The King Of Warriors novel (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6590

Cedric played his part well, but Jared caught something else in his eyes.

It wasn't gratitude. It wasn't admiration.

It was the thrill of a hunter watching prey walk straight into a trap.

"Master Blackwell, is this the secret realm you were talking about?" Jared asked.

Cedric nodded and swept his gaze across the barren land.

A feverish light flashed through his red-gold eyes.

"That's right. This is the Ancient Battlefield. Legend says this is where the Aureate Way and the celestials fought their final war in the elder age. Countless ancient powerhouses died here, and their inheritances, arcane implements, healing elixirs, and crystals are buried somewhere in this land. Find even one or two of them, and it would be enough to let an order thrive for tens of thousands of years."

The place where the Aureate Way and the celestials had fought their final war.

Jared’s brow twitched.

He remembered what Master Alaric Vale had said. The Aureate Way and the celestials had come from the same root, then split into two factions in the primordial age over a difference in belief.

After that, war had raged for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Aureate Way had been driven back again and again. The Aureate Codex had been lost in that era, and the Chaos Sanctum had been sealed away in an independent realm during that same time.

If this really was the place where the Aureate Way and the celestials had fought their final battle in the primordial age, then the treasures buried here were more than enough to justify everything the Abyssal Exchange had poured into this.

But Jared had caught something else.

When Cedric had stepped out of the gate of light just now, there had been no hesitation in him. No confusion. He had moved like a man who already knew exactly what waited on the other side.

Which meant Cedric knew far more about this place than he’d admitted.

Jared didn’t call him on it. He only nodded.

"Master Blackwell, which way do we go next?"

Cedric pulled out a jade slip from his sleeve and sent his spirit sense into it. A moment later, he looked up and pointed southeast.

"According to the intelligence the Exchange gathered, there’s a tomb three hundred miles to the southeast. There are no remains inside—only an altar. And on that altar, an ancient relic is sealed away. If we can break the seal, that relic is ours."

Three hundred miles.

In an ordinary place, that was no more than the time it took to burn an incense stick for a Golden Immortal cultivator.

But this ancient battlefield wasn’t an ordinary place.

Every step could be a trap. Every corner could hide danger. Three hundred miles here might take a full day—maybe longer.

"Then let’s move." Jared started southeast first.

Cedric followed behind him, while the dozen-plus cultivators from the Abyssal Exchange spread out around them, watching everything with tight, wary eyes.

The group advanced across the gray-white earth at a measured pace, neither fast nor slow.

Jared kept his spirit sense stretched to its limit the entire time, covering everything within a hundred miles.

He had already detected more than a dozen pockets of danger.

Some were remnant souls sleeping inside ancient bones. Some were ancient beast remnants lurking in spatial fissures. Others were spatial nodes warped into traps by some unknown law.

Every time they approached one of them, Jared warned the group in advance and steered them around it.

Cedric watched Jared’s back, something complicated flickering through his red-gold eyes.

He had spent tens of thousands of years gathering intelligence on this ancient battlefield. He had poured in countless resources and manpower, and sacrificed who knew how many cultivators, just to barely map out the danger zones around the outer edge.

But Jared—here for the first time—was picking out those dangers with spirit sense alone.

And he was doing it more accurately than the information Cedric had spent all those years collecting.

Was that what made chaotic force so terrifying?

Saints stood at the very peak of the celestial realm. The stories said that once someone reached that cultivation level, they shared the lifespan of the world itself, shone alongside the sun and moon, and with a single thought could create a world—or erase one.

And a half-step saint was only one step short of that.

A being like that had died here on its knees.

And from the posture of the bones, this hadn't been a death in battle. It looked like the figure had knelt of its own will, as if submitting to some greater existence—then been killed by a force it couldn't resist.

What kind of existence could make a half-step saint kneel willingly... and then kill it without the slightest chance to fight back?

A chill slid through Jared.

Everything he knew stopped at the celestial realm. As for what lay beyond it—the Godrealm, the heavens and the myriad worlds, what cultivation levels existed there, how those realms were divided—he knew nothing.

To him, saints had always been the absolute summit.

Maybe one day, when Jared reached sainthood and stood at the top of the celestial realm, he'd realize he was still nothing more than an ant—that beyond this realm were even greater worlds, and people far more terrifying than anything he'd imagined.

Cedric's expression hardened too.

"Go around it," he said at once. "Do not get close to that skeleton. A half-step saint's remnant thought isn't something people like us can provoke."

The group skirted the scorched earth and kept moving southeast.

After roughly another hour, a low stone hill rose into view ahead.

It stood about a hundred yards tall, gray-black from top to bottom, its surface scarred by weathering as if it had endured countless ages of wind and rain.

At the foot of the hill was a cave entrance. It wasn't large—barely enough for one person to pass through. A cold, sinister wind poured out of it, carrying the smell of rot.

Cedric stopped and stared at the opening. A flash of excitement lit his red-gold eyes.

"This is it." He couldn't quite hide the excitement in his voice. "The altar is inside the cave."