*****“Hahahaha!”A sudden roar of laughter shattered the tension, echoing through the hall so abruptly that it nearly gave several guests a heart attack.Immediately, all heads whipped around in perfect unison, all eyes searching for the source of the thunderous voice.It came from the third section… Julius, Julius Cromwell.At this moment, he was on his feet, his entire body shaking as he laughed like a man who had been possessed.His grin stretched wide, his eyes gleaming with manic delight, which, to the crowd, made him appear like someone who had just lost his grip on sanity.“That… that is my master!” Julius crowed, his chest puffed, and his voice bursting with pride.The crowd watched in stunned disbelief, almost everyone wondering whether he had lost his mind.But Julius didn’t care. He was far too busy drowning in excitement right now to care.He had expected Xavier to dominate, yes, but this? This was far beyond anything he had imagined. It was glorious, terrifying

*****Normally, an F-rank fighter would never dare to breathe too heavily in the presence of an E-rank. Yet right at this moment, this man was roaring in fury, leaving everyone, especially the F-rank and E-rank fighters in the hall, to wonder if he had gone mad or simply grown tired of living; after all, the audacity was something else entirely.However, the man’s expression told another story.At this moment, his face twisted with unrestrained rage, thick veins bulging out across his temple, yet beneath that anger lay a suffocating fear.At first, he seemed oblivious to the hundreds of eyes drilling into him. But soon he realized, and when he did, he didn’t shrink back.Instead, his lips curled into a snarl.“What?!” he barked, his voice reverberating through the hall, and his fury swelling instead of shrinking. “Did I lie?!”The question instantly struck like a slap.Several people flinched instinctively, no one expecting defiance from an F-rank to an E-rank fighter, yet her

*****At this moment, Sarah remained seated, frozen on the ground, her body still stiff and her mind still spinning in frantic denial, desperately convincing herself that what had happened earlier was nothing more than some unfunny joke and the aftereffect of all the wines she had had that night.But the harder she fought against it, the faster the reality pressed in on her until suddenly… out of nowhere, a chilling sensation swept down her spine, stabbing her skin like icy needles.It wasn’t just fear, it was more like an instinct… like an animal certain that something unspeakable was on the verge of happening to her.In the next blink, her heart leapt to her throat, and the fog clouding her mind instantly broke apart, snapping her back to the present, and then to her confusion and anxiousness, she realized that... every gaze in the hall was presently fixated on her... over two hundred pairs of eyes locked on her as though she were some lab rat on the verge of getting dissected.

*****At this moment, whether it was men or women, elder or youth, fighter or weakling, guests or servants, everyone… every last person in that hall, save for four or five silent exceptions, had turned their wrath upon Sarah right now.Over two hundred people now glared at her with open hatred and ferociousness of beasts dying to long to rip her apart with their bare hands.Earlier, Xavier and Grace had endured a barrage of cutting, spiteful, humiliating, and ruthless words thrown without even the tiniest bit of restraint or pity for their mental health.But now, compared to what Sarah faced, those earlier insults and humiliation appeared almost tame, like a child’s play.The insults thrown at Sarah right now weren’t just scorn... they were daggers heavily laced with venom, meant not only to cut down her pride but to shatter her very spirit and make her unable to lift her head for the rest of her life.And Sarah, pinned under the barrage of these arrows of malice, had gone compl

*****At this moment, Sarah felt suffocated. It was as if the air itself had turned against her, every breath turning to a desperate gulp that failed to fill her lungs.Her heartbeat thundered wildly frantically against her, stumbling and skipping as though it might give up entirely.Her body also quaked uncontrollably, trembling not with a shiver but like a machine on the verge of detonating, her jaw clattering and her teeth striking against each other so frantically they appeared as though intent on self-destruction.It was maddening.Every pair of eyes in the hall was sharply and mercilessly locked on her, and in her unraveling mind, they fused together into one monstrous glare.Soon, the voices around her also became blurred, merging into a single dreadful chant, while the hall itself seemed to come alive, rising against her in some twisted conspiracy.She felt as if she were in a horror series, her chest tightening as pure panic tore through her nerves.And yet, when she