Chapter 5778

That night, the moon hid, the wind prowled, and the world offered its darkness to anyone bold enough to slip through it.

Jared left the Myriad Beast Sect without rustling a single leaf. Even the little fire unicorn that usually padded after him was ordered to stay behind.

A breath later, he became little more than a pale aqua smear, a suggestion of motion folded into night air. His mastery of spatial footwork crushed distance into mere suggestion-rivers blurred, ridgelines bent, and valleys spun backward beneath his boots as he arrowed toward the Myriad Sword Mountains, that third, lonely vertex of territory claimed by mountain, plain, and beast.

Days later, a serrated silhouette rose off the horizon-a procession of peaks so thin and cruel they resembled titanic blades rammed tip-first into the clouds.

Unlike the age-softened Myriad Beast Mountains or the gore-stained Blood-scar Plains, the Myriad Sword Mountains radiated pure, ascetic sharpness. Unseen sword intent sliced the overcast into silvery ribbons, and even shallow breaths stung the lungs of ordinary travelers.

Jared slowed, absorbing the savage beauty, then veered toward a settlement that clung to the outer ridges like the hilt of a hidden dagger.

The place was called Greenblade Town-largest market under Mystic Sky Sword Sect administration, a crossroads where gossip and contraband traded hands with equal ease. Buildings of quarried blue-gray stone rose in clean, severe angles; nothing here was ornate unless simplicity itself counted as ornament. Sword cultivators moved through the streets in streams-backs straight, steps quiet, eyes glinting like whetted steel. Even their murmurs carried the clipped certainty of a cut that could not be taken back.