CHAPTER 35 — The Chaos
The sky over the Jagged Flats was the color of a bruised lung.
Frostmere City was a glimmering memory behind them, its artificial warmth replaced by a wind that tasted of iron and ancient stone.
Below, the terrain was a labyrinth of obsidian shards and deep, narrow fissures—a place where shadows didn't just fall; they pooled.
Kael sat at the head of the flying beast, his hands steady on the reins, but his gaze was fixed on the clouds and the fire-aspected qi beneath his skin was restless.
"Twelve," he said quietly.
"Sixteen," Rovan corrected from the rear, his hand never leaving the hilt of his blade. "Four more just broke from the northern ridge. They aren't following the Obsidian Vale."
"No," Kane added, his spear resting across his knees. "The Vale is too big a target. These are the jackals. They're looking for the mid-tier prizes. The ones who spent enough to be worth robbing, but didn't bring an army to protect it."
Ren sat in the center of the formation. The fox was tucked against his side, its fur standing on end.
He didn't need the others to tell him they were being watched. He could feel the Intent. It wasn't the sharp, focused killing intent of the Grimveil Strider; it was a greasy, opportunistic hunger that drifted through the air like smog.
"They're measuring us," Ren said.
Kael glanced back, eyes narrowed. "They see an Initial Core leader and four youngsters. On paper, we're an easy harvest."
"Let's keep it that way," Serik murmured, his fingers tracing a formation seal on the beast's saddle. "If we show our teeth too early, they'll call for reinforcements. If we wait too long, they'll think we're paralyzed."
The first strike came not from the air, but from the shadows below.
A streak of pale light erupted from a fissure, a bone-chilling whistle cutting through the wind. It was a Soul-Piercing Bolt—a specialized tool meant to ground flying beasts.
Kael didn't flinch. He jerked the reins, and the beast banked hard, the bolt whistling past Ren's ear.
"Grounding!" Kael barked. "Brace for impact!"
The beast roared as a second bolt caught its wing-joint. The creature didn't die, but its flight-rhythm shattered. They began a controlled spiral toward the obsidian floor of the Flats.
They hit the ground running.
The moment Ren's boots touched the stone, he felt the Ashen Guard flare to life. He didn't wait for the dust to settle.
Three figures emerged from the obsidian pillars.
They weren't sect members. They were Scavengers—cultivators who had long ago traded their honor for the efficiency of the hunt. Their clothes were mismatched, their auras jagged and unstable.
"Drop the storage rings," the leader rasped. He was a Intermediate-stage Core Realm cultivator, his skin covered in faint, weeping sores from a botched cultivation path. "And we might let you walk back alive."
Kael stepped forward, his flame-aspected qi beginning to leak out, heating the air until the frost on the nearby stones turned to steam.
"You have ten seconds to disappear," Kael said, his voice flat.
The leader laughed, a wet, rattling sound. "Ten seconds? We have three Arbiters currently tearing the Obsidian Vale apart ten miles from here. No one is coming to save you, boy."
He smiled, lips peeling back from yellowed teeth.
"Pavilion trash," he rasped. "Didn't expect only an Initial Core guarding something this expensive."
Kael stepped forward, flame qi leaking into the air.
"You misjudged your prey," he said.
The scavenger leader laughed. "So did you."
The scavenger laughed.
"Cripple the others," he said casually to his men. "Seize the item. Two Initial Cores are more than enough for three Peak Inner Realm brats."
His eyes flicked to Ren once.
Dismissive.
"And the kid?" one of the scavengers asked.
The leader waved a hand. "Ignore him."
He gestured, and his two companions—both Initial Core Realm—lunged.
Kane, Serik, and Rovan met them head-on.
The clash was instant and brutal.
Steel rang. Qi detonated. The ground fractured beneath the pressure.
At first, the Peaks held.
Then the gap showed.
Initial Core Realm was still Core Realm.
After a dozen exchanges, Kane was driven back, blood at the corner of his mouth. Serik's formation shattered under a heavy kick. Rovan blocked desperately, boots skidding across obsidian.
They were being suppressed.
The leader smirked, fully focused on Kael now.
"You're outmatched," he said, drawing his saber. "And you know it."
Ren stood ten steps away.
No one looked at him.
No one sensed the way his breathing slowed.
No one noticed him clench his fist.
Ren didn't activate Vein-Wind Traversal.
He ran.
Straight toward the scavenger fighting Kane, Serik, and Rovan.
The cultivator glanced at him mid-exchange.
An Inner Realm child charging a Core Realm battlefield.
Pathetic.
He turned away, bringing his blade down toward Kane.
That was the moment.
Ren activated Vein-Wind Traversal.
The world snapped.
Distance folded.
One step became nothing.
The scavenger felt it—too late—a distortion in the air, a wrongness brushing his instincts.
Ren's fist connected with his head.
Blazing Sever.
There was no explosion.
No flash.
The qi penetrated.
Then—
BOOM.
The man's skull ruptured from the inside.
Blood and bone erupted outward in a red fountain, spraying across the obsidian as the body collapsed without even twitching.
Dead.
Instant.
If he had raised his guard—if he had reinforced his armor—he would have lived.
But fighting three Peak Inner Realm cultivators, he hadn't bothered.
That arrogance killed him.
The fox didn't flinch. It stood in the spray of red, teeth bared in a silent snarl, its eyes reflecting Ren's cold focus. It wasn't a pet watching a master; it was a shadow watching its source.
Silence split the battlefield.
The remaining scavenger froze.
Ren didn't pause to admire the work. He turned, his gaze scanning the pillars.
The leader's laughter had stopped. He looked at the crumpled body of his companion, then at Ren, who was standing still, breath steady, eyes cold.
"Inner Realm?" the leader hissed, his voice trembling with a mix of fury and dawning fear. "That wasn't an Inner Realm strike."
Ren didn't answer. He just adjusted his footing.
In the distance, a massive explosion rocked the horizon—the Obsidian Vale's struggle reaching a new level of violence. The shockwave rattled the obsidian pillars around them.
The scavengers were the least of their problems. The war for the Edict was spilling over, and the Jagged Flats were about to become a graveyard.
The leader of the scavengers didn't wait for a fair exchange. Seeing his man fall so easily, he triggered a Flash-Fire Talisman.
A blinding white light consumed the space between them.
Ren closed his eyes, relying entirely on Intent Recognition. He felt the leader moving—not toward Kael, but toward the weakest link. Toward him.
The leader's heavy-saber whistled through the air, coated in a corrosive green qi.
Ren didn't retreat.
He felt the Crescent Qi deep in his marrow stir. It didn't surge; it simply provided a foundation that felt immovable.
Ren side-stepped the saber by an inch. He felt the corrosive heat sear the air near his cheek. Using the momentum of the miss, Ren drove his elbow into the leader's sternum.
Ashen Guard absorbed the recoil, protecting Ren's joints from the impact against a Core Realm body.
The leader gasped, air leaving his lungs in a wheeze.
"Kael!" Ren called out.
Kael moved instantly. He didn't hesitate at being signaled by a subordinate; in the heat of the Flats, he had already accepted Ren as a tactical equal. Kael appeared like a blur of steel, his flame sword singing as it crossed the leader's throat.
Clean. Efficient. Final.
The last scavenger didn't hesitate.
He retreated, vanishing into the obsidian maze.
Kael didn't pursue.
Ren loosened his fist.
Only then did he feel the faint tremor in his bones, the echo of Blazing Sever fading back into stillness.
Something moved at his side.
The shadow fox slipped free from Ren's shadow without a sound.
No one stopped it.
At first, they thought it was simply pacing—an animal unsettled by blood and qi. Then it reached the nearest corpse.
The Initial Core Realm scavenger lay broken, his skull collapsed inward, his body already cooling.
The fox lowered its head.
Its jaws opened wider than they should have.
Shadows folded inward, swallowing light.
There was no tearing of flesh.
No spray of blood.
Just a sudden, sickening absence—as if something essential had been pulled out of the world.
When the fox lifted its head again, the scavenger's chest had caved in completely.
The heart was gone.
The fox did not pause.
It moved to the second body.
The Intermediate Core Realm leader.
Kael's fingers tightened on his sword.
If the beast had been ordinary—if it had been anything resembling a normal spirit companion—it would have burst apart the instant it consumed the heart of a Core Realm cultivator.
Instead, the fox devoured it calmly.
Methodically.
When it turned back, its shadowy fur was still black.
Almost.
At certain angles, beneath the shifting darkness, a dim, blood-red tint pulsed faintly—like an afterimage burned into shadow itself.
The fox padded back to Ren and spat two storage rings into his open palm.
Metal clinked softly.
No one spoke.
No one asked what the beast was.
Not because the act was common.
Because something far more unsettling had already lodged itself in their minds.
Kane was the first to look away.
He had fought that Initial Core Realm cultivator head-on.
He knew exactly how much strength, vitality, and raw resilience a Core Realm body possessed.
And yet—
Ren had shattered one with a single punch.
No guards raised.
No armor breached.
Just penetration.
Serik swallowed, his earlier injury throbbing unnoticed.
He was a Peak Inner Realm cultivator.
So was Rovan.
So was Kane.
None of them—not one—could say with certainty that they could replicate what Ren had done.
Not even if the enemy had been careless.
Not even with perfect timing.
Rovan's grip tightened on his blade.
He replayed the moment in his mind.
The speed.
The precision.
The absolute lack of hesitation.
That hadn't been recklessness.
That had been judgment.
Ren accepted the rings without comment and slipped them away. The fox returned to his shadow, its presence heavier now—denser.
Silence returned to their immediate circle, punctuated only by the distant, thunderous booms of the Arbiter-level battle miles away.
Kael stood over the bodies, his expression grim. "They were just the scouts. The noise of that fight will draw more. We can't stay on the Flats."
He turned to Ren. "Your movement... it's more refined than it was in the forest."
"The path settled," Ren replied simply.
Kael nodded, though his eyes lingered on Ren a moment longer. He was recalculating again. Ren wasn't just an asset anymore; he was a combat variable that could actually tilt the scales.
"Serik, how's the beast?" Kael asked.
Serik was already kneeling beside it.
The flying beast lay on its side, breath coming in shallow, uneven pulls. The damage to its wing hadn't worsened—but something else had.
Serik pressed two fingers against the creature's neck, his expression tightening.
"…It's dead," he said quietly.
Kane stiffened. "But the bolts only crippled the wings."
"They were treated," Serik replied, withdrawing his hand. "Not for cultivators. For beasts. A slow-acting poison keyed to their bloodlines. It shut down its core circulation."
Kael exhaled through his teeth.
Scavengers didn't hunt fair. They hunted efficient.
Rovan looked back toward the open Flats. "We can't make it back to the Pavilion on foot. Not with Arbiters tearing the sky apart."
Kael's gaze shifted to the jagged mouth of the Sunless Canyons.
"Then we don't go back," he said. "Not across open ground."
The canyons were death traps under normal conditions—shadow beasts, collapsed paths, things that hunted without sound.
But today, with the sky filled with predatory Arbiters, the shadows were the only safe place left.
"Shadows will hide us," Kael continued. "Here, we're targets. Out there—prey."
"Then we go to the ruins," Kael decided. "If the world is going to tear itself apart for a false Edict, we might as well see what the true one is hiding."
They left the corpse of the beast behind, already stiffening in the cold, and disappeared into the dark veins of the earth—choosing monsters over execution.
_
Chapter End