"ra, sir, step back and protect yourselves. I''ll break this array," he said calmly, drawing the Dragonyer Sword.


    The de was in,cking brilliance. Yet the moment it was drawn, a fierce aura that could cut through cause and annihte allw surged upward, diluting the murderous aura emanating from the Northern Abyss Immortal-ying Ice Array.


    The general''s pupils contracted slightly. He sensed the sword''s extraordinary nature.


    "Attack!" hemanded, though confident in his array.


    "ck Tortoise World Suppression-Total Frost!"


    The spectral ck Tortoise roared, spewing a wide ice-blue pir of light!


    Where it passed, space froze into solid ice, carrying the power to crush everything, aimed straight at Jared.


    This strike alone reached the power of a Level Eight Heavenly Immortal.


    Jared didn''t dodge. He gripped his sword with both hands in front of him, eyes closed, mind and depletely fused.


    Chaotic celestial energy surged within him. The Chaotic Fire Lotus in his elixir field and the draconic energy ignited simultaneously, channeling immense force into the sword.


    The Dragonyer Sword hummed with anticipation. Fine dragon-scale patterns appeared along the de, and an ancient, vast, all-destroying sword intent began to coalesce.


    Jared''s eyes snapped open-golden light burst forth like tangible mes!


    "Dragonyer Sword Technique Third Form-Heavenrend!"


    He shed diagonally from bottom to top.


    No dazzling sword light, no deafening sound—just a thin, almost transparent gray thread of energy extending from the tip.


    It looked fragile, as if it could snap at any moment.


    Yet the instant it met the ice-blue pir, like a hot knife through butter, the pir, containing the force of a Level Eight Heavenly Immortal, was effortlessly split in two.


    The halves grazed past Jared''s sides, mming into the ice behind him, creating two bottomless craters—but leaving himpletely unharmed.


    The fment of gray swordlight did not falter. It drifted onward with deceptive ease, gliding toward the vast, translucent battle array that shimmered above the ice like an illusion made of starlight.


    "Brace for impact—maximum defense!" themander standing at the center of the Celestials'' phnx bellowed, his voice cracking under sudden fear.


    One hundred fifty armored warriors answered at once. Their immortal energy red, flooding the glyphs beneath their feet. The sigils zed white-blue, and the phantasmal ck Tortoise above their ranks thickened until it looked hewn from cial jade.


    The sword-thread alighted upon the ck Tortoise''s shell, a single gray hair brushing ancient armor.


    Time seemed to freeze, holding its breath in the brittle air.


    The next heartbeat snapped.


    Crack!


    A faint, unmistakable fracture rippled through the silence.


    From the point of contact, spider-fine fissures raced across the tortoise illusion, webbing outward until they filled its colossal body.


    The cracks leapt to the soldiers below. Ice-blue breasttes, crystal pikes, even


    flesh and bone—all split along the same fatal lines.


    "No!" themander roared, his protest swallowed by despair as the sound tore at his throat.


    Boom!


    The ck Tortoise—and the warriors who sustained it—copsed like toppled statues, exploding into shards of armor, splinters of weapons, and a mist of frozen blood.


    Azure motes and crimson vapor drifted down upon the white in, a snowfall of ruin. One stroke an entire battle arrayy broken.


    Jared stood with his sword lowered, chest rising and falling. That single cut had siphoned nearly a third of his celestial energy, yet the result was nothing short of awe-inspiring.


    With the array''s keepers dead, the flight-locking field wavered. The pale dome flickered, then burst like a soap bubble, and the crushing hundredfold gravity vanished.


    Vermilion and ra stared at the ravaged field-—and at Jared, sword in hand, poised between god and demon-unable to summon words.


    "Come. The pool can''t be far," Jared said as he slid the de home. His face was calm again, as though the world-shattering strike had been no more than casual practice.


    They stepped across ice that was red, then instantly ss-hard, pressing deeper into the frozennd.


    Behind them remained only shattered armor, broken pikes, and blood-red crystals— mute testimony to the celestial warriors'' defeat.


    Less than an hourter, a pressure unlike any before surged from the icebound depths-ancient, predatory, unstoppable. Vermilion and ra gasped, lungs seized, spirits quaking under an invisible mountain. Even the screaming blizzard hushed, its snow hanging motionless in the air.


    Jared halted, turned, and fixed his gaze on the approaching storm of power. For the


    first time, true gravity darkened his eyes.


    Whoeveres is stronger than every guardian we have faced-stronger even than that Level Seven Heavenly Immortal we slew before.


    Jared''s mind sharpened in a heartbeat. The stranger''s strength sat at the very summit of the Heavenly Immortal Realm-Level Eight, razor-steady, dense as winter stone.


    No trace of pill-swollen bluster clung to that aura. Every drachm of power felt earned, hammered into shape by years of honest battle.


    An icy blueet tore through the cloud-bank and speared into the in, exploding


    in a shower of frozen light a hundred yards ahead. When the brilliance faded, only a


    lone figure remained, motionless amid the drifting snow.


    He looked to be forty, his features chiseled and severe, eyes as bottomless as a cier''s crevasse A jagged cobalt sigil burned between his brows more intricate, more. fuminous, than any Jared had yet


    encountered in thesends.


    A simple robe the color of cier ice hung from his shoulders, yet the cold it exuded


    warped the very air.


    He held an ancient sword of wless crystal. Though its edge appeared dull, the


    chill it breathed pricked at Jared''s soul like needles of ck frost.


    "I am Cedin Frostbane, third


    general of the Northern Abyss Pce. Are you the interloper who smashed our lines and ughtered hundreds of my kin? Curious... you register as Level one Heaventy


    vet your aura is a storm of formless chaos-draconte pressure flickering within. Whatever art you practice, I have never seen its like."


    "Step aside," Jared said, his voice calm and level. "I came only for the medicine that


    will save a life. I''ve no wish to cut anyone else down."