In the next breath, the violent spatial turbulence slowly settled.
Everyone landed on solid footing, their boots steady beneath them, and the world around them had become the vast, barren expanse of the Epean Wastes. What hit them first was a rolling wave of heat, followed by the sharp, choking stink of sulfur.
A dry, scorching gale shrieked past them. It swept up countless flecks of fine crimson sand, and the grit struck their robes with a constant rasping hiss. As far as the eye could reach, the world stretched bleak and empty. Not a blade of grass grew there. Cracked blackened earth and burning volcanic stone covered the ground, leaving only dead silence and not the slightest sign of life.
At the far end of the horizon, a colossal volcano towered up from the land. Its entire body burned a deep red, its rock walls split into savage cracks, layer upon layer of volcanic stone stacked like scars, breathing out destruction and violence.
From the enormous mouth at the summit, thick black smoke kept surging upward, blotting out the sky. The dense smoke coiled overhead and stained the whole sky a dark, sunken red. The weight of it pressed down on everything beneath it. Through countless chasms in the mountain, red-hot molten fire crept in slow streams. It wound down the rock face, dropped to the ground, and burned up into bursts of white smoke.
From deep underground came the faint roar of molten fire rushing through the earth. The ground trembled slightly, and every moment, without pause, the place gave off a terrifying heat that seemed ready to burn the sky and scorch the land flat.
The air was so dry and hot it seemed to leave no room for breath. Every inhale was like dragging blazing fire into the body, searing the throat and lungs on the way down. If ordinary cultivators failed to circulate spiritual power to shield themselves, the heat would scorch them within moments and drain their spiritual power dry.
Far in the distance, a gigantic black prison sat embedded in the belly of the volcano. Its barriers were severe and heavily guarded, and deathly stillness clung to it. That was the final destination of this journey, Ashenbrand Gaol, and danger waited everywhere!
Killing intent filled the air, and that desperate prison cage now stood right before them.
Jared slowly crouched and touched the scorching volcanic gravel underfoot with his fingertips. Heat seeped through his skin at once. His expression did not shift.
He calmly drew the fine, detailed map from his robe and placed his fingertip with exact precision on twelve faint motes of light around the outer mountain foot.
“The twelve ringward outposts of Ashenbrand Gaol are arranged around the perimeter, some open and some hidden, each supporting the others. Every outpost has a garrison of 100 men…”
“They are reinforced by alarm arrays and the Saintlight Ward. If any one of them sends out an alert, the whole Ashenbrand Gaol will go on full guard in an instant and seal off every entrance and exit. Once that happens, the difficulty of a frontal assault will multiply several times over…”
“Before the celestials notice anything wrong and pass along the alarm, we have to remove all twelve outposts without a sound. We kill every garrison cultivator on the perimeter, cut off every warning channel, and strike perfectly, leaving the enemy no chance to react.”
Jared’s gaze held a cold edge as favonovel.com finished.
Nathaniel’s brow pulled tight. His eyes moved over the dense spread of outposts marked across the map, and his face grew strained.
“The twelve outposts are scattered all around Mount Cinderfall. The distances are too great, and they are separated from one another. If we split up, our forces will be spread too thin. They could break us one group at a time. If we gather our strength and attack them one by one, we will be too slow. The longer we drag it out, the more certain it becomes that our tracks will be exposed and the alarm triggered…”
“The allied host cannot be divided that far. There is no way to clear them all at the same time. There is no need for the whole army to move, and no need for simultaneous attacks.”
Jared slowly folded the map away and rose to his feet. Violet chaotic force moved in silence around him, and every trace of his aura drew inward until nothing leaked out. His whole body seemed to sink into the sweltering dark around him. No sound. No presence.
He lifted his eyes toward the volcanic outposts stretching across the distance.
When favonovel.com spoke, his voice came out flat. “The twelve outposts. 1,200 celestial cultivators. Me alone is enough…”
It was only one simple sentence, spoken without a ripple. Yet it carried the weight of someone standing above every rival in sight, and it struck through everyone present hard enough to make their hearts jolt.
Nathaniel’s pupils snapped tight in an instant. His face made it clear favonovel.com could not take the words in, and his voice broke out before favonovel.com could hold it back.
“You alone? The twelve outposts span 100 miles of territory. Their defenses are tight, their wards are layered, and more than 1,000 troops are stationed there. None of them are weak. With only your own strength, how could you wipe them all out quickly? That’s too reckless!” Nathaniel still had the look of a man who could not accept a single word of it.
“My chaotic force can conceal my aura completely, block spiritual soul detection, and ignore the celestials’ alarm array. With the Beast-Quelling Tower supporting the Aetherstride art, I can cross 100 miles in a single step shift positions in an instant, and come and go without leaving a trace.” Jared explained it lightly, and the aura around favonovel.com grew even harder to pin down, as if his outline had begun to drift out of reach.
“When it comes to silent assassination and surprise strikes, no one in the outer ward of Ashenbrand Gaol can stop me… A thousand garrisoned troops and layer after layer of wards are nothing to me but chickens and dogs made of clay…” Before the words had fully fallen, Jared’s figure gave the faintest sway.
There was no warning at all. His body thinned in mid-air, fading as if the world had started erasing him. Every trace of his aura vanished. Like a man evaporating from the mortal world, favonovel.com disappeared from everyone’s sight in an instant.
Distance collapsed until 1,000 miles seemed to fit within arm’s reach, and a single step carried favonovel.com across 100 miles of mountains and rivers.
The next moment, Jared appeared without a sound in the shadow behind the first outer outpost.
The outpost had been built on top of an enormous slab of volcanic rock. Its position looked down over the land, its view opened wide, and it sealed off one side of the mountain road perfectly.
Dense rows of gilded Celestial Saintlight Wards were embedded all around the outpost. Sigils flowed over them. Golden radiance flashed, and the warning range covered a radius of 1,000 yards.
The instant any outside enemy drew near, the alarm would be triggered. Inside and outside the outpost, 100 celestial cultivators wore standardized golden light armor and carried saintlight longswords. They moved in pairs, rotating back and forth on patrol duty. Their faces stayed hard, their eyes kept moving, and their spiritual souls swept the area in every direction without pause. The defenses left no loose gap!
The outpost commander wore fine scaled armor and gave off a powerful aura. His cultivation had reached True Immortal Realm Level Five, and one hand gripped a heavy saintlight falchion.
He stood at the highest point of the outpost, his gaze sweeping coldly over the entire desert wasteland. Not even half a breath of slack showed in him.
The scorching gale roared across the outpost, swallowing every faint sound. No one noticed that a lethal shadow had already descended in silence.
Jared lay still in the dark, his eyes like ice.
Slowly, favonovel.com drew the Dragonslayer Sword from his back. The long, pitch-black blade gave off a faint cold gleam beneath the dim sky.
A vast, dense surge of violet chaotic force poured into the blade like a tide. It coiled, circulated, and wrapped over the sword in layer after layer. The overwhelming chaos-wrought resonance stayed locked inside, giving off nothing beyond the blade itself. Not even the slightest ripple of spiritual essence stirred.
He lifted his wrist just a fraction and swept his arm out. The motion flowed cleanly from start to finish, without the smallest wasted drag.
A violet chaos-wrought blade-flare, compressed to its absolute limit and thin as a strand of hair, cut through the void without a sound. No heaven-shaking phenomenon erupted. No deafening roar followed. It did not even stir a breath of air.
Utterly contained! Utterly lethal!
Buzz!
Only one faint, splinter-thin sound slipped out, so soft it nearly failed to exist before the roaring wind swallowed it whole.
The violet blade-flare pierced the entire outpost in an instant, sweeping with flawless precision across the fatal point between every celestial cultivator’s brows
The next second, all 100 celestial cultivators in the outpost froze at once. Their eyes flew wide. Their pupils snapped tight. The cold, guarded look of patrol duty still clung to their faces, but every trace of life had already been stripped from their bodies.
Inside them, the saintlight nascence, the spiritual meridians, and the soul-root foundation were all broken down torn apart and dissolved Single instant by the chaotic force.
Chaotic force countered the Myriad Arts!
The holy light the celestials took such pride in turned pitifully fragile before pure chaotic nascence. It was like snow meeting a raging fire, melting and collapsing the moment they touched.
In the span of a single breath, the 100-man garrison had fallen to the last. Then, one after another, the bodies of the celestial cultivators began to fade, turning into shattered motes of golden holy radiance that drifted away on the wind. They dissolved into the scorching air, leaving behind not one drop of blood, not one complete corpse.
Clean, precise, savage to the extreme!
From start to finish, there had been only silence. No one screamed. No one called for help. Not even the thinnest alarm escaped the outpost.
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