The King Of Warriors novel (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5969

Cold creek spray pricked his face. He blinked and found himself once more beside the water in Peach Blossom Haven, the dream of stone pavilions already dissolving.

Yet the resonance lingered. Deep within, the four entwined forces sat more snugly than before, and the impression of nascent chaos pulsed against his soul like a fresh brand.

The Vermilion Demon Lord cocked his head, crimson curls dancing over one horn. "What just happened? You shut your eyes for a breath, and the old man waved you through."

"Hard to unravel," Jared said, still tasting the hush of that vanished board. "Call it an insight."

He let the questions hang. His gaze traveled to the farthest reach of the haven where fog curled around the mouth of an ancient cave, lines of time etched in its shadowy arch.

"That should be the final dwelling," he murmured. "The third trial waits at its door."

He and the demon lord moved, the hush of peach petals giving way to the crunch of gravel as anticipation nudged them forward.

Ahead, the mountain wall folded inward and revealed a cavern mouth nearly a hundred feet high—too sudden to be anything but nature’s own doorway.

A liquid curtain of seven colors draped the opening. Light rippled like water, and within the ripples drifted sigils far more intricate than the ones he had studied on the stone board.

On the left stood a statue: a human face atop a serpent’s coils, a measuring rod balanced in slender hands, its carved gaze cool and exacting.

On the right towered another—broad human torso, tiger’s head, stone axe lifted as if one swing might split the unborn world. Time had eroded nothing of its menace.

Jared and the Vermilion Demon Lord had barely crossed within a hundred paces when both statues’ eyes flared, bright and sudden.

The glow was not inert gemstone light; it moved, alive, and for one breath Jared felt as though something inside the stone had awakened and fixed on him.

"Children of the after-times, stay your steps. This retreat belongs to my master. Only those of fate, virtue, and capability may pass." The first two gates weighed your strength and perception. The third will measure your heart, your purpose, and the breadth of what you can bear.

"Break these bodies we guard with or earn our approval," the tiger-headed statue thundered. "But fail, and body and soul alike will shatter beyond the wheel of rebirth. Do you dare the trial?"

The air thickened. Pressure dropped onto Jared’s chest like a falling cliff, stealing half a breath before he forced his lungs to move again.

That single moment of weight eclipsed the strain he had felt under the three shadow guardians and the old man at the game board combined.

Beside him, the Demon Lord’s pupils burned crimson. A grin split the fiend’s face. "Finally—something with teeth. Jared, straight through or—"

Jared let his glance travel from the statues to the shifting barrier, mind spinning through options the way a gambler palms dice.

Force a way in?

The two guardians shared one current of power, an unseen formation humming between them and the multicolored screen. Even victory would likely leave him too drained to breach the barrier itself.

Earn their approval, then. But how?

He remembered Sidney’s warning: Ancient Energy Refiners cut straight to essence. The test strikes at heart, will, and the space within a soul that can hold the world. A reckless thought took shape, bold enough to quicken his pulse.

"Seniors," Jared said, stepping forward with palms pressed together in formal salute, "I, Jared, seek to fuse the alien force within me and grow strong enough to resist the devouring evil. I mean no disrespect to ancient wisdom. The earlier gates taught me how vast your path is. For this third, I offer my own way for your judgment."

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