The thick cloud of white spiritual jade dust slowly began to clear, drifting over the shattered remnants of the Faith Family's grand courtyard.
Tony Clark stood perfectly still amidst the rubble, his hands casually tucked into the pockets of his dark hunting cloak with his standard, lazy posture fully intact. Beside his leather boots, the massive Crimson Shadow Griffin kept its eagle-like head lowered in serene devotion, its thirty-foot blood-red wings folded tightly against its muscular flank.
The entire front line of the family's baseline guards lay groaning and unconscious across the marble floor, completely broken by the absolute kinetic force of the previous shot.
From the grand, heavily carved doors of the main ancestral hall, a group of remaining family elders frantically rushed out into the open courtyard. At the absolute front of the panicked crowd was the Head of the Faith Family—Julie's biological father.
