"Who else?" Cedric asked again.


    Silence.


    The kind of silence that felt like a grave had opened at the bottom of the pit.


    Everyone kept their heads down.


    Not one of them dared meet Cedric''s eyes.


    Their fists clenched so hard their joints crackled.


    Their teeth ground against each other.


    Still, not a single person stepped out.


    Cedric gave a satisfied nod.


    He walked over to thergest emberstone crystal.


    He reached out and ran a hand over it, and something naked and grasping showed


    in his eyes.


    Golden patterns flowed across the crystal''s surface.


    The heat passed through his palm and into his whole body, until it seemed like every pore on him hade alive and started cheering.


    "Good stuff," he muttered. "The Hall Master will definitely like this."


    He was just about to put the crystal into his Storage Ring when a voice came from the edge of the pit.


    "Put it down."


    The voice wasn''t loud.


    But every person there heard it, clear as day.


    Every head turned toward the rim of the pit at the same time.


    A young man in azure robes stepped out from behind a rock.


    A sword hung at his waist.


    Several cracks ran along the de, like it had juste through a brutal fight.


    His face was calm.


    His eyes were cold enough to cut.


    Behind him stood a woman in white, her features cool and distant, her long hair ck as ink.


    A faint ice-blue radiance drifted around her.


    Standing there, she looked like a white lotus on a snow-covered peak, distant and untouchable.


    Cedric''s eyes narrowed.


    "A human cultivator?" He looked Jared up and down, then let out a coldugh. "What the hell are you supposed to be? You think you get to tell me to put it down?" Jared didn''t answer.


    He started down from the edge of the pit, one step at a time, unhurried.


    His footsteps rang through the dead silence of the Pyre Chasm. Every stepnded like it was stamping down on everyone''s chest.


    The cultivators at the bottom of the pit moved aside on their own and opened a path for him.


    None of them knew this young man.


    But the instant he came closer, they could all tell there was something on him that put their nerves on edge.


    It wasn''t pressure from cultivation level.


    It was something deeper than that.


    Like a natural predator. Like fate itself. Like some kind of existence they couldn''t make sense of.


    Jared walked straight up to Cedric and stopped.


    There were only 3 yards between them.


    Jared stood half a head shorter than Cedric, and his cultivation level was lower by an entire major realm.


    And yet when he stood there, he looked like a god staring down at all living things.


    In front of him, Cedric seemed as small as an ant.


    "I said, put it down."


    Jared''s voice stayed even, but each word struck Cedric square in the chest like a hammer.


    The color drained from Cedric''s face.


    He had felt it.


    This human cultivator, who looked to be no more than Top Level High Immortal Realm Level Eight, carried a kind of power that made Cedric''s throat tighten.


    It wasn''t suppression from cultivation level.


    It was something more fundamental.


    In front of this man, Cedric''s holy radiance was actually trembling.


    Like a rat seeing a cat. Like darkness running into light.


    "You... who are you?" His voice shook.


    Jared didn''t answer.


    He raised his right hand, and a cluster of fire gathered in his palm.


    The color of the me kept changing-crimson, orange-yellow, gold-white, deep blue, transparent. Each color carried the nascence of a different kind of me power.


    They wove together in Jared''s palm, merged, and spun faster and faster until they turned into an entirely new me, purple and gold twisted together.


    Chaos-me.


    The instant it appeared, the temperature in the entire Pyre Chasm shot up several times over.


    The emberstone crystals scattered across the ground started to resonate.


    A low hum rolled out of them, and the light on their surfaces red brighter.


    The cultivators at the bottom of the pit backed away without thinking, one step and then another.


    The heat pouring off that me was too high.


    It was so high even their protective spiritual power gave off the strained, breaking whine of something about to fail.


    Cedric''s pupils shrank hard.


    "Heavenfire... you absorbed the quintessence of heavenfire from the Pyre Chasm?"


    His voice shook. "You... you''re the one who destroyed the Pyre Chasm?"


    Jared did not answer.


    He gave the chaos-me in his hand a light push.


    The me stretched into a long, narrow fire snake and shot at Cedric without a sound.


    The fire snake was not fast.


    If anything, it was slow.


    It moved like a real snake, winding through the air.


    Unhurried, it swam straight toward Cedric.


    But Cedric found that he couldn''t dodge it.


    It wasn''t a matter of speed.


    That fire snake had locked onto him.


    No matter which way he tried to evade, the fire snake followed.


    The lock was on the level of the soul.


    It was a lock written into thews of Heaven.


    Cedric''s face went paper-white.


    He drove his holy radiance with everything he had.


    Golden radiance surged out of him and condensed in front of his body into a heavy


    shield of light.


    The shield had sevenyers.


    Everyyer held the full weight of the


    cultivation he had built over his


    entire life, enough to withstand.ne


    rue


    full-power strike from a Tru Immortal Realm Level Five expert


    The fire snake struck the light shield.


    There was no explosion.


    No deafening st.


    Only a faint hiss.


    The firstyer of the light shield broke.


    The secondyer broke.


    The third.


    The fourth.


    The fifth...


    The fire snake went through all sevenyers of the light shield the way a red-hot iron


    rod slid through butter.


    Silent. Effortless. Straight through.


    Then it coiled around Cedric''s right arm.


    "Aaagh!"


    Cedric let out a shriek so harsh it scraped across the whole pit.


    It didn''t sound like something a True Immortal Realm expert should have made.


    It sounded like a wild beast with its tail pinned under a boot.


    Every note in it came apart on the same edge-pleading, breaking, and already at the end of itself.


    Under the burn of the chaos-me, his right arm ckened at a speed the eye could follow.


    Then it cracked, crumbled, and blew away into ash.


    The fire-snake crawled up his arm and kept going, burning toward his shoulder, his chest, his neck.


    Every inch it advanced, an inch of flesh charred with it, and an inch of bone burned


    away.


    The air turned thick with the stench of scorched skin and meat.


    "No! No! Spare me! Spare me!"


    Cedric dropped to his knees and begged with everything he had left.


    Tears and snot ran together down his face.


    What was left there had been stripped bare.


    At that moment, he wasn''t an Elder of the Celestial Tribunal.


    He wasn''t a True Immortal Realm Level Four powerhouse.


    He was only an ordinary man wing to stay alive.


    Jared looked down at him.


    There was no mercy in his eyes, no satisfaction either—only a quiet coldness that


    didn''t move at all.


    "I gave you a chance just now," Jared said softly. "You didn''t take it."


    He raised a hand, ready to end Cedric''s life.


    "Stop!"


    A shout crashed down from the edge of the pit.


    A streak of golden radiance dropped from above andnded beside Cedric.


    It was a celestial cultivator, a True Immortal Realm Level Two expert-Cedric''s


    deputy.


    He held up a golden token in his hand.


    The mark of the Tribunal was carved into it.


    "Jared!" the cultivator shouted, his


    voice shaking even as he forced the words out. "If you kill Elder Gilt, the Tribunal won''t let you go The Hall Master is True Immortal Realm


    Level Eight! That''s not someone you can afford to provoke!"


    Jared nced at him.


    Then he smiled.


    The smile was faint.


    So faint it was almost impossible to see.


    But in that moment, everyone there felt it—an icy chill shooting up from the soles of


    their feet straight to the crown of the skull.


    "True Immortal Realm Level Eight?" Jared''s voice stayed calm. "Someone I can''t


    afford to provoke?"


    He lifted a hand and struck out with his palm.


    The cultivator''s body jolted as if a


    mountain had mmed into him He flew backward, spinning more than a dozen times through the air before crashing hard into the wall of the pr.


    The impact sted a huge crater into the pit wall.


    The cultivator''s body lodged there on the spot. Blood sprayed wildly from his mouth,


    and he cked out where he hung.


    "Anyone else?" Jared asked, sweeping his gaze across the area.


    Not a single person spoke.


    Every celestial cultivator had lowered their head, none of them daring to meet his


    eyes.


    Cedric was still on his knees, shaking all over.


    His right arm waspletely gone.


    The wound at his shoulder had been burned ck, and the reek of charred flesh still


    hung in the air.


    His face had gone paper-white, and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.