Night fell, and the light dimmed.
In the void, a scant few stars were embedded in the ink-black canopy of the sky, their glow as faint as candles about to gutter out, unable to cast even a trace of warmth upon the earth.
A crescent remnant moon hung on the horizon, its outline blurred. The cold moonlight it shed held not the slightest gentleness; instead, it was like an ice-tempered blade, slanting across this Dead Silence world.
The late-autumn night wind carried a bone-piercing chill, sweeping in with thick black clouds in roiling waves, instantly covering most of the remnant moon and plunging heaven and earth into deeper gloom.
The scattered shards of moonlight leaking through gaps in the clouds fell upon that Cultivation Family's residence, making the manor seem even more desolate, like a lonely grave long since abandoned.
At that moment, in the courtyard at the deepest part of the manor, a dense bloody reek spread like something tangible.
In the very center of the courtyard, the shattered corpses of Human Race cultivators were piled up, their blood soaking the entire expanse of bluestone slabs.
Aside from the family's old ancestor, who was bound by an invisible force and suspended in midair, everyone in the entire clan, whether old or weak, women or children, had already been murdered.
Those cultivators stood steadily between the corpses and puddles of blood, their faces wearing savage grins twisted into hideous shapes.
There was not the slightest mercy in their eyes, only bloodthirsty fanaticism as they stared fixedly at the family old ancestor floating in the air, like a pack of hungry wolves eyeing prey.
That old ancestor of the Golden Core Realm had long since been tortured beyond human shape.
There was no intact patch of flesh anywhere on his body,