A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6552

In the valley basin, more than twenty cultivators were throwing everything they had at the Lava Lion King.

Their robes were all different colors, but the arcane implements hanging at their waists were standard issue.

This time, though, they weren't using short blades. They had a mixed arsenal instead—spears, broadblades, war axes, hammers—and every weapon burned with dark red fire.

Those flames were nothing like the Ember God Palace's golden sacred fire.

They burned darker, hotter, and far more violently, carrying a primitive, ruinous edge.

It was the demons' primal fire.

Jared's violet gaze swept over the cultivators, measuring their cultivation at a glance.

Most of them were True Immortal Realm Level Nine. A handful had reached Golden Immortal Level One.

The one leading them was a broad, bald man at Golden Immortal Level Two, wielding a double-headed war axe wrapped in dark red fire. Every time he hacked into the Lava Lion King's scales, he managed to leave behind only a shallow cut.

But the Lava Lion King's regenerative power was terrifying.

Under the searing wash of its own flames, those wounds closed almost as soon as they opened, never amounting to real damage.

The attacks from more than twenty people looked ferocious, but to the Lava Lion King, it was barely more than a scratch.

Its counterattacks, on the other hand, put every one of those cultivators in mortal danger.

Jared saw four or five bodies already lying along the edge of the valley basin.

Some had been burned down to blackened husks. Some had been smashed flat beneath the lion's claws. One had been caught by the bony mace at the end of its tail, and half his body was simply gone.

Their blood seeped into the broken stone and sand, staining the edge of the basin a dark, ugly red.

"If this keeps up, those twenty-odd people won't last much longer."

Gwendolyn kept her voice low. "That Lava Lion King isn't even going all out yet."

Jared said nothing.

He kept watching the battlefield.

Then he noticed something.

Individually, these cultivators weren't especially strong, but they worked together with remarkable precision.

They had split into three groups.

One attacked head-on to hold the Lava Lion King's attention. One harried it from both flanks to keep it off balance. The last stayed to the rear, using arcane implements for ranged attacks.

Whenever one of them was injured, someone else stepped in immediately, and the wounded fighter was dragged to the back for treatment with practiced speed.

That kind of coordination didn't come together overnight.

This group had clearly fought side by side for a long time, and the trust between them ran deep.

"A demon battle formation."

Jared spoke softly. "It's different from the celestials'. Theirs is more flexible, more focused on coordination between individuals."

"Demons?" Gwendolyn looked startled. "You're saying these people are demons?"

"Yeah. The Inferno Devil bloodline."

Jared's eyes settled on the bald man's forehead. There was a dark red flame pattern there, subtle enough to miss if you weren't looking for it.

"See that mark?"

"That's the sign of the Inferno Devil bloodline. Every one of them has it on their forehead. They can usually hide it with their power, but when the fluctuations get violent in the middle of a fight, it shows."

Jared carried the demons' primal fire within his own body. He knew the Inferno Devil bloodline well.

Gwendolyn looked more carefully and, sure enough, it wasn't just the bald man.

The others also had dark red markings on their foreheads, some faint, some deep.

"The Inferno Devil bloodline... shouldn't they be sworn enemies with the Flame Deity branch? Then how would they dare hunt demon beasts inside Ember God Palace territory?" Gwendolyn asked.

"Because they're sworn enemies," Jared said, "they have to hunt them."

Jared's gaze deepened. "The Inferno Devil bloodline and the Flame Deity Branch came from the same root. Both command the laws of flame. But the Flame Deity Branch follows holy radiance—light. The Inferno Devil bloodline walks a path of destruction through the primal fire."

"They restrain each other, and they need each other too. If the Inferno Devil bloodline can kill a demon beast like the Lava Lion King—one with the bloodline of a primeval fire-beast flowing through it—and cultivate with its blood essence and beast core, their strength can surge by leaps and bounds.

And in the territory of the Ember God Palace, beasts like this are more common than anywhere else."

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