A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6475

"The ancient tree was not towering or massively thick.

It was only wide enough for two people to wrap their arms around. Its trunk rose straight and upright, without bend or twist. Rough, heavy bark in a deep brown covered it, and the surface was packed with dense natural markings, some deep, some shallow, all layered close together."

"Those markings wound and crossed over one another in strange, countless shapes.

Some tangled and twisted together like distorted human faces, each one trapped in struggle, each one crying out with pain and refusal."

Others stretched long and far, like great rivers of time running across eternity, flowing without end.

"Thread after thread of dim black light seeped faintly from beneath the bark’s markings.

It was neither vicious nor baleful, yet it carried the heavy breath of ancient desolation, of ages settled layer upon layer."

"The ancient tree’s branches were thick with leaves.

Each leaf was a deep jade green, its texture warm and fine, as though it had been carefully carved by nature from flawless jade. The veins were clear, and the luster stayed restrained beneath the surface."

"Under the warm sun, the leaves gave off layers of soft, gentle light.

They were full of life, forming a sharp contrast with the trunk’s dark, old simplicity."

Elderheart Soulwood.

"The core foundation among the Three Relics of Embodiment, the piece without which nothing could be completed, the final goal Jared had crossed the Wastelands for, risked the three trials for, and survived by the thinnest margin again and again to find, now stood right before him.

It was close enough to touch."

"Jared's violet soul suddenly brightened by a faint degree.

The hope he had forced down for so many days began to surge quietly upward. Thoughts of avenging blood debts, returning to the ancestral homeland, and seeing old companions again rushed into him all at once."

"But he forced the turbulence back down.

He still did not rush forward to seize it. Instead, he remained where he was and swept the surrounding woodland again, checking over and over for hidden guardian wraithbeasts, killing wards, or fatal illusion arrays."

"He searched again and again.

He sensed again and again.

The result never changed—no danger, no killing intent, no guardian, no ward."

"Across the entire woodland, there was only peace.

Only age-worn simplicity.

Only the Elderheart Soulwood standing there in silence, with nothing else beside it."

Aldric spoke again, his voice calm, yet carrying the certainty of someone who had already seen through the whole thing. "Stop looking. No matter how much you search, it will do you no good.

"The Third Trial has no traps, no wards, no illusion arrays, and no guardian wraithbeasts. Every external killing move is absent. The trial has never been in any outside thing. It is only in your heart."

"It does not test how strong your battle power is. It does not test how sharp your strategy is. It does not test how fast your movement technique is. It tests only three things."

"First, whether you dare to take this heaven-defying opportunity, and whether you dare to bear the endless cause and effect behind it."

"Second, whether you are willing to set down the obsessions in your heart, so your pure spirit can resonate with the Soulwood's nascence and merge with it."

"Third, after you take the Soulwood, whether you can withstand the backlash of countless failures' obsessions, hold to what first drove you, keep your true heart unchanged, and not stray down the wrong path."

Jared stayed silent for a long while. The shape of his spirit rose and dipped without settling, and thought after thought cut through him.

He carried a blood debt as deep as a sea. He carried the lives owed to his own sect, the obsession of returning to the Sixteenth Firmament, and the mission of raising the Aureate Way again and continuing the First Patriarch's inheritance.

His obsessions ran too deep. His burdens were too heavy. Love and hate were tangled together, debts and grudges clung to him from every side. To reach a state with no stray thought, pure and flawless, was harder than any blade or formation before him.

But there was no other path left to him.

For his body. For revenge. For every person who had already fallen. However hard it was, he had to do it.

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