A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5967

A faint pulse flickered in the Illusion Origin Star deep within his private realm, answering the scene before him.

After a heartbeat he shook his head.

"This one is real."

"Thank the void!" the Demon Lord barked, relief cracking through his harsh voice.

"The Eye of Return-to-Void really does hide a world," he said, pulling in a measured breath.

"But it’s quiet—so quiet it hurts my ears."

Jared nodded; the same unease needled beneath his ribs.

The beauty was skin-deep; the cranes’ eyes held no spark, and the deer moved like winding clockwork.

Beneath it all, he could taste an immense, nearly invisible field—part prison, part rulebook—woven through every inch of sky and soil.

Jared slipped the Guiding Talisman out of his sleeve again.

Instead of pointing, it throbbed with a feverish pulse; the shifting runes blinked on and off, as if something in this valley was answering it.

"The sanctum must be tucked deeper inside this peach-blossom paradise. Stay sharp—nothing here is what it seems."

After pocketing the talisman, he wrapped his fingers around the Dragonslayer Sword and stepped ahead, following the ribbon of water toward the heart of the grove.

The Vermilion Demon Lord glided behind him, demonic senses stretched thin like wires, testing every shadow for a hidden barb.

At first, the path behaved—no ambush, no stutter in the air, only scenery so flawless it felt manufactured.

When venerable-looking herbs shimmered beside the rocks, rich with ambient breath, Jared still harvested them, every motion cautious and measured.

A stand of bamboo—leaves jade-bright, trunks glass-smooth—rose ahead; both men stopped at its edge.

This was exactly where the Ghostspring Sect had been jumped a day ago.

Their attackers then had been smoke and suggestion, not the true Eye of the Return-to-Void.

Even knowing that, unease seeped beneath Jared’s ribs.

"Jared, tell me we’re not about to get the same welcome."

"Unlikely. This isn’t an illusion; it’s the real Eye. If—"

A thunderous blast swallowed the rest of his words.

Vision lurched; everything around him wrinkled and peeled away.

The bamboo vanished; the green mountainside bled out of color.

Sudden, endless starlight replaced it, and beneath his boots lay a cold, iron-hard meteor plain.

Silence pressed in—broken asteroids drifted nearby; farther off, remote suns blinked like distant eyes.

"Illusion?" the Demon Lord muttered.

For proof, he slashed a claw; a floating stone shattered, fragments skittering across Jared’s boots—solid, undeniable.

"Not just mirage," Jared rasped.

The veins of power that usually threaded the sky were faint, his own energy dragging like wet sand. "It feels like a displacement—someone’s domain. We’ve been hauled into a special trial space."

If this were mere glamour, his command of the Essence of Illusion would have rung alarms. It hadn’t twitched.

That left one conclusion: some hidden engine had dragged the two of them wholesale into another pocket of reality.

Perhaps this pocket overlapped the Eye itself—like two rooms briefly sharing the same walls before one collapsed and the other showed through.

Pinpricks of silver drifted across the black, sliding toward one another as if some hidden magnet had been switched on.

Jared felt the small hairs on his arms stiffen before his mind found an explanation.

Within the shifting glow three outlines bled into existence, too blurred yet to own a face.

Only a breath later the haze receded.

They wore rough hemp robes cinched at the waist, their hair knotted high the way old scroll-paintings showed forgotten sages.

The features refused to settle, as though the starfield itself kept them from choosing a single form.

No blades hung from their sleeves.

They simply stood, perfectly still, yet Jared's lungs shrank as if the entire night sky had leaned onto his chest.

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