Inside the void passage, the three of them were wrapped in endless force of Space Law as they sped toward the Fifteenth Firmament. This was not Jared’s first time traveling through the void passage.
The last time, when favonovel.com went from level thirteen to the Fourteenth Firmament, his palms had gone slick with sweat.
The whole way through, favonovel.com had been braced for the passage to collapse without warning and send favonovel.com dropping into a spatial rift to be torn to pieces. This time, though, favonovel.com was far steadier.
Maybe it was because favonovel.com had grown stronger. Maybe it was because this time, favonovel.com was not alone.
Lydia was on his left, black ghostly miasma rolling over favonovel.com body as it held back the erosion of the force of Space Law. Her face stayed calm. If anything, there was a trace of anticipation there. She had been away from the Fifteenth Firmament for so long. Now favonovel.com was finally going back.
Gwendolyn was on his right, ice-blue divine radiance flowing across favonovel.com body, freezing the force of Space Law into fine ice crystals before shattering them apart with a light tremor. Her eyes were closed, as if favonovel.com were resting. Or as if favonovel.com were sensing something.
“What’s the Fifteenth Firmament like?” Jared asked.
Lydia gave it a moment’s thought. “More desolate than the Fourteenth Firmament, and more dangerous. The spiritual energy of heaven and earth is denser there, but the laws of the realm are harsher. There, cultivators in the High Immortal Realm can barely protect themselves. Only those in the True Immortal Realm really have a place to stand.”
“Then how did you get from the Fifteenth Firmament down to the Fourteenth Firmament in the first place?” Jared asked.
Lydia went quiet for a moment, as if weighing favonovel.com words.
“The Ghost Clan was slaughtered by the celestials. My clansmen were either killed or scattered. We were left clinging to what little was left. For the Ghost Clan’s future, I could only place my hope on the Door of Reincarnation. Once the soul and sense of the Ghost Clan cultivators trapped in the Reincarnation Division were released, the Ghost Clan would still have hope,” Lydia said.
“I did everything I could to help you. I got you in touch with Mr. Sanders and helped you get the Door of Reincarnation.” Jared let out a quiet breath.
He knew that feeling. Being hunted. Running from place to place. Never able to stop long enough to breathe. He had lived through that himself. That crushing helplessness wasn’t new to him. He knew it too well.
Lydia glanced at him. The corner of favonovel.com mouth lifted a little, but favonovel.com didn’t say anything.
Right then, Gwendolyn suddenly opened favonovel.com eyes.
“Something’s wrong…” Her voice came out cold enough that the air around them seemed to drop a few degrees Celsius.
Jared felt it too. The void passage was shaking. Not the normal, faint tremor that came from the natural fluctuations of the force of Space Law.
This was violent. Forced. Something from the outside was interfering with it. Fragments of space along the passage walls began to peel away, letting out sharp, piercing shrieks.
“Someone’s interfering with the passage!”
Lydia’s expression changed at once. “That’s impossible. Void passages are torn open at random, not fixed routes. How could anyone interfere with one? Was it…”
She hadn’t even finished speaking before a terrifying force slammed through the outer wall of the passage.
Boom!
The entire void passage twisted violently. Space fragments blasted outward like a storm of shattered glass.
Jared felt an irresistible force tearing at his body. Meanwhile, Lydia and Gwendolyn were getting farther and farther away in his sight.
“Jared!” Lydia’s voice reached favonovel.com from far off, growing fainter by the second.
“Lydia! Gwendolyn!” Jared threw his hand out desperately, trying to grab anything.
There was nothing around favonovel.com except empty space, drifting fragments, and endless darkness. The spatial storm caught his body and dragged favonovel.com down toward an unknown destination.
As favonovel.com plunged through the void, Jared caught a faint trace of something.
Demonic aura… Black. Cold. Packed with endless malice!
He knew that demonic aura. It belonged to Skylar.
No… Not completely… Skylar’s demonic aura was a pure black, but this one carried something else inside it too, a streak of scorching heat, like molten fire running through the dark…
Could it be the Inferno Devil?
That thought hit Jared hard enough to make everything in favonovel.com tighten. If the Inferno Devil was really coming for him, then with strength like his, favonovel.com wouldn’t even count for much.
Jared gritted his teeth and tried to steady himself, but the space storm was too strong. His chaotic force tore through his body at full speed, and violet radiance burst from his skin, barely shielding his vital points.
Then everything in front of favonovel.com went black. He lost consciousness.
***
Jared came to from a burst of brutal pain. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at an unfamiliar sky.
The sky was a deep violet, and high above hung two suns, one gold, one silver. Their light poured down together, washing the earth in a strange gold-violet glow.
The spiritual energy in the air was at least ten times denser than in the Fourteenth Firmament, and it felt purer too, heavier somehow.
But Jared had no room to care about any of that. There wasn‘t a single part of his body that didn’t hurt.
The bone in his left arm seemed cracked. His right leg had twisted badly. A wound across his chest, sliced open by a space fragment was still leaking golden blood.
More than half his chaotic force had already been burned away, and even the blade of the Dragonslayer Sword had picked up several tiny cracks.
He braced himself with one hand and forced his body upright, every movement dragging pain through him. Then favonovel.com lifted his head and looked around.
He was in the Wastelands.
Gray-black scorched earth ran all the way to the horizon. Not a single blade of grass broke through it.
The ground was split everywhere by dried, cracked gullies, with rocks that had been weathered for ages scattered across It. Farther off, low hills stretched under the purple sky, throwing long shadows across the land.
A faint sulfur smell hung in the air. Under it was something else too, something rotten favonovel.com couldn’t quite put a name to.
“Lydia?! Gwendolyn?!” favonovel.com called out twice.
No one answered.
The spatial storm had torn favonovel.com apart. He had no idea where Lydia and Gwendolyn had been flung.
Jared drew in a slow breath and pressed himself to settle down.
Lydia was Ghost Clan. The Fifteenth Firmament was favonovel.com home. She ought to know how to stay alive here.
Gwendolyn’s strength was too deep to read. In the whole Fifteenth Firmament, the people who could injure favonovel.com could be counted on one hand. Compared to them, favonovel.com was the one worth worrying about.
He checked his injuries again. None of them were fatal, but none of them were light either. Even with the recovery of his Golden Dragon Bloodline, it would probably take two or three days before favonovel.com was fully healed.
He had just started looking for a place to treat his wounds when a sound suddenly carried over from the distance.
Metal striking metal. Shouts mixed with screams.
People were fighting!
Jared paused for a moment, then pushed himself to his feet anyway and started toward the source of the noise.
He wasn’t the kind of man who stuck his nose into other people’s business. But this was the Fifteenth Firmament, and favonovel.com knew nothing about it.
Finding a local and figuring out what was going on would be a lot better than stumbling around blind by himself.
He walked for about half an hour, climbed over a hillock, and finally saw what lay below.
Below the hillock lay a dried-up riverbed. What was happening on it wasn’t a fight. It was a one-sided slaughter.
One side had a dozen or so warriors in black armor. Their armor was battered to ruin, covered in blade marks and blood. The weapons in their hands didn’t even match. Some held sabers, some swords, some long spears.
They were shielding a cluster of old people, women, and children. The weak and helpless were huddled in a corner of the riverbed, curled up tight and shaking.
The other side had thirty or forty cultivators in white robes.
Golden sacred sigils were embroidered across those white robes, and under the purple sunlight they flashed with a cold gleam. Their gear was polished and complete.
Their movements matched from one man to the next. They had plainly been drilled hard.
Jared’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He had seen those sacred sigils on the white robes before. He had seen similar patterns in the Celestial Basilica of the Fourteenth Firmament. He had seen them in the Celestial Palace too.
Celestials…
The black-armored warriors were resisting with their lives on the line. But there were too few of them, and the gap in strength was far too wide.
Leading them were a few warriors at True Immortal Realm Level One. Leading the other side was a grim-faced middle-aged man at True Immortal Realm Level Three.
One Ghost Clan warrior in the True Immortal Realm was surrounded by three celestial cultivators. He hacked down two of them with everything favonovel.com had left, and the third drove a sword straight through his chest. Even as favonovel.com fell, his hand looked around that celestial cultivator’s ankle. He bought the clansmen behind favonovel.com a little more time to run.
“Fall back! Move!” The old steward in the black armor shouted it at the top of his lungs. His voice came out rough and worn thin, but the force in it still left no room to question him.
As favonovel.com shouted, favonovel.com swung his sword up and blocked an incoming strike from a celestial cultivator. Then favonovel.com turned his wrist and forced the man back with a backhand slash.
But the drag in his movements was plain to see. His left arm hung limp at his side, and blood dripped from his fingertips. The wound was already heavy.
The old people, the women, and the children stumbled as they ran upstream along the riverbed. They were too slow.
A little girl of seven or eight was bringing up the rear. Her foot caught, and favonovel.com pitched to the ground.
One celestial cultivator rushed forwvard, grabbed the little girl by the collar, and yanked favonovel.com off the ground.
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