Malcolm and Morven''s faces locked, shock sliding into raw terror while their eyes traced the fading after-image Jared''s casual stroke had left in the dust.


    They finally understood what Jared had meant when he said the fight could end whenever he wished.


    To them, it was no boast-it was a in statement of physics.


    Jared tipped his chin toward the pair. "Your turn."


    The words sounded calm, yet the instant theynded Malcolm and Morven shrank as though an ice cer had opened beneath their feet.


    "Impossible—absolutely impossible!" Morven screamed, voice shredding itself against the cavern walls.


    Spittle flew as he raged, "Tricks, sorcery, smoke-you''re faking it! Die for me!"


    Sanity snapped; wounds forgotten, he rammed the Ninefold Nether Demonic Technique to its ragged limit.


    "Nether Styx-Ten Thousand Ghosts Devour the Heavens!" he roared, every syble cracking the dark.


    Thunder rolled in answer.


    Behind him a curtain of pitch-ck world unfurled; serrated ghost shapes surged out, howling as they dived for Jared.


    Their hollow mouths promised rot for spirit and marrow-whatever price Morven paid, he no longer cared.


    Across the ruinous wind, Malcolm felt the same de at his throat; hesitation vanished.


    "Reincarnation Annihtion-Myriad Arts Return to the Void!" he intoned, dread and devotion tangled.


    The phantom Door of Reincarnation behind him bucked like a chained beast and vomited rivers of chalk-pale reincarnation aura.


    The vapors clenched before his chest, swelling into a cyclopean gray eye.


    When the lid snapped open, a beam rich with oblivion tore outward and even the air began to decay.


    Two High Immortal Realm titans, corners pressed, hurled their defining attacks as one-dwarfing what the three Reincarnation Guardians managed together.


    The summit buckled beneath his boots. Above, sky and sun smeared into one bruised stain, as though daylight had been scraped away.


    Reincarnation Peak shivered like an animal smelling the axe.


    The roar of collidingws hammered his eardrums, daring him to blink.


    He let the challenge settle, the moment he dropped restraint and reached for the whole of his power.


    He slid one foot forward, nothing more than the length of a single stride.


    The mountain answered with a deep, metallic hum.


    From that quiet step, an ashen radius bloomed outward-one hundred yards across before the echo faded.


    Inside the ring, rivers of unborn elements curled around one another-fire, water, earth, wind-spinning, devouring, birthing in endless session.


    A pale-gold dragon silhouette coiled through the haze, singing a soundless hymn.


    This was no simple barrier; it was a seedling cosmos, a Chaos World still wet with first light.


    The forms from the Primal Unity Refinement Tome drifted across his memory-here, now, in living color.


    Chaotic Domain, first pattern.


    Barely an embryo, yet its nature already towered beyond ordinary celestial fields. Spectral wraiths rushed the boundary, eager as moths to me.


    The newborn currents shredded them, drank them, grew on their stolen essence.


    The pir of reincarnation light speared in next, rippling the shell for a heartbeat.


    Five-element cycles dismantled it, Earthfire True me scoured it clean, chaotic aura swallowed the remainder.


    "My turn."


    The words drifted through the domain as steady as slow rain, untouched by strain.


    He raised his right hand, pressed index and middle fingers together, and leveled them toward Morven and Malcolm.


    "Chaos Origin-Unification Finger."


    At his fingertip, a pinprick of gray condensed so dense it seemed to swallow its own edges.


    In that mote lurked the strength to birth worlds and the appetite to end them. The gray left him without even a sigh.


    Where it drifted, space blinked out, revealing bottomless dark beyond geometry.


    Time buckled around it; light sloughed off; the veryws quivered like ss too close to me.


    Across the gap, Morven''s and Malcolm''s pupils tightened to pinpoints, their auras fluttering with mortal dread.


    They hurled shields inyered panic-Ninefold Nether Demon Shield Reincarnation Barrier, Soutbound relics eachyer igniting the next in frantic bloom.


    Jared watched, certain the gesture would matter as little as mist to lightning.


    A wet pop answered his certainty.


    Something broke the silence—a weightless pop, as though the air itself had snapped.


    Before the echo settled, a thread of ashen light speared forward.


    Wards, walls—everything meant to stop power-parted the way butter parts for a hot knife.


    Jared''s gaze tracked the beam as it bored through Morven''s brow, slipped out the back of his skull, then punched straight into Malcolm''s chest.


    Ashen light blossomed behind Malcolm like a second heart, hungry, merciless. Everything halted.


    Dust hung mid-fall, stray sparks froze in midair; Jared''s own heartbeat dragged into syrup.


    Opposite him, Morven''s features-madness, fury, raw terror-stiffened into a grotesque mask.


    The old demon lowered his gaze, searching for a wound over his heart and finding


    none.


    Then his eyes crossed toward the bridge of his nose, where a pin-prick of gray bloomed and began to crawl outward.


    Where the dot passed, flesh unraveled into smoke, soul-light guttered, power fell away like wet ster.


    Jared felt the void behind that color-an undoing older than creation itself. "Not...poss...ible..." Morven forced the sybles through cracking teeth.


    From his crown downward, he sifted apart, inch by inch, intozy swirls of soot.


    The terror Jared had known since childhood-the Ancestor of the Ninefold Nether Pce-simply wasn''t there anymore.


    Even the echo of Morven''s presence copsed, leaving the chamber thinner, strangely innocent.


    Malcolm, still pinned on the far side, fared even worse.


    Jared could taste the metallic panic rolling off him.


    When the graynce bored through his chest, Malcolm''s reincarnation mantra had leapt alive on reflex


    circles of pale script skittering


    beneath his skin.


    That defense met the chaotic force head-on; the two magics chewed each other and everything nearby.


    Jared felt the shockwaves in his teeth.


    "Aaaargh!"


    Malcolm ballooned, ribs groaning, skin straining like overfilled leather.


    Streams of pallid vapor chased one another beneath the surface, then burst from his


    nostrils and ears along with ck-red pulp.


    Jared saw the man''s reincarnation core buckle, splinter, and finally cave, the way a house gives when its beams rot.


    Jared stepped once; space folded, and he stood breath-close to the dying man.


    The swirling boundary of his Chaotic Domain recoiled into his body like a tide obeying the moon.


    He lowered an open palm, not quite touching the ruptured sternum.


    A gentler strand of chaos flowed out, stitching fractures long enough to hold the


    pieces together.


    "The xseed n''s souls-do you still have them?"


    Jared locked eyes with him, voice colder than permafrost despite the roaring power


    in the room.


    Malcolm''s cultivationy in ruins; life seeped out of him like water from cracked


    stone.


    Nothing left but the rattle of a single breath.


    "The xseed n? Ha..." Malcolm''sugh scraped like broken ss. "Those insects'' souls were taken by the Supreme Master long ago. You want them? Step through the Door of Reincarnation. But once you pass inside, you''ll join thêm. be another puppet... just like them... ha... ha..."


    Theugh cut off mid-breath; his head lolled, eyes zing before Jared.