Jared bent down and reached out, steadily helping the aged prisoner to his feet.
A long, warm current flowed from his palm, helping the old man stabilize the chaos in his blood and breath.
“Senior, the suffering ofthe past has already turned its page. There is no need to keep carrying it in your heart. Walk out of this hellish cage with me. The long night will fade at last, and the flames of war that belong to our resistance against the celestials have already spread into a prairie fire. Everything ahead is still worth waiting for.”
A short while later, Jared personally led the way.
Behind favonovel.com followed a group of newly freed foremost adepts and more than 1 thousand rescued cultivators who had suffered through countless torments. Together, they poured out of the Third Depth in a vast, surging line.
Across the vast Wastelands, the sky had just brightened. Dawn light broke through the heavy clouds and spilled over the whole earth.
In the distance, rolling volcanic peaks stood tall and massive. From the huge craters, thick black smoke surged upward without end. Dust and smoke filled the sky, blotting out the sun and swallowing its fierce light.
The whole vault of heaven was dyed a dark, oppressive red. The wind howled over the bleak Wastelands, and beneath that desolation, the will to fight rose harder in every chest.
Jared stood alone at the very front of the formation. His back stayed straight as an old pine, proud and unbending, while his black robes snapped and streamed in the wind. He stood there steady and towering, as if no force in the Wastelands could move him.”
Behind him, more than a thousand cultivators of every kin stood packed shoulder to shoulder, all of them given back to life from the edge of the grave.
The human race held itself with hard-won discipline. The beast race carried a fierce, fearless edge. The demons stood iron-blooded and unyielding. The Ghost Clan endured in silence with a toughness that had not cracked. The Sylvan Kin stood gentle in bearing, yet joined as one.
The Kindreds had gathered here, and every face turned toward the same road. Their clothes hung from them in rags. Their bodies had been stripped thin by prison and torment.
Across their skin, old scars overlapped with wounds not yet healed, the marks of torture left plain for anyone to see. Their blood and breath had not fully recovered, yet not one of them bent at the waist. Not one lowered their head like someone ready to be broken again. Those eyes had once been hollow, dulled by despair until even numbness had seemed like a mercy.
Now they shone like stars set deep in the dark, and inside them burned a prairie fire raised against crushing power.
Heat filled their gazes, the kind that only came after clawing back a life that should have been lost. Wrapped inside it was a belief hammered past the point of retreat, they would go forward, and they would not bow, even if it cost them everything.
From a distance, they looked toward the young figure ahead, the one who had taken the banner of the Kindreds’ rebellion onto his own shoulders. Their trust settled on favonovel.com without reserve. Their lives, their road, and the fight still waiting beyond the Wastelands had all been placed in his hands.
Jared turned slowly. His gaze moved over the thousands behind him, over cultivators who had suffered beneath celestial oppression and endured every cruelty the prison could carve into them. His eyes stayed calm, without a ripple, while the conviction inside favonovel.com held as hard as forged steel. Then favonovel.com started forward.
Against the screaming gale, favonovel.com crossed the ground step by step until favonovel.com reached the broken, charred corpse of Marshal Vale not far away. The body had already been burned beyond recognition by chaos-flame. Its face was gone. Its sinews and bones had been scorched dry.
The killing aura that had once surrounded it had scattered until nothing remained. Only the alliance badge on its chest remained intact. Cold, glaring, and untouched, it still bore the celestial crest.
Under the darkened daylight, the metal threw back a bitter, freezing gleam. It looked almost stubborn, as if even now it still wanted to display the old celestial arrogance, the high-and-mighty authority that had once pressed down on every living thing beneath it.
Jared’s face went cold. He raised his foot slowly, carrying with it the fire of the Kindreds and the will of the thousand freed cultivators behind him. Then favonovel.com brought it down hard, grinding his sole into Marshal Vale’s ruined corpse.
Inch by inch, that pressure crushed the last of the celestials’ arrogance and the empty authority they had wrapped around themselves. It crushed the shackles of raw power. It crushed the chains of oppression.
The gale over the Wastelands suddenly rose to a harsher scream. It swept across the four directions, tearing up stones and dust until the air itself seemed to boil with grit.
Jared lifted his head and squared his chest.
The will to fight surged through favonovel.com like a tide breaking through stone, and his voice rose all at once, exploding across the sky like thunder from the highest heavens. That cry carried the towering fire and unbent will of every cultivator of the Kindreds gathered there. It spread across a thousand miles of the Wastelands, shook the world in every direction, and cut through the air with such force that it lingered long after the words had left him.
“The Celestial Alliance bullies the weak with its strength and runs wild across the heavens. It imprisons cultivators of the Kindreds without cause, tramples living beings as it pleases, uses power to force its rules onto the world, and uses violence to crush weaker races. Tyrannical, lawless, and soaked in monstrous crimes!”
“Today, I, Jared Chance, stand with the strength of cultivators of the Kindreds beneath the heavens. I have broken through the celestials’ hell-gaol, slain a high-ranking celestial war champion before all eyes, and torn apart the celestials’ false mask! From this day forward, we move against heaven’s decree and rise against the tide. We do not lower our heads to raw power. We do not bend our backs to tyranny!”
“Today, I act in heaven’s name and lead cultivators of all the Kindreds under heaven to tear down, with our own hands, the sky you celestials built above us the sky you used to stand high and oppress all living beings!”
The instant his final word fell, more than a thousand cultivators of the Kindreds behind favonovel.com threw up their arms and roared as one. The sound stacked wave upon wave, surged straight into the highest heavens, and rolled out with a force vast enough to shake the whole reach of the Wastelands.
“Tear down the celestials’ sky!”
“Tear down the celestials’ sky!”
“Tear down the celestials’ sky!”
The unbroken roar thundered across the crimson Wastelands and would not fade. It surged upward with brutal force, punched through the heavy clouds, and scattered the black smoke and murk that had covered the sky.
Each roar carried endless refusal, a chest full of fire, and the decision to resist even to the death. It formally announced the beginning of the collapse of the celestials’ thousand-year rule, and the sound rang through all Epea beneath the Sixteenth Firmament.
High in the distant sky, black clouds rolled and gathered in a frenzy. Wind and thunder stirred inside them, half-seen and half-heard, while low rumbles moved through the vault above. It was as if the entire momentum of the world had been struck by that unyielding will to resist.
The world trembled faintly, and an omen answered into being.
Among the crowd, Nathaniel stood in silence. His gaze fixed on Jared’s back, on that lone yet towering figure planted before them all.
Thousands of years of grievance, restraint, torment, and waiting broke into scalding tears. They slipped soundlessly from his eyes and fell onto the front of his robe. All of it had been for the overthrow of the celestials’ brutal, inhuman rule. For the peace of Freevale. For the last thread of survival left to the Kindreds.
He had endured in silence, stayed hidden, and carried that weight forward for far too long. Today, at last, favonovel.com had waited long enough to see the endless night split open and the first light arrive. Everything favonovel.com had carried pressed through favonovel.com at once, and the tightness that had lived in favonovel.com for ages finally began to loosen.
Far away beneath the mountains, the gates of Freevale stood wide open. Lights that had burned all night shone bright, cutting through the deep darkness and the gloom filling the sky, warm and dazzling against the distance.
The moment Jared appeared at the mouth of Freevale with a host of foremost adepts and more than a thousand rescued cultivators behind him, the whole vale came alive at once.
Cheers tore through the valley, rolling from inside the walls to the open ground beyond.
Rowe heard the news and dropped the still-warm wine bowl in his hand on the spot. He paid no mind to the slick ground underfoot. He stumbled and lurched as favonovel.com ran out, eyes rimmed red, his voice catching before the words could fully leave his throat. “Mr. Chance! You came back safe! All of you came back safe!”
The lanky counsellor, who on ordinary days always stood there with his folding fan and that easy, unshaken air, could not even keep his fingers steady now. The fan trembled in his grip. With a sharp clack, the folding fan slipped from his hand and struck the flagstone hard. He did not notice at all. He only rose onto his toes, craning to see the returning procession, his eyes wet and shining.
Upon the city walls, the middle-aged bladeswoman on watch gripped the twin blades favonovel.com carried close to favonovel.com body. The steel gave a faint tremor in favonovel.com hands. The sharp, hard set of favonovel.com brows from ordinary days had loosened completely. Her mouth split into a wide grin, open and unguarded, the kind that came straight from surviving disaster and finding everyone together again.
Vale, the Old Man Vale, stood quietly at the mouth of the vale, one hand slowly smoothing his grizzled beard. Hot tears traced the deep and shallow lines across his face, falling one by one onto the thick city bricks, each drop landing heavily in the silence and saying what his mouth did not.
Rowan, the oldest and most senior among them, leaned on a solid cane and hurried forward on unsteady legs. His voice came out rough and choked, the force inside it impossible to press down. “Mr. Chance… you really did it… You really brought every trapped kinsman back safely…”
Jared stepped forward quickly and caught Rowan with a steady hand before the old man could lose his balance. A gentle curve touched Jared’s mouth, and his voice carried the weight of a promise kept.
“Senior, rest easy. What I promised you back then, no matter how hard it was, still stood. Every word counted. I would never go back on it…”
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