A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6529

One disciple of Pole Star Hall dragged himself toward his companions on the stumps of legs severed by flying swords, scraping his fingertips down to white bone against the flagstones.

He didn't even make it halfway.

An arrow from nowhere punched through the back of his neck, his body jerked twice, and then he went still.

But Pole Star Hall still hadn't collapsed.

Anyone who had survived this long was one of Pole Star Hall's finest disciples, each of them a high-ranking True Immortal cultivator tempered in blood and fire.

Their eyes were full of fear, but the fear hadn't broken their will to fight.

Because they knew Starwick was still standing. Their Hall Master was still fighting.

As long as their Hall Master remained on the field, Pole Star Hall had not lost.

Starwick swept his gaze over the battlefield.

The square was carpeted with corpses. What remained of his formation had been compressed to the breaking point. On three sides, Beastmoor Ridge had sealed him in behind walls of steel.

With every breath, another person fell.

With every breath, the noose pulled tighter.

Then he looked to both flanks.

Glacier’s chariot had not moved an inch. Clarendon’s sacred dais still hung in the air.

The two of them only watched.

They watched his disciples get butchered. They watched his war-chariot smashed apart.

There was no pity in their eyes. No hesitation.

Only cold calculation.

Glacier even lifted a cup of spirit tea and took a slow, unhurried sip.

The teacup had been carved from age-old black ice, its outer wall beaded with tiny droplets that glittered in the sun.

Each droplet looked like a tiny eye, reflecting the slaughter in the square.

Reflecting his indifference too.

"Glacier... Clarendon..." Starwick ground his teeth so hard they creaked, then suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

The sound was wild, broken, full of despair. "Good. Very good. You want me dead? Then I refuse to die. If I’m going down, neither of you will walk away clean!"

He bit through the tip of his tongue and spat out a mouthful of golden blood essence.

It burst into a cloud of blood mist and stained his golden spear from end to end a dark, muted gold.

The spear started shaking violently, giving off a shrill hum.

Every war sigil along the shaft flared to life under the blood essence, blazing with a radiance fiercer than the sun.

His eyes turned blood-red.

Golden veins rose beneath his skin, and the blood racing through them looked like boiling magma, shining through hard enough to cast his face in the likeness of a wrathful guardian.

"Pole Star Hall disciples, hear my command!"

His voice came out hoarse and crazed, yet it still crashed against every ear like muffled thunder.

"Today we fight to the death! I stand with you! Kill one and you break even—kill two and you profit! Let these beast-race bastards learn this well: disciples of Pole Star Hall die on their feet, not on their knees!"

Before the last word finished ringing out, his pressure spiked.

By burning his blood essence, he forced his cultivation from the peak of Golden Immortal Level Three into Golden Immortal Level Four.

The rise was only temporary, but the violent holy radiance pouring off him blazed like a fallen sun and swallowed the entire square.

Under that crushing pressure, the flagstones split into webs of fractures that spread for hundreds of yards.

Every cultivator below True Immortal Realm Level Nine felt their breathing seize up.

Those with weaker cultivation dropped to their knees on the spot, blood threading from their ears and noses.

"Burning blood essence?" Master Wellspring’s face changed instantly. "Starwick’s gone mad! Once he burns through it all, his cultivation will drop an entire major realm!"

"He never planned to make it back alive," Cloudspire said grimly.

His sword-craft never stopped moving, but the look on his face had turned dangerously serious. "He means to take us down with him."

At the edge of annihilation, the shattered remnants of Pole Star Hall found one last thing to hold on to.

Their Hall Master was burning his blood essence and throwing his life at the enemy.

Under the relentless impacts, even the Myriad Arts Order's eighteenfold layered wards began to crack.

Several array masters guarding the core formation-node coughed up blood as the backlash slammed through them.

One gray-haired old array master dropped flat onto his back, eyes wide open, already dead.

His hands were still locked in a hand seal.

The bones in his fingers had been ground to powder by the backlash.

The casualty count on Beastmoor Ridge's side started climbing.

A Vice Sect Master of the Wellspring Order was cut in half at the waist by Venerable Starwick's spear-arc.

Even as his upper body flew away, he was still swinging his sword.

Seven core disciples of the Azure Cloud Sword Order vanished under the bombardment of the holy-radiance bombs.

When it was over, all that remained where they had stood were seven shallow blackened pits.

Three array masters of the Myriad Arts Order had their meridians shattered by the backlash and died where they stood.

The slaughter on the square turned even more savage.

Bloodier. Less and less like anything human.

Every moment, someone fell.

Every moment, someone screamed.

Blood soaked every inch of the square's flagstones.

Severed limbs lay scattered in every corner.

The stench of blood in the air had grown so thick it turned the stomach.

A young disciple of the Wellspring Order was blown into the air by an explosion.

Only when he hit the ground did he realize his left arm was gone, the stump a blur of torn flesh with white bone jutting through it.

He didn't scream.

He gritted his teeth, snatched up the sword he'd dropped with his right hand, and charged back in.