The King Of Warriors novel (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5968

When he lifted the blade again, a dusky swirl of unformed matter oozed from the steel.

Instead of gushing out, the chaos folded back, braiding itself around the edge, breathing a promise of erasing all things.

Next came the five-element rhythm, not in loud colors but in a whispered cycle, each phase birthing the next so quickly the eye lost count.

Earthfire True Flame licked along the spine, savage and clean.

A pale gold dragon sigil coiled at the guard, sharpening every breath of metal with imperial bite.

Compared with the hundred-yard storms he had flung earlier, the weapon now seemed almost polite, even ordinary.

He cut toward the whip of starlight.

The moment chaos touched it, that dense ribbon—strong enough to garrote artifacts—melted like frost under noon sun.

The elemental cycle slipped inside the fracture, scrambling its spine, and Earthfire burned the scraps to smoke.

The dragon whispered, and the point sailed on, straight for the phantom’s throat.

Blur rippled across the phantom’s face.

Its seals reshuffled; the body shattered into motes, reassembled several yards away, the aura clearly dimmed.

It studied the sword and spoke in that indifferent monotone, “Interwoven forces, chaos as root… interesting. The first trial is yours."

At the last syllable, the other two figures broke off—one from battering the Demon Lord, the other from pinning gravity—and began to thin like mist.

Stars peeled away, colors bled, and suddenly the hum of insects in the Jade Bamboo Grove returned as though someone had unmuted the world.

Yet the hollowness in Jared’s limbs and the fresh blood striping the Demon Lord’s arm said the fight had been anything but illusion.

"That was passing?” The Demon Lord flexed his tingling arm, unease still clouding his eyes.

“Those three tricks were outright wicked. If not for that final stroke of yours—"

"A shortcut, nothing more.” Jared shook his head; no triumph warmed his face, only a deeper gravity.

“The way they handled power just rewrote my map. Maybe we’ve been flinging too much outward and keeping too little close to the bone."

The insight from the first trial still hummed behind Jared’s breastbone: true strength lived in the precise union of every strain of power, not in raw force alone.

He tasted the warning nested in that lesson. This was only the opening gate; whatever waited deeper would cut closer to the bone.

He and the Vermilion Demon Lord let their lungs settle, trading one slow breath after another until the tremor in their limbs calmed.

When the last echo faded, Jared tipped his chin toward the darkened tunnel. They moved again, boots whispering over ancient dust.

The passage bent, and the air ahead thickened, bright as struck iron. Jared barely registered the change before a new threshold unfolded across the path.

So the second trial had not waited long after all.

One step later the tunnel was gone. Wind drenched in mist slapped his face, and he stood on the knife-edge summit of a lone peak wrapped in drifting clouds.

At the very crown, a plain stone pavilion hunched like an afterthought. Inside, a figure sat—white hair against a childlike face, hemp robes falling through his body as if he were smoke.

Before the phantom rested a board Jared first mistook for polished slate.

Then the surface breathed—threads of black and white vapor wove runes that birthed each other, died, and returned, a quiet storm contained by square borders.

"Sit." The command arrived like a leaf settling on water, gentle yet impossible to ignore.

The phantom lifted one translucent hand. "This trial asks no blood," he said, voice even as dusk light. "Only insight. The Vital Force Chessboard carries the ancient art of drawing breath from heaven and tempering yin with yang."

"Take black first," he continued. "Place each piece where the currents cross. Stir the board until either I must rise or chaos’s first dawn blooms. Only then will the gate open."

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