Chapter 66: The Shadow of Judgment Descends (Part 2)
The Shadow of Judgment Descends (Part 2)
Compared to the stunned silence that gripped every member of the Salvatore Clan, Damien stood almost unnaturally calm.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t shocked.
He was.
But he’d already experienced this shock once before.
Long before this day.
The moment he first saw Elder Black, a long-forgotten memory from his previous life had stirred awake, surfacing from the deepest corners of his soul.
As the Quick-witted Lord, Damien had spent centuries wandering through countless forbidden lands, ancient ruins, and forgotten realms in search of the scattered fragments of the Eternal Tribulation Sword.
One journey, however, had been unlike all the others.
He had stumbled upon an ancient Heavenly Secret Realm—a place so old that even the greatest powers of his era believed it had disappeared from history.
Time itself seemed unable to reach that forgotten world.
There, hidden beneath endless layers of silence and decay, he found not only another fragment of the Eternal Tribulation Sword...
...but something far more terrifying.
A memory.
Not written in books.
Not carved into stone.
A memory preserved across endless ages, as though someone had forced history itself to remember.
Even after dying once and being reborn, Damien had never forgotten what he saw that day.
Every image.
Every sound.
Every impossible detail.
They remained etched into his soul as vividly as if it had happened only yesterday.
...
The sky was breaking apart.
The heavens had already collapsed, leaving behind a landscape of endless destruction.
Stars rained down like blazing meteors, dragging rivers of fire across the darkness as they crashed into worlds below.
One realm after another crumbled into ruin.
Mountains shattered.
Oceans boiled away.
Entire civilizations vanished in the blink of an eye.
Blood stained the endless void.
Countless divine beings—existences worshipped throughout the ages as invincible, eternal legends—fell one after another.
Some fought until their bodies were torn apart.
Some died without even seeing what had killed them.
Their enormous corpses drifted silently through the shattered cosmos like abandoned monuments to a forgotten era.
Then...
Something emerged.
A hand.
A skeletal hand so unimaginably vast that even worlds looked insignificant beneath its shadow.
It descended from the darkness beyond the heavens, where even light dared not exist.
Its bones were ancient beyond measure.
Dry.
Withered.
Yet they carried an authority that seemed older than creation itself.
Strange runes crawled across every finger, twisting and shifting endlessly.
They weren’t symbols from any language Damien had ever known.
Merely looking at them filled his mind with unbearable pain, as though mortal beings were never meant to witness such things.
Wherever the hand reached...
Space shattered like fragile glass.
Time itself began to rot.
Entire worlds disappeared without so much as leaving behind a single grain of dust.
No explosion.
No resistance.
Only absolute erasure.
Cries of despair echoed across the broken heavens.
Millions.
Billions.
Countless living beings screamed as everything they had ever known was swallowed by endless darkness.
Even the mighty Grand Saints...
Even the Eternal Immortals who stood at the pinnacle of countless eras...
Were powerless.
Before that terrifying existence, they were no different from grains of sand before an endless ocean.
Small... Fragile... Meaningless.
And then—
A broken sword appeared.
An old soldier stepped forward.
His back was slightly bent.
His black robes fluttered gently in the endless void.
There were no earth-shattering movements.
No magnificent divine techniques.
No dramatic declarations.
He merely raised that broken sword.
And swung it.
One strike.
Just one.
The endless darkness split apart.
The skeletal hand was severed.
The heavens were cleansed.
Everything returned to silence.
...
That old soldier...
Had the exact same face...
As Elder Black.
Not merely similar.
Identical.
Even the calm expression in his eyes...
Even the lonely aura surrounding him...
Everything matched perfectly.
Damien slowly exhaled.
His heartbeat gradually steadied.
At first, he had suspected Victor to be the reincarnation of some supreme Eternal Emperor.
Now...
That theory seemed laughably small.
His gaze drifted toward Victor, who calmly walked forward beneath the endless attention of the entire city.
His long shoulder-length black hair swayed gently with the breeze.
Golden eyes remained calm, like an endless sea untouched by waves.
The black robe embroidered with golden dragons moved gracefully with each measured step.
Every movement carried an indescribable dignity.
He wasn’t trying to appear imposing.
He simply was.
Damien’s heart trembled.
"Patriarch..."
"Perhaps you were never an Eternal Emperor."
"Perhaps..."
"You stand even higher than the Eternal Emperor Realm..."
"A realm that even I, in my previous life, never knew existed."
"To command someone like Elder Black..."
"Just what kind of existence are you?"
His respect deepened even further.
Not out of fear.
But genuine admiration.
...
Meanwhile...
The disciples of the Salvatore Family finally recovered from their daze.
Their emotions exploded all at once.
"The Patriarch’s attendant possesses such divine power!"
"Hahaha! I knew it! The Patriarch would never lose!"
"A mere Crimson Abyss Sect actually dared challenge our Salvatore Family!"
"Our Patriarch is invincible!"
"Long live the Patriarch!"
"LONG LIVE THE PATRIARCH!"
Their voices merged into one overwhelming roar that echoed throughout Aurelia City.
The sound carried absolute confidence.
Absolute faith.
To them...
Victor was no longer simply their Clan Patriarch.
He had become the pillar supporting the heavens above the Salvatore Family.
As long as he remained standing...
No enemy could destroy them.
Not now.
Not ever.
...
Throughout Aurelia City, every cultivator stared blankly at the Salvatore Estate.
Many rubbed their eyes repeatedly.
Some even pinched themselves.
Yet no matter what they did...
The scene before them remained unchanged.
A Heavenly Genesis Realm expert...
Had truly died from a single sentence.
An elderly cultivator swallowed hard.
"I... have cultivated for more than a century..."
"...yet today..."
"...I feel as though everything I believed about cultivation has been overturned."
Another martial artist nodded absentmindedly.
"I thought the Crimson Abyss Sect was an insurmountable mountain."
"But compared to that old man..."
"...they don’t even seem worthy of being called ants."
Fear.
Awe.
Reverence.
Every emotion blended together.
At that moment, nobody dared underestimate the Salvatore Family ever again.
Not even in their thoughts.
The family that had once been regarded as a rising power...
Now appeared more like an unfathomable ancient giant that had quietly awakened from countless years of slumber.
And standing at its center...
Was Victor.