High above the sky, two figures hovered in the air. Their sleeves shifted faintly in the wind as they followed the army at an unhurried pace, looking down the whole time on the countless forms of life below.”
Venerable Emberlain wore red robes like fire. Around him, gold-red saintfire flowed in faint currents, and waves of searing pressure spread outward.
Venerable Frostgrave wore silver robes like frost. His gaze was cold and indifferent. Frost energy spread around him, freezing the surrounding void.
The two Golden Immortals carried a steady, boundless aura. The pressure of their cultivation level swept in every direction, and with every lift of a hand or shift of a foot, the momentum of the world seemed to move with them.
In their eyes, the slaughter and struggles of the Sixteenth Firmament and the desperate resistance of True Immortal cultivators, were nothing more than ants tearing at ants, dust rising and falling. None of it was worth mentioning.
The Golden Immortal Realm had long since broken beyond the shackles of the ordinary heavens.
From that height, they looked down over countless living beings.
Crushing ordinary cultivators was as easy as lifting a hand to pinch an insect to death, simple and without a ripple.
The army sped onward without anyone blocking its path.
Before long, it drove into the heavily fortified, magnificent heartland of the Celestial Alliance’s temple, then continued straight to the temple‘s innermost forbidden precinct. Ordinary celestial cultivators could not approach this place in their entire lives.
Heavy troops guarded it year after year, and layer upon layer of wards cut off every attempt to spy or probe within.
A thousand fathoms beneath the temple, the hidden sanctum lay buried away from the world. It was sealed in silence, cut off from everything outside.
The four walls of the hidden chamber had been forged from starfall iron mixed with hallowed gold. Each wall was a full three feet thick, so hard that ordinary immortal weapons and divine relics could not shake them in the slightest.
Across the wall surfaces, dense blood-red sealing sigils had been carved, inherited from the elder celestials. The sigils linked into one another, weaving themselves into a Worldlock Net.
They could both imprison the spirit and stop spiritual power from leaking out. They could also shield the hidden workings of fate and conceal every trace of aura or movement. Even if a foremost mighty adept passed through this place, it would be difficult to notice the slightest abnormality in the hidden chamber.
At the very center of the hidden chamber, an ancient, heavy black stone dais stood firm.
The grain of the stone looked weathered, covered in marks left by time. Clearly, it had endured the settling weight of ages beyond counting.
Across the top of the stone dais, the ancient Soul-Refining Grand Array had been carved in spiraling, interlocking lines so dense they seemed to exhaust complexity itself.
Every groove sank deep into the black stone, tying the formation into the world’s baleful yin force. Its sole purpose was to refine the spirits of powerful cultivators. It stripped away stray thoughts and fixed obsessions, purified nascence soul-force, and in the end condensed everything into a pure soul-pearl for a foremost adept to devour, absorb, and use to break through cultivation barriers faster while comprehending nascence law.
Venerable Emberlain descended slowly before the stone dais.
In his palm, the black Soul-Vault Pearl rose with deliberate care. His fingertips moved over the cool surface of the bead, while his lowered gaze fixed on that wavering violet soul-light sealed at its core.
For along while, favonovel.com said nothing.
The hidden chamber dropped into a dead hush, with only the faint circulation of spiritual power left moving through the air.
Only after a stretch of silence did favonovel.com speak, his voice low and measured, carrying the weight of a decision that could not be taken back. “Cassian, are we truly going to insist on refining this boy’s spirit? Once we act, there will be no room to regret it…”
Venerable Frostgrave stood behind favonovel.com with his hands clasped at his back. His silver eyes stayed hollow and still, without the slightest ripple, and when his voice came, it was flat, cold, and even.
“This boy carries innate chaotic nascence force. It is a supreme nascence left from the first opening of the world, something that might not appear once in 10 thousand years, rare to the extreme across the heavens and the myriad worlds… If we use the Soul-Refining Grand Array to purify and refine it, and condense a chaos-soul pearl, then once the two of us devour it, we can follow that momentum to break through our current Golden Immortal fetters, comprehend world-nascence law at a deeper level, and take the key step toward a higher cultivation level…”
“With a heaven-sized opportunity like this, with a temptation beyond measure, are the two of us supposed to hand it away and miss it for nothing?” A hungry shine filled Venerable Frostgrave’s eyes.
Venerable Emberlain did not answer at once. But the answer had already settled deep inside him. Of course favonovel.com could not bear to give it up.
Chaotic force stood above ordinary celestial energy and celestial power. It was the foundation from which all things began, the root that kept the Great Dao in motion.
In the ancient ages, the celestials had once crossed paths with peerless prodigies who carried chaos-wrought constitutions. Unfortunately, all of them had been thin in fortune. Before they could be captured, their spirits collapsed and their nascence scattered, leaving the celestials with nothing in the end.
Now Jared’s soul had fallen into their hands whole and unharmed. His chaotic nascence remained perfectly sealed, without the slightest loss. A heaven-sent chance like this was nearly impossible to find across all ages. If they missed it, there would be no second opportunity in this life.
“There is no time to waste. Open the array immediately!” Venerable Emberlain hesitated no longer.
He raised his hand and placed the Soul-Vault Pearl with perfect precision onto the core eye of the Soul-Refining Grand Array carved into the stone dais. Its position did not deviate by even a hair.
Venerable Frostgrave immediately moved to the opposite side of the stone dais. His palms flashed through the air, forming one ancient and abstruse celestial seal after another, while pure, piercing Golden Immortal frost-wrought spiritual power poured without end into the lines of the great array.
In an instant, golden array lines lit one after another along the veins of the stone.
The glow grew from faint to blazing, spreading in layer after layer until, in the blink of an eye, the entire dark chamber shone clear and bright as daylight. At the same time, Venerable Emberlain raised his hand and cast his own art.
Rolling gold-red deathless saintfire surged from his palm. The saintfire burned hot and overbearing, wrapped in Golden immortal nascence dominion, and drove precisely into the four array foundations to strengthen the formation’s power.
The next instant, the entire ancient Soul-Refining Grand Array roared into full operation.
A vast soul-binding force, invisible and without substance, swept over the chamber and locked tightly around the Soul-Vault Pearl at the heart of the array.
Under the pressure of the formation, the pearl’s dense, hardened shell began to soften bit by bit. It melted. It broke apart. Like ice and snow beneath a fierce sun, it rapidly vanished without a trace.
The Soul-Vault Pearl dissolved completely.
Jared‘s faint, wavering violet soul-light was laid bare at the center of the great array, with nothing left to shield lt, isolated and helpless, fully at their mercy.
Raging soul-refining fire rose from beneath the great array. It was pure golden fire, made to burn spirits and refine thoughts, without the slightest warmth of ordinary flame.
All that remained was a bone-piercing agony that burned straight through the spirit. It wrapped tightly around the violet soul-light, coiling from top to bottom, searing and tampering it from every direction at once.
The torment of refining the spirit was nothing like an injury to the flesh. It was one of the ultimate tortures beneath the heavens. The flame did more than scorch the texture of the soul-nascence. It followed the spirit’s own channels and struck directly into the deepest layers of memory and obsession, into the seven passions and six desires, into every bond and attachment.
Layer by layer, it peeled away fragments of the past. Inch by inch, it burned away the marks left by feeling. Bit by bit, it ground down obsession and will, forcing out the most primitive, coldest soul-nascence while erasing every trace of living awareness.
Jared’s buried consciousness was jolted awake by the sudden, unbearable pain.
From the depths of his spirit came a tearing agony that cut to the core, hundreds and thousands of times worse than a shattered body or bones and tendons snapped apart. Boundless blackness rolled in with that pain and swallowed favonovel.com whole.
Scene after scene, each one carved too deeply to forget, flashed uncontrollably through his spirit. They came with brutal clarity, not blurred by even the smallest degree.
Josephine’s back as favonovel.com turned and left appeared before him, solitary and receding. Her brows and eyes were soft, carrying the weight of all the things favonovel.com still could not let go.
Then came Lydia’s bright face in the mountains, caught in a faint smile. She looked quick and alive, with a warmth that seemed to fill the whole scene.
Then came the moment Gwendolyn shielded favonovel.com companions. She took a Golden Immortal’s heavy strike head-on, forced herself to withstand it, and then crashed down with no way back.
Then came the brutal sight of Freevale’s mountain gate shattered apart, blazing firelight roaring into the sky. Innocent cultivators lay in rivers of blood, corpses scattered across the ground.
Everything Jared had kept buried deepest in his heart, his attachments, his obsessions, his warmth, his hatred, was ripped out by the soul-refining fire. It was dragged into the open and burned in front of him, inch by inch, until every trace was ground away.
Each memory stripped from favonovel.com was like a razor-sharp knife carving straight into his chest. The pain drove through the spirit, deep enough to make existence itself unbearable.
Visit VIRTUAL NOVEL for more available chapters of this title!