The two casual syllables cracked like twin slaps, landing first on Rowan’s cheek and then on every Wagner clansman who heard them.
Color drained from Rowan’s face. The veins at his temples jumped, and the rigid line of his jaw said he had finally grasped just how far out of his depth he was, by a hundred-fold, by a thousand-fold.
“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” he roared, voice scraping. He clenched his teeth and lunged again. This time he held nothing back. Fist shadows and palm winds laced together into a killing web, every step designed to carve Jared into scraps.
The outcome did not shift an inch. Jared never sidestepped, never raised a guard. He stood like a sea-fixing pillar planted in bedrock.
Each punch landed and vanished as though the man were a bottomless lake, waves utterly absent. Each palm struck his chest and slipped away like a spring breeze brushing a cliff face, unable to move the stone at all.
After ten exchanges the storm of blows ended. Rowan bent at the waist, lungs pumping, sweat pouring down the ridge of his nose. The terror shining in his eyes was thick enough to read from across the room.
His hands quivered without permission, knuckles aching as if he had been pounding raw flesh against millennia-old iron. Jared still looked down at him, calm and detached, eyes as flat as standing water without a ripple.
“Done yet?” He asked it softly, the gentle tone crawling under the skin like something that did not belong. Rowan’s mouth worked. No sound followed. His dried throat refused every threat he tried to form.
A shudder rolled through him from tailbone to scalp, hollowing out whatever will to fight remained. Jared raised his hand. The movement was slow, almost considerate. Then the hand dropped.
Pfft!
A muffled burst echoed.
Rowan’s proud head exploded like a melon smashed by a sledge. Red and white sprayed across floor and table legs.
The headless body wobbled once, then toppled with a thud.
The House of Wagner Patriarch, Rowan of the True Immortal Realm Level One, was gone, just like that. So swift, so stifled, so absurd that the word “Death” felt almost out of place.
Silence swallowed the hall. A pin striking the floor would have rung like a bell. Guests, Wagner disciples, and the few guards still breathing stood frozen, as though a binding spell had locked every joint.
Rowan, a True Immortal Realm Level One, had just fallen?
Cut down by a High Immortal Realm Level Three youth, as casually as someone swats a fly?
What kind of world allowed that?
Jared lowered his hand and swept his gaze over the hall, eyes unhurried and steady. Wherever that gaze passed, heads dropped; no one dared meet it.
“Who else?”
The calm words detonated inside every chest like hidden thunder. But, no one took a step. No one opened a mouth. Even breathing came out in tiny, strangled wisps.
Dominic sagged in his chair, warmth flooding down his legs and pooling beneath him, yet he seemed not to notice. He stared at his father’s headless corpse and the spreading blood, mind struck blank, left only with the black tunnel of despair.
Jared moved toward him, footsteps unhurried. Each soft impact landed on Dominic’s chest like a hammer, squeezing the air from his lungs, stalling his heartbeat.
At last Jared stopped directly in front of him.
A damp shadow blanketed the space, and Dominic felt as though an icy grip had closed around his throat, squeezing until no air could pass.
“Dominic…” Jared spoke, his voice flat and even. “I already told you there are things in this world you have no right to touch. And there are people you can never afford to provoke.”
Dominic’s jaw, worked soundlessly. He tried to drop to his knees, to smash his forehead against the floor and blame everything on his father, yet the crushing pressure kept his throat locked. His muscles spasmed white snot and tears streamed down his face.
Jared watched him the way a passer-by might glance at a trampled weed-no interest, no pity. He raised his right hand at an unhurried pace. The tip of his index finger pressed the air, and a shard of brilliant gold gathered there, bright as à falling star.
Pfft!
The gold streak blinked across the space. A hole as wide as a thumb punched through Dominic’s brow, burst out the back of his skull, and sprayed a cloud of red.
His body locked in place, the expression on his face stayed frozen-eyes wide, lips parted, muscles still twitching. Whatever words he had clung to never made it out.
Thud! The corpse collapsed, eyes round and unclosing. Dominic was gone. Jared withdrew his hand as casually as if brushing away a buzzing gnat. He then turned and fixed his gaze on Vivian, who had stood quietly to one side the entire time.
She remained rooted, silent tears sliding down and soaking the front of her robe. Her stare drifted over Dominic’s body, over Rowan’s headless corpse, over the blood that smeared every flagstone, and something wordless churned behind her eyes.
Days spent swallowing back sobs collided with the sharp release of payback, and the clash beat against her ribs, light and heavy at once.
For a fleeting breath she seemed to ask the fallen, Father, the Elders, every soul of her family, whether they could see this moment. The debt was settled. Settled so thoroughly that not a single strand remained.
Jared moved closer and patted her narrow shoulder. Heat and strength flowed through that brief contact, scattering the chill that had crept into her bones.
“Let’s go…” The words came out mild, yet they carried a solidity a person could lean on. “The people from the Celestial Palace are still waiting.”
Tears still glassing her lashes, Vivian looked up at him and nodded hard. One hour later, in Cloudhaven City, Celestial Palace Branch.
The hall that once embodied the Palace’s untouchable authority had been crushed into a field of smoking rubble. Broken walls jutted like jagged teeth, and the smell of ash still drifted through the cracks.
Three Celestial Palace Elders sprawled in the pooled blood, their once-proud faces twisted into rigid masks.
More than twenty elite soldiers lay nearby, each felled by a single strike. Jared stood at the center of the wreckage, his gold robe stirring in the wind, as spotless as when he first put it on.
Anyone arriving late might have believed he had merely passed by and brushed away a speck of dust. Behind him, Vivian, Luther, and Grace stared at the scene, waves rolling unseen beneath otherwise steady faces.
The wet tracks on Vivian’s cheeks had already dried. She studied the bodies of those who had destroyed her family, and the tightness in her gaze loosened as though a knot had finally slipped free.
“Jared…” The name came out softly, scraping her throat. Jared turned. She drew a breath, straightened her robe, stepped forward, and bent into a long, deep bow.
“Thank you…” The simple phrase dropped between them with the weight of stone. Jared shook his head and lifted her upright with an easy motion. “No need.”
His eyes drifted toward the horizon. “The House of Wagner and the Celestial Palace already owed me. Helping you was convenient, and helped me, too.”
Moisture gathered again at the corners of Vivian’s eyes. She searched for words, but beside his unshakable presence every phrase felt too thin to stand.
Jared let the corners of his mouth tick upward. The light curve felt as easy as the first warm breeze after a long winter, a touch so gentle it could have turned drizzle into mist.
Beneath that gentleness, though, lay an unhurried certainty, an ease that treated everything beneath the sky as if it already belonged beneath his feet.
