A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6754

Outside Elder Nether's cavern, two figures blazed like black flames. Beneath the dark red mineral glow, they seethed with fury held at the very edge of control.

They were an elderly man and woman of the Ghost Clan, both haggard, with ghostly miasma boiling around them like ink.

Their gaunt hands were clenched into fists, nails buried deep in their palms. Dark red blood dripped between their fingers and struck the ground with faint hisses.

The man's voice was hoarse and abrasive, like sandpaper scraping iron. "Give me back my daughter! Give her back!"

His wife stood beside him and wept without a sound. Despair and anger churned together in her blue eyes.

She did not roar as her husband did, but her silence weighed even more heavily, like a massive blade descending without a whisper.

"Gavin, Maeve, you need to calm down."

Ghost Seven approached from the far end of the rope bridge, his black robe billowing. He regarded the couple with blue eyes and spoke with weary helplessness. "This is clan law, and you both know it. Generations of Abyssal Lords established the sacrifices. Your daughter wasn't singled out."

"You can murder my daughter at will and excuse it as clan law?"

Gavin's voice rose sharply. The ghostly miasma around him exploded outward and sent loose stones rattling down the cliff. "She is only 16! She did nothing wrong! Why should she be thrown into that fissure?"

Maeve finally spoke. Ragged and hoarse, her voice carried such resolve that it was hard to look her in the eye. "Ghost Seven, if you don't return my daughter today, I will die right here. I'll detonate my ghost core and take everyone with me. This is not an empty threat."

Ghost Seven frowned deeply. He could sense the ghostly miasma compressing madly within Maeve. She truly meant every word.

She had packed the force inside herself as tightly as it could go. It could explode at any moment, like an ignited barrel of blasting powder.

The self-destruction of a Grand Zenith Immortal would destroy at least the entire seventh level.

"Stop and think."

Ghost Seven stepped forward, a rare urgency entering his voice. "Your daughter has already been sacrificed. Destroying yourselves won't change that. You still have other clan members..."

"Other clan members?"

Gavin gave a bleak laugh filled with despair. "Do you think we don't know? The people chosen for sacrifice are those nearing the end of their lives or suffering from grave injuries.

"At least they had the chance to grow old. My daughter is only 16! She had her whole life ahead of her, so why was she sent in?"

Ghost Seven opened his mouth, but whatever he intended to say dissolved into a sigh.

There was no answer he could offer. The sacrifices were indeed normally selected from clan members near the end of their lifespans. Iris did not belong among them. She was young and healthy, and this should never have been her fate.

But he was powerless to change what had happened.

The standoff had reached breaking point, and the ghostly miasma within Maeve had visibly swollen, when a jumble of footsteps came from the stone staircase below.

"Dad! Mom!"

The cry tore through the Nether Abyss's deathly silence like a gash ripped across the darkness.

Gavin and Maeve stiffened. Both turned at once toward the voice.

Iris stumbled into view at the top of the stone steps. Her black robe hung in tatters and wounds covered her body, but tears and the joy of survival filled her blue eyes.

She lurched as she ran and nearly fell several times, yet still drove herself toward her parents with all the strength she had left.

The ghostly miasma gathered in Maeve's hands abruptly dispersed. She stood frozen, her lips moving several times as if she needed to make certain the sight before her was not an illusion. Then she flung herself forward.

"Iris!"

Maeve swept Iris into her arms and crushed her against her chest as though trying to merge their bodies together. "Iris! You're alive! You're really alive..."

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