He slowly drew his gaze back from the demon sun. Under his breath, he repeated the two names. “Cloudhaven City… Jared…”
When the words fell, the corner of his mouth lifted. The smile was faint and hard to read. Buried inside it was something nobody there could have made sense of—part of it leaned toward the thought of meeting an old acquaintance again, and part of it burned for a clash at the very top level.
“Good… very good… I was already planning to go meet Jared myself,” Skylar said, his voice even, though the satisfaction under it would not stay buried. “I didn’t expect the Celestial Palace to make the first move and clear away a good number of nuisances for me. That saves me quite a bit of trouble.”
He slowly turned around and looked at Darian, who was still bent in respect. His tone did not rise, but the order in it pressed down over everything else. “Darian, gather every fighter in your Demon Dragon Lineage at once. Every adult Demon Dragon warrior, every demon general, every demon marshal. Assemble all of them and follow me to Cloudhaven City.”
Darian paused, caught off guard. He looked up without thinking. “S-Senior, we’re going there… to save Jared?”
As far as Darian could tell, Skylar had never had any dealings with Jared. If he was mobilizing the entire Demon Dragon Lineage now, then it should have been to help Jared and fight the Celestial Palace.
Skylar gave him a flat glance. There wasn’t a ripple in it, but Darian dropped his eyes at once and didn’t dare say another word. Then Skylar spoke, slow and cool. “Save him? No… what stands between Jared and me is beyond anything you could imagine. As for the people from the Celestial Palace…”
He stopped there for a beat. A razor-thin contempt flashed through his eyes, as if the countless powerhouses of the Celestial Palace were nothing more than weeds under his feet. “A bunch of pests in my way. If they block my road, I’ll kill them. Jared is mine, and only I am allowed to kill him.”
Hearing this, Darian’s whole body tightened. A chill seemed to crawl up from the bottom of him. He didn’t dare question a single word. He bent down again at once and answered in a loud voice, “Yes! This junior will gather the Demon Dragon host immediately. In a moment, they’ll be assembled outside the hall and waiting for your command, Senior!”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Darian turned and strode out of the courtyard. He didn’t dare waste even a moment. A short while later, above the Demon Dragon Hall, the long cry of the war horn rolled out low and fierce. It punched through the thick demonic fog and spread across ten thousand miles of the Demon Marches. That horn call was the battle order of the Demon Dragon Lineage.
Ancient demonic sound was woven into it, and every note shook heaven and earth hard enough to set the blood of countless Demon Dragon warriors surging. The instant the war horn sounded, dark red figures shot up from the mountain ranges surrounding the Demon Dragon Hall. Some took human form; others showed their true bodies outright.
One massive Demon Dragon after another climbed into the sky, their scales dark red, their vicious presence spilling in waves. Their wings spread wide enough to blot out the light, and every beat of those wings kicked up violent wind and sent the demonic fog churning.
Packed together, the swarm of Demon Dragons became a dark red flood. It surged forward in a vast, pounding wave toward Cloudhaven City. Everywhere it passed, the color of the sky shifted and demonic aura surged upward.
At the very front of that Demon Dragon army flew the supreme demon dragon, a giant beast a thousand yards long, with scales like blood jade and horns glowing with a dim, eerie light. It was a descendant of the ancestral dragon of the Demon Dragon Lineage. The pressure pouring off it far surpassed the rest of its kind, and it was Darian’s bonded war dragon.
Skylar stood with his hands behind his back on top of the supreme demon dragon’s head. His black clothes moved in the wind. His face stayed calm as he looked toward Cloudhaven City in the distance, as if the slaughter waiting ahead were nothing more than a forgettable trip.
Josephine stood quietly beside him. Her cool gaze rested on the distance, and her slender hand drew tight just a little before she spoke in a soft voice. “Junior, this time… are you going there to kill him, or to see him?”
Skylar stayed silent for a moment. The wind tugged at his black clothes and lifted his hair as he looked toward the far edge of the sky. Then he said lightly, with something unreadable under the words, “Josephine, you’ll know when we get there.”
As soon as the words fell, the Demon Dragon host picked up even more speed. The whole army looked like one dark-red dragon ripping across the sky, tearing through the clouds and bearing down fast on Cloudhaven City.
Cloudhaven City was an immortal city with a towering name in the Fourteenth Firmament. In quieter days, mist had wrapped around it year-round, spiritual energy had filled every corner, pavilions and towers had crowded the city, common people had lived in peace, cultivators had come and gone without pause, and the whole place had carried the look of calm prosperity.
But now, that former immortal city had already turned into a brutal battlefield. Everywhere one looked, there was ruin. Everywhere, wreckage. High above the city, the earthshaking battle had already dragged on for a full hour. The roar of techniques never stopped, and wave after wave of shock from colliding power spread outward, to the point that even space had begun to warp.
The city-ward array of Cloudhaven City, built over several thousand years and once used to withstand attack after attack, had long since been blasted apart under the Celestial Palace army’s relentless bombardment. It had shattered into countless sparkling motes of light and scattered into the air without leaving behind even the slightest trace.
The city walls, cast from ten-thousand-year black jade and once thought unbreakable, were now covered in dense cracks and scorched black marks. Those wounds had been left by bombardment from techniques and strikes from divine weapons.
In several places, the city walls had already come crashing down. Huge chunks of stone were scattered everywhere. Some had smashed homes inside the city; others had piled across the streets, kicking dust into the air until it hung there thick enough to sting the nose.
The people inside the city had long since been driven into utter soul-ruin. One after another, they hid in their homes, barred their doors and windows, and curled into corners, shaking where they crouched. They clapped their hands over their ears and listened to the deafening slaughter outside—the dragon roars, the explosions of techniques.
Every sound landed like a hammer against the chest. All they could do was wait like prisoners under final judgment, with no way of knowing whether the next breath of war would swallow their homes or take their lives.
Children crying, women sobbing, old men sighing—those sounds tangled together inside the city. But the killing outside drowned them out, and that only made the whole scene feel more bleak.
Up in the sky, golden light slammed into golden light again and again. That was the Sky Dragon Clan’s draconic energy grinding against the Celestial Palace’s golden techniques. Dragon cries shook the heavens, techniques thundered, and surges of power rose and crashed without end.
At first glance, the fight looked evenly matched. But anyone who looked closer would have seen more and more glaring streaks of blood mixed into that dazzling gold. It was the blood of the Sky Dragon Clan’s clansmen, staining the whole sky red.
The Sky Dragon Clan had already suffered devastating losses. They were at the edge of a dead end. Roland, the Sky Dragon Clan Chief, had long since cast off his human form and returned to his true body. A golden dragon a hundred yards long, scales blazing with brilliant light and dragon horns carrying crushing majesty, fought savagely across the sky.
He was fighting one against three. By himself, he held off three Celestial Palace True Immortal elders, and every clash between them exploded with terrifying force. At that moment, Roland had none of his old majesty left.
His golden scales, once blazing with light, were covered in dense wounds so deep the bone showed through. Some of those wounds had been burned black by spells; others had been torn open by divine weapons. Golden dragon blood kept pouring out of him like spring water, splashing across the city walls and the streets of Cloudhaven City, dyeing the ground a sheet of red.
