"No." Jared shook his head. "I''m going alone."
Lydia''s brow pulled even tighter. "Why?"
Jared held her gaze. "The Celestial Pce has always stayed hidden from the world. That means they don''t want to be disturbed. If I bring too many people, it''ll be easy for them to take it the wrong way. If they think I brought help to provoke them, they probably won''t even let me through the door."
He paused, then gave a crooked smile. "Besides, word that the Celestial Basilica was destroyed is going to reach the Celestial Pce sooner orter. If they find out I''m one of the people who wiped out the Celestial Basilica, they''ll already be on guard against me.
"If I show up with a huge group behind me on top of that, of course they''ll think I came to wipe them out too."
Lydia went quiet.
She understood what Jared meant.
The Celestial Pce was not the same as the Celestial Basilica.
The Celestial Basilica stood in the open.
It acted boldly, and there were rules to follow.
The Celestial Pce stayed in the dark.
It was mysterious, impossible to read, and did things by its own standards.
When the opponent in front of him followed rules, there was still room to maneuver through those rules;
But against someone with no rules at all, there was no way to know what they would do next.
And on top of that, the Celestial Pce''s foundation ran too deep to measure.
If it really came to a fight, Jared might not win.
And even if he did, if the Celestial Pce got wiped out in the process, then Sidney and his wife''s remnant souls would truly be left without any hope at all.
"But if you go by yourself..." Lydia still couldn''t let it rest.
"If I go alone, it''ll actually be safer."
Jared said, "I''ll be going there as a guest asking for an audience, not as an enemy charging their gates. Besides, with the strength I have now, there aren''t many people in the Fourteenth Firmament who can stop me anymore."
That wasn''t false.
After his battle with Skr, his cultivation had broken through to High Immortal Realm Level Five, and his Golden Dragon Bloodline had grown even more solid.
His cultivation level was still in the High Immortal Realm, but in a real fight, he was already sure he could take on a True Immortal Realm Level Three cultivator.
Lydia bit her lip, and in the end, she didn''t press it again.
She knew Jared was making sense, but the weight sitting in her chest refused to
ease.
"Then promise me this."
Lydia held his gaze and said each word slowly, "If the Celestial Pce makes a move against you, leave immediately. Don''t force it. Don''t try to fight them head-on."
Jared nodded. "I promise. You all need to get back to Cloudhaven City as fast as you can too. With only Rnd and Vivian there, they might not be able to hold it. Skr got away, and if he goes back, he may even bring the Demon Dragon to attack Cloudhaven City."
"Okay." Lydia nodded.
Jared turned around and looked out toward the far edge of the sky.
That way led to the northernmost edge of the Fourteenth Firmament, to the unknownnd called Return to the Void, to the ce where the Celestial Pce might exist.
"Mr. Morse, just wait a little longer."
The words passed silently through him. "I''ll find a way to get you both out."
He drew in a deep breath, then turned into a streak of golden light and vanished into the horizon.
Lydia stayed where she was and watched his back disappear.
A long time passed, and she still didn''t move.
Luther walked up beside her and said softly, "Mr. Chance is just like that. Nobody can stop him."
Lydia said nothing. She only tightened her grip on the sword in her hand.
"Let''s go too."
Her voice came out even, but something flickered deep in her eyes.
Right now, Jared was her biggest hope.
She was still counting on him to go with her to the Fifteenth Firmament.
"If he isn''t back within a month... then I''ll storm the Celestial Pce and rip their
front gate right off." Princess Lydia''s temper had clearly kicked in.
"..."
Luther opened his mouth, wanting to say something.
In the end, he said nothing at all.
Forget it. Ms. Feenix had an even bigger temper than Jared.
This was not somebody to mess with. Definitely not.
There was no Teleportation Array to the far north.
Jared flew north the whole way, seven days and seven nights without stopping.
For the first three days, there were still signs of life below him.
Scattered small towns, caves belonging to wandering cultivators, and the asional merchant caravan passing through.
He asked every person he came across about the Celestial Pce.
Every answer he got was the same. A shake of the head.
"The Celestial Pce? Never heard of it."
"Isn''t that just some ancient legend? Who knows if it''s even real."
"Kid, did somebody fool you? I''ve lived in the Fourteenth Firmament for 8 thousand
years, and I''ve never heard of any Celestial Pce."
By the fourth day, all signs of people were gone for good.
Thend under his feet changed from boundless grasnd to barren frozen earth.
Then the frozen earth gave way to endless ice ins.
The temperature dropped so hard that even his protective draconic energy started catching traces of cold.
Each breath he exhaled froze in the air into tiny ice crystals, and they scattered down with a dry, brittle patter.
On the fifth day, even the ice ins disappeared.
Under him was a stretch of white emptiness.
It wasn''t ice. It wasn''t snow. It was some kind of substance he had never seen
before.
That white expanse looked like light that had frozen solid.
When he stepped onto it, there was no real sense of ground beneath him, but he didn''t fall through either.
In every direction, there was only one thing left.
A silence so deep it made the chest tighten. Even the wind was gone, like the whole world had been muted.
The aurora overhead bled from those rich blue-greens into a pale, unnatural white, like a dying me swaying soundlessly above him.
Jared had no idea how far he had flown, or where he was anymore.
He had lost his sense of directionpletely.
All he could do was trust his instincts and keep flying north, farther and farther north.
On the sixth day, he ran into the first st of the Voidwind.
It came out of the depths of the aurora without a sound, carrying a chill that felt like it
could freeze a soul to pieces.
The moment
tit brushed across
Jared''s indestructible golden body,
frost spread over theyer of golden scales that could withstand a full-force strike from a True Immortal Realm Level One cultivator. The ice faced along the
scales with a sharp crack that scraped at the ears.
Jared''s whole body tightened. He pushed his Golden Dragon Bloodline with everything he had, and golden draconic energy zed over his before he barely managed to keep. the Voidwind outside.
skin
But in that same instant, the rate his spiritual power was draining jumped tenfold.
"So this is the Voidwind of Return to the Void..." Jared ground his teeth and sped up.
He didn''t know how many more of those winds were waiting ahead, and he didn''t know how much longer he could hold on.
But he couldn''t stop, and he couldn''t turn back.
By the seventh day,
more than half of Jared''s spiritual
power was already gone, and the et
draconic energy protecting his body had @immed by well over halfpared to when he first set out
His lips were split from the cold, thick frost clung between his brows, and every
breath felt like swallowing knife des.
He was almost at his limit.
Then, right at that moment, he suddenly caught the sense of something ahead.
It was an unbelievably faint presence, so faint it was almost impossible to detect.
But the power hidden inside it made his heart m once in his chest.
That presence... it was alive.
Jared''s whole bearing tightened.
He dragged out thest of his strength and shot toward it.
After flying for about 2 hours more, the scene in front of him suddenly changed.
That empty white expanse vanished.
In its ce was a stretch of deep blue ice ins.
Countless enormous ice pirs rose from the ice ins.
Every one of them stood dozens of yards tall, like a stone forest and also like a
natural maze.
Thin mist drifted between the ice pirs.