By the time dawn neared, the last cold afterglow of night over the Northern Marches Wastelands had faded completely.
The twin uncanny moons still hung alone in the heavens, one silver and one red. Their cold light cut down like blades.
Cold light slashed at an angle through the carved skylights of the principal hall of the Celestial Alliance, then fell in a straight, pale shaft into the hall. It struck the flagstone floor, cold and smooth as jade, and it struck just as hard across two battered figures below. The glare cut into the eyes and seemed to drive deeper than sight.
Marshal Stone and Marshal Grey clutched each other by the arm, locked together as if letting go would drop them both. Each step sank heavy, their footing loose and unsteady. Their robes hung torn to strips, soaked through with dark red bloodstains. Dust from the road had mixed with blood and clung to their skin, leaving them ruined from head to toe.
Not a trace remained of the authority they once carried as foremost war champions guarding Northern Abyss Gaol and pressing their weight over the Northern Marches. Every inch they dragged forward burned through what little strength still remained in them.
Their bodies swayed on the edge of collapse, as if the next breath might send them crashing to the floor.
Marshal Stone’s towering body had been tempered for 10 thousand years, once unbreakable, once impossible to shake. Now that old force was gone. At the center of his chest, a savage hole the size of a fist punched clean through from front to back. The flesh around it had been burned black and left rotting, while the meridians along the edges had all been scorched into char by chaos-flame.
A foul stink of blood and burned meat slowly spread around him. The Aurelian Deathless Body nascence lines that had once blazed across his chest and limbs had gone completely dark. They lay silent like dead ash, without the faintest shine left in them. Not even a thread of Aurelian spiritual power could surge through them anymore.
The supreme body favonovel.com had cultivated through 10 thousand years of bitter effort had been broken at its foundation by Jared’s chaotic nascence force. He had become like a dry stone split apart after endless wind and frost, hollowed through with wounds inside, while life kept draining out of him. Those arms that once could shatter mountains and split boulders with a casual lift now hung powerless at his sides, trembling faintly.
Each breath pulled at the terrible wound in his chest, sending pain knifing deep into bone. He could not keep himself from bending forward, hunched over as favonovel.com dragged in great mouthfuls of air.
The massive frame that had once seemed able to hold up heaven and earth was now curled and bent, heavy with the air of decay. Even the strength to straighten his back had been spent.
Marshal Grey’s condition was no better than Marshal Stone’s. He, too, had been driven into a desperate state by his injuries.
The Frostbrand had pierced straight through his right shoulder, leaving a clean, vicious sword wound where the flesh had frozen stiff and crusted over. Inside, his meridians had snapped and torn. His nascence-wrought spiritual power leaked away in all directions, impossible to gather, impossible to circulate.
His entire left arm had been frostbitten deep by the utmost Ice-Seal frost. The flesh had turned rigid and purple, and the cold kept burrowing along his meridians, eating into his spirit-well nascence.
Cold and numbness spread over him, leaving his limbs stiff and sluggish. The Firmament Snare’s whisk, the relic favonovel.com had relied on all his life and carried through years of battle, had been ruined as well.
Most of the white hairs had snapped away, leaving the fly-whisk ragged and uneven. The spiritual light of the formation that had once lingered over its surface had almost entirely scattered, leaving it dim and lifeless. It could no longer lay out even half of a complete killing-and-binding great array.
The Frost-Deity Ice-Seal force left inside favonovel.com clung like rot sunk into bone. It crawled through his meridians, cutting at his spirit veins every moment and scraping against the spirit.
His focus could not hold steady, and every circulation of spiritual power snagged and stalled. Even raising a hand to offer a formal salute took more out of favonovel.com than it should have.
Those eyes had once measured every move from behind the curtain, dark, vicious, and impossible to read. Now they were webbed with blood, and deep beneath them lingered the shadow of something favonovel.com had not managed to shake off. Not a trace of his old calculating ease remained.
Along both sides of the great hall, ranks of the celestial household guard and high- ranking cultivators stood on duty in strict formation. Every gaze snapped to the two of them.
In the next second, every face went paper-white, and knees softened and trembled beyond control. A chill shot straight through them to the crown of the skull, and even their breathing thinned without anyone ordering it. No one dared make the slightest sound.
The hall fell so still that a dropped needle would have carried. Only the heavy, ragged breathing of the two war champions echoed slowly within the great hall.
They had guarded the High Hall of the Celestial Alliance for years. Day after day, they had seen the two great war champions standing in divine authority, striking hard and deciding life and death without hesitation.
Those two had held the bulwark of the Northern Marches and kept cultivators of every kin pressed firmly beneath them. They had always won every battle and broken every enemy before them.
Who among the guards had ever seen them reduced to this-battered, broken, their blood vitality running thin?
They were powerful adepts at the peak of True Immortal Realm Level Nine, the two strongest bulwarks of the Celestial Alliance’s northern region. Yet someone had beaten them into crippled, wounded bodies and forced them to flee back to the Alliance heartland in disgrace.
An invisible wash of ice seemed to soak straight through the hearts of every watch-standing cultivator in an instant.
The cold bit deep into the bone and left no one able to steady themselves.
If even the two great war champions had returned in defeat, how monstrous was the strength of the enemy invading them?
Had the celestial defensive line in the Northern Marches already collapsed completely?
Countless thoughts churned in silence. No one spoke, and no one moved.
At the highest point of the great hall, the towering gilded throne hung over everything. Alaric sat upon it, his back straight, his presence cold and sharp.
Only moments earlier, favonovel.com had lifted his fingertips and tapped unhurriedly against the throne’s armrest. The rhythm had been calm and almost idle, his expression steady, as if nothing could rush him.
Every small movement carried the bearing of a High Sovereign who held the whole situation in his hands and arranged every move before it happened. It was as though every change in the world had already fallen into his calculations, ready for favonovel.com to grasp with ease.
But then his sharp gaze swept downward. His gaze caught every detail with brutal precision: the two of them covered in heavy wounds, their blood and vital force drained low, their nascence torn and damaged beyond hiding.
The fingertip tapping against the armrest stopped dead. It hung stiffly in the air and did not come down again.
The easy command around favonovel.com vanished in an instant. A sharp cold spread through the great hall without a sound, pressing down until every mind in the room shook under it.
Silence. Silence pressed to its absolute limit!
It carried a force held down so tightly it seemed ready to burn through restraint, and it covered the entire celestial high hall. No one dared lift their head and look straight at Alaric on the black throne. No one dared break that choking stillness.
“Really? You two… Lost?” Alaric spoke slowly, his voice flat and level, giving away nothing.
But every person inside the hall sensed it clearly.
Under that calm surface, something vast had been forced down, something ready to sweep outward like wildfire and burn everything in its path. One wrong move, and killing would follow. Blood would run across the floor.
Marshal Stone’s chest sank under the weight of it, and favonovel.com did not dare delay for even a breath. He forced himself through the tearing pain raking across his whole body and dropped with difficulty to one knee. His broad frame wavered, barely holding itself upright. Cold sweat mixed with dark red beads of blood on his forehead and kept sliding down his cheeks.
They struck the flagstone tiles below and burst into small wet marks. His voice came out hoarse and dry, each word squeezed out as if dragged through flesh and clenched teeth. Every syllable carried the weight of disgrace and the refusal to accept it.
“H-High Sovereign, your servant was incompetent. Your servant failed in command and lacked the strength to match the enemy… Northern Abyss Gaol has been completely lost. It has fallen in full. The defending forces suffered catastrophic casualties. The entire line has collapsed… Your servant fought through to a difficult battle and only then managed to return to the hall in this state… High Sovereign, please punish your Servant…”
Bang!
Alaric’s five fingers suddenly clamped down hard around the armrest of the black throne.
The hard gilded wooden armrest creaked under his grip. Cracks raced across it, and splinters sifted down in a dry patter. Cold light flared in the depths of his eyes, while heat surged through his chest like a fire fed too long. It almost tore through the last edge of reason and burned everything clean.
Marshal Grey followed close behind, bending down with difficulty before collapsing to his knees on the floor. Cold crept along his spine, and what remained of the battle still pressed against him like a blade favonovel.com could not stop seeing.
He spoke weakly and reported the truth as it was, not daring to hide even the smallest part. “High Sovereign, the battle changed without warning… No human hand could have controlled it. Jared had already broken through cleanly, and his cultivation had settled at True Immortal Realm Level Three… The chaotic force inside favonovel.com had grown even more overbearing, even denser, and its destructive power had multiplied… It specifically suppressed our orthodox celestial saintlight nascence. There was almost no way to withstand it…”
“Beyond that, Gwendolyn had fully received the ancient Frost-Deity inheritance. She awakened the full panoply of Frost-Deity theurgies, wielded the Frostbrand, and wore the Frostwrought Panoply. Her combat power surged several times over. Attack and defense were fused as one, and whether favonovel.com was breaking formations or cutting people down, there was hip answers for it…”
“Your servant and Marshal Stone exhausted the cultivation we had spent our lives building, along with every last trump card we had kept hidden. We fought to the death for half a day, staking our lives just to hold them off. In the end, all we barely managed was to leave both sides wounded… We had no strength left to stop the allied host from breaking into the prison and rescuing their people. There truly was no way to turn it back…”
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