into something new.
Bruises faded and torn meridians knitted back together; the progress was so fast he could have watched it in a mirror. At the same time, his cultivation rose, steady as a tide creeping up the shore. He drew out the Nether Codex jade slip and pressed it between his brows. His consciousness sank into the text, chasing after the core of the Nether path.
A single line flared before his inner sight: “Nether is the peak of death, and from that peak rebirth begins.” Another passage declared the Ghost Clan’s creed: “All that lives must die, and all that dies must live again.” Only the revolving door between life and death, it insisted, could be called the true Grand Way.
“Thus, the Nether path is no mere cult of death but the turning of the wheel itself… Life and death cycle…” The words tumbled out before Jared knew it, and a burst of clarity cracked open in his mind.
What, then, is chaos? Chaos is the state before heaven and earth split, the first point of all things, and the last. It holds everything—life and death, yin and yang, space and time—all floats inside chaos.
“I get it now!” Jared cried, light bursting from his eyes. “Chaos is not simple destruction, nor simple creation; it is the union of both! It is the start and the finish, the birth and the grave, the forge and the wrecking hammer!”
In that instant, his grasp of the Chaos Grand Path leaped across a chasm. The chaotic force inside him spun madly, curling into a gray whirlpool. At the whirlpool’s heart, a speck of gray light, no larger than a grain of rice, took form—the first bud of a Chaos Genesis Seed. Yet Jared understood it still fell short. A true seed had to drink in his insight into life, death, and the turning wheel.
He withdrew a pill, the Ninefold Rebirth Elixir scavenged from King Goldtoad’s ring, and swallowed it in one smooth motion. The draught could mimic life and death, guiding the mind toward that very path.
The moment the elixir hit his gut, the world around him warped without warning. Visions flooded in: his past lives, his present one, and the endless procession of beings marching through birth and death.
Jared saw faces and seasons, joys and sorrows. Birth slid into aging, and aging into death. Love became hate, then regret. Every strand of life curved back, proving the circle unbroken. Next, the scene sharpened as King Ironhide, grinning through cracked fangs, fell beneath a rain of spears. Elder Hartcrest toppled in exhaustion, antlers scraping dust. All around, beast-race warriors met death with unblinking eyes.
In that rushing torrent of images, death refused to look final; it felt more like a heavy door swinging inward to another corridor. Hatred, however, clung like smoke. It stretched past the fall of bodies, feeding itself on memory and pain until the next circle began.
Yet somewhere beneath the ash, hope kept a spark. He could sense it refusing to dim, waiting for the wheel to rise again.
“I get it…” Jared’s voice slipped out, soft enough to vanish inside the rolling mist.
He closed his eyes. A single tear traced the corner of his cheek before the vision’s glow swallowed it. Inside his energy center, the gray mote swelled, its skin rippling. Lines as intricate as ancient runes crawled across the surface, each stroke pulsing with muted thunder.
Those runes braided together, weaving a pocket-sized diagram of the cycle—a tiny wheel turning at the heart of the mote.
The Chaos Genesis Seed finally began to take real shape, its newborn gravity tugging at every strand of power in his body. Then, without warning, the scene lurched, as though the secret realm itself hit a snag in reality. A sky-splitting roar boomed from the depths of the realm. Shockwaves rattled the gray expanse, shaking even the walls of the Pentacarna Tower.
“What was that?” Jared’s eyes snapped open.
He vaulted out of the Pentacarna Tower, his boots landing on swirling mist. The gray fog thrashed like a hooked beast, and a terrifying aura erupted far inside the realm, riding the turbulence toward him. Brutality, chaos, and ruin saturated that presence—a savage counterpoint to the pure, gentle nether aura filling the area moments before.
From the depths, Luther’s alarm spilled through the fog. “Mr. Jared! Get out of here! The sealed soul of an ancient beast just woke up!”
The warning had hardly ended when a black blur burst from the mist and hurtled straight at Jared. The newcomer looked like a phantom Ravenousor Wraith, a hundred yards long, its hide ink-black and slick with ghostly light. One inhalation from its gaping maw sucked away most of the surrounding fog.
“A soul remnant of the Ravenousor Wraith?” Jared’s face drained of color.
Legend called the Ravenousor a monster that devoured anything, even governing laws themselves—far worse than the Sky-Swallowing Beast. Though only a remnant, the aura it exuded already reached High Immortal Realm Level Seven, right at the peak. Jared did not hesitate; the Dragonslayer Sword flashed from its sheath, and his chaotic force burst forth at full strength.
“Chaos! Cut!” Jared roared, pouring everything into the swing.
A gray arc shot forward, keen and silent, heading straight for the soul remnant. The revenant simply opened its jaws again, and the sword light vanished down its throat without stirring the mist.
“What?” Shock bit through him like ice water.
The Wraith’s crimson eyes locked onto him, and another pull yanked at the air, hungry enough to peel skin from bone. His body slid forward against his will; even the chaotic force inside him quivered, as though ready to be gulped down.
“Damn it!” He clenched his teeth. Every muscle strained as he fought the suction, veins standing out along his arms.
At that instant, the budding Chaos Genesis Seed inside his core erupted with blinding light. Gray brilliance burst from his pores, whipping into countless chains. They shot outward and coiled around the Ravenousor Wraith. The wraith screamed, discovering that its devouring power slid off those chains, while its own strength was being ripped away instead.
“So this is the Chaos Genesis Seed’s might?” Awe and delight surged together inside him. Instead of retreating, Jared rushed straight at the wraith remnant, forming seals as he unleashed the Chaos Incantation.
“You want to swallow? Then choke on me!” Jared shouted. His entire figure collapsed into a streak of gray light and shot straight into the remnant’s gaping mouth.
