*****Meanwhile, Mistress Ayra listened to the subordinate’s report with such an unreadable expression that one would have thought he was merely informing her that the weather outside had turned slightly cloudy rather than handing her the kind of news that could shake an entire city.She neither interrupted nor reacted outwardly.She just stood there, elegant and composed, her posture relaxed, her face smooth, and her eyes calm enough to make it seem as though everything she had just heard was only natural… as though a man single-handedly dismantling a first-rank family was merely another item on today’s schedule.Only after the hooded figure finished his report did she fall silent for a moment, sinking into thought.Then, slowly, the corner of her lips curled upward into a smirk.‘So… our patriarch has single-handedly destroyed a first-rank family?’ she asked inwardly, though the way her eyes lit up made it abundantly clear that she was not asking because she doubted it.She was aski

*****A pot-bellied man suddenly sprang out of his chair so violently that the cup of ale in his hand flew from his grip and crashed onto the floor, splashing alcohol everywhere.The man seated beside him immediately recoiled in disgust, his brows knotting together as he stared at the beer now dripping onto his trouser leg.“What the hell…”He turned sharply, clearly ready to curse the pot-bellied man into next week, but the words never fully came out.The fellow looked too deranged to quarrel with.His mouth was hanging open, his eyes stretched so wide they looked one shock away from abandoning his skull entirely, and his hand trembled around his phone as though the device had transformed into a venomous snake.He looked less like a man checking social media and more like someone who had accidentally opened the gates of hell with his thumb.But then…“Have… have you guys seen Anonymous404’s post?” he cried out.His voice was so shrill and strained that it instantly cut through the ba

*****Meanwhile, while Mistress Ayra remained seated in her bar, busy daydreaming about how Xavier was going to react and reward her once he realized how extraordinarily she had executed the mission, the rest of Riverton seemed to have gone collectively insane.The entire district looked as though someone had poured fire into the veins of the city.Whether they were past victims of the Revercrests… people who had been cheated by the family, bullied, extorted, ruined, or trampled on over the years, or simply ordinary Riverton residents whose outrage had finally reached the ceiling and punched through it, they all surged toward the Revercrests’ mansion like a flood that had broken through a dam.Men, women, old people, youths, rich, poor… none of it mattered. At this moment, everyone had only one thing on their minds.Justice.Or, if justice proved too slow, then a very enthusiastic substitute involving screaming, stones, and the decorative destruction of expensive property.They rushed

*****Every eye lit up, faces twisted with fury, and the crowd, which had already been half-crazed with rage and adrenaline, seemed to collectively lose the last scraps of restraint they had left.Without a second of hesitation, they spread out like a flood breaking past a dam, charging at every single thing they could reach.Within moments, people had begun producing all kinds of tools from nowhere… as if the city had secretly been waiting for this exact day with construction equipment in hand.Diggers, shovels, axes, iron rods, hammers, even thick metal pipes appeared one after another, and soon the outer perimeter of the Revercrest estate was being assaulted from all directions.The scene was utterly wild.Seeing this, a man hidden among the sea of furious civilians suddenly curled his lips into a smug smirk.He was the one who had been stirring the current from the shadows all along, tossing words here and there, nudging their anger in just the right direction, making sure the fir

*****The silence pressing down upon the council chamber was so oppressive it almost became a living thing, wrapping itself around everyone's throats.Finally..."I... I always knew that family was evil," the Blackwood patriarch muttered at last.His voice was barely above a whisper, sounding more like a thought he had accidentally spoken aloud than words intended for others.Yet in the crushing silence, every single word rang clearly throughout the hall.Everyone instinctively snapped back to reality. Then, like the first domino tipping over..."He is in the same cultivation rank as I am," the master of one of Riverton's largest cultivation schools slowly said, rubbing the goosebumps on his arm. "Yet every single time I looked into his eyes... I felt an inexplicable chill. It was as though I wasn't staring at a fellow cultivator but at something hiding inside human skin."Another elder nodded grimly."I thought it was merely his temperament.""So did I.""I simply assumed he cultivat