Jared halted. With a whisper, he told the little fire unicorn to mask its presence. Together they melted into the bramble''s shadow, inching forward until a gap in the thorns framed the scene like a secret window.
A broad, bowl-shaped hollow stretched beyond the thicket. There, five cultivators in identical ck robes hunted two fugitives.
Golden thread at each sleeve embroidered a warped demon skull-icon of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect―gnashing as though devouring souls.
The quarry were beast-folk, not full humans.
The male stood nearly ten feet tall, bronze skin striped with faint tiger markings. A king''s sigil zed on his brow. He wielded a door-wide axe, every sweep roaring with sovereign ferocity.
Beside him, a lithe huntress moved with panther grace. Wheat-brown skin, wild beauty, eyes of vertical amber slits. A ring-banded leopard tail flicked behind her.
Twin daggers shed in her hands like falling stars. Their auras were strong yet disciplined-cultivated beast energy, not the mindless rage of forest fiends.
But both were spent.
The man''s palms were split; blood soaked the axe haft. Deep wounds scored his frame-one ragged w mark across his back revealed glimpses of organs. He gasped like bellows.
The leopard woman fared little better. Her left shoulder smoldered ck, poisoned. Blood foamed at her lips, yet her slit pupils still zed with defiance.
"Haha... You stubborn beasts," the leading ck-robed man rasped. "Hand over the map to the beast-soul crystal vein, or my next strike will rip out your spirits and bind them to my Ten-Thousand-Soul Banner for all eternity!"
He stood at Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Five, swirling a banner of choking midnight mist. Countless twisted faces writhed on the cloth, howling without sound. As he shook the banner, a mind-piercing screech rose, and his smile turned colder than grave dirt.
"Filthy robbers of the Myriad Souls Demon Sect!" the tiger warrior thundered, voice booming, though blood flecked his teeth. "Level ten is vast. You havends of your own, yet you raid the Myriad Beast Mountains again and again. How are you different from demons from beyond the sky?"
Another ck-robed attacker sneered. "The strong eat the weak-that is the universe''sw."
He hurled a sickly green skull forward, and corrosive Netherworld Ghostfire sprayed toward the leopard huntress.
"We guard these mountains. We will die before we yield!" With that cry, the leopard woman crossed her daggers, Two icy arcs shed
outward, deflecting most of the
ghostfire yet the impact pitched her backward, stumbling on wounded legs.
Myriad Souls Demon Sect.
The name thundered across the gulch like a war drum. Hidden
among the thorny undergrowth,
Jared felt his gaze hone toet
predator''s edge An icy surge killing intent erupted within him, flooding veins and thought alike.
Every trace of caution—every n to lie low-blew away like ash on the wind. That
mutt Soul Devourer is nesting inside theirir after all. So much for searching; fate has brought him back to me.
Ahead, the impatient ck-robedmander raised his Ten-Thousand-Soul Banner.
ck light ballooned, knitting itself
into a colossal spectral w that
shrieked with the agony of bound spirits. It ured toward the tiger
man''s skull, intent on ending resistance in a single squeeze.
Jared moved.
"Uni, now!" Even as the words left his tongue, he burst from the brambles like a loosed arrow. Mid-air, the Dragonyer sword shed free, its chill gleam bathing the dim valley floor.
"Five-Element Cycle-Annihtion Edge!"
He held nothing back. The strike was forged from his deepestprehension of the Five-Element Law and driven by raw chaotic energy.
A beam of Prismatic Sword Aura—its surface rippling with microscopic worlds birthing and dying-tore open the air.
It crossed dozens of yards in a heartbeat, aiming unerringly for the ck-robed leader''s brow, his consciousness field.
One sh. Fast. Merciless. Precise. And within it, an intent that judged and ended all things.