The void was a canvas of chaos, painted with the desperate lights of shattered domains and dying spells.
The first wave of cultivators who had charged the Crimson Vital frontline with eager, bloodthirsty grins were now scrambling backward in sheer terror. Their retreat left trails of crystallized blood and abandoned weapons spinning through the emptiness. They had plunged into the front expecting to bully fragile alchemists for easy, early kills. Instead, they had struck a fortress of monsters who simply refused to die, their lines unbroken and their counterattacks devastating.
Realizing the nightmare they had walked into, the surviving vanguard broke off their assault. Retreating frantically from the Crimson Vital formation, they turned their weapons and redirected their offensive toward the other fronts. If blood had to be spilled today, they vastly preferred facing traditional warriors over the undying.
But not all enemies withdrew.
Those who remained before the Crimson Vital frontline were no longer the careless cultivators who had rushed forward with contempt in their eyes. The weak, arrogant, and poorly equipped had already learned their lesson.
The cultivators advancing now were different. These were no longer the standard disciples carrying ordinary sect-issued weapons. They were inner disciples and battlefield specialists trained for true war.
Even so, the immediate pressure on the Crimson Vital front had reduced, and the Crimson Vital disciples did not remain idle. Several squads shifted formation and extended their support toward the Thousand Veils Sect frontline beside them, reinforcing areas where shadow cultivators had become entangled in prolonged clashes.
Healing rings flashed among wounded assassins, green light washing over burns and severed tendons. Spatially extended spears intercepted enemies attempting to surround Thousand Veils scouts. Barrier staffs deployed defensive fields at critical gaps, giving injured cultivators time to withdraw before being overwhelmed.
A Thousand Veils' elder watched the reinforcements arrive, his expression unreadable beneath his mask. He had expected the Crimson Vital disciples to collapse under sustained assault. Instead, they held. And now they were sharing their strength.
For a brief period, the joint frontline stabilized, the Crimson Vital Sect and Thousand Veils Sect forming a far more dangerous wall than any of the opposing armies had expected.
Then the second wave struck.
From the direction of the Ashen Vortex Sect's forces, a group of core disciples surged forward. Their robes and armor burned with dark red patterns, and each carried fire-based weapon artifacts. Heat rippled from their weapons in visible waves, distorting the void around them.
Unlike the earlier vanguard, they did not charge blindly. Their formation spread as they advanced, each cultivator maintaining calculated distance from the others, preventing grouped attacks while allowing their domains to overlap just enough for coordinated suppression.
One of them, a tall young man with ember-red eyes and a long saber wreathed in black flame, looked toward the Crimson Vital frontline with a grim expression.
"To think we were sent here to handle an alchemy sect," he muttered, his voice carrying through the formation.
A woman beside him, her hair bound tightly behind her head and her gauntlets glowing with internal heat, gave a bitter laugh. "Look carefully before you keep calling them pill refiners. The first wave said the same thing, and now half of them are drifting behind us in pieces."
Another core disciple clicked his tongue, his spear spinning once in his grip. "Who would have thought alchemists could grow to this level? They are fighting like a combat sect."
"No," the ember-eyed man said, his gaze narrowing as he studied the Crimson Vital formation. His saber tilted slightly, black flames crawling along the edge. "They are not fighting like any combat sect I know. They are using weapons, artifacts, healing, formations, and authority in separate layers. Whoever trained them knew exactly how battlefield suppression works."
The woman with the gauntlets exhaled sharply, the heat within her fists rising until the space around her knuckles trembled. "Then we stop treating them like alchemists."
She raised her hand, and several cultivators behind her immediately activated a set of purple-silver formation tokens. The tokens spun in the void, spreading into a circular formation around the Ashen Vortex core disciples. Purple spatial rules flickered outward, weaving together into a suppressive field that blanketed the area ahead.
The ember-eyed man spoke coldly. "Deploy the Space-Severing Field. Disable their spatial movement artifacts first."
The formation ignited. A silent pulse spread through the surrounding battlefield, invisible to most eyes but instantly felt by the Crimson Vital disciples. Space around them hardened, becoming sluggish and unresponsive. The spatial movement rings on several disciples' hands flickered once, then dimmed. The inscriptions did not shatter, nor were the artifacts destroyed, but the arcane space concept they relied upon could no longer connect properly with the surrounding rules.
Several Crimson Vital scouts noticed the problem immediately. One pressed his ring, felt nothing, and cursed under his breath. It did not prevent space from being manipulated through authority, but it blocked the direct activation of arcane space inscriptions embedded in artifacts.
"The space rings are blocked!"
"Arcane space suppression field!"
"Switch protocols!" the squad leaders commanded, and the Crimson Vital formation adjusted almost instinctively.
Those who relied heavily on spatial rings retreated half a step into protected positions, while disciples whose weapon artifacts depended on pressure, gravity, heat, binding, and direct force moved forward to hold the line. Support cultivators raised defensive barriers, shimmering walls of compressed mana forming between the frontline and incoming attacks. Mid-range fighters shifted their weapons toward non-spatial inscriptions, their movements disciplined enough to show that they had trained for exactly this kind of battlefield disruption.
Yet it was not that simple. The Ashen Vortex core disciples struck with brutal efficiency. Sabers wreathed in black flame collided against Crimson Vital weapons, and instead of shattering, they held firm.
Gauntlets punched through defensive barriers with concentrated explosive force, cracks spiderwebbing across mana constructs before they collapsed entirely. Spears formed from molten essence stabbed through the void, their tips carrying heat intense enough to distort nearby domains, leaving wavering trails of scorched reality.
The same glaive-wielding Crimson Vital disciple who had earlier slain an enemy commander stepped forward once more. Her weapon spun in her hands, silver-blue inscriptions flaring along the blade as she met the ember-eyed saber wielder head-on.
Their first clash sent a shockwave rippling through the void, forcing several nearby cultivators from both sides to adjust their positions.
The saber wielder's eyes narrowed, his grip tightening on his weapon. "You are strong."
The glaive-wielding disciple did not answer immediately. She twisted her wrists, redirected the force of his saber, then drove the butt of her glaive toward his chest. He blocked with his forearm, the armor there glowing red as the impact pushed him backward several meters.
Only then did she speak, licking her lips with a faint, fierce smile. "You sound surprised."
"I am," he admitted, his expression hardening. "You should not be this good."
Her eyes sharpened, amusement dancing behind the focus. "Hehehe… then keep being surprised."
She lunged again, the glaive carving a wide arc through the void. The weapon's inscription activated, compressing pressure along the blade's edge until the strike carried the force of a collapsing world.
The saber wielder met it with black flame, his artifact releasing a controlled burst that dispersed part of the pressure before it could land fully. The two attacks collided, and the resulting explosion threw both of them apart. Debris and fragments of broken mana scattered in all directions.
Around them, the same pattern unfolded everywhere. Crimson Vital disciples were no longer cutting through enemies without resistance. The Ashen Vortex core disciples knew how to fight, how to preserve authority, how to use artifacts without wasting energy, and how to coordinate suppression fields with offensive pressure. Weapons clashed with equal force, and domains pressed against domains without immediate collapse. For the first time since the war had begun, the Crimson Vital frontline was pushed into a true contest.
"This is ridiculous," one Ashen Vortex woman growled as she exchanged blows with a Crimson Vital swordsman. Her flaming gauntlets hammered into his blade again and again, each impact sending sparks and molten fragments scattering through the void. "Why does every single one of them have a customized artifact?"
"Why don't you ask after you survive?" the Crimson Vital swordsman replied, his voice steady despite the blood trickling from a cut above his eye.
She snarled and kicked him backward. But the frustration in her eyes remained. It was not fear exactly. It was something harder for a proud core disciple to accept: recognition. The realization that the enemies before them were not weaker, not inferior, not sheltered alchemists pretending at war, but equals, was difficult for her to swallow.
The battle continued, neither side collapsing. The Crimson Vital disciples lost ground in some places, regained it in others, and suffered wounds that even their healing artifacts could not endlessly erase. Green light flickered across torn flesh, knitting muscle and sealing cuts, but the essence crystals powering those rings gradually dimmed. The Ashen Vortex core disciples paid for every step forward with blood, yet they continued advancing, determined to prove that combat sect disciples still stood above alchemists, no matter how much preparation the latter had received.
Then, near the center of the local clash, one Crimson Vital disciple reached his limit.
He was a young man wielding a long-handled hammer, his weapon designed to deliver delayed pressure bursts after impact. He had already crushed two enemy cultivators earlier in the battle, their bodies reduced to pulp by strikes that detonated seconds after landing. But now his movements had slowed. His left arm hung limp, burned nearly to the bone, the flesh blackened and cracked.
The healing ring on his finger had dimmed completely. Its essence crystal was empty. He tried to activate his spatial movement ring, but the Space-Severing Field held firm, preventing the arcane space inscription from responding.
An Ashen Vortex core disciple noticed immediately. His lips curled into a predatory smile. "Out of tricks?"
The Crimson Vital disciple gritted his teeth and attempted to raise his hammer, but his injured arm refused to respond properly. His domain flickered around him, unstable from willforce exhaustion. He tried to form a defensive authority technique, but the command collapsed before it could complete, fragments of intent scattering uselessly.
The enemy spear descended toward him.
Several nearby Crimson Vital disciples saw the attack and tried to intervene, but they were locked in their own battles. The glaive-wielding disciple turned sharply, her eyes widening, but she was too far away. The spear thrust forward with lethal precision, aimed directly at the young man's chest.
The strike landed.
Or rather, it should have.
At the exact instant the spear was about to pierce through his heart, the Crimson Vital disciple vanished.
The spear passed through empty space.
The Ashen Vortex core disciple froze, his eyes widening in disbelief. His spear continued its trajectory, stabbing nothing. "What the hell?"
He spun around violently, searching for the target. His head whipped left, then right, scanning frantically. The Space-Severing Field was still active. The disciple had been too injured to use authority, and his spatial ring had already failed. There had been no visible portal, no fluctuation of arcane space, no authority command, nothing.
"How did he teleport?" the enemy shouted, voice cracking slightly. "We blocked space. He couldn't even move."
Far behind the Crimson Vital frontline, within the protected interior of one of their warships, the wounded disciple appeared on the floor of a medical chamber. He gasped, clutching his chest as several support cultivators rushed toward him. His breathing came in ragged bursts. Space around him rippled faintly, and beside him stood Kaelar, his expression calm as he withdrew his hand.
"Stabilize him," Kaelar instructed. "His ring is exhausted, and his willforce is damaged."
The support cultivators froze for a fraction of a second, stunned by the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar Peak Rule Stage being, but their training forced them into motion immediately. They carried the wounded disciple toward the treatment formation without asking questions.
Outside, hidden in the folds of the battlefield, Octaven appeared beside Kaelar without disturbing the surrounding space. His gaze remained fixed on the greater battlefield, his expression no longer casual.
Kaelar glanced toward him, "Did you notice it?"
Octaven nodded slowly, "Yes. We are not the only Peak Rule Stage beings moving silently through this war."
Kaelar's eyes narrowed, "Hidden guards?"
"Not guards," Octaven replied, shaking his head once. "Hunters… There are several of them. It seems the sects kept additional Peak Rule Stage cultivators concealed outside, waiting for opportunities to slaughter high-value targets."
Kaelar's expression darkened, his hands curling into fists, "Scheming even after separating the leaders from the armies. These sects are thorough."
"Of course they are," Octaven said, his voice turning cold. "This is a war for supremacy, Kaelar. Honor is just a decoration in war. Victory is all that matters."
For a brief moment, both men looked toward the battlefield where Crimson Vital disciples continued fighting. These were Adrian's people, and the order given to them had been simple: do not allow them to die.
Octaven's eyes sharpened, "Let us take care of them."
Kaelar smiled faintly, and for the first time since his liberation, something predatory returned to his expression, "It has been a million years since I hunted someone worthy."
The two figures vanished without another word.