King Nightbat''s pupils shrank.


    "What?!" The shout burst from him before sense could catch up.


    That Soulshatter Demon Dirge had once crippled a Top Level High Immortal Realm Level Seven foe.


    Yet the youngster in front of him, only Ninth Level Celestial by his reckoning, stood untouched as if it were a spring breeze.


    Jared gave no answer.


    He stepped once, the motion light and silent, then reappeared in front of King Nightbat like a flicker of bad light.


    His fist snapped forward.


    The punch looked in, almost informal, but the air around his knuckles darkened.


    Chaotic force threaded through the strike, and thin ck cracks crawled across the space it traveled.


    King Nightbat jerked his wings in front of him.


    Lines of obsidian runes red across the membrane, knitting into a dense shield.


    Boom!


    The cave shook as the two forces met.


    Fist hammered wing.


    The impact folded the air inward, popping ears and rattling loose stones from the ceiling.


    The rune wall ripped like wet paper.


    Jared''s fist tore straight through the battered wing and buried itself in King Nightbat''s chest.


    Bone cracked with a noise like splintering ice.


    Spurt!


    A sheet of ck blood fanned across the pool, hissing where itnded.


    King Nightbat spewed another mouthful of tar-thick blood.


    His breastbone sank inward; ribs snapped with every staggered breath.


    Terror caught up with him.


    Gray energy flooded his meridians, eating through flesh and spirit alike, and every technique he tried to muster scattered before he could grip it.


    "No... impossible..." he rasped.


    "I''m High Immortal Realm Level Seven-how can you..."


    The roar tore what remained of his voice.


    Hate and disbelief swam in his blood-red eyes, chased by a deeper, crushing fear. Jared offered silence.


    His left hand rose, two fingers aligned like a de, and he drove the gray edge toward the center of the bat king''s brow.


    King Nightbat lurched aside, but the broken bodygged behind the order.


    The ash-colored lightspear slipped through his forehead and sank into the sea of his


    awareness.


    Darkness closed over him like a door, and it never opened again.


    Jared plucked the storage ring from the corpse, then peeled away the pair of ck wings that had once looked so imposing.


    In skilled hands those membranes could be forged into a fine flight treasure; he stored them without a word.


    He spared the cavern no second nce and slipped into the shadowed tunnels. Within breaths he was gone.


    Barely half a stick of incense after he left, the night-watch bats discovered their king lying in the blood-soaked pool.


    Panic spread through the Western Front Encampment the way mold spreads through damp grain.


    "The king is dead!"


    "Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"


    rms nged, wings beat the air, and an entire underground city stumbled over itself in chaos.


    By then Jared had crossed half the battlefield and stepped onto the Southern Front.


    His next mark was King Goldtoad, third of the Five Beast Kings.


    King Goldtoad was weaker, sitting at the peak of Top Level High Immortal Realm Level Six, but he made up for it with venom and armor.


    His ancient body, a thousand-year poison toad, carried skin thick as bronze and spittle that could dissolve top-grade spirit gear.


    Jared shunned subtlety.


    He walked straight into the centralmand tent, gray light wrapped around his boots like a veil of dust.


    "Who goes there?!"


    King Goldtoad had been bent over a campaign map with several lieutenants. When the stranger appeared, rage and shock rippled across his wide face.


    "The one who hase for your life," Jared replied, voice as still as stone.


    Chaotic force gathered in his palm, stretching into a gray longsword that hummed with quiet hunger.


    The breath leaking from that de prickled King Goldtoad''s skin, and his heart sank.


    The visitor was no friend.


    He roared, and his body ballooned outward.


    In an instant a house-sized golden toad squatted where the man had been.


    Bulbous poison sacs crawled across his back.


    He belched a cloud of swirling green venom that flooded the entire tent.


    The nearbymanders barely had time to scream.


    The mist ate them to slurry, spirits and all.


    Gray light rippled over Jared''s skin.


    Every drop of poison that touched the halo fractured, then vanished as if devoured


    by something older than rot.


    King Goldtoad''s pupils widened until they swallowed the gold around them.


    Only now did he realize he had met his bane.


    He sprang, the massive body falling toward Jared like an eclipsing moon.


    At the same time his tongue snapped out, lightning-fast, a needle of gold venom glimmering at its tip.


    The bead of gold poison at the tongue''s tip pulsed, brighter than torchlight.


    King Goldtoad had nursed that venom for a thousand years; a single mote of it had


    ended High Immortal Realm Level Seven masters before.


    Jared''s gaze sharpened, no hint of retreat in his stance.


    He lunged instead, gray longsword sweeping up.


    The de carved an arcing crescent of chaosced light that sliced toward the looming toad.


    A wet, tearing pop split the stale air.


    The sword crescent sheared through the muscr tongue, severing it at the root.


    Momentum carried the strike onward, cleaving King Goldtoad''s skull from crest to jaw in one clean line.


    The colossal carcass crashed down, rattling shields and tents.


    Inky-green blood gushed out, sizzling wherever it sttered and chewing deep pits into the earth.


    Somewhere in the smoky dusk of the camp, a scout screamed, "Three kings are down!"


    The cry raced through the western region faster than falcons.


    Fortresses, valleys, and skyships jolted awake as if struck by rolling thunder.


    Inside Beast-Quelling Hall Headquarters, the Beast-Quelling Venerable mmed


    both palms onto the jade rail and finally stood.


    "Within a single day he decapitated Red Scorpion, Nightbat, and now King


    Goldtoad?" His voice scraped across the pirs.


    Shadow pooled beneath his eyes; the Venerable''s facey still and dark as standing


    water.


    "So the Divine Punishment Warrant didn''t exaggerate," he said. "Jared really does wield an uncanny power."


    Below the dais, only two thrones remained upied.


    King Silverserpent and King Ironhawk hunched in uneasy silence, scales and feathers drained of color.


    "Venerable, that human is too terrifying. Perhaps we should... perhaps we should lie low for now?" The plea rang across the silent hall.


    King Silverserpent''s voice barely rose above a whisper; every syble crept out, as though sound itself might provoke wrath.


    "Lie low?" The Venerable''s chuckle was colder than marble.


    He straightened, cloak ring.


    "I have guarded the western region for hundreds of years without retreating a step.


    Send the order-summon every banner and weave a Heaven-Snare. I will meet


    Jared myself."


    "And dispatch word to the Grand Venerable of the Central Region. Tell him Jared has appeared and request reinforcements."


    Themand runners bowed as one. "Yes, sir!"


    King Silverserpent and King Ironhawk nearly tripped over each other, rushing to echo, "Yes, Venerable!"


    Ice shed in the Venerable''s eyes. "Jared, whatever your origins, the western region will be your grave."


    *****


    Deep within Skyfiend Gorge, King Ironhide had followed Jared''s n to the letter.


    His sudden strike on the Western Front Encampment seized wagonloads of grain and crates of pills, and his troops roared with renewed confidence. "Brother Jared, you are truly the savior of our kind!" Ironhide bellowed, his voice booming off the canyon walls.


    The bear king''s massive paw thumped Jared''s shoulder, the gesture rough yet brimming with affection.


    Jared''s expression stayed grim. "Bear King, the Beast-Quelling Venerable is gathering every army to surround us. The real fight starts now."


    Elder Hartcrest nodded slowly. "Mr. Jared is right. We may have in three kings,


    yet the celestials'' foundation remains untouched."


    "The Venerable stillmands tens


    of thousands of elites," Hartcrest added, and reinforcements are already marching from others


    regions The pressure is only growing content


    Luther hurried into the tent, cloak


    dusted with grit. "Mr. Jared, I found an ancient array deep in the valley.


    The stone is cracked, yet the sigils, still shine and they look like Ghost n script."


    Jared''s eyes sparked. "Show me."


    Guided by Luther, he threaded through twisting gullies and slipped into a concealed


    cavern near the gorge''s heart.


    Torchlight revealed a circr stone


    dais roughly thirty feet across evet


    inch etched with interlocking runes that spiraled like skeletal vines.


    Age had rubbed many glyphs pale, yet the underlyingttice remained unbroken, its


    pulse faint beneath the dust.


    Tracing one groove, Jared found patterns matching marks on the Ghost King Token fragment Luther once carried.


    "A Ghost n teleportation array," he concluded.


    "And not a minor one. In ancient days the Ghost n used arrays like this to leap


    across continents."


    Luther''s breath hitched. "If we can repair it, we might escape to other Ghost n territories."


    Jared weighed the idea. "It will take time and a mountain of space-attuned materials


    to restore. Time is the one thing weck."


    His words had barely settled when his head snapped toward the tunnel mouth,


    pupils tightening.


    "They''ve arrived," he said.