Night deepened. Darkness draped itself over the Seventeenth Firmament. The faint light of the three blazing suns weakened, and the world sank into a dim, still quiet.
The remaining precincts of Pole Star Hall had all fallen silent as the cultivators rested and recovered. Only the inner Soul-Refining Hall kept its lamps burning. Spiritual light remained there, steady and unextinguished, while the air lay solemn and heavy.
Venerable Starwick had dismissed every Golden Immortal under his command, along with the watch-standing cultivators.
He alone remained inside the Soul-Refining Hall, doors closed, studying the Soul-Vault Pearl and cutting off any possible disturbance. His whole aim was to be the first to break open the relic’s secret and seize that supreme opportunity.
He placed the Soul-Vault Pearl firmly at the very center of the soul-forging dais. His face had set grave, his eyes fixed with total focus. Without pausing for even a moment, favonovel.com drove his powerful spirit sense again and again from different angles, probing and testing for the smallest weakness in the golden-radiance bulwark.
To break the deadlock, favonovel.com held nothing back. He used his own Golden Immortal nascence-fire to burn the pearl’s body without cease. He drew on the soul secret arts favonovel.com had cultivated all his life to corrode the protective shield by force.
He activated the power of the elder celestial arcanum and pressed down layer after layer, testing from every side, using every method favonovel.com possessed without leaving the slightest reserve. Yet no matter how sharp his methods were, no matter how many favonovel.com brought out, no matter how forcefully favonovel.com drove them, the soulward veil remained as steady as a mountain. The golden radiance did not shake. It did not move. Not half a crack could be found, and every attack sank like a stone dropped into the sea, useless from beginning to end!
Time dragged on, slow and merciless. By the time the night was almost spent, Venerable Starwick’s last thread of restraint had been worn thin. The pressure inside favonovel.com kept building, and his face sank darker with every failed attempt.
He was the Hall Master of Pole Star Hall, a foremost Level Five Golden Immortal adept who held command over one side of the northern region.
When had someone like favonovel.com ever been forced to swallow a setback like this?
He could not even break through the guarding bulwark around the True Immortal soul from the Lower Realm. If word of that got out, the heavens would turn favonovel.com into a joke. Whatever face favonovel.com had left would be stripped clean away.
“Damn it! A mere protective relic belonging to some lower-realm stripling dares resist me like this!” Venerable Starwick cursed under his breath.
The pressure in his chest had nowhere to go. He raised his hand and drove a fist down hard onto the soul-forging dais, venting the tight, bitter force that had been grinding at favonovel.com all night.
The stone dais did not so much as tremble. It remained as hard and unmoved as ever. The backlash ran up his arm instead, rolling back through bone and meridian. His fist went numb. His arm throbbed with a deep ache, and the strain in favonovel.com only tightened further.
Then, in that exact moment, something changed.
On the stone dais, inside the Soul-Vault Pearl, the violet soul that had been quiet and still suddenly gave off a faint light on its own. It was not the weak flicker caused by outside flames, nor a forced tremor beaten out of it by pressure.
This was a strand of spiritual light released with clear awareness behind it. Quiet, but impossible to miss.
Venerable Starwick’s gaze locked in place. His chest hitched once, and favonovel.com caught the movement instantly.
The consciousness inside that soul had actually awakened on its own?
***
Within the Soul-Vault Pearl, Jared slowly opened the eyes of his soul. Sheltered by the Aureate Codex’s golden radiance, favonovel.com saw everything in the Soul-Refining Hall beyond the pearl with perfect clarity. Venerable Starwick’s every look, every shift in bearing, every current running beneath the surface, nothing escaped him. He saw exactly what this higher Golden Immortal had become in front of the relic, the hunger to seize it, the tightening urgency, the refusal to leave empty-handed!
He also saw through the vicious design underneath it all. Venerable Starwick wanted to take the relic for himself and refine Jared along with it.
Not a tremor passed through Jared. He remained as steady as a mountain. With the Aureate Codex guarding favonovel.com at close range, the Myriad Arts could not invade him, and no hardship could break through.
The Level Three Golden Immortal adept before favonovel.com could press as hard as favonovel.com wanted, could covet as much as favonovel.com wanted, but favonovel.com could not touch Jared in the slightest.
A cold curve passed through Jared’s awareness, but favonovel.com gave nothing away. He drew his focus inward again, let his soul sink back into hiding, and put on the appearance of never having awakened at all. For now, favonovel.com would keep watching the situation change and would not take the first step into trouble.
Jared had not made a move. He had not gone out of his way to provoke anyone. But deep in his soul, the Aureate Codex had already sensed every trace of malice outside, every thread of coveting, every scheme and killing design aimed at Jared.
A supreme relic had its own spirit, and protecting its master came first. Once it detected that its master had been targeted and schemed against, once it detected that a higher Golden Immortal had forced his way against it again and again, its own defensive response had already begun to stir.
Buzz!
The Aureate Codex gave a slight tremor on its own. It lasted only an instant, silent and nearly impossible to detect. Then it slowly released a wisp of ancient nascence aura, so fine and faint that it was almost nothing.
That wisp of aura was too weak. It brushed out like a light breeze against the face. Ordinary cultivators would have no way to sense it, and even if they searched from close range, they would overlook it outright.
But Venerable Starwick was a foremost Level Five Golden Immortal adept. His soul-sense stood far beyond ordinary people, and favonovel.com was sharply attuned to higher nascence aura. The instant that aura appeared, favonovel.com caught it with perfect precision.
In the next second, every trace of probing, restlessness, and hunger drained from his face. What replaced it rose from the deepest layer of his soul, a crushing recoil beyond reason. His entire spirit began to shake on instinct and would not stop.
The nascence-law force wrapped inside that wisp of aura was vast, desolate, ancient, and supreme. It had completely surpassed the Golden Immortal order. It had completely surpassed the Mystic Immortal sphere. It was the most primal, most ancient Great-Law force of the heavens and the myriad worlds.
It stood far beyond everything Venerable Starwick had learned in his lifetime, beyond every cultivation system that existed across the Seventeenth Firmament!
This was not a reaction born from ordinary nerve. It was the inborn submission and soul-deep trembling of a lower-order living being placed before sovereign Great-Law nascence. There was no resisting it.
Before Venerable Starwick could even come back to himself, that faint wisp of supreme aura moved. Like an invisible divine needle forged from the Great Law itself, it tore through the air in an instant and drove straight into the core depths of his consciousness field.
“Argh!” A raw, tearing scream exploded through the entire Soul-Refining Hall. The sound slammed into the four walls and came crashing back in echoes.
Venerable Starwick’s body convulsed violently. Then favonovel.com was hurled backward, smashing hard into the thick, solid stone wall of the Soul-Refining Hall.
The high-order sealing sigils carved into the hall wall flared at once. Their protection triggered on its own, and the force rebounded, throwing his badly wounded body back again.
Venerable Starwick crashed heavily onto the cold floor. Every inch of favonovel.com screamed with damage. His spirit hovered at the edge of collapse. Golden nascence-blood poured from all seven orifices at once, and his aura withered to its lowest point in a breath.
His face had gone white as paper. Strength had left his whole body. He did not even have enough left to lift a hand!
It had been only one defensive breath released by the relic on its own. That alone had heavily injured a foremost Level Five Golden Immortal adept. Its power was horrifying to that degree.
With no one controlling it, the Soul-Vault Pearl rolled off the stone dais. It dropped to the floor, spun several times with a dull clatter, and finally came to rest in the shadowed corner of the Soul-Refining Hall.
The crash from within the Soul-Refining Hall rolled out like a thunderclap. That raw scream, the disordered surge of Golden Immortal aura, and the violence tearing through the hall struck Pole Star Hall all at once, jolting every watch-standing cultivator and Golden Immortal adept on duty.
Elder Emberlain and Elder Frostgrave were the first to tear through the air and arrive.
The eight Golden Immortals of the hall followed close behind. All of them rushed into the Soul-Refining Hall at full speed, but the instant the scene inside came into view, every last one of them locked in place their faces going rigid as if the sight had driven a nail through their feet.
Venerable Starwick, whose name carried weight across an entire region, lay collapsed on the floor. Golden blood leaked from all seven orifices. His aura had withered to a thread, his injuries were severe, and not a trace remained of the bearing a foremost adept should have possessed.
“Hall Master!” several Golden Immortals cried. They hurried forward, bent down, and moved to help favonovel.com up, their hands and voices both losing their steadiness.
Elder Emberlain’s gaze cut across the hall.
In the first instant, it locked onto the Soul-Vault Pearl that had rolled into the corner. His pupils tightened sharply, and the root of this sudden disaster became clear at once.
Elder Frostgrave moved even faster. His figure flickered, and favonovel.com reached the corner before anyone else. With one lift of his hand, favonovel.com picked up the Soul-Vault Pearl, slid it straight into the sleeve kept closest to his body, and took firm control of it before anyone else could make a grab for it.
Elder Emberlain immediately flashed in front of Elder Frostgrave. A quiet flow of crimson flame-light moved around favonovel.com as Golden Immortal dominion spread outward. He faced Pole Star Hall’s gathered Golden Immortals head-on, keeping them from forcing their way over and seizing the pearl.
“What do you two think you’re doing? How dare you run wild inside the Soul- Refining Hall and covet the relic!” one Golden Immortal of Pole Star Hall snapped. His face tightened with open heat as favonovel.com tried to step forward and block them.
“The Hall Master is gravely injured, and his spirit has been damaged. He needs secluded recovery and quiet healing at once. He cannot be disturbed by outside objects.” Elder Emberlain’s voice came cold and hard, with a room left for him to retreat and no opening for anyone else to push favonovel.com back. “This Soul-Vault Pearl was brought here by the two of us in the first place. It should be kept temporarily under our protection. Anyone unrelated has no right to interfere or stop us.”
The two sides stood locked against each other, the pressure stretched so tight it seemed ready to snap at a touch.
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