"What''s that?" Jared asked.
"The deepest part of the battlefield."
Gwendolyn''s voice dropped. "The ancestral records say that ce is where the strongest being in this battlefield was buried. Even when the ancestors of the celestials joined forces with a Draconian sovereign, they still couldn''t defeat that enemy.
"No one knows what it was. No one knows where it came from. No one knows why
it was here, or why it stood against all the Elder Kin."
She put the jade slip away.
Then she looked at Jared.
"I''m going there."
Jared frowned. "Why? That ce is too dangerous."
Gwendolyn shook her head. Her gaze did not move. "The Frost Deity Branch bloodline may have been strengthened through our dual cultivation, but that was only temporary. If I can''t find the true source, the Ice God Bloodline will decline again sooner orter. In the end, it''ll vanishpletely."
She held out her hand, palm up.
A pale golden radiance appeared there. It was the power born from the fusion of their bloodlines.
But around the edges of that glow, a faint dimness had already started to show.
"Look. The fused power is fading. Our dual cultivation can only keep the bloodline active. It can''t change the root cause behind the Ice God Bloodline''s decline. And that root cause is in the deepest part of the Ancient Battlefield."
Jared fell silent.
He understood what Gwendolyn meant.
She wasn''t throwing herself into danger for nothing.
She was looking for thest path left to her people.
"Let''s go," Jared said. "I''m with you."
Gwendolyn looked at him.
Somethingplicated flickered through those deep eyes.
She didn''t thank him.
She only gave a small nod.
The two of them headed deeper into the Ancient Battlefield.
After walking for about 2 hours, the surroundings started to change.
The bones on the ground grew denser.
And bigger.
Some of the skeletons had piled together into small hills of white bone.
A faint rotten stench began to spread through the air.
It wasn''t the smell of flesh decaying. These bones had been here for who knew how many tens of thousands of years.
It was something deeper than that, the breath of death itself, as if thews of the realm of decay were flowing through the air.
"Something''s wrong," Gwendolyn said suddenly, stopping in ce with her brows drawn tight.
Jared had sensed it too.
The area around them was too quiet.
Not ordinary quiet. This was dead silence, the kind that seemed to swallow sound itself.
Their footsteps, their breathing, even the beat in their chests vanished after only a few steps, as if something in the dark had pulled everyst bit of noise away.
"Something''s watching us," Jared said under his breath.
Every instinct in him was screaming.
It was the same pressure as prey under a predator''s eyes, like a beast hidden in the dark, lying low and waiting for the one moment it could strike clean.
Gwendolyn tightened her grip on the jade slip, and ice-blue divine radiance began to flow around her body.
"Be careful..."
She didn''t get to finish. The ground under their feet suddenly started shaking hard.
Rumble...
Through the deafening roar, a skeleton not far away began to move.
It was a Draconian skeleton. Smaller than the other remains around it, but still hundreds of yards long.
It had been lying there in stillness like a hill of white bones. Now its frame began to pull itself back together. The spine locked in ce vertebra by vertebra, the ribs slid back one by one, and the bones of its limbs snapped together with sharp cracking sounds.
In no more than a few breaths, aplete bone dragon was standing in front of them.
Two clusters of eerie green fire burned inside its eye sockets. That was ghostfire, a thing born from ancient malice.
Its jaws opened slowly and loosed a soundless roar. No noise came out, but the shock wave still sted through the air hard enough to warp it, and the loose stones on the ground jumped and sprayed in every direction.
"This is..." Jared said, his hand tightening around the Dragonyer Sword before he even realized he was doing it.
"The resentment of the ancient dead hastched onto the bones."
Gwendolyn''s voice came fast but steady "They attack any i
they find Don''t get tied intruderet
fighting them Come with
She caught Jared by the hand and broke into a sprint in another direction.
The bone dragon''s massive tail swept across at them, kicking up a violent gust.
Every spike jutting from that tail was several yards long, sharp enough to slice through metal and jade alike.
The two of them sprang up and barely cleared the sweep.
The bony tail skimmed under their feet and smashed into the ground with a st, blowing open a massive deep pit as shattered rock flew everywhere.
After Jarednded, he threw a look back over his shoulder, and his pupils shrank. It
wasn''t just that one bone dragon.
More skeletons were starting to move.
The giant remains scattered across the ground rose one after another.
Some were the bones of celestial ancestors, and when their enormous skeletal
wings spread, they blotted out the sky;
some were the bones of demon progenitors, with twin horns on their heads and rows of jagged fangs in their mouths;
and there were others from races Jared didn''t recognize at all. Some had three heads and six arms. Some were covered from head to toe m bone spikes. Some looked like moving fortresses.
to ''
Dozens of massive skeletons closed in from every direction.
Ghostfire flickered in their eye sockets, dozens of green mes bobbing in the dark like ghostnterns.
"Run!"
Gwendolyn shouted it and dragged Jared into a full sprint.
The two of them shot forward as twin streaks of light, one gold and one blue.
They threaded through the gaps between the skeletons at top speed.
A celestial ancestor''s skeleton thrust out a gigantic skeletal hand and snatched at
them.
Each finger on that skeletal hand was several yards long, with tips sharp as des. Gwendolyn twisted aside to avoid it, then drove a palm strike into the wrist with her backhand.
Ice-blue divine radiance burst out.
A thickyer of ice spread over the wrist at once, and the skeletal hand stalled for a single instant.
Jared caught that opening.
The Dragonyer Sword shed from its sheath, and he shed straight at the
finger joint.
The golden de-re crashed against the green ghostfire and exploded in a shower of blinding sparks.
That finger snapped off on the spot.
It mmed into the ground and threw up a sky full of dust.
But more skeletons had already closed in around them.
A demon progenitor''s skeleton opened its jaws wide.
A torrent of ck fire sted out of its mouth and rolled straight at them.
The heat in that fire was so brutal even the air looked like it was burning.
Wherever it passed, the ground melted into dark red molten fire. Gwendolyn formed a seal with both hands.
An ice-blue shield of light condensed in front of the two of them.
Boom!
The ck fire mmed into the shield.
Ice and me collided, and the impact burst out in a deafening roar.
Cracks burst across the light shield in a dense web.
Gwendolyn staggered back several steps, and a thin line of blood slipped from the
corner of her mouth.
"This way!" Jared grabbed her and charged toward a gap that looked weaker than
the rest.
A skeleton with three heads and six arms dropped into their path.
All six bony arms swung at once.
Each skeletal hand gripped a massive bone de, and all six came shing down
at the two of them in a brutal storm.
Jared clenched his teeth.
The Golden Dragon Bloodline inside him boiled all the way through.
Golden draconic energy zed over his body, and the Dragonyer Sword erupted
with blinding golden radiance.