Jared''s hand gave a slight tremor.
Right then, the fight on the other side reached its end.
Gwendolyn''s icy divine radiance and Josephine''s fiery red de-re mmed into each other dozens of times in midair.
Ice and fire tore through the surrounding 300 yards, turning the whole area into a ruin of scorched earth and frozen wreckage.
Josephine''s strength wasn''t weak.
But against Gwendolyn, an ancient terror who had lived for over ten thousand years, she was still far too outmatched.
Gwendolyn''s ice needles pierced through the firelight protecting Josephine''s body.
With perfect precision, they sealed seven major acupoints on her body.
Josephine''s body locked up in an instant. She stood there like a sculpture carved from ice, frozen in ce and unable to move.
"Don''t hurt her!" Jared shouted.
"I know," Gwendolyn said tly, pulling back the icy divine radiance in her hand.
Josephine remained sealed where she stood, unable to move, but her mind stayed clear.
Her gaze passed over Gwendolyn and settled on Jared.
Confusion flickered in those eyes. So did resistance, and something else twisted in with it, something even she couldn''t make sense of.
Gwendolyn walked over to Jared''s side and nced at Skr, still on one knee on the ground.
"What do we do with him?"
Jared went quiet for a moment.
"Make him give Josephine''s memory back."
Skrughed, and the sound came out loaded with mockery.
"Jared, you''re still this naive. You really think I''ll obediently do what you say?"
He lifted his head and looked in Josephine''s direction.
A tiny glint shed through his eyes, so well hidden it almost slipped by. "Senior sister, we''re leaving."
The moment the words left his mouth, a blinding ze erupted from inside his body.
It wasn''t ordinary fire. It was a kind of power Jared had never seen before, neither demonic aura nor spiritual power, but something older than both, something more primal.
The zing firelight swallowed Skr whole and wrapped around him until it became a searing pir of me.
The pir of me shot straight into the sky and tore a massive gash through the clouds.
"He''s getting away!" Gwendolyn shouted, and her ice-blue divine radiance mmed toward the pir of me.
But the force inside that pir was too terrifying. The instant Gwendolyn''s divine radiance touched it, it was knocked away.
The pir of me stretched toward Josephine and swallowed her into it too.
The Ice Seal around Josephine melted fast in the zing firelight.
Then the power inside the pir lifted her body and drew her toward Skr.
"Josephine!" Jared lunged forward, reaching for her hand.
But the pir''s force was too strong. The second his hand touched its edge, he was thrown back, and the flesh on his palm split open under the burn.
Josephine drifted farther and farther away, and her eyes stayed on Jared the whole time.
Then something inside those eyes suddenly cracked apart.
Just before the pir of me swallowed herpletely, her lips moved a little.
Jared heard no sound, but he understood what her lips were saying.
"Jared... I''m hurting so much..."
Then the zing firelight shed, and Skr and Josephine vanished at the same time.
Only the torn-open clouds remained in the sky, along with the air scorched ck by the zing firelight.
Jared stood where he was, staring nkly in the direction the two of them had disappeared.
Blood still dripped from his hand.
The wound Josephine had cut across his chest still throbbed under his clothes. But neither of those
came close to the pain pressing through his chest.
"I''m hurting so much..."
She hadn''t been talking about the pain in her body.
She had meant the pain inside her heart.
She didn''t remember him. Her
memories were sealed away. Skr
had been controlling her the whole
time Even so, her heart still
remembered.
It remembered who he was.
It remembered what had once existed between them.
Jared dropped into a crouch and braced both hands against the ground, dragging in rough, heavy breaths.
Gwendolyn stood behind him and said nothing for a long while.
Then she let out a soft breath, walked over to his side, crouched down, and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"She''lle back."
Jared said nothing.
He only kept looking toward the ce where Skr and Josephine had vanished, and something cold shed through his eyes.
"Skr, next time we meet, I won''t give you another chance to run."
He rose to his feet, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and slid the Dragonyer Sword back into its sheath.
"Let''s go." His voice came out hoarse, but it didn''t waver. "We''re going back to Cloudhaven City."
Gwendolyn nodded and followed behind him.
The two of them headed south, one in front and one behind.
"Jared, your wife... what exactly
happened to her? And that Skr what kind of blood feud is ther@between you two?" Gwendolyn asked.
She didn''t know any of the story behind it.
But from the look of it, Jared and Skr had known each other a long time.
And as for Josephine, how had she ended up like that, to the point where she didn''t even recognize Jared?
"It''s a long story. My grudge with Skr started back in the mundane world..."
Jared let out a quiet sigh. A cold edge flickered in his eyes.
"With Skr''s strength alone, there was no way he could control Josephine''s spirit sense. It was all that Inferno Devil..."
"Sooner orter, I''m cutting off that old bastard Inferno Devil''s head and kicking it around like a ball."
That frightening pressure rolling off Jared made Gwendolyn hold her tongue.
She had no idea who the Inferno Devil was, but anyone who could do this had to be
terrifying.
Even so, Jared faced someone like that with nothing but killing intent, without a trace of fear or retreat.
At that moment, Gwendolyn knew she had chosen the right person.
If she followed Jared from here on out, the Frost Deity Branch would definitely rise
again.