“It is thorny. A direct head-on assault won’t be easy to force through…” Jared rolled the intelligence scroll closed, his expression set, his voice low.
Elder Cillian stepped forward slowly. He considered it for a moment, then offered the steadier course. “Master Chance, in my view, we should delay the assault on Northern Abyss Gaol for now. We should enter seclusion first, build our strength, and raise the whole team’s power step by step…”
“Especially you… Your innate chaotic force naturally suppresses the celestials’ holy radiance and celestial nascence. You are the key to breaking this situation open and turning the board around. If you can use this chance to break into True Immortal Realm Level Three, or even the fourth tier, your combat power will surge. Then, when all of us gather and attack Northern Abyss Gaol together, our odds will rise sharply. That would be the safest course,” Elder Cillian added.
Jared gave a slow nod. The truth of it needed no explaining, if his cultivation broke through, favonovel.com could overwhelm stronger enemies. But the timing gave favonovel.com no room to drag this out.
“Of course I want to go into seclusion, focus on breaking through, and temper my combat power. But right now, what we lack most is time. We cannot afford to waste even a minute or a second. And beyond that, we lack resources.” Jared understood better than anyone that raising himself by even a minor realm would swallow a massive amount of resources.
The color drained from Nathaniel’s face. He lowered his voice without thinking, leaned closer to the others, and delivered the piece of news with lethal weight. “The sworn clandestine agent I planted inside the core of the Celestial Alliance sent back top-secret intelligence overnight…”
“The Celestial Alliance’s two hidden Grand Elders are in seclusion, attacking the barrier of the Golden Immortal Realm, and they’ve already reached the final closing stage. In a few days, they will emerge from seclusion and step onto the Golden Immortal Great Path. Once the two of them break through smoothly and both become Golden Immortals, the two Golden Immortals will sit at the heart of the Celestial Alliance and look down over the entire Sixteenth Firmament…”
“By then, Jared, even if you break through to True Immortal Realm Level Five, even if all of our combat power doubles, we will still be ants trying to shake a tree before Golden Immortals. We won’t withstand a single blow. We won’t have even half a chance to win. All we can do is sit and wait to be slaughtered…”
When the words landed, Jared, Elder Cillian, Gwendolyn, and the others all changed at once. A cold thread seemed to grow out of the silence around them.
True Immortal and Golden Immortal looked only one step apart, but in truth they were separated like heaven and earth, like cloud and dirt. That step crossed the barrier between immortal and mortal, and the gulf in combat power could not be bridged. There was no real way to contend with it.
“We must overthrow the Celestial Alliance before the two Grand Elders emerge as Golden Immortals. We have to wreck every arrangement they have in place. Otherwise, the Kindreds all die.” Jared’s voice stayed flat and still, yet carried a decision nothing could shake. The will to fight held steady in his eyes.
Nathaniel let out a thin, strained laugh, the words coming out tight. “But right now, our strength isn’t enough. We can barely stand against two ninth-rank war champions. How are we supposed to buy time? How are we supposed to face the Golden Immortal adepts afterward? There is no answer.”
Gwendolyn had stood off to the side in silence from the beginning, quietly turning the matter over. Only now did favonovel.com finally speak, slowly. Her voice was cool and soft, but every word came through clean, settling the air the moment it reached them.
“There may be a way,” Gwendolyn said. “A way to raise our fighting strength fast, help Jared break through his cultivation level in a short time, and build enough leverage to turn this around before the Golden Immortals come out of seclusion.”
Every head turned at once. All eyes landed on Gwendolyn, and the room held still, waiting for the rest.
“In the frozen marches of the North, at the deepest place where the ice has sealed the land for countless ages, lies the Frost Deity Branch’s true ancestral seat.” Gwendolyn looked toward the frozen reaches of the north. A fixed light passed through favonovel.com eyes, tight with purpose and something favonovel.com had carried too long.
“Within the ancestral seat, the ancient Frost-Deity inheritance left behind its most precious treasures, a complete set of Frostwrought Panoply and the Frostbrand… Both are ancient divine arms, and their power is beyond measure. If I can retrieve them safely, my bloodline will awaken, my cultivation will surge, and my fighting strength will rise by an entire major tier. It would be enough for me to face a ninth-rank war champion head-on…”
“Beyond that, the ancestral seat still holds vast stores of pure cultivation resources and nascence-wrought spirit-materials accumulated by generations of Frost Deity Branch ancestors. There is a strong chance that among them lies a nascence relic suited to Jared’s chaos-wrought constitution. It should be enough to help you break through with the momentum and raise your fighting strength quickly.”
Hearing this, a sharp gleam lit Jared’s eyes.
Something clicked into place, and favonovel.com suddenly remembered what Aldric’s remnant soul had once said inside the Frostfall Ruins, deep in the northern reaches of the Sixteenth Firmament, the true Frost Deity ancestral seat still existed. But the celestials had already occupied it by force with heavy troops, locking it down so tightly that outsiders could barely get close.
“Where exactly is the ancestral seat?” Jared asked at once, his voice low as favonovel.com pinned down the route. “Are there heavy troops blocking the way? Any powerful wards?”
“It lies in the innermost Frostwaste of the North,” Gwendolyn said. “Winter’s Reach, snow flying across ten thousand miles, and killing cold all year round… The outer perimeter has long been layered with celestial troops. Camps stretch one after another, patrol duty never stops, and they have also set down the Elder Severance Ward…”
“Without pure Frost-Deity blood, no one can approach the hidden heart-sanctum. Anyone who forces their way in will be shredded by the ward until not even bones remain. Only true Frost-Deity blood can pass through unharmed and open the ancestral seat’s three ordeals.”
Jared did not hesitate any longer. He rose at once and began issuing orders with clean finality. “No time to waste. We leave immediately! Gwendolyn leads the way. Alaric, Elara, Cedric, and I go with favonovel.com five of us traveling light and n moving in stealth, straight to the Frost Deity Ancestral Seat in the North. In and out as fast as possible!”
“Everyone else stays in Freevale. Go into seclusion within the Pentacarna Tower and prepare for battle with everything you have. Guard the mouth of the vale. No one leaves without authorization. Just wait for our return!”
Nathaniel opened his mouth. The warning was already there, the road ahead, the danger, the celestial heavy troops waiting in ambush, but then favonovel.com met Jared’s eyes. There was no room in them for bargaining.
Nathaniel swallowed every word of refusal and left only the warning that mattered. “Be extremely careful on the road. Protect yourselves. You have to come back safely. Everyone in Freevale will be waiting for your victory.”
Jared gave a faint smile and nodded with steady ease. “Don’t worry. I won’t fail the trust everyone has placed in us.”
***
A moment later, five figures slipped quietly out of Freevale. Then Jared took out the Beast-Quelling Tower and used spatial transmission to send the five companions to the farthest reaches of the North.
The farthest reaches of the North were a vast Wasteland sealed completely beneath ancient frost. For countless ages, it had never thawed. Between sky and earth, only the extremity of cold remained.
The wind came like sharpened blades of ice. It carried a sky full of frozen grit and shattered snow, howling over everything, cutting skin, driving cold deep into bone.
The cold here was vicious beyond reason. Ordinary cultivators in the lower levels of the True Immortal Realm, even with protective spiritual power raised around them, would have their meridians frozen in an instant, their bodies locked stiff, and their lives cut off on the spot.
Jared and the others pushed into the brutal wind and raced across the ice, searching as they went.
At last, far ahead, the towering outline of the Frost Deity Ancestral Seat rose into view. It was a massive ice peak thrusting out of the earth and climbing into the clouds. Its whole body had been formed from Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice, crystal clear and unstained by dust. Beneath the cold moonlight, it refracted a deep, blue glimmer, solemn and sacred, carrying its own ancient pressure.
Below the ancestral ice peak, the celestial encampment spread in an unbroken mass.
Tents packed the ground in dense rows. Heavy troops guarded layer after layer. Fires burned bright through the camp, and the defenses left no loose opening. At least more than a thousand celestial elites were stationed there, each one carrying formidable fighting power.
The field captains of the encampment were even more troublesome, two genuine celestial elders at True Immortal Realm Level Eight. Their cultivation ran deep, their offense and defense were both solid, and they guarded the place with absolute strictness, cutting off every possible path for outsiders to approach the ice peak.
“The celestial forces are too strong. If we force our way through from the front, we will alert the entire army. The losses would be heavy, and it wouldn’t be worth it…” Alaric kept his voice low as favonovel.com swept his gaze quickly over the surrounding defenses. His reminder landed heavily among them.
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