Kaelan extends his authority, letting it sink into the rule network of the world, and calmly investigates the four beings attempting to break through to the third stage of transcendence.
The first lies near the capital of the Night Dynasty.
A Heavenly Official.
Kaelan's expression tightens slightly. From that figure, he senses almost no life fluctuation at all. If not for the faint, unmistakable tremor of a soul, he would have mistaken the Heavenly Official for a spiritual treasure rather than a living being. It is rigid, precise, and unnervingly complete, more artefact than human.
His gaze shifts.
The second stands deep within a forest, above a quiet lake, beneath a roiling tribulation cloud.
Jin Yinji.
"No," Kaelan corrects himself coldly. "Isla. The Goddess of Day."
His eyes narrow as he senses wizard fluctuations woven into her aura.
"She turned to the Wizard Way?"
The thought unsettles him. Isla does not need cultivation. Even without walking the Wizard Way, she could slowly restore her demigod-level strength through her innate authority alone. She would never abandon her original path without reason.
"What do you want?" Kaelan thinks.
In his mind, Isla's choice reeks of intent. She is not like others who seek power out of desperation or opportunity. Whatever drove her here is deliberate.
His attention moves again.
The third presence feels familiar.
Ariel.
She, too, has turned to the Wizard Way.
Kaelan does not dwell on her. Unlike Isla, Ariel's choice makes sense. Both are innate beings, yet they are separated by an unbridgeable gulf. Isla was born a divine being, entering the world already at demigod-level cultivation. Ariel, by contrast, climbed her way up from the mortal realm step by step. For her, abandoning the Demon Refining Qi path in favour of a superior system like the Wizard Way is a rational decision, not a conspiracy.
Then Kaelan's gaze reaches the fourth.
Ge Qiu.
The moment he senses him, Kaelan suppresses the surge of murderous intent that rises instinctively from his core. He forces himself not to look too closely at the sword in Ge Qiu's hand.
When he was still at the second stage, such attention would not have mattered. Back then, gazing at a spiritual treasure-grade weapon would have been nothing more than appreciation.
Now, it is different.
Now, his authority carries weight.
A spiritual treasure already possesses awareness. A stage-four sword—one realm higher in quality—is far more than that. It has intelligence comparable to an artificial mind, capable of perception, judgment, and response.
If Kaelan's attention lingers, the sword will notice.
And if the sword notices him, it may react.
That reaction could range from hostility to something far worse: accelerating the invasion of the Sword Immortal World, or marking him as a threat that must be erased.
Kaelan does not know how the nine swords would respond.
They might ignore him.
They might attempt to kill him.
They might hasten a calamity he is not yet ready to face.
He will not gamble on ignorance.
Kaelan withdraws his gaze immediately, severing the connection before it deepens.
Only then does he return his attention to the present.
Veena stands nearby, the pale bone mask covering her face. Behind her, her holy spirit manifests in silent vigilance, death energy coiling calmly yet lethally around her form.
Instead of drawing her holy spirit into the mask, she does the opposite.
Her body elementalises, dissolving into streams of death energy that flow inward, merging fully with her holy spirit. In that moment, her holy spirit becomes her true vessel. As the fusion completes, her aura surges upward, dense and oppressive, and dark tribulation clouds begin to gather overhead.
Kaelan does not find this strange.
The natal treasure was never meant to merely assist her—it is meant to replace the physical body. Cutting the chains would destroy the mortal shell, and the mask would serve as the anchor for rebirth. That was always the logic.
So, making the natal treasure the physical body before or after the tribulation doesn't matter.
But after he advanced, he knew the chain didn't need to be cut, but pulled out.
He thought that after she occupies her natal treasure with her holy spirit, then he was going to mention it.
But she is rushing.
Rushing because of the four simultaneous breakthroughs across the world.
If Veena cuts them, she will still lose her body. If she pulls them out, she can extract herself from the World Will's restraint without erasing her existence. Veena does not know this. She may intend to occupy the mask only after breaking through, unaware that destruction is not a requirement.
Kaelan's expression hardens.
He shouts, his voice carrying authority that pierces through the rising storm.
"Don't cut the chains."
Veena's aura wavers slightly.
"Send your power through the chains," Kaelan continues, floating higher, eyes fixed on her. "Pull them out."
Above them, the tribulation clouds thicken, rotating faster, darker, heavier. The air vibrates with pressure as death-aspected thunder gathers, the sky rumbling like a suppressed roar, poised to strike.
Kaelan hovers in silence, watching, waiting.
Time stretches.
Hours pass as Veena struggles within her holy spirit form, learning to transmit force through the chains rather than severing them outright. Each movement sends tremors through the clouds above.
And when she finally reaches for the last chain—
The sky answers.
Death thunder descends.
Veena does not defend the first four strikes.
They slam into her elemental form one after another, death energy tearing apart and reforming in violent cycles. Each bolt scours her existence, but she stands unmoving, teeth clenched, forcing herself to endure. This is the price of ascent.
From the fifth thunder onward, she begins to fight back.
Death spells erupt from her hands, lances and waves of annihilating energy colliding with the falling thunder. The power of the strikes is weakened, broken apart mid-descent, but the backlash still reaches her. By the sixteenth thunder, her body is visibly destabilising. Portions of her elemental form scatter and reform too slowly. Her outline flickers, incomplete.
The seventeenth thunder falls.
Veena no longer hesitates.
The bone mask flares.
A pale, ancient light unfolds from its surface, forming a protective radiance around her. The thunder crashes against it, shaking the air, but fails to break through. The mask hums, absorbing, analysing, dispersing.
From the seventeenth to the twenty-fourth thunder, the mask becomes her shield.
Each strike lands heavier than the last, but within the protective light, Veena begins to recover. Death energy flows back into her, rebuilding what was shattered, stabilising her form even as the tribulation rages.
Kaelan watches in silence.
Beyond the immediate battlefield, wizards gather along the borders of Chen Kingdom and Ren Kingdom, unable to approach but unwilling to look away. Among them, two auras catch his attention—familiar, distinct.
Lin Zian.
Minyu.
Kaelan glances at them briefly, then returns his focus to Veena.
The twenty-fifth thunder descends.
Veena answers with everything she has.
She raises her hand, and a spell manifests that Kaelan recognises instantly.
Death Hound.
A massive hound formed entirely of condensed death energy erupts into existence, its eyes burning with cold hunger. It charges upward, leaping into the falling thunder. Its jaws snap shut, tearing chunks of the lightning apart, swallowing and erasing it as it plunges straight into the tribulation cloud itself.
The sky responds with fury.
The cloud roars.
The hound is blasted back down, its form torn apart, dissolving into scattered wisps of death energy.
Then comes the twenty-sixth thunder.
Faster.
Sharper.
More concentrated than any before.
It strikes Veena directly.
The protective light shatters. The force drives her downward like a meteor, smashing her into the marshland below. The earth collapses inward, forming a deep crater filled instantly with seeping water and shattered terrain.
Silence hangs for a breath.
Then, slowly, Veena rises.
Her body is barely holding together, death energy leaking uncontrollably. She staggers upright within the crater, half her form fractured, her outline unstable.
And then—
The final thunder falls.
The twenty-seventh.
Kaelan's breath catches.
The thunder obliterates the crater entirely. The ground caves in further, water exploding outward, mud and shattered earth thrown high into the air. When the light fades, Veena's body lies at the centre, face down, half-destroyed, motionless.
For a heartbeat, the world seems to stop.
Then—
The tribulation cloud turns gold.
Heaven and earth origin energy pours downward like a sacred flood, enveloping Veena completely. Her shattered form begins to glow. Death energy stabilises, deepens, transforms. Her aura surges outward, no longer restrained, no longer incomplete.
Third Stage of Transcendence.
The origin energy fades.
The golden cloud disperses.
Veena rises slowly into the air, hovering above the ruined marshland. Waves of death magic spread from her body, seeping into the land below, transforming water, soil, and air alike. The marshland darkens, reshaped into a domain steeped in death-aspected magic.
Minutes pass.
Veena opens her eyes.
Kaelan moves toward her at once, descending into the haze of death magic that now blankets the entire region.