*****As soon as this realization dawned upon Victor, his blood turned to ice, and his soul quivered, as if preparing to be plucked straight from his body.His mouth opened, but no sound came, and just like that, his entire being became paralyzed, suffocated by that voice.Just at that moment…“Sir… sir mighty E-rank fighter!” A trembling voice erupted from the second section, trembling with fear and desperate flattery, startling everyone.Every head instantly turned.The speaker was an older man, somewhere in his mid-sixties, who, right now, looked ancient, as if the very act of speaking itself had aged him decades.His skin had gone chalk-pale; his eyes wide and frantic, staying locked on Augustus like a man pleading with a god.Slowly and unhurriedly, Augustus turned to the man, his expression a mask of icy menace.He said nothing, but the silence was more terrifying than rage, the oppressive aura pouring from him, so heavy that it made the old man shake, his lips tremblin

*****Victor’s heart began to hammer violently against his ribs with each passing second, each beat feeling like an axe trying to split his chest open.Ultimately, he forced himself to breathe, then he turned his gaze toward his parents, clinging desperately to the hope that their faces would reassure him.But the moment he looked at them… his body stiffened once again.He had hoped to find some calm... perhaps a trace of regret at most, just some subtle sign that things, though bad, were still under control.But unfortunately, the sight that greeted him instantly drove a spear straight through his chest.His parents, who had previously been kneeling and bowed, had now collapsed onto their butts.Their mouths hung ajar, their eyes glazed and empty, and their faces slack with devastation.Right now, they looked as if their entire world had just shattered before them, leaving nothing but ashes and despair behind.The sight immediately caused chill to grip Victor’s spine. 'Why…

*****Several kilometers away from the Scoan estate, sat a modest three-bedroom bungalow.This building wasn’t lavish enough to impress the neighbors, nor shabby enough to draw pity from anyone… just a normal house that screamed home.This was the very house Xavier had bought way before the prison situation came up and claimed five years of his life… the home he had envisioned sharing with Sarah after their marriage.It was the home that should have been their very sanctuary. Instead, Sarah and Victor had stripped it from him, Sarah boldly claiming she had “sold it off” to cover the damages Xavier had supposedly caused to Victor. A neat little lie she had told without batting an eyelid.It was the very house Xavier had returned to after leaving prison, only to walk in on Sarah and Victor shamelessly humping each other on the same matrimonial bed he had purchased for their future.Inside this same villa, two figures currently sat stiff before a tripod stand holding a cell phone,

*****Ava’s head immediately snapped slightly at her son’s words, and for a terrifying instant, her gaze rolled as though she might faint.Her sight grew hazy, darkness closing in from the edges, but she fought desperately to stay conscious… struggling against the pull of collapse.Her fingernails dug into her palm, and her teeth clenched so hard that it felt like they might splinter.She pinched her arm viciously until she felt the sting.And then, with that pinch, her face collapsed into something empty and older. It was as though she had suddenly aged years in seconds.“I… I felt that pain,” she muttered hoarsely, her voice trembling with disbelief. “It’s real… It’s not a dream… this… this isn’t a nightmare? How… how can it be real?”Her body shook violently, her teeth frantically chattering against each other like a woman seized by hypothermia.Then, all at once, she lost control.Ava wildly scratched at her scalp in desperation, yanking out strands of hair as her eyes wi

*****Still inside the banquet hall.It had been over one hour since the Amodu family and Sarah were escorted out in disgrace, yet the silence within the vast room remained unchanged.No one spoke, no one reacted, and no one moved.Instead, the air in the hall remained heavy with the residue of humiliation and shock, the silence so absolute that it pressed down on every chest like a crushing weight.Everyone just remained standing where they had been from the start, staring quietly in a daze, the memory of everything that had happened in the past hour flashing in their brain… things so surreal that if they hadn’t witnessed them with their own eyes, they would have found it too difficult to believe.From the first section, where the lofty upper second-rank families had been seated, to the second section of the third-rank families, all the way down to the descendants and guests filling the third section of the hall, the effect was the same.Every man and woman stood in stunned si