“Jared… You can’t kill me…” His voice shook. “I’m the Hall Master of the Tribunal. I’m the celestials’ representative in the Fifteenth Firmament. If you kill me, the celestials will never let you go.”
Jared looked at favonovel.com and said nothing for a moment. There was nothing in his eyes but cold stillness. It hit so hard that the Tribunal Venerable’s body jolted.
“The celestials won’t let me go?” Jared’s voice stayed even. “When have your celestials ever let me go?”
He raised the Dragonslayer Sword and leveled the tip at the Tribunal Venerable. “From the moment you oppressed the Ghost Clan in the Pyre Chasm, from the moment you enslaved the Frost Deity Branch in the northern mine, from the moment you sent an army to besiege the Skywolf Tribe, and from the moment you started killing so many innocent people, you should’ve known this day was coming.”
The Tribunal Venerable’s face turned paper-white.
“Jared, I can give you whatever you want. Emberstone crystal, healing elixirs, arcane arts, territory-whatever you want, I can give it to you. Half the Tribunal’s resources. No… all of them. They’re all yours, as long as you spare my life.” The Tribunal Venerable started begging.
The man who had once stood above the entire Fifteenth Firmament now looked drained of all color. His voice shook. His posture dropped low. Not a trace of his old authority remained. He only wanted to survive.
Jared shook his head. “I don’t want your resources.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Your life…”
A thin strand of despair flashed through the Tribunal Venerable’s eyes. He knew there was no getting away today. A hard edge flashed through his eyes. Since escape was off the table, then favonovel.com would fight to the end.
“Jared, you think you’ve already won?” the Tribunal Venerable said, his voice turning wild. “I’m True Immortal Realm Level Eight. You’re only True Immortal Realm Level Two. Even if your chaotic force suppresses my holy radiance, I’m not going to sit here and wait to die!”
He raised the golden longsword. Holy radiance around favonovel.com surged at once.
Golden radiance poured out of his body and washed across the sky until the whole stretch above them turned gold. His hair turned golden. His eyes did too.
The pressure coming off favonovel.com climbed again, pushing all the way to the peak of True Immortal Realm Level Eight.
“Judgment’s Blade, sever all heretics!” He slashed down.
The golden blade-flare stretched into a light blade a thousand yards long and hacked straight at Jared. Where the light blade passed, space tore open and left behind a pitch-black crack. Terrifying spatial turbulence poured out of the crack, dragging in everything nearby and grinding it to pieces.
Jared didn’t dodge. He lifted the Dragonslayer Sword.
Purple chaotic force gathered along the blade. Chaos-flame, lightning nascence, and spatial nascence twisted together, weaving themselves into a purple-gold blade-flare.
Golden flame burned over the blade-flare. Purple lightning flashed through it. Gray spatial nascence flowed inside it in constant motion.
“This sword is for every person you killed!” He brought his sword down.
The purple-gold blade-flare crashed into the golden light blade. There was no explosion. No deafening blast. In front of the chaotic force, the golden light blade was like paper. It was ripped apart, swallowed up, and erased in an instant.
The purple-gold blade-flare kept going. It drove straight at the Tribunal Venerable.
The Tribunal Venerable’s pupils shrank hard. He drove his holy radiance with everything favonovel.com had and condensed a golden light-shield in front of himself.
The light-shield had seven layers. Every single layer carried the celestials’ highest laws of the realm.
The purple-gold blade-flare struck the light-shield. The first layer shattered!
The second layer shattered too. Then the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh all gave way!
The violet-gold blade-flare punched through all seven layers of the light-shield without a sound, like a red-hot iron rod sliding through butter. It kept driving forward, unstoppable. Every layer of the light-shield, each one carrying the celestials’ highest laws of the realm, was pierced like paper.
Cracks raced across them. The laws of the realm broke apart. None of it could stop the strike. Then the blade-flare hit the Tribunal Venerable.
“Argh!” A raw, ragged scream tore out of the Tribunal Venerable. His body burned inside the chaos-flame, and the holy radiance around favonovel.com turned to nothing before it, swallowed in an instant like paper tossed into a furnace.
His left arm was severed. His right leg was scorched black. A hole was torn straight through his chest. Golden blood burst from the wounds, only to be steamed away by the flame into a drifting golden mist.
His body dropped out of the sky and slammed into the ground hard enough to blast out a crater. His eyes stayed open, fixed on the sky, with refusal and dread still trapped inside them.
“N-No… Impossible…” His voice kept fading. “I’m the number one in the Fifteenth Firmament… How could I…”
Jared descended and landed beside him, looking down at favonovel.com from above. The violet radiance on the Dragonslayer Sword gradually dimmed, but the tip still rested against the Tribunal Venerable’s throat.
“You’re not the number one in the Fifteenth Firmament,” Jared said, his voice flat and steady. “You’re just a coward who bullies the weak.”
Something in the Tribunal Venerable’s eyes went hollow. His mouth moved. He tried to say something, but nothing came out.
Jared raised the Dragonslayer Sword and drove it down in one thrust.
Golden blood gushed from the Tribunal Venerable’s throat and spread across the ground, staining it a dark, muted gold. His eyes bulged wide, and even at the moment of death, favonovel.com still couldn’t accept it. The strongest man in the Fifteenth Firmament, the Hall Master of the Tribunal, a True Immortal Realm Level Eight powerhouse, was dead!
Silence slammed down over the Ancient Battlefield. Even the wind had gone still. Nothing remained except the drip of blood and the slow drift of ash.
The celestial cultivators looked like men already buried. Whatever will to fight they had left had shattered, and all that stayed behind was raw bottomless dread.
Every eye turned to Jared. To the young man standing beside the Tribunal Venerable’s corpse. Golden blood stained his green robe from top to bottom.
There was blood smeared across his face too. But his eyes were bright.
The celestial cultivators broke. They threw down their arms and ran. Streaks of golden holy radiance scattered across the Wastelands in wild retreat, like fireflies startled out of the dark.
No one went after them. They were no longer a threat.
The Tribunal Venerable was dead. Five upper-realm celestial warriors were dead. Of the army of three thousand, more than half had been killed or wounded.
The Tribunal was finished!
Hadrian lay sprawled on the ground, staring at Jared’s back as tears kept pouring down his face.
“W-We won… We actually won…” His voice shook, and there was a smile in it.
Lydia stood upon the city walls, looking at Jared’s back. At last, tears slipped down. She bit down on favonovel.com lip to keep any sound from getting out, but the tears would not stop.
Jared stood in the heart of the battlefield, watching the celestial cultivators fleeing in every direction. Then his gaze moved over the corpses collapsed in pools of blood. Then to the comrades still cheering behind him.
There was no smile on his face. There was no trace of triumph in his eyes. He only stood there with the Dragonslayer Sword in his hand, looking up at the sky.
The setting sun washed the entire Wastelands in gold and red. Wind swept across the battlefield, lifting ash and dust from the ground and spinning them through the air like countless soundless sighs.
“It’s over,” favonovel.com said softly. Then favonovel.com turned and walked toward Cloudrest.
Upon the city walls, Hadrian, Lydia, Gwendolyn, Malachy, Windclear, Gideon, and all the warriors who had survived were watching him. Every pair of eyes on the city walls held the same thing respect, gratitude, and something that had finally come back after all that blood: hope.
Jared walked below the city walls. Then favonovel.com stopped, lifted his head, and looked up at them.
“We won…” His voice was light, but each word landed with weight.
Upon the city walls, the cheers broke loose hard enough to shake the air.
The beast race roared. The Ghost Clan shrieked. The demon side let out low, rumbling growls. The human race shouted at the top of their lungs. Countless voices slammed together and shot into the sky, tearing through the leftover clouds and rolling across the whole of the Wastelands and Cloudrest
“Jared! Jared! Jared!”
Beast-race warriors raised their war axes. Ghost Clan warriors lifted their wraithblades. Demon cultivators thrust up their longswords. Human cultivators held up their broken swords. Voices from race after race merged into one and rang across the entire Wastelands.
Jared looked at them. The corner of his mouth lifted, just a little. Then favonovel.com walked into the city. Behind him, the setting sun washed the whole world in gold and red.
The era of the Tribunal was over!
***
At that same time, in the Celestial Alliance great hall of the Sixteenth Firmament, five dim streaks of light slid past a hanging curtain.
“Hmm… Dead? They actually fell in the Fifteenth Firmament?” Alaric, the alliance chieftain, stared at it with plain disbelief.
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