The silence that preceded the strike was far more terrifying than any thunder that had come before.
It was an unnatural, choking empty pocket. A dead hush that seemed to halt the turning of the terrestrial sphere. Birds across three mountain ranges ceased their calls. They dropped into the dense brush with wings clamped tight against their bodies. Mountain streams, swollen with melted snow from the peaks, slowed to an oily crawl as though the fluid itself feared to make a sound beneath the gathered weight of the high sky.
Across the entire Eastern Training Sector, spanning tens of thousands of li, ancient spiritual scrying cooking pots began to vibrate all at once.
In the secluded old family crypts of the Violet Cloud Sect, three hundred leagues to the north. That bronze tripod had remained undisturbed for seven hundred years suddenly rang with a high, mournful chime. An ancient patriarch, whose flesh was dry as parchment and whose beard swept the stone floor, opened cloudy eyes in sudden terror. He spat a mouthful of withered blood. He stared toward the southern horizon where the sky had turned the color of bruised plums.
“Total ruin...” the old hermit croaked, his withered fingers clawing at the flat stone slabs. “A Ninth-Tier Annihilation Decree has showed up in the mortal realm... Which sect has awakened an ancient fiendgod? The heavens are dropping their headsman’s blade!”
