A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5841

A shadow of uncertainty skimmed Vermilion Demon Lord's face, yet resolve blazed behind his eyes. "I thank you, Mr. Cloudridge. Even if hope is a single thread, I will walk through blades and fire to seize it!"

Jared looked up, fingers tapping the arm of his chair. "Mr. Cloudridge, do we know any landmarks that point to this pool? And when is the next blossoming expected?"

Linden closed his eyes, drifting through centuries of scroll dust. "The old texts are vague," he said at last, "but they speak of a place ringed by three titanic ice peaks arranged like the corners of a glyph."

He counted backward in silence, lips barely moving. "Last recorded bloom—two hundred eighty years ago. By the hundred-year cycle, the next awakening comes within the next twenty years. Could be this winter...or the winter after the next dozen."

Hope flared brighter in Vermilion's gaze. Twenty years, to a cultivator, was no more than a drawn breath.

"I wield primordial flame," Jared said, confidence ringing clear. "And after merging with the ice nascence, that fire has only grown. I even command a fragment of ice law. If a mere frozen pool bars the path, I have nothing to fear."

The ice plains, a frostpool, a flower—compared with worlds I have burned and storms I have endured, they are insects beneath an avalanche.

Linden's hand drifted over his beard again; this time, the motion felt like a warning bell.

"Sir Chance," he murmured, "even if cold, wind, and lurking beasts cannot dissuade you, one obstacle remains—more troublesome than any blizzard or serpent."

Jared's eyes narrowed. "What obstacle?"

Linden's voice dropped to a hush that filled the chamber with frost. "The Eternal Ice Plains are not unclaimed tundra. Its core has long been considered sacred ground by a singular, aloof people—the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan."

He allowed the name to hang like falling ice.

"The Northern Abyss Celestial Clan? They're all Celestials?" asked Jared. This was the first time he heard something like that.

"Yes," he continued, answering Jared's unspoken question, "they carry ancient god-blood, born to the language of ice. Their bodies rival star-steel, their lifespans stretch beyond imagination. From their palace—Northmere Hall—they oversee nearly every resource the icefield offers, especially the hidden sanctums. The Bloodshade Ice Pool is almost certainly under their guard."

Linden's eyes hardened. "They are proud, frigid hearts. To them, all who dwell beyond the ice are lesser, unclean. Trespassers receive no warning: at best, expulsion; at worst, obliteration."

His final words tolled like iron on stone. "Countless masters thought their cultivation high enough to ignore that decree. The snow still keeps their bones."

Jared listened in silence, piecing together the revelation Linden had just offered. The so-called Northern Abyss Celestial Clan, he now understood, was nothing more than a proud tributary of the vast Celestial race.

Yet every member of that offshoot, he learned, carried the same sickness of arrogance. They drifted through life like self-crowned emperors, their gazes skimming over lesser souls as if the world were personal property.

Jared almost laughed. People behaved that way only when life had not yet bruised the vanity out of them.

A handful of decisive beatings, he mused, and even the loftiest tiara would learn humility.

After all, he himself bore the legendary Golden Dragon Bloodline, yet had never felt the urge to parade it about.

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