A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6379

Jared lifted a brow slightly. "Where are we supposed to find help?"

Here in the Sixteenth Firmament, the human race was weak, hunted down by the celestials from all sides like stray dogs with nowhere to go.

As for the other races, they had either already bowed to the celestials or shut their doors and focused on surviving.

Who would willingly take the risk of offending the Celestial Alliance just to lend them a hand?

Nathaniel slowly raised his head and looked toward the distant Greywild Mountains.

The peaks speared up into the clouds.

Ancient trees towered over the slopes, mist wound through the heights, and deep inside that wilderness lay countless secrets and dangers no one really knew.

Something complicated showed in his eyes.

There was a trace of reverence in it, and a trace of hesitation too, like he was about to speak aloud a secret that had been buried for years.

"There's still one race hidden in the Sixteenth Firmament."

"A race the celestials never completely crushed and never completely wiped out."

"They stay hidden year-round in the deepest parts of the remote forests and mountains, cut off from the outside world. The celestials have searched everywhere, but they've never had an easy time finding the race's true nest."

"Even when they occasionally noticed something, they never wanted to get too tangled up in it. And they wanted even less to launch some massive extermination campaign."

Something shifted in Jared's eyes.

"Why?"

"Because that race wants no part in the struggles of the world."

Nathaniel explained, "They never start conflicts. They don't expand their territory, they don't seize resources, and they don't covet power. They pose no threat at all to celestial rule.

"The celestials weighed the costs against the gains and decided there was no point wasting huge numbers of troops to attack a patch of land with nothing to offer. Better to leave them alone. As long as they don't make trouble, the celestials look the other way."

A glint cut through Jared's gaze.

"What race?"

"The Sylvan Kin."

Nathaniel lowered his voice.

What came out carried the weight of something that could shake the entire Sixteenth Firmament if it spread too far.

"Some people also call them the Verdant Folk."

"They aren't flesh-and-blood beings, and they aren't beasts who cultivated themselves into human form either. They're spirits born directly from the world's spiritual essence."

"A thousand-year ancient tree draws in the essence of the sun and moon. A ten-thousand-year reishi takes in the earth-breath of mountains and rivers. Strange flowers and rare grasses endure the world's tempering. Given enough time, they awaken intelligence, gather bodies of their own, take human form, and become a race unto themselves."

"They belong to neither the human race, nor the celestials, nor the demon, nor even the beast race. They are lives born from nature itself. The spirits of the mountains and forests. The souls of flowers, grass, and trees."

Jared paused at that.

The beast race was no mystery to him.

They were birds and beasts that had cultivated their way upward until they could assume human form, and among them were more than a few with astonishing talent.

He had once taken the Fox Queen, Catina, to bed. Her true form had been a fox. Her beauty had been enough to stop a man in his tracks, and the pull she carried had lingered on him long after.

But a complete race born from flowers, grass, ancient trees, and spiritual plants—one with its own territory, its own rules, its own inheritance—that was something he had never heard of and never seen.

That alone was enough to stir his curiosity.

"Are they strong?" Jared asked straight out.

In a world where the strong fed on the weak, power was the foundation under every alliance.

Nathaniel nodded without the slightest hesitation.

"Very strong."

"But not the kind of strength you're thinking of—the kind that charges headfirst into battle and kills without hesitation. The Sylvan Kin aren't good at frontal combat, and they don't cultivate savage offensive arts. Their strengths lie in perception, healing, and the formation."

"If an elder worldtree that has lived for over ten thousand years takes human form, its roots can spread through an entire mountain range. Within a thousand miles, any movement in the wind, any fluctuation in spiritual power, any trace of a solitary figure passing through—none of it escapes their senses. In front of them, ambushes and sneak attacks might as well not exist."

"A sylvan elder born from a ten-thousand-year reishi—just one drop of its nascence sap could drag the dead back to life and put flesh on bare bone. An ordinary fatal wound would close in the blink of an eye. Even if a cultivator was crushed to the edge of death, as long as one last breath still hung on, they could be pulled back by force."

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