A deathly silence swallowed the valley.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Every cultivator present stared at the empty space where their most ferocious companion had stood only seconds earlier.
Minds reeled, unable to process what their eyes had just witnessed.
There had been no gesture, no ripple of energy, no warning flare of aura from Aaron. Nothing.
"How…" one of the sect masters whispered, voice cracking.
Aaron finally raised his eyes. He swept his gaze across the frozen crowd once more.
"I will say it one more time," he stated, tone flat and final. "Are you all here to pay your respects?"
This time he did not ask politely.
His soul pressure erupted outward like an invisible tidal wave, cold, vast, and utterly suffocating.
It rolled over the entire gathering in an instant, pressing down with the weight of an entire realm.
Every single cultivator dropped.
Knees slammed into the dirt. Backs bowed. Faces pressed toward the ground in involuntary submission.
