"Then send them back," Jared said without a second of hesitation.
Gwendolyn looked at him. "Do you know how to open the void passage between two firmaments?"
Jared said nothing.
He did.
Opening a void passage from the Fourteenth Firmament down to level thirteen required a terrifying amount of power.
Ordinary High Immortal cultivators couldn''t do it at all. Only experts at the True Immortal Realm and above had that kind of ability.
His current strength was enough to fight across realms against a True Immortal Realm Level Three cultivator.
But opening a void passage didn''t depend onbat strength. It depended on understanding thews of space and being able to control them.
"I can try." Jared said it through clenched teeth.
Gwendolyn didn''t say anything.
She only gave a small nod.
That afternoon, Sidney and Cadence really did wake up.
When Jared stepped into the hollow, Sidney was bracing himself with visible effort, trying to push his body upright from the stone dais.
Cadence leaned against him.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were open now, drifting across everything around her with a lost, unfocused look.
"Mr. Morse!" Jared hurried over and caught Sidney by the shoulder. "Don''t rush to get up. You''re both still too weak."
Sidney lifted his head and looked at Jared.
That face, the same one that had once carried itself with full force and confidence in the Elder Marches, was now drained by weakness and exhaustion.
But his eyes were still as bright as ever.
"Mr. Chance..." His voice came out rough, carrying the weight of someone who had barely crawled back from the edge. "I... I really thought I was done for."
Jared smiled.
"You''ve got a tough life, Senior. Even if you wanted to die, it wouldn''te easy." Sidney gave a bitter little smile, then turned to look at Cadence beside him.
Cadence was looking at Jared with something tangled in her eyes.
The rims of them had gone faintly red.
"Mr. Chance... thank you." Her voice was so soft it nearly vanished. "Sidney and I... we owe you one life. No... Sidney owes you two now."
Jared shook his head.
"What are you saying, Senior? Back in level twelve, you were the ones who helped me. If it weren''t for you, I''d have died a long time ago. And if you hadn''t gotten contaminated by the chaotic aura on me, the Celestial Pce never would''ve refined you into soul crystals."
Cadence looked like she still wanted to say something, but Sidney gently took her hand.
"That''s enough, Cadence," Sidney said. His voice was weak, but it still carried that steady weight that made people settle. "Mr. Chance isn''t the kind of man who likes sitting there listening to people thank him. We can keep it in our hearts."
Cadence nodded.
She didn''t say anything else. She just rested her head lightly against Sidney''s shoulder.
Jared watched them, and something in him eased.
They had made it back alive.
Footsteps came from outside the hollow.
Gwendolyn walked in.
She looked over Sidney and Cadence''s condition, then gave a small nod.
"They''re recovering well. At this rate, after another two or three days of rest, they should be able to move around on their own again."
She paused, then looked at Jared.
"But my suggestion is to send them away today."
"Today?" Jared said, caught off guard. "They haven''t recovered yet..."
"The slower they recover, the longer they stay in the Fourteenth Firmament, and the longer they stay here, the greater the risk that thews of the realm will eat away at them."
Gwendolyn''s voice stayed level, and it didn''t bend.
"While their bodies are still rtively stable, send them off as soon as possible. The longer this drags out, the more chances there are for something to go wrong."
Jared went quiet for a moment.
Then he turned and looked at Sidney.
Sidney still didn''t fully understand what was going on, but from the exchange between the two of them, he had already picked up enough to know the situation wasn''t simple.
He looked at Jared, then at Gwendolyn.
After a moment, he nodded slowly.
"I''ll leave it to you," Sidney said. "As long as I get to stay alive and stay with
Cadence, it doesn''t matter where I am."
Jared drew in a deep breath and got to his feet.
"Alright. Then today it is."
Jared walked out to the open space outside the hollow.
He tipped his head back and looked up at the golden canopy overhead and the pale
aurora beyond it, then pulled in a long, deep breath.
Then he raised his right hand.
Golden draconic energy poured from his palm and gathered in front of him,
condensing into the phantom of a Five-wed Golden Dragon.
The phantom was far dimmer than it had been at its peak.
Even so, the dragon''s pressure rolling off it still made the air turn heavy.
Jared closed his eyes and focused all of his attention on the void.
He could tell the spatial barrier of the Fourteenth Firmament was much heavier than he''d expected.
That barrier stood there like an invisible wall, sealing the Fourteenth Firmament off from level thirteen below.
If he wanted to open a void passage leading to level thirteen, he first had to find a weak point in the spatial barrier.
Then he had to rip it open with enough force.
He found it.
The weak point hung in the void several dozen yards in front of him.
It looked like a crack that was barely there, giving off a faint pulse of spatial fluctuation.
Jared drove his full power forward.
The golden draconic energy sharpened into a fierce de-re and shed straight
at that weak point.
Boom!
The de-re struck the void and exploded with a deafening roar.
Space shook violently.
Ripples spread out inyers, just like theke''s surface after a boulder had been
hurled into it.
But that crack only peeled open a gap less than 1 foot wide before it snapped shut again.
Jared''s face shifted. He drove his draconic energy again and shed out with another sword strike.
This time, he put everything he had into it.
The golden de-re came out sharper than before, harder, more violent.
The de-re struck the exact same spot.
Space shook again, and the crack opened to 2 feet, but it still wasn''t enough.
For even one person to pass through the void passage, the crack had to be at least
10 feet wide.
2 feet wasn''t even close.
Jared clenched his teeth and forced his draconic energy up for the third time.
But the moment he did, his body jerked hard.
The bacsh from burning through too much life force hit all at once.
A burst of pain tore through his spirit well.
The golden draconic energy mmed wildly through his meridians, nearly slipping
out of control.
A muffled grunt forced its way out of him.
He dropped to one knee, and heavy drops of cold sweat rolled off his forehead.
"Mr. Chance!" Sidney shouted from inside the hollow, trying to get up, only to be pinned in ce by Cadence.
"Don''t go," Cadence said. "If you go over there now, you''ll only make things worse for him."
Sidney ground his teeth, but in the end, he stayed where he was.
Jared fought his way back to his feet, drew in a deep breath, and got ready to strike again.
A hand came down on his shoulder from behind.
The hand was cold, but there was something strange in it. Power sat in that touch.
That power flowed in through Jared''s shoulder and spread through his body.
theet
The draconic energy rampaging inside him settled under it, and the stabbing pain in his spirit welk slowly. eased as the force soothed it away.
"Enough."
Gwendolyn''s voice came from behind him, t as still water. "You''ve done all you
can. Leave the rest to me."
Jared turned and saw Gwendolyn standing behind him, looking at him with that
same calm gaze.
"But..."
"No buts."
Gwendolyn cut him off. "You''ve
burned through nearly half your life force. You''ve still got hidden injuries inside you. If you force the void passage open now, you''ll only make
your condition worse."
het
"And even if you throw everything you have into it, with the way you understand thews of the realm
till migh
not be able
right hów, you to open a passage wide enough."
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