A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6376

Freevale had never been this lively before.

The clearing at the heart of the vale was packed with tables and chairs.

Every piece had been hauled out from somebody's home. None of it matched. Sizes were all over the place, colors clashed, and a few chairs were missing a leg, propped up with stones to keep them from tipping over.

The tables were heaped with food and wine jars.

The food wasn't delicate or fancy.

Most of it was roasted beast meat, coarse grain cakes, and pickled vegetables.

But to the people who had spent hundreds of years in Blackstone Gaol eating feed fit for pigs, this spread was worth more than any feast from the mountains or the sea.

The wine had been brewed in Freevale.

They'd made it from spirit grain grown in the vale and wild fruit, fermented the old rough way by hand. The taste came out harsh, but it hit hard enough.

Rowan sat at the main table with a bowl of wine in his hand.

His hand was still shaking.

Not from his wounds.

From the way the night had hit him all at once.

For the first time in three hundred years, he was sitting out in the open drinking.

Overhead was a sky full of stars. Beside him were his own people. Off in the distance came the sound of children laughing and running wild.

He took one drink, and the tears came down.

"Old Master Rowe, what are you crying for?" Rowe sat beside him, grinning so wide the scar on his face bunched up into a knot. "This is a day for celebrating. You should be laughing."

Rowan wiped at his eyes and laughed. "Right. I should. This is from happiness."

Rowe filled his own bowl to the brim, rose to his feet, and lifted it toward Jared.

"Mr. Chance, I was blind the first day. I mouthed off to you without knowing who I was talking to. This bowl's for you. I'm apologizing."

Then he tipped back his head and gulped the whole thing down in one go.

Jared sat in the seat of honor. He lifted his bowl with a smile and drained it too.

"You're being too polite, Rowe. With that little bit of strength you had, you couldn't even break through my protective true qi. What exactly are you apologizing for?"

Color surged straight into Rowe's face, and the people around them burst out laughing.

The lanky man shook his folding fan and laughed so hard he nearly folded in half.

The fan almost slipped right into his wine bowl.

The middle-aged woman slapped the table and laughed until she couldn't straighten up.

Vale stroked his beard and smiled with his eyes narrowed.

The wrinkles on his face spread like a chrysanthemum in full bloom.

The lanky man got to his feet, snapped his fan shut, and cupped his hands toward Jared. "Jared, when I jabbed one finger at your neck, all my spiritual power vanished. The feeling was like throwing a punch into cotton. No, worse than cotton. It was like hitting thin air."

"I've been cultivating for all these years, and this is the first time I've taken a loss that badly." He poured himself a bowl. "Here's to you. Here's to your chaotic force."

Jared drank another bowl.

The wine was fierce.

It burned all the way from his throat down into his stomach, but it went down clean and hard.

The middle-aged woman rose to her feet too.

The middle-aged woman didn't say much. She only lifted her bowl toward Jared in a brief salute, then tipped it back and drained it in one go.

Jared emptied his own bowl the same way. She gave a small nod and sat back down.

Vale stood last.

He carried his bowl over to Jared, stopped in front of him, and spoke with complete seriousness.

"Mr. Chance, I've cultivated fire technique for 3 thousand years. I always believed I'd already reached the absolute peak."

"Then I saw your chaos-flame, and only then did I realize I was nothing but a frog at the bottom of a well. This bowl is to you, and to the chaos-flame."

He threw it back in one swallow, then bent at the waist in a deep bow toward Jared.

Jared caught him before he could stay bowed and steadied him.

He drank too, then said, "Old Master Vale, your flame is pure. It's only missing a little heat. If we get the chance later, we can trade pointers."

Vale's eyes lit up, and he nodded again and again.

Nathaniel sat beside Jared and hadn't said much the whole time.

He just kept drinking. One bowl after another.

The set of his face gradually loosened.

Jared smiled. "It wasn't all me. Without the map you gave me, without Old Master Rowe helping from the inside, without Gwendolyn and Alaric Winterborne backing me up, I couldn't have done it alone either."

Nathaniel waved that off. "You're being modest. Yeah, I gave you the map, but you're the one who went in. You're the one who found Old Master Rowe, broke the seal, and killed the gaoler. We all saw it with our own eyes."

Rowe chimed in from the side. "Exactly. Mr. Chance, you can stop being modest. After all these years in Freevale, this is the first time we've ever held our heads up like this."

The lanky man shook his folding fan and asked with a grin, "Jared, how'd you train that chaotic force of yours, anyway? Teach us, will you?"

Jared gave him a look. "You can't train it. Talent."

The lanky man's smile locked up for a second. Then he let out a sigh. "Talent? Then that's the end of that. No way I'm ever pulling that off in this lifetime."

That got everyone laughing again.

After a few more rounds, the mood at the table climbed even higher.

Someone started singing.

It was an old song of the human race, with an old melody and older words, but everyone there knew how to sing it.

The song rolled through the vale, low and long, as if it were telling something that had been buried there for years.

Then someone started dancing around the bonfire.

Soon others joined in, hand in hand, their steps unsteady but full of life.

Some people grabbed each other and cried. When the crying stopped, they laughed. When the laughing ran out, they cried again.

Rowan drank too much and caught Jared by the hand, talking on and on without stopping.

He talked about his days in the Resistance. He talked about being captured and thrown into Blackstone Gaol. He talked about how he had endured it, day after day, inside that prison.

Jared listened and nodded now and then, never cutting him off.

He knew it was better for those words to come out than stay bottled up inside.

Nathaniel had drunk too much too.

He slapped Jared on the shoulder and shouted, "Jared, tell me this—what do we do next? Those other two prisons, are we hitting them or not?"

Jared took a drink, his words starting to thicken. "We're going. Why wouldn't we? Saving one is saving people. Saving two is saving people. We go tomorrow."

Nathaniel’s eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Really."

Jared set his wine bowl down. "If we could wipe out Blackstone Gaol, the other prisons won’t be any different. The gaolers are True Immortal Realm Level Eight. I’ve killed more than one already. If a few more show up, I’ll kill them too."