A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6532

Gwendolyn.

She wore spirit armor, the silver-white plates catching the holy radiance and giving off a soft glow.

She had no helmet. Her black hair fell like a waterfall, loosely pinned with a silver hairpin, and her expression was calm and unshakable.

Her white dress whipped in the wind with a sharp snap.

She didn't walk fast, but every step was impossibly steady, a silver-white longsword gripped in her hand.

She walked straight to Jared's side, then turned to face Venerable Glacier.

Then she did something no one had expected.

She lowered her head slightly, brought both hands together, and offered an ancient formal salute.

It wasn't a Beastmoor Ridge salute. It wasn't a Wellspring Order salute.

It belonged to something older than both of them, something far more ancient.

"Senior."

Her voice wasn't loud, but every person there heard it clearly.

"Junior Gwendolyn, seventy-second generation heir of the Frost Deity Branch, pays respects to Senior."

Venerable Glacier's fingers stopped cold.

He had been on the verge of driving the Glacier Chariot into a full charge, but the instant he heard the words "Frost Deity Branch," he froze.

His ice-blue robes seemed to lock in the wind, the fluttering hems hanging in midair as if the air itself had frozen around them.

He narrowed his eyes and studied Gwendolyn carefully.

His gaze fell to the silver sword in her hand, then to the spirit armor she wore. On one shoulder plate, a sigil had been carved so faintly it nearly disappeared under the holy radiance.

But Venerable Glacier recognized it.

It was the clan mark of the Frost Deity Branch.

"The Frost Deity Branch?"

There was a flicker in Venerable Glacier's voice now.

"You're from the Frost Deity Branch? How is that possible? The Frost Deity Branch died out tens of thousands of years ago..."

"Almost,"

Gwendolyn picked up the sentence without hesitation. Her voice stayed even, but there was grief buried deep in her eyes.

"We changed our names and hid in the Lower Realm, where the spiritual essence was thin, and barely survived for tens of thousands of years. Senior should know the Frost Deity Branch's place among the celestials. We were pushed aside, suppressed, and driven out by the other branch lines. In the end, we had no choice but to cripple our own cultivation and flee to the Lower Realm."

Venerable Glacier went silent for a long time.

His ice-blue robes drifted slowly in the wind, and some of the frost coating the Glacier Chariot gradually receded.

Something painfully complicated crossed his face—the look of a man who had just been struck by a memory he'd sealed away ages ago.

"You... you really are from the Frost Deity Branch?"

His voice had gone much quieter, stripped of the cold disdain from before.

"Show this master your bloodline mark."

Gwendolyn raised her left arm and pushed her sleeve up to her elbow.

On the inside of her wrist was a tiny ice-blue mark, no bigger than a fingernail, shaped like a six-pointed snowflake.

At the center of the snowflake was an extremely fine vertical line, like a sword—or an ice pillar.

She poured spiritual power into the mark.

It flared to life at once, releasing an aura of frost so pure it was almost overwhelming.

It wasn't a gloomy cold.

It was solemn, ancient, and unmistakably the frost-born power of a true orthodox branch of the celestials.

Venerable Glacier's pupils tightened.

He stood there in silence for a moment.

Then he lifted his own left hand and rolled his sleeve back to the elbow.

On the inside of his wrist was the same ice-blue snowflake mark.

The two auras of frost met before the mountain gate.

The temperature plunged. Moisture in the air flash-froze into countless tiny ice crystals, scattering seven-colored light beneath the sun.

The Frost Deity Branch bloodline had recognized its own.

Both marks flared at once, answering each other in an ancient, wordless resonance.

That echo carried tens of thousands of years and the weight of generations of inheritances.

Clarendon's smile froze.

He narrowed his eyes at Glacier and said nothing more.

The silence stretched on for dozens of breaths.

The wind before the mountain gate died.

Even the smell of blood hanging in the air seemed to freeze in place.

The cultivators of Beastmoor Ridge gripped their weapons tight, with no idea what would happen next.

Master Wellspring's palms were slick with sweat.

Cloudspire's flying sword hovered behind him, turning soundlessly in the air, and the array masters of the Myriad Arts Order already had their fingers pressed to the final warding sigils.

Glacier looked at Gwendolyn, and a storm of emotion moved through his eyes—nostalgia, anger, grief, bitterness, and beneath all of it, the faintest flicker of hesitation.

He had lived for tens of thousands of years.

When the Frost Deity Branch fell, he had been powerless. When the celestials pushed them aside, he had swallowed the humiliation. After carving out Deepvault Cloister, he had clawed his way upward with everything he had, determined to prove that the Frost Deity Branch stood beneath no other branch.

And this girl—this descendant of the Frost Deity Branch who had clawed her way up from the Lower Realm—had managed, with every word, to drive straight into the place that still hurt him most.

"Senior."

Gwendolyn spoke again, her voice much gentler now. "The Frost Deity Branch is almost gone. If you attack Beastmoor Ridge today, then win or lose, Deepvault Cloister will be crippled. Our branch can't afford any more losses."

She paused, then met Venerable Glacier's eyes head-on.

"Senior, don't attack Beastmoor Ridge. This is my plea to you—as the seventy-second heir of the Frost Deity Branch."

Silence fell over the square again.

Venerable Clarendon's expression darkened by the second.

He turned to look at Venerable Glacier, and every trace of warmth had vanished from his eyes.

Venerable Glacier still said nothing.

He was still wavering.

If he took Beastmoor Ridge this time, he'd gain enormous resources, strengthen Deepvault Cloister, and give the Frost Deity Branch a better chance to flourish.

But...