The King Of Warriors novel (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5508

That killing intent hung so thick it seemed to leech warmth from the very stones beneath their knees.

The Soul Urn had always been the beating black heart of the Malevolent Path Hall. Inside that bone-white vessel drifted nearly a thousand shimmering soul threads—each one a captive whisper torn from some unlucky cultivator, each one refined into raw power the hall intended to swallow and wield.

Now the urn lay in smoking shards, and the harvest of souls had scattered like ash on the wind. For Stebarin, the loss struck like a hammer to the ribs; his grand design staggered, and fury rushed in to fill the gap.

Worse still, his people had already paid the Celestial Palace in mountains of celestial gems to keep the urn fed. It had been days—perhaps hours—from reaching capacity, and then, at the very brink of success, everything had gone catastrophically, irreversibly wrong.

Back on level six, the moment Stebarin sensed the Soul Devourer's defeat, he slipped into the shadows and fled up to level seven without a sound. He had consoled himself with the thought that Jared would need weeks—months, even—to breach this higher realm. Yet here the man stood, arriving like a thunderclap far sooner than any calculation should have allowed, turning every one of Stebarin's careful estimates into dust.

"Sir, Jared Chance didn't just smash the Soul Urn. He absorbed every last soul thread inside it to fuel his own cultivation!" The kneeling cultivator's voice shook so violently that it scraped the air. Terror hollowed out his face, as though Jared were already at his back, blade raised for the kill.

"What?" Stebarin's single word crashed through the hall like a falling mountain.

He surged to his feet. Oily black mist poured from his pores, twisting into tendrils that clawed across the vaulted ceiling like the arms of some waking demon.

The notion of siphoning souls for personal ascension was a secret art even most Demonic Cultivators dared not attempt—an abomination whispered about in night-hushed corridors. That Jared could wield it proved the man hid more forbidden mysteries than Stebarin could count.

A tremor of unease slid beneath his rage. How many other secrets does that man carry under his skin?

"Spread my command! Turn level seven upside down if you must, but bring me Jared Chance. Alive if possible—dead if necessary, but I will lay eyes on him either way!"

The command boomed through the chamber, thunder echoing off stone.

"Yes, sir!" the gathered cultivators roared, eyes flaring with ruthless resolve, every one of them suddenly a soldier marching toward war.

Boots hammered the marble floor as they whirled and vanished into the outer corridors, their retreating footsteps a volley of urgent drumbeats that faded into silence.

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