Luminous Sanctuary, beneath Saintlight Peak.


    Jared stood with Evelyn in a hidden hollow at the base of the mountain and looked up at Saintlight Peak, wrapped in that sacred glow.


    The mountain wind howled and dragged banks of spirit mist through the hollow, but it couldn''t strip away the weight pressing down on either of them.


    "Young Lord, are we... still going up?"


    Evelyn asked it under her breath. The strain in her voice didn''t hide well.


    She reached out and lightly held Jared''s arm, and the second her fingertips brushed his sleeve, she caught the change in him.


    His face looked the same as ever. His eyes were even sharper than before. But a faint coldness wasing off him, and she caught it at once.


    It was the kind of chill that seemed to rise out of the Ninefold Hells. In this Luminous Sanctuary, where sacred aura filled everything, it stoodpletely out of ce, as if the two forces were quietly pushing against each other.


    In the distance, Saintlight Peak rose into the clouds, and the pce at the summit showed through the mist now and then like the celestial pce.


    Golden light spilled down through the clouds, sacred and solemn, washing over every inch of ground.


    But to Jared, that light looked painfully harsh right then, like countless golden needles stabbing into his eyes and scraping at his nerves.


    Jared stayed silent for a moment, staring hard at the half-hidden pceplex on the summit as if his gaze could pierce all those wards and drag out whatever truthy behind them.


    "We''re going up."


    His voice was t, without the slightest ripple, but the weight in itnded like iron. There was no room to question it.


    Evelyn froze, her brows pulling tight. "But that young man said the Basilica Lord is in seclusion. No one is allowed to disturb him. He said people can''t even get close.


    If we force our way up there again, we could lose our lives. The Celestial Basilica''s Mountain-Guarding Grand Array is famous across the Fourteenth Firmament. This isn''t something to take lightly."


    "In seclusion?"


    The corner of Jared''s mouth lifted just a little.


    There was no warmth in that smile. It only sharpened the mockery. "He says the Basilica Lord is in seclusion, and we''re supposed to believe it? He says we can''t go through the front gate, and that means all we can do is stand here and stare at the mountain?"


    He turned to Evelyn, and something hard shed through his eyes, mixed with a trace of yfulness. "What I said was that we''re going up. I never said we were taking the front gate."


    Evelyn just stared at him, her eyes full of confusion.


    Not through the front gate?


    Then how were they supposed to get up there?


    All around Saintlight Peak, the Godyer Grand Array had beenid down. The stories said even a True Immortal Realm expert couldn''t slip through it without a sound.


    Back then, there had been a demon called the Bloodhand Butcher whose name shook the world. He had tried to sneak in from the side, and the formation had ground him into a bloody mash. Not even his soul and sense were left behind.


    Jared didn''t exin. He only raised his right hand slowly.


    In the center of his palm, a golden light flickered.


    It wasn''t the same pure gold shining off Saintlight Peak. This light carried a thread of dark gold through it, as if ancient dragon blood were moving inside it, old and mysterious.


    He closed his eyes, and his spirit sense spread out at once like invisible feelers, sweeping toward Saintlight Peak.


    At that moment, the world in his sight changed. What had looked like an unbreakable barrier showed him apletely different face.


    To everyone else, Saintlight Peak was airtight, packed with wards, sealed up like an iron barrel.


    Anyone who tried to force their way in would be reduced to ash in that terrifying storm of spiritual power.


    But under Jared''s spirit sense, that so-called Godyer Grand Array was nothing more than a web woven from countless lines of spiritual power.


    Those lines looked seamless and tight, but in truth they were full of nodes and joins. And every node, every turn in the flow of spiritual power, produced tiny ripples.


    To an ordinary cultivator, those ripples were too small to matter, too faint to catch at all.


    "Too rough," Jared muttered to himself inwardly, his tone carrying a trace of disdain. His spirit sense moved along those lines like a fish entering water, and it didn''t take long before he found several ws hidden so deep most people would never notice them.


    Those ws weren''t defects in the formation''s design. They were slight snags left behind by the one who built it when two different kinds of spiritual power had been joined together.


    It was like a perfect painting with one drop of wet ink left in the corner. Hard to notice, maybe, but enough to break the bnce of the whole thing.


    For an ordinary cultivator, that tiny bit of drag could be ignoredpletely. Most wouldn''t even notice it existed.


    But in Jared''s eyes, it stood out as clearly as a ck mark on white paper.


    "So that''s it."


    He opened his eyes, and a sharp light shed through them, as if he had just seen through ayout built over a hundred years. "So the foundation of this formationes from borrowing the nascence power of a fallen light-aspected demon beast.


    Too bad that beast''s nascence wasn''t pure. There''s a trace of yin evil mixed into it, which means every three hours, when yin and yang trade ces the entire formation


    locks for a single instamation


    That single instant of stagnation was the one opening in the whole thing.


    He worked out the timing, then lifted his head and checked the sky.


    It was now 9:45 in the morning. There was only half a stick of incense left before yin and yang shifted.


    There was no time to waste.


    "Follow me."


    His figure moved, turning into a faint streak of golden light as he shot toward the side of Saintlight Peak.


    That side was nothing but sheer cliffs. The wind screamed across them, and an ordinary person would have had trouble even staying on their feet, let alone climbing.


    Evelyn hurried after him, but the shock inside her kept rising like waves.


    She watched Jared''s easy, controlled movements and felt everything she thought she knew getting overturned again and again.


    The two of them followed the slope and kept climbing higher.


    The route Jared chose was unbelievably tricky. He moved only through the weak points in the wards, the ces the naked eye could never catch.


    At times, he turned sideways and slipped between two giant boulders. It looked like there was barely an inch of space there, but that narrow gap happened to avoid two crossing ughter Arrays.


    At other times, he stopped for a brief


    moment beside a dead tree, then


    waited until a gust of wind came


    ough and the


    leaves blocked the


    formation''s sweep for an instant


    before he shed past.


    The protective formations set up by the Celestial Basilica looked like nothing in front


    of him, as if they were just paths in his own backyard.


    He moved like the owner of a private garden out for a walk. Every path, every hidden trap, seemedid bare before him, and with a few casual steps, one danger after another dissolved away.