The battle began with a shimmer.
Themos stood atop a shattered pillar of ice, his regal armor shimmering in the pale moonlight. With a cruel smile, he gathered ethereal frost between his palms and launched a barrage of jagged ice lances toward Jalen. The crowd gasped—twenty-nine elite cultivators from the top twenty sects and royal families, including the Peak Imperial Realm dignitaries, watched with bated breath.
But Jalen was no ordinary youth.
He vanished. Or so it seemed.
The moment Themos released the attack, Jalen shimmered—then fractured like scattered beams of sunlight.
His body blurred, slipping between radiant paths that cut through the night air, moving not with speed but through sequence—light ray to light ray, directionless and flawless. It was no dash. No teleport. It was Luminous Veil Step, a technique that flowed through luminance itself.
The crowd blinked.
And suddenly—Jalen was gone from where he had stood, and reappeared inches from Themos, blade already pulsing in his hand like condensed dawn.
Themos flinched too late.
Jalen's strike whispered through armor and pride, Luminal Edge carving a deep wound across the prince's chest. Ice cracked. Blood froze midair.
Not because Themos was weak. Because he was arrogant.
He hadn't sensed it… hadn't recognized that the boy before him—no older than sixteen—was a mid Spirit Fusion Realm cultivator, a whole sub-realm above him.
The crowd erupted in disbelief. From rogue cultivators to Imperial disciples—shock ignited the air. Tera's breath caught as she stared. Even Lloyd, the seventeen-year-old Star Realm prodigy, watched silently. For Jalen to so easily tear down someone not only strong but also of royal blood… it transcended everything they knew about power scaling. And to top it all—Jalen held back.
Themos had survived only because he was the brother of Jalen's father's fiancée. Lara Tenison.
The thought of her brought another flicker. His father, Jaquan Hewitt. His little brother—the power child—was likely walking freely now in the living realm, leaving ruin in his wake. Jalen couldn't wait to meet him.
But now wasn't the time for reflection. It was time for retribution.
Normally, Jalen wouldn't choose slaughter. Precision was his creed, restraint his instinct. But this moment demanded something else—decisiveness. Mercy, now, would be a gamble he couldn't afford.
If the sect and royal elites survived, they wouldn't retreat. They'd regroup. Retaliate. And Lloyd, bearer of the Supreme Grade Spirit Light Saber, would become their first target. Then him for being a cultivation anomaly. Jalen knew this pattern well.
The Ruona continent's royal family had once hunted him for defying cultivation norms. It nearly cost him everything. Waiting had meant surrender. Hesitation had invited ruin.
He'd learned the hard way: when power threatens the system, the system strikes back.
If he let them live, chaos would follow. If he didn't, consequences would still come. But at least he'd choose the battlefield—not be dragged into it.
So Jalen acted—not out of vengeance, but necessity.
Without a word, the world went dark. A yawning shroud rolled outward, swallowing sky and land. Two hundred and fifty feet of terrain vanished beneath ink—a dense shadow field pulsing with power. Within, reality shifted. Sound died. Light bled. Time felt fragmented.
He had cast Shadow Domain Compression.
Inside the newly unfurled domain, every inch bent to his rhythm. The air collapsed into silence. Qi drained. Movement echoed like whispers. Jalen became omniscient—able to detect, defend, and dominate.
Then came the spears.
Silent Spear Manifestation.
Dozens of shadow-forged projectiles launched from his aura, piercing pressure nodes and meridian anchors. Imperial Realm cultivators dropped mid-air, limbs useless, qi scrambled.
A Spirit Fusion expert charged.
Jalen summoned Dusk Rend Spiral—a cyclone of orbiting blades that tore through formations and shredded defenses. The expert faltered, overwhelmed by the sheer density of shadow force.
Five cultivators remained.
Jalen cast Echo Twin Manifestation, surrounding them with echoes of himself. They struck, distracted, and confused. He swapped places mid-combat using Eclipsed Motion, appearing where they least expected.
One tried to flee.
Jalen whispered the seventh form—Shadow Devour.
The enemy's own shadow rose like a tide, consuming their qi, aura, and spiritual threads. They didn't scream. They simply vanished.
Then came Shadow Surge Overdrive.
Jalen absorbed ambient shadow, his speed and strength surging. He moved like a storm—fluid, ruthless, elegant. He severed pathways. Collapsed formation anchors. Reversed energy flows.
The final cultivator trembled.
Jalen didn't strike.
He cast Puppet Eclipse Control, manipulating the man's own shadow to force him to kneel.
And then…
Silence.
The shadow domain withdrew. The Vault floor teemed with echoes. Lloyd, though he knew how strong Jalen was, had never experienced him in a battle. In fact, he didn't even see what happened—he was cloaked by the shadows. But what happened here… he had no words to describe.
He didn't just witness power. He witnessed a truth: Jalen wasn't just ahead of the system. He was outside it.
Tera stood stunned. She had fought Imperial-level beasts. Battled sect prodigies. But this… This was devastation sculpted in silence.
Every eye in the Vault—disciples from the top sects and royal families, rogue cultivators—watched Jalen step forward.
No cheers. No curses.
Just awe.
Because what do you say… when a sixteen-year-old annihilates the ceiling of your cultivation system?