The moment Jayden stepped through the dimensional veil with Mira and Nia beside him, the world changed completely.The cool forest air outside vanished, replaced by heat, dust and something bitter enough to burn the back of the throat. Jagged black cliffs rose on every side like broken blades, their surfaces scarred by ancient cuts that looked far too deep to have been formed naturally, while the sky above them stretched in a dark crimson sheet without a trace of ordinary blue. Far in the distance, crooked mountain ranges disappeared beneath violet haze, and strange flashes of light occasionally moved behind the clouds as though storms had been trapped there for thousands of years without ever ending.Nia stopped walking for a moment and stared upward.“It’s red.”Mira kept one hand close to her daughter as she took in the unfamiliar landscape. “I noticed.”Nia tilted her head, still studying the sky before glancing at the black ground beneath their feet. “I don’t like this place’s c

Before anyone in the gorge could fully process what had just happened, Nia smelled the roasted aroma.Her head turned toward the nearest pile of charred Blood-Soul Centipedes, and curiosity immediately replaced whatever caution Mira hoped their six-year-old daughter possessed. While the Azure Cloud disciples remained frozen on the cliffs above, Nia slipped away from her mother’s side and hurried toward one of the smoking carcasses. The creature’s shell had cracked open from the heat, exposing pale flesh beneath the darkened armor, and one long leg had broken cleanly from the body.Mira realised what her daughter was doing half a second too late. “Nia, don’t...”The warning never finished, Nia picked up the crispy leg and bit into it.A loud crunch echoed through the suddenly quiet gorge.Every Azure Cloud disciple staring from above seemed to forget how to breathe.These were Blood-Soul Centipedes, ancient poisonous beasts that had evolved inside a prehistoric battlefield saturated wi

Seraphina gritted her teeth as she pushed herself back to her feet. The force from Mira’s earlier strike still burned across her shoulder, but what hurt more was the sight of the Azure Cloud disciples watching her with stunned faces. She was their Saintess, the prodigy praised since childhood, yet a woman she had dismissed as a mortal had blocked her sword twice and forced her backward in front of everyone. Her fingers tightened around the hilt until her knuckles turned pale, and the anger in her eyes sharpened into something colder.She stopped underestimating Mira.Neen rushed through Seraphina’s body as she lowered her sword beside her hip, and a pale mist began gathering around her feet. The air around the spring changed with it. Thin streams of cloud curled across the ground before rising around her body, hiding parts of her figure while the ancient sword in her hand gave off a clear ringing sound. Several Azure Cloud disciples immediately moved farther away when they recognised

The colossal azure palm descended over the valley like a piece of the sky had broken loose.Its shadow swallowed the Divine Lotus spring first, then spread across the surrounding cliffs while the pressure beneath it crushed loose stones into powder. The Azure Cloud disciples had already retreated as far as they could, yet even from the edges of the valley they struggled to remain standing. Seraphina was being supported by two disciples near the cliff wall, her ruined sword forgotten at her feet as she watched the technique come down with a mixture of awe and hatred. To everyone from the Azure Cloud Sect, this was the end. Their Patriarch had stopped restraining himself, and no mortal cultivator standing beneath that palm should have survived.Mira did not retreat.She moved closer to Nia instead, one arm coming around their daughter tighter while she watched Jayden. She could feel the terrifying force descending from above, but she had lived beside him long enough to know when he was

Several months passed quickly after the Azure Cloud Sect was completely driven from Skyreach, and for once, those months were not filled with enemies breaking through the city gates or arrogant cultivators arriving with threats. The sealed Primordial Rift remained under Jayden’s control, its ancient valleys now supplying Skyreach with herbs, spirit soil and rare materials that had not been seen in the outside world for generations. Rather than allowing the treasures to disappear into private storehouses, Jayden began using them to change the city itself.The first thing he built was something most citizens never even saw.For several nights, Jayden moved across the outer districts while the city slept, placing formation stones beneath roads, watchtowers, reservoirs and old sections of the city wall. Some were buried deep enough that ordinary formation masters would never find them, while others were hidden inside structures that had existed for decades. He used high-grade beast cores