Chapter 103: The Valley of Thunder and the Night of the Fallen Kings
The Sea of Beasts did not end; it simply fractured.
After days of marching through the suffocating tropical jungle and the corpses of minor abominations, the plant world collapsed abruptly. Before the six Pillars of the Morningstar clan, the earth opened into a colossal, black wound—an abyss with jagged edges of molten rock and volcanic glass.
It was the Thunder Rift Valley.
The air here wasn't breathed; it was suffered. The atmosphere was so saturated with Lightning Qi that the taste of copper and burnt ozone permeated the saliva. The sky above the rift was an unnatural vortex of dense, twisting purple clouds that howled with a dull fury. Every few seconds, an electric arc the thickness of a river descended from the heights, striking the bottom of the canyon with a crash that vibrated the marrow in one's bones.
Kael Morningstar stopped on the obsidian ledge, looking down into the depths. The Whisper of the North on his back hummed softly, reacting to the residual energy of the environment.
—"The Lightning Qi here is a hundred times denser than in the core of our citadel," —Eris whispered. Her white hair floated slightly, defying gravity due to the static. Instead of fear, her eyes reflected a predatory fascination—. "It's a miracle the rock hasn't disintegrated."
—"Don't look at the rock, look at the descent," —Varian (Rank 21) cut her off.
The sniper was crouching at the edge of the abyss. His emerald pupils had been replaced by an intense electric yellow as he kept his [Eagle Vision] active. To Varian, the canyon wasn't just darkness and flashes; it was a three-dimensional web of electromagnetic currents and lethal heat signatures.
—"It's a three-dimensional minefield," —Varian reported, pointing down the drop of more than two kilometers—. "There are routes where the lightning never strikes, vacuum currents created by the pressure. I can see them, but they change every minute. Down there, on the valley floor, there's a camp. Multiple active runic formations. It's a temporary fortress."
Violeta (Rank 2) stepped forward, her single blue eye scanning the spatial distortion.
—"If we fly down, we'll be human lightning rods. If we try to walk down the main path, the sects' alarm arrays will detect us before we've descended a hundred meters."
Kael observed the vertical cliff—a wall of black stone battered by the storm. His face, hardened by the blood of the last few days, showed no hesitation. The clan's tactics did not include retreating.
—"Then we won't use the path. We'll descend through the impact zone. Right through the lightning curtain."
Elara (Rank 6) swallowed hard, looking at the immense columns of purple electricity that annihilated everything in their path.
—"Through the crossfire?"
—"No one guards hell because no one expects anyone to be insane enough to walk into it," —Kael decreed. He looked at his team, assigning roles with the coldness of a frontline general—. "Varian, you are the eyes; mark the path second by second. Violeta, I want you to fold the space around us; deflect the direct hits. Bren, Vanguard; you will be our lightning rod for the residual static. Elara, wrap us in thermal mist; let no one from below see our body heat."
The giant of the Iron Mountain, Bren (Rank 19), banged his armored fists together.
—"Better to die fried than bored. In formation."
The descent was an act of tactical dementia, a millimeter-precise dance with annihilation.
Varian leapt from ledge to ledge, his yellow eyes reading the air. "Left! Arc drop in three seconds!" he transmitted via telepathy. The squad moved in unison.
Violeta broke out in a cold sweat. Her hands constantly drew seals in the air. She didn't create solid shields, but spatial slopes. When a purple lightning bolt fell directly toward them, it struck Violeta's dimensional fold and curved, crashing into the rock a few meters away, showering the group in blinding sparks and obsidian shards.
But the spatial barrier couldn't stop the electromagnetic induction. That's where Bren came in.
The group's tank marched in the lead, his immense basilisk-scale shield held high. He had activated his [Core Anchoring], turning his body as dense as lead. Every time the residual static exceeded the lethal threshold, Bren's body absorbed the discharge. The giant grunted, his muscles suffering micro-tears from the voltage, his skin smelling of burnt meat, but he didn't stop.
Elara maintained the [Shroud of Vitreous Shards], a dense, frigid mist that clung to their bodies. The effort of maintaining the ice in the middle of an ozone furnace made her lips bleed, but the mist did its job: from the bottom of the valley, the six Pillars looked like just another cloud of static descending the stone wall. Eris and Kael brought up the center, keeping their Qi to a minimum so as not to attract discharges, ready to intervene if any member collapsed.
It was an hour of pure agony, cramped muscles, and first-degree burns. But when they finally touched the crystallized bedrock at the bottom of the canyon, they were alive.
They crouched behind an immense promontory of black quartz, about three hundred meters from the center of the valley. The storm raged above them, but down here, the spectacle was even more terrifying.
The valley floor was a massive crater, and in its center, a war of attrition was being waged.
Two banners waved desperately beneath the storm. One was a Silver Sword on blue silk: the Heavenly Sword Sect. The other was a Golden Cauldron surrounded by smoke: the Alchemy Pavilion. Two giants of the Northern Alliance.
But they weren't camping. They were fighting for their lives to maintain an immense runic formation that glowed a bloody red on the valley floor.
—"They're using an Earth Lightning Chain Array," —Varian whispered, his eagle eyes analyzing the flow of Qi—. "It's high-level sealing magic."
And then they saw it. The target of the seal.
In the center of the array, struggling with a rock-shattering fury, was the Guardian Beast. It wasn't a simple lizard. It was a Rift Leviathan.
The aberration was the size of a galleon. It lacked eyes; its head was a dome of bony plates designed for ramming. Its serpentine body was covered in immense black sapphire scales that literally absorbed the lightning strikes from the sky, using them to regenerate its wounds. It was at Stage 1 of Semi-Saint. A calamity of nature.
Around the beast, the scene was hellish. Fifty Alliance disciples formed a concentric circle. They weren't attacking; they were sitting in the lotus position, channeling their own vital Qi into the ground to feed the chain array that kept the Leviathan anchored. They were acting as human batteries. Many of them were bleeding from the eyes and nose, their bodies desiccating, sacrificed by their leaders.
—"Maintain the flow! If the array yields, it will slaughter us all!" —the voice of Jian, the Heavenly Sword prodigy, cut through the din. He wore soot-stained blue robes. His cultivation was at Stage 8 of the Origin Realm, but facing the Semi-Saint, he looked like a child holding a dragon by the tail.
At his side, Lysa, the heiress of the Alchemy Pavilion (Origin Stage 9), threw flask after flask of corrosive poisons at the Leviathan's scales.
—"The marrow-devouring toxin is barely penetrating its armor!" —Lysa screamed, her face disfigured by panic and exhaustion—. "Jian, my alchemists are dying from Qi depletion! We need to deal the final blow or the Root will be lost!"
Kael, hidden behind the quartz, narrowed his eyes. His golden pupils followed the Leviathan's line of sight toward the back of an immense cavern in the canyon wall. There, pulsing with a stellar, silver, and purest light that ignored the violence of the storm, was the Star Dragon Root. The anchor that could save the Patriarch. The material capable of tempering the flesh of a god.
—"They are desperate," —Violeta whispered, a predatory smile crossing her face—. "The beast is a Semi-Saint. The sects underestimated its regeneration power. They are tied to their own array. If they stop injecting Qi, the chains break and the beast devours them."
—"Perfect," —Bren grunted, spitting a blood clot from his own burns—. "We wait for the beast to kill half of them, and then we decapitate the survivors."
Kael nodded slowly. Patience was the plan.
But the Sea of Beasts had its own irony.
The valley floor didn't tremble from thunder. It trembled from the passage of something massive.
From the only safe path into the valley—the same one the Morningstar group had avoided—burst death on the backs of armored beasts.
A stampede of steel-plated War Rhinos smashed through the rocks. Upon them, mercenaries dressed in furs, armed with axes and rustic spears, howled with bloodlust. The banner of the Iron Fang Sect flew at the vanguard.
At the head of the charge, mounted on a ten-meter-tall mutated Direwolf, rode General Fang. A gigantic barbarian in interlocking bone armor with a suffocating Origin Realm Stage 9 aura.
Beside him, riding a four-eyed feline, was Young Master Draken. His face was contorted in hysterical anger, the humiliation he had suffered at Kael's hands still burning in his guts.
Draken pointed toward the valley, his voice amplified by Qi:
—"They are here! I tracked them by the ash Qi! The obsidian demons are in this valley! Kill them all and bring me their heads!"
The irruption was a tactical disaster.
General Fang, seeing the elite of Heavenly Sword and the Alchemy Pavilion in the center of the valley, did not think of obsidian demons. He saw rival sects hoarding the ultimate prize of the Star Dragon Root. In his beast-tamer mind, the Alliance was trying to steal the glory and, surely, covering up for his Young Master's assassins to use them as mercenaries.
—"Heavenly Sword, that treasure is ours!" —General Fang bellowed, raising his double-edged battle axe—. "The root belongs to Iron Fang! Smash their arrays!"
The stampede of war rhinos did not stop. They charged directly into the line of minor disciples feeding the Chain Array.
Jian and Lysa saw death approaching from two fronts.
—"Fang, stop, you damn animal!" —Jian shouted, his eyes bloodshot—. "If you break the suppression formation, the Leviathan will kill us all!"
General Fang did not listen. A steel rhino ploughed through three alchemists, impaling them on its horn.
The Array's circuit was broken. The red runic chains binding the Rift Leviathan flickered and vanished.
The Semi-Saint beast, free for the first time in hours, unleashed its pent-up fury.
The Leviathan reared up on its tail, an obelisk of black sapphire. It opened its shattered maw, and a sonic roar instantly collapsed the lungs of twelve Iron Fang warriors. Immediately after, its horn absorbed a purple lightning bolt from the sky and fired it like a plasma cannon at ground level, cleaving sword disciples and beastial mercenaries alike in half.
The chaos became absolute. Magic, steel, blood, lightning, and poison mixed in a hurricane of annihilation.
Hidden behind their quartz rock, the Seven Pillars watched the collapse of the Alliance.
Kael Morningstar tightened his grip on the hilt of the Whisper of the North. His golden eyes shone with a lethal lucidity. He wasn't going to join that stupid war. This was a heist. A scalpel assassination.
He raised his hand to give the order to his squad.
But before he could open his mouth, Kael felt something strange.
His own shadow, which for a day had caused a slight chill on the back of his neck, suddenly felt... light. The oppressive, imperceptible pressure that had accompanied him vanished as if a feather had been lifted off him.
Kael frowned. He said nothing, assuming it was a trick of the valley's static electricity. He didn't have the cultivation level to understand what had just happened.
No one in the valley could feel it. Not Kael, not Jian, not General Fang.
But high up in the suffocating purple clouds crowning the valley of thunder, sleeping amidst the electricity, were two immense hidden cosmic pressures. Two Supreme Elders from the Heavenly Sword Sect and the Alchemy Pavilion—True Saints—hidden, ready to intervene if their heirs (Jian and Lysa) faced real death, using the expedition as a trial by fire for the youths.
Malak, the Sovereign of the Scythe, had indeed felt them.
And while the mortals below prepared to kill each other for a root, Malak's absolute shadow had detached itself from Kael in total silence. Like a drop of black ink floating into a dark sea, Malak ascended toward the storm clouds, wielding his soul scythe, going to hunt the hidden saints so the wolves could steal in peace.
Ignorant of the cosmic war about to erupt in the sky, Kael Morningstar lowered his hand.
—"Chaos is our door," —Kael ordered his squad, his voice cold and sharp—. "Do not fight their wars. Do not seek honor. We take the root, and let the valley bury them all together. Varian, Elara, rearguard control. Bren, Eris, break the line. Violeta, get ready to open."
—"Orders received," —they chorused in a lethal murmur.
Bren stood up. The giant channeled his magma Qi into his legs and shield. He didn't use subtlety.
—[Ignimbrite Slide] —Bren muttered, adapting Kael's technique to his own brute mass.
Bren charged from his hiding place like a volcanic locomotive. His charge took the periphery of the battle by complete surprise. He crashed into a flank of Iron Fang mercenaries trying to surround a group of alchemists. Bren's tower shield smashed three men into the ground, turning their armor and bones to pulp.
Immediately behind Bren, Eris took advantage of the open blood tunnel.
The demented Pillar of Ruin did not aim at the mercenaries; she aimed at the terrain structure to isolate the target. Her hands were engulfed in the black, devouring [Ruin Flame].
She struck the rocky valley floor with both fists.
—[Entropic Combustion].
The black fire didn't generate an explosion. It traveled like a subterranean plague through the limestone rock. A wall of decomposing fire rose between the pitched battle and the entrance of the cave where the Star Dragon Root lay.
Several Heavenly Sword Sect swordsmen tried to cross the black fire barrier to reach the cave. Upon touching the flames, their defensive Qi was devoured. Their robes turned to dust, and they began to scream as the Touch of Ash decomposed their skin alive. Eris's barrier physically cut off the Alliance's access to the prize.
Jian, barely blocking an onslaught from General Fang, saw the black fire wall isolating the cave.
—"Someone is in the vault!" —Jian roared—. "Demons!"
Draken, on the back of his feline in the distance, recognized the color of the flames and the giant's black armor.
—"It's them! The obsidian demons! General, they're stealing the root!"
Fang turned his immense head toward the cave. He forgot Jian. His ten-meter Direwolf snarled and charged with all the inertia of Stage 9 toward the black fire wall, determined to crush whoever was behind it.
But the sky had its own judge.
Perched on a canyon ledge thirty meters high, Varian drew his femur bow. His yellow eyes locked onto General Fang's skull.
—"Your hunt is over. [Arrow of Inevitable Judgment]."
Varian's shot was not a normal arrow. It was a beam of pure, white light that ignored wind parabola and gravity. It pierced the air, creating an absolute vacuum.
General Fang, a Stage 9 barbarian with hyper-developed instincts, felt the imminence of death. He used the shaft of his immense bone axe to block his head in the last microsecond.
The arrow of light impacted the axe.
The sonic boom ruptured the eardrums of nearby warriors. The General's axe, forged to withstand the blows of beasts, shattered into hundreds of pieces. The shockwave of pure energy threw the immense General Fang backward, tearing him from his mount and brutally crashing him into the mud.
Simultaneously, Elara materialized near the cave entrance.
Her daggers dripped frost. She took a deep breath, forcing the valley's tropical moisture.
—[Frigid Mist Clones].
Three identical copies of Elara formed on the periphery of Eris's fire barrier. When the Pavilion alchemists tried to flank the flames and attacked the illusions with poisons, the clones burst in an explosion of freezing suction, frosting the attackers' weapons and arms, leaving them exposed to Varian's secondary arrows falling like rain.
The Morningstar squad had operated with terrifying efficiency. In ten seconds, Bren, Eris, Elara, and Varian had created an "isolation bubble" around the mouth of the cave, halting three armies that were already busy being slaughtered by the colossal Rift Leviathan.
Inside that bubble of tactical isolation were Kael and Violeta.
The entrance to the deep cave was sealed by a golden formation previously left by Lysa. An array of warning and repulsion.
Kael had no time to decipher alchemical runes. He raised the Whisper of the North, closed his eyes for an instant, and let his Sword Heart purify his intent.
—[Slash of Doubt].
The sword emitted a steady, pale white glow. Kael launched a silent slash, leaving a trail of silver light particles. The blade ignored the physical density of the golden shield and attacked its concept of illusion and barrier. The alchemical shield shattered as if made of sugar, vanishing into nothingness.
The path into the cave's darkness was open.
At the back, a hundred meters deep, the starlight of the Star Dragon Root pulsated, oblivious to the slaughter.
—"Violeta. The anchor," —Kael ordered.
Violeta didn't run. She clasped her hands together, her single blue eye shining with an intensity that made the silver veins stand out on her face—a symptom of extreme dimensional overexertion. She was battling the enormous geological and spiritual pressure of the cave, attempting to fold space in the very core of the valley's anomaly.
—[Step Between Worlds].
The space in front of Violeta collapsed inward, crumpling violently. A galactic-violet and platinum crack tore the air, revealing the interior of a tunnel where reality itself warped. On the other side of the portal, mere centimeters away, floated the stone promontory where the millennial, glowing root rested.
—"Close your fist," —Violeta whispered, bleeding from her left eye.
Kael reached his gloved arm directly into the dimensional portal. His hand crossed a hundred meters of physical space in a millisecond. He felt the extreme spiritual cold of the divine treasure. His fingers closed around the Star Dragon Root, a plant that looked like pure crystal streaked with stardust.
With a violent pull, Kael extracted the cure for his father. The root left its resting place of centuries.
The heist was an absolute success.
But the Sea of Beasts and the Valley of Thunder collected their debts in blood.
The exact instant the Star Dragon Root was disconnected from its stone pedestal, the energy grid of the entire valley suffered a catastrophic collapse.
The Rift Leviathan, which was in the middle of massacring Fang's War Rhinos, stopped abruptly. The spiritual anchor of its nest had disappeared.
The Semi-Saint aberration turned its immense, eyeless head toward the cave. Its horn glowed with blinding intensity, absorbing all the residual electricity of the valley into a single point of annihilation.
The Leviathan had just marked the Golden Generation as its sole, absolute prey.
Kael stored the root in his spatial ring, his golden eyes fixed on the black sapphire colossus pointing a plasma cannon at them.
—"Target secured," —Kael roared to his squad, tactical calm replaced by pure survival urgency—. "Dimensional evasion! Now!"
The war wasn't over. It had only changed scale. And in the upper skies, oblivious to everything, a True Saint of Death unsheathed his scythe before the arrogance of hidden gods.