Chief Greenwood led from the front, the heartwood staff gripped in his hand as favonovel.com charged first into the battlefield.
Thousands upon thousands of vines burst up through the earth, coiling hard around the celestial cultivators rushing in and crushing them in place.
The blood fight truly began.
“Marshal Stone saw it and let out a cold snort. His mouth curled as if the whole stand was beneath him. Then favonovel.com raised his hand and drove out a single punch with a force that shook the field.
Aurelian Deathless fist-force turned into a dark-gold pillar. It rolled forward with brute force, tearing the sky full of vines to pieces in an Instant. Its remaining power did not weaken at all before it slammed hard into Chief Greenwood’s chest.
Chief Greenwood was thrown back more than ten steps. Pain exploded through his chest. His blood and Qi churned violently, and a mouthful of blood sprayed from his lips.
Cracks raced across the heartwood staff, and its spiritual light dimmed by a full measure. Wood-aspected spiritual power was innately suppressed by Aurelian saintlight.
His cultivation was high, but against Marshal Stone at the peak of his power, favonovel.com simply had no strength with which to contend. Still, favonovel.com clenched his teeth and held himself up. He did not retreat even half a step. He turned back into the fight, staking his life on guarding his people.
Marshal Grey swept in from the flank. With a lift of his hand, favonovel.com laid down the layered Sundering Maze, cutting the Sylvan remnants apart with brutal precision so each pocket could be surrounded, killed, and broken one by one.
The Sylvan array masters fought with their lives on the line. But before Marshal Grey, a true master of the array-craft, they could not withstand a single exchange. Their formations shattered in an instant, leaving them with no power to resist.
The blood battle dragged on from noon until the sun sank west. An entire day of slaughter left bodies strewn across the wild, and the mountains and rivers ran red.
By dusk, Evershade had fallen completely into scorched ruins. Every towering ancient tree had burned and blackened into charcoal. The clear streams had been dyed red with blood.
Grass and wood lay charred. Spiritual essence had run dry. Everywhere the eye could reach was wounded ground, with not even half a trace of the old life left.”
Chief Greenwood was drenched in blood from head to toe, his body covered in wounds. The heartwood staff had snapped beyond repair. He knelt on one knee in the dirt, his breath thin, his spiritual power exhausted.
At his side, fewer than a hundred broken soldiers remained. Every one of them carried wounds. Some had severed arms, some had blinded eyes, and all of them looked ready to collapse. Yet they still held themselves upright and refused to surrender.”
Marshal Stone walked forward slowly and looked down at them from above, the front of his fist stained with the blood of the Sylvan Kin.
His voice carried the chill of iron. “Lay down your arms and bow your heads In surrender, and the remaining clansmen may be spared. Keep resisting from your last corner, and today will be the day the Sylvan Kin is wiped out. Not even a chicken or dog will be left alive.”
Chief Greenwood slowly lifted his head. Blood marked the corner of his mouth, but favonovel.com let out a cold laugh, his spine still straight. “In ancient times, our ancestors bent the knee and surrendered. That was how they were enslaved by the human race for thousands of years and made to endure every humiliation and torment… Today, Greenwood stands here. I will never repeat that mistake, and I will never let the descendants of the Sylvan Kin become slaves again. If you want the Sylvan Kin destroyed, then step over my corpse first!”
Seeing this, Marshal Stone’s brows drew tight. He said no more. His raised hand began to gather power, ready to strike out with a fatal punch and end the Clan Chief’s life.
“Stop!” Alaric Wycliffe stepped forward slowly and lifted a hand to stop him.
His gaze swept over the gravely wounded Chief Greenwood as if looking at something already beneath his notice, and the life favonovel.com offered wore the shape of mercy. “I will give you one last chance…”
“The whole Sylvan Kin submits to the celestials. Hand over every spirit vein, every arcane art, and every resource, and serve the celestials for generations as vessels and slaves. Do that, and I will spare your entire clan from death. How does that sound?”
“Vassals? Slaves? That is only another way to enslave my people!” Chief Greenwood’s voice had been scraped raw, but every word struck like metal. “The children of the Sylvan Kin would rather bathe in blood and die than bend the knee and become slaves!”
He surged to his feet and squeezed out every last strand of nascence-wrought spiritual power.
A green-blue wooden sword condensed in his hand. With all the strength favonovel.com had left, favonovel.com drove the blade straight toward Alaric’s heart, choosing death without turning back.
Alaric did not move at all. The look on his face did not shift, as if the strike was not worth the flicker of an eyelid. In mid-air, a cold silver gleam flashed past.
Elder Frostgrave struck from afar. Frost energy broke through flesh and instantly pierced Chief Greenwood’s chest.
Blood sprayed out. Frost energy sealed his whole body in ice, and Chief Greenwood’s body rapidly froze into an ice sculpture. He remained standing where favonovel.com was, spine unbowed.
The next second, the ice sculpture shattered with a crash. The Sylvan Chief died there in battle, a warrior’s death!
“Clan Chief!” The surviving Sylvan remnants cried out as if their chests were being torn open. They hurled themselves toward the Celestial Army like they had forgotten how to stop, fighting with their lives to take revenge.
Every last one was surrounded, cut down, and killed, their blood staining the scorched earth.
Elara’s spiritual power had been sealed. Two celestial cultivators held favonovel.com up by force, one on each side, locking favonovel.com in place so completely that favonovel.com could not move at all. All favonovel.com could do was watch the Sylvan Kin die one after another before favonovel.com eyes, tears cutting down favonovel.com face while there was nothing left favonovel.com could do to turn any of it back.
Cedric lay collapsed in a pool of blood. His eyes stayed wide open, fixed on the sky, carrying the last hard refusal of a man who had sworn to die before closing them.
Alaric Winterborne was dead too. The three of them, all from the Frost Deity Branch, had not escaped the fate of being slaughtered either.
Cedric and Alaric Winterborne, at least, had reached an ending. Both of them were dead. Elara was different. She had been captured alive, and what waited for favonovel.com was something worse than death.
Countless celestial cultivators would keep coming for her. For a long, long time, again and again, they would mount favonovel.com body and grind favonovel.com down beneath them.
Elder Cillian had been badly wounded and had fallen into a stupor, his life hanging by a thread. The celestials dragged favonovel.com away by force, and no one knew whether favonovel.com would live or die.
Alaric Wycliffe swept his gaze over the scorched earth and the bodies covering it. He gave a slow nod, as if this ruin had met his measure, then delivered his verdict in a cold voice. “From this day forward, within the Sixteenth Firmament, there will be no Evershade. There will be no Sylvan lineage. Their name is erased completely…”
The Celestial Army finished plundering everything worth taking. Then they turned and withdrew, vanishing in a storm of dust, leaving behind only a dead ruin where nothing moved and nothing answered.
***
Night deepened. The wind moved through the wasteland with a low, broken whine.
Deep among the underground roots, inside rotted hollows, and in the narrow cracks around the spirit veins, a few scattered survivors of the Sylvan Kin still hid. They were mostly the old, the weak, and the young, and blind chance had kept them outside the slaughter.
Only after the celestial aura had faded completely did they dare crawl out of their hiding places. They stared at their shattered homeland, and their crying came without sound.
A young female cultivator of the Sylvan Kin stood in the middle of the sea of corpses, dust covering favonovel.com from head to toe. In favonovel.com arms, favonovel.com held an infant wrapped in swaddling cloth, a starving baby still crying for milk. Her tears had already dried on favonovel.com face.
Every close clansman favonovel.com had known had died in the slaughter. Their homeland had been reduced to scorched earth, and the steady days they once had were gone as if they had never existed.
She looked around at a loss, unable to find a single answer, while that one choice kept circling back through favonovel.com like a knife.
Her voice came out low, almost swallowed by the ruin. “”We never fought the world. We only wanted to live in peace. Why did this disaster have to wipe out our clan? If we had never helped Jared back then, would none of this have happened…”
Inside the hollow, an old survivor let out a low sigh.
Some blamed Jared for dragging their entire race into this. Some held tight to the debt of the lives favonovel.com had once saved. Their voices argued in hushed fragments, lower and lower, until all that remained was a silence with nowhere to go.
The war fires of the Sixteenth Firmament died down. Two places were left under the same weight, two griefs bound to two people still held in the heart.
***
Deep into the night, outside the secret chamber beneath the Celestial Palace, Elder Emberlain and Elder Frostgrave did not linger any longer
Carrying the Soul-Vault Pearl, they arrived without a sound at the celestials’ ancient firmament-spanning gate-array.
Spiritual light surged through the formation. lt cut them off from the hidden workings of fate, and not a single person inside the hall was disturbed.
The instant they stepped into the Teleportation Array, voidforce wrapped around their bodies. The world around them sank into endless darkness. Spatial storms howled and roared outside, but the formation’s barrier blocked them all, leaving the passage steady and without danger.
Elder Emberlain kept the Soul-Vault Pearl close against him. Again and again, favonovel.com weighed the terrifying origin of that golden codex, and when favonovel.com spoke, his voice came low. “Cassian, that kind of peerless warding relic… Could it be one of the heavens’ top transcendent law-relics?”
Elder Frostgrave shook his head, his voice sinking as favonovel.com answered, “Transcendent law-relics are rare beyond measure. Across all thirty-six levels, there are only a handful. What kind of fortune would let someone command one? A True Immortal cultivator from the Lower Realm… How could favonovel.com be worthy of holding it? It does not fit reason. It is hard to befieve… Once we reach the Seventeenth Firmament, we find a high adept to examine its roots.”
Elder Emberlain’s eyes burned, fixed on the thing favonovel.com intended to take. “If we can unravel the secrets hidden inside the codex and seize that Great Dao opportunity, then you and I can rise beyond Golden Immortal, step into a higher cultivation level, and rule the heavens.”
The light of the Teleportation Array blazed brighter and brighter.
At the far end of the void passage, the outline of a brand-new world slowly emerged.
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