At the same moment, the two of them opened their eyes.
Their gazes met across the distance. No words passed between them. They did not need any signal at all to read what lay buried deep in each other’s eyes: the same heavy pressure, settled in the same place.
They saw the shadow hanging over the road ahead, refusing to lift. They saw the life-and-death crisis pressing down on both of them.
In the Celestial Alliance, two supreme elders who had been in seclusion for years had already reached the final closing stage of their assault on the Golden Immortal threshold.
At any moment, they could break through the barrier and emerge, stepping into the rank of Golden Immortal. Once a Golden Immortal appeared, every True Immortal became an ant.
That gulf was a heavenly chasm. It could not be crossed.
Jared slowly rose to his feet and walked out of Pentacarna Tower with steady steps. His gaze swept across all of Freevale’s square.
Across the square, every cultivator trained and cultivated with everything they had. Not one of them dared slack off, not even a little.
Elder Cillian personally led three hundred elite Sylvan warriors, moving day and night between Pentacarna Tower and the vale. They used the time difference inside the tower to train hard and gather strength. Their spiritual power grew richer by the day. Their battle formations locked together with sharper and sharper coordination.
Life-filled spiritual power brimming around them, their battle strength climbed step by step.
Nathaniel directed the human Resistance, drilling killing battle formations day and night without pause. They hammered their combat skills, strengthened their attack-and-defense coordination, and tempered their will and nerve.
Their discipline held strict. Their formations stayed orderly. Their morale still held. They had sworn to defend Freevale to the death!
Everyone was fighting to grow stronger. Everyone was fighting to prepare for war.
They wanted to hold on to their homeland. They wanted to hold on to the hard-won days of peace they had barely managed to claim.
But Jared understood with brutal clarity that all of this was nowhere near enough.
A cup of water against a burning cart. Effort that could not change the ending. It would not matter how many cultivators they had. It would not matter how practiced the battle formations became, or how dense their spiritual power grew.
Before a genuine Golden Immortal adept, they would be no more than ants and dust. They would not withstand a single blow. Numbers, tactics, arms, the secret art, everything they could bring together still could not erase the heavenly gap between a True Immortal and a Golden immortal.
Alone, favonovel.com walked up to the upper ramparts of Freevale and stood there in the wind.
Jared looked far toward the Northern Marches, toward the place where the Celestial Alliance held its ground. The distant horizon lay dark and heavy, and from somewhere beyond sight, a killing edge seemed to press across the empty miles.
For a long while, favonovel.com stood there without a word. Inside him, every possible answer turned into a dead end; every part of favonovel.com still pushed against it; every measure favonovel.com had left came up short.
“Then we can only gamble…” favonovel.com murmured under his breath. His voice came out low and rough, worn down to the bone, with no clear direction left in it.
“We gamble that the two Grand Elders fail in their attempt to reach Golden Immortal, that they fall short at the last step… We gamble that something goes wrong in seclusion, and the backlash leaves them badly wounded… We gamble that before they break through, we can fight our way into the heartland of the Celestial Alliance and break it open with our lives on the line… We end this war before they get the chance… Apart from that, there is no way out…”
Nathaniel walked slowly up onto the city walls and came to Jared’s side. He had heard every word of that low murmur. His chest dropped under the weight of it, and a bitter smile tugged at his face. No warmth remained in that smile.
“A gamble? You’re talking about all our lives, and the safety of everyone in Freevale… The path to survival for tens of thousands of clansmen, are we really staking all of it on one throw? Do we still have any road left behind us?”
Jared did not turn back. He gave no answer. There was nothing favonovel.com could say, and no bright road ahead came into view. He could not find a perfect plan, either.
A powerful enemy was on its way, and the dead end had already closed around them. Beyond that gamble, no choice remained.
The sense that no strength would be enough rose like a cold tide, slowly covering the bottom of his heart, pressing until even breath seemed hard to draw.
***
Several days went by in a rush, gone almost before anyone could mark them.
That morning, the sky hung in one flat sheet of gray. Thick clouds piled layer upon layer, sagging low over the horizon. No daylight showed. No wind stirred.
Everything felt dull and compressed, heavy enough to tighten the chest and keep the mind from settling.
For no clear reason, no one could stay still. It was as if some disaster had already begun lowering itself over the world.
Inside Freevale, the cultivators rose at dawn and began their drills as usual. The hard ring of blades striking blades echoed through every part of the vale. On any other day, that sound had been familiar, steady, almost peaceful.
But today, every person there carried a faint misstep in the chest, as if the body knew something the mind had not yet caught. They could not sit, could not settle, and their thoughts kept slipping out of place. None of them knew the crisis was already on its way.
Jared stood at the crest of Freevale’s ramparts, staring out toward the far horizon. His focus would not steady.
That nameless pressure sharpened by the moment, and the warning bell deep within favonovel.com rang harder and harder.
A chili began to gather. In the next instant, favonovel.com sensed it clearly.
Then Jared caught them clearly: two vast, boundless, terrible auras, each one heavy enough to press down on the world. They erupted from the distant direction of the heartland of the Celestial Alliance, blasting upward with a force that seemed to punch through the sky.
The clouds split apart. The wilds in every direction shook. They did not rise slowly. They did not build by degrees. They came like a volcano tearing open, like the heavens and earth collapsing at the same time.
Savage power shot straight into the clouds and cut across the world from end to end.
The whole world trembled violently. Mountains and rivers swayed, and the river valley roared under the impact.
Faint cracks opened through the earth. Spiritual essence in every direction turned wild, surging in chaotic currents until it ran completely out of control.
The thick black clouds were shredded in an instant beneath that horrifying pressure, layer after layer breaking apart. Sky light struggled down through the torn seams, but it carried no warmth at all. Where it fell, it only drove the chill deeper, all the way into the bones.
A Golden Immortal aura!
Two of them. Real Golden Immortal dominion, absolute and overbearing, looking down on all living beings.
Jared‘s pupils snapped tight, and something inside favonovel.com dropped hard. Cold rushed through his entire body. An extreme chill surged from the soles of the feet straight to his head, leaving every limb and bone drained of warmth.
The chaotic force inside favonovel.com began to churn on its own, spinning violently beyond his control. By instinct, it tried to rise and contend against that terrible dominion crushing the world.
But the difference in level was too vast. Before it, favonovel.com was small, stripped of strength.
The chaotic force might have a tyrannical nascence. Its talent might be extraordinary beyond measure. Yet in front of the Golden Immortal Great Law, it still seemed low and insignificant, shivering despite itself.
This was not a failure of nerve. It was not a mind flinching from danger!
It was what happened when a lower-level cultivator faced a higher Great Path powerful adept: the body recognized the gulf, and no willpower could fill it.
Inside Freevale, every cultivator stopped what they were doing in the same instant. As one, they raised their heads and looked toward the far horizon. Their faces went paper-white in a blink. Their legs weakened under them, and their bodies turned cold and began to shake.
One person’s knees gave out, and favonovel.com dropped straight to the ground, eyes unfocused, as if every road ahead had been cut off. Another gripped his weapon with both hands, but his fingers shook so hard the weapon nearly slipped free and fell. Whatever held favonovel.com together was coming apart.
Someone else stopped breathing altogether, face gray-white, body locked rigid and unable to move.
That breaking pressure swept through the entire vale like a plague. From corner to corner, the thought of surviving seemed to vanish.
Nathaniel‘s face drained of color, and favonovel.com rushed out of the Council Hall without holding anything back. He hurried up onto the city walls and stared toward the terrifying aura tearing the distant sky open.
His voice shook. His eyes had gone hollow. “G-Golden Immortals… They really are Golden Immortals… And there are two of them… Heaven wants Freevale dead…”
Elder Cillian hurried out of Pentacarna Tower as well. His aged face had gone tight and bleak, bitterness carved into every crease.
He let out a long breath, the sound dragged thin by the weight behind it. “8 thousand years… The celestials’ two Grand Elders broke through in the end. They have ascended as Golden Immortals… The fastness of the Northern Marches no longer has a barrier. Our momentum is gone, and there is no turning it back…”
Gwendolyn moved. In a blink, favonovel.com was at Jared’s side. The Frostbrand came out of its sheath at once, guarding favonovel.com body. Icy divine radiance flowed over every inch of her.
She forced it up against the invading Golden immortal dominion. She did not retreat half a step. Not a trace of surrender showed on favonovel.com face. Yet favonovel.com body still trembled beyond favonovel.com control, and a knife-deep chill sank through favonovel.com from within. She knew the dead end had already closed around them, and still chose to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. Life or death, favonovel.com would follow favonovel.com through it.
Jared drew in a deep breath of cold, foul air and forced down the black surge rising in his chest, that crushing weight that said nothing could be changed.
He pinned his mind in place by force. His gaze moved across every cultivator in the vale. It passed over face after face, each one drained pale, searching for help that was not there, with the last light almost gone from the eyes.
His chest tightened as if a boulder had been driven down onto it, hard enough to steal the air and leave only pain.
It had come to this. There was no way to reverse it. With Golden Immortals pressing down on them, Freevale could be wiped out in the next breath.
If they stayed, every last one of them would die in battle. Not even bones would remain, and Freevale would be erased completely. Only by scattering and fleeing could they preserve the flame seed and keep one thin thread of life alive.
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