The revelation of the First Law and the horrifying truth of Arthan's cosmic transgression filled Elias with a renewed sense of urgency. The Ledger was a dying construct, and the primordials were stirring. But Arthan's apprentice, Master Veyra, was still at large, and her plans were advancing with terrifying speed.
Using the map she had left behind, Elias and Mei Lin tracked Veyra to the designated ley line nexus in Emberfall. They arrived too late.
Veyra, her eyes blazing with a cold, triumphant light, had already completed her work. She hadn't planted a simple bomb. She had unleashed something far more insidious. She detonated a final, powerful resonance bomb at Emberfall's nexus, but her intention was not to destroy it. Her aim was to overload it, to push the delicate ley line network past its breaking point, creating a vast, spiraling karmic vortex.
The effect was instantaneous and devastating. A chilling wave of discordant Prana ripped through the region. Every cultivator in Emberfall above Rank 3 suffered immediate, severe feedback burns. Their Prana channels screamed in agony, their cultivation shattered, leaving them writhing on the ground, their bodies marked with hideous, invisible wounds. The mighty Aegis Legions, the human cultivators tasked with defending the border, were crippled, their power neutralized, their lines collapsing in disarray.
Elias felt a surge of profound horror. This wasn't just about weakening Jadeheart or framing the Stoneborn. This was about systematic annihilation, a culling of power that mirrored Arthan's ancient experiments. The vortex was not just localized; it was a hungry, expanding maw of chaotic karma.
His karmic lens, now stripped of his most damning secrets but still capable of sensing subtle shifts, registered the terrifying truth: the vortex was spreading toward Jadeheart. It was a consuming force, an unraveling of karmic reality that would first cripple, then erase, all cultivation in its path. Veyra's "revenge" was far more terrifying than a simple explosion; it was an act of existential unraveling, mirroring the very void-creating power of Arthan's initial transgression. The clock was ticking, and the very concept of power in the Realm was swiftly being extinguished.