The road north from Hearthome was a ribbon of packed dirt and gravel that wound through the valleys like a scar. The air grew thinner and colder with every mile north. The wind transforming from a biting gust into a steady freezing shriek.

  Li Yu and Krell walked at a steady pace. They weren't rushing yet, just moving with the long ground-eating strides of experienced travelers.

  "Smells wrong," Krell grunted while kicking a loose rock with a heavy boot. He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling. "Tastes like rust. Like the fires in the deep earth are leaking out."

  "The rifts perhaps?" Li Yu noted. He went to pull his grey cloak tighter against the chill.

  Above them, the night sky was alive. Curtains of green and violet light rippled overhead, casting long, dancing shadows across the snow.

  They rounded a bend in the valley and stopped.

  Ahead of them, high atop the jagged peaks flanking the trade road, massive bonfires had roared to life. The flames were not orange but a chemically treated brilliant blue. They pierced the grey gloom and were chaining together peak after peak.

  They were sending a silent scream of warning down the continent. Li Yu and Krell asked a group that was near what it meant.

  “There was a rift that had opened up and it was north of here.” Said a woman from that group.

  The road had been relatively empty but was now suddenly choked with movement. But it was the direction of the movement that made Li Yu pause. People were pouring out of the small villages and outposts. They weren't fleeing south and away from the danger like he thought. They were actually moving north.

  Groups of cultivators that were clearly not from major sects, were hurrying along the shoulder of the road.

  Li Yu watched a young man, barely at the Foundation Establishment stage, hurriedly packing a sled. He wasn't packing food or clothes. He was stacking heavy bundles of talismans inscribed with crude explosive runes. Beside them were crates of low-grade spiritual stones, the kind used to power defensive formations. Once he was done he put it into his storage ring.

  The boy’s hands trembled as he worked but he didn't stop. He strapped a sword to his waist and hurriedly ran toward a waiting group of mercenaries.

  "The beacons are lit," another passing woman said to her companion. Her voice was tight but resolved. She was adjusting the straps of her leather armor while walking. "Blue fire. That means a Major Breach. I hear that the Iron Cliff Sect is gone."

  "Gone?" Her companion, an older man with a limp, gripped his spear tighter. "That’s a mid-tier sect. If they were wiped out..."

  "Then that area will fall soon. Spreading who knows where else.," the woman finished grimly. "We have to get supplies to the Grey-Water Valley before the demons push through to the civilian towns."

  Li Yu listened to all the chatter. ‘It would seem since rifts and attacks are so common, there is a method to get the news out quickly. They must have developed methods or have a system in place so news travels quickly. That way people can react accordingly. The reaction here is quite different from what I thought it would be though.’

  On other continents, news like this would cause a panic. People would be trampling each other to get away from the dangers. Here, the immediate reaction was to mobilize. The weaker cultivators supported the strong. The strong held the line. It was a society built entirely around the concept of defending.

  "They run toward the fire," Krell observed, watching a group of teenagers loading barrels of spiritual water onto a cart. "Good steel in these ones. Not brittle."

  "A continent of fighters that are united in purpose." Li Yu agreed silently. "Let’s pick up the pace and head there. We can see how this continent contends with the rifts." Li Yu grabbed Krell’s shoulder and the two blurred away.

  At Grey-Water Valley

  The valley was usually a majestic gorge carved by a glacial river. Today, it was a slaughterhouse.

  The Iron Cliff Sect, which had sat perched on the eastern ridge, was simply... gone. In its place was a crater of smoking rubble and a tear in the sky so large it looked like the eye of a malevolent god. The rift pulsated with corrupt energy and was vomiting forth horrors.

  The human defensive line was a desperate crescent formation held by three other sects that had responded first. They were fighting a retreating battle but were giving up ground yard by bloody yard.

  The demons pouring from the rift were nightmare fuel. There were hulking behemoths which stood thirty feet tall and their skin like armored plating. Four legged monstrosities that moved quickly with claws and teeth that made short work of anything they touched. It was a nightmare.

  But the real threat floated above the carnage.

  Three demons. They radiated the terrifying pressure of the Soul Formation realm. One was a bloated mass of eyes and tentacles. Another was a skeletal figure wreathed in green flame. The third was a four-winged monstrosity holding a jagged spear of bone.

  The human cultivators were collapsing. Strong cultivators were being picked off by one of those three demons and the forces were being destroyed.

  A group of Core Formation elders tried to combine their attacks to slow down the skeletal demon but the creature merely waved a hand and green fire consumed them. Before long it turned them to ash in mid-air.

  Despair was palpable. The human cultivators were fighting with the ferocity of trapped rats but they were outclassed. The weight of the demon aura was also acting to suppress their circulation and it was making every movement sluggish. However, you couldn’t see anyone running away.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "Fall back!" a bloodied commander screamed while clutching a severed arm. "We can't hold them! Save the juniors!"

  The rout was about to begin. If they broke now, the demons would run them down and slaughter thousands.

  Then, the sky cracked once more.

  It wasn't the sound of thunder. It was the sharp, tearing sound of reality being sundered by pure voltage.

  A bolt of jagged, blinding white lightning struck the center of the battlefield. It didn't fade instantly; it lingered, sizzling with black arcs of destruction that ate into the very rock of the valley floor.

  BOOM!

  The shockwave knocked a dozen Behemoths off their feet. Standing in the center of the impact crater was a man.

  He was a giant of a human and his frame thick with muscle. He was unarmored and his upper body was completely bare, showing muscular frame. But it was his weapons that drew the eye.

  He held not one but two colossal greatswords. Each blade was as wide as a torso and longer than a man. They were forged from a dark and heavy star-metal. They were weapons that not many would be able to use one of, let alone dual-wield.

  He had wild steel-grey hair that whipped in the static-charged air. His face was a mask of grim determination and etched with scars. His entire body was etched with scars.

  His aura erupted. It was the color of a storm cloud and shot through with veins of annihilation. The man was at the Peak of Soul Formation. It looked like his affinities were with lightning and destruction.

  A ragged cheer went up from the beleaguered human lines.

  "It's him!"

  "Lord Vorgnir!"

  "The Spark Before the Dawn is here!"

  "The Death Seeker!"

  Vorgnir didn't look back at the people cheering him. He didn't issue orders or even acknowledged that they were there. He dragged the tips of his twin greatswords through the frozen earth and sparks of white lightning and black destruction were flying where the metal touched the stone.

  "Finally!" Vorgnir roared. "Could today be the day?!."

  He moved instantly. He didn't use a movement technique. He simply exploded forward, his body turning into a blur of lightning. The four-winged demon shrieked and thrust its bone spear.

  Vorgnir didn't move to block it. He didn't raise a blade to parry. He simply charged straight at the demon without worrying about the spear.

  The bone spear tried to pierce Vorgnir’s left shoulder but in the last minute his body shifted slightly and the spear only grazed him. Where the spear touched his body sparks seemed to explode from every spot that was contacted but the spear couldn’t pierce through his skin.

  The humans watching gasped at the reckless move. But Vorgnir didn't even flinch. A manic grin split his face. He had been willing to trade his flesh for positioning.

  "Too slow!"

  With a loud roar he swung both greatswords inward in a terrifying scissor motion.

  CRACK-BOOM!

  The blades met at the demon's neck. The sheer force of the impact, combined with the explosive lightning coating the steel, didn't just cut the head off—it obliterated it. The demon's upper torso evaporated in a mist of blood.

  Vorgnir kicked the headless corpse away and grabbed the demon’s spear. He took the spear and launched it at another weaker demon that was about to kill a cultivator, killing it instantly instead. He turned to the next demon general. Another manic grin on his face and his eyes burning with a desire for the end.

  "This represents the Death Seeker style," A seasoned cultivator observed from the distant ridge. His tone was respectful and filled with awe. "All out offense. Two blades mean no hand is free for defense. He invites the fatal blow to deliver the final one."

  Vorgnir was a tempest of violence. He charged the skeletal demon next. Green fire quickly washed over him. It was burning his skin. Vorgnir ignored the pain completely and ignored the smell of his own cooking flesh.

  He slammed his swords into the ground, channeling his Qi.

  "Thunder Funeral!"

  Jagged pillars of black lightning erupted from the earth and shattered the skeletal demon's bone shields. Vorgnir leaped through the debris and brought both swords down in an overhead smash that looked heavy enough to split the world.

  The skeletal demon tried to catch the blades as a last means of defense. Its arms shattered instantly from the force.

  Vorgnir pounded the demon into the earth. He continued chopping again and again until there was nothing left but dust and fading green embers.

  He killed the second Lord.

  But the effort had cost him. He was breathing more heavily and his chest heaving frantically. His skin was burned and his Qi was fluctuating wildly. The demons were strong and resilient. He had to use a lot of his Qi for his attacks in order to destroy them in one go.

  Unfortunately, the third demon—the bloated mass of eyes—was the strongest here. It was a half-step into the Divine Transformation realm.

  "You did well but are a broken thing, human," the tentacled demon spoke. Its voice was a mental screech that echoed in everyone's ears in the area.

  It unleashed a beam of concentrated void energy that somehow appeared behind Vorgnir and hit him in the back before he could react at all. He was flung forwards, skipping across the frozen ground like a stone across a pond and finally crashing through a boulder before coming to a halt.

  "Lord Vorgnir!" Screamed the cultivators in the area. He was their hope.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the figure in the rubble moved. Vorgnir pushed himself up. His back was a ruin of charred meat and exposed bone. Blood bubbled from his lips.

  He shouldn't be standing. He should be dead from the damage he took.

  But Vorgnir stabbed one of his greatswords into the ground and used it as a crutch to haul himself upright. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the snow.

  "Is that all?" Vorgnir rasped, his voice wet. "I'm still here!"

  The human cultivators roared. It was a sound of heartbreak and awe. They surged forward, inspired by his madness, clashing with the lesser demons to keep them off him.

  "Stay back!" Vorgnir roared at them, his eyes flaring with a final, suicidal light. "He is mine!"

  He took several pills and began to gather all of his Qi and strength that he had left. A mist of white and black lightning enveloped him. He was preparing a technique of mutual destruction. He was going to turn his body into a bomb to take out the final Demon Lord.

  ‘This is it,’ Vorgnir thought with a sense of relief washing over him. ‘I’m finally going.’

  The tentacled demon sensed the danger. It gathered every ounce of its power, preparing a second void beam to vaporize Vorgnir before he could detonate.

  On a ridge overlooking the valley, two figures finally crested the hill. Li Yu and Krell stopped once they saw the scene and were looking down into the bowl of the valley.

  They saw the smoking crater of the sect. They saw the thousands of demons swarming over the broken human lines. And they saw the lone, bloodied figure of the grey-haired giant standing against a massive, pulsating horror. His body was glowing with the volatile energy of self-destruction.

  It was a scene of absolute desperation. The humans were seconds away from being wiped out.

  "Messy," Krell grunted while looking at the sheer volume of enemies.

  Li Yu’s eyes locked onto the man down below. He saw the intent. He saw no regret or desperation, he saw happiness.

  "We made it just in time," Li Yu said quietly as he sprung into action.