The Lightbringer's Return

Richard Ellsworth turns up and the fighting between humans and demons starts over. Ian Barton serves in the order that hunts demons, and in the middle of this he learns what his father is. The man had been in the city the whole time, living as an ordinary person and raising his son through the ordinary run of it. Before that he was called the Venerable, the strongest human alive, and he was the one who sealed the Demon Ancestor away before dropping out of sight. The limit that had held his cultivation in place for years is only now starting to give. The seal is not holding as it did. A second Richard Ellsworth appears and the two of them cannot both be real, which sends every side into working out which is which. Whatever is between Ian Barton and Lillian Harrington gets more tangled. The factions bargain over the formation that guards the city and over what the demon king outside the border wants. Cultivators who had stayed out of things and demon lords alike begin showing themselves, and Ian Barton is given a higher rank.