Nobody moved.
For three agonizing seconds, the shattered cultivation hall remained entirely frozen. The heavy black spear stood embedded in the center of the room, dark energy crawling across its polished surface like living shadows. The golden defensive formations Instructor Vale had painstakingly activated flickered violently, struggling against the sudden spike of foreign mana before finally stabilizing. Barely.
Orion stared at the weapon, his every survival instinct screaming. It wasn't just the raw power of the weapon that set him on edge; it was the terrifying precision of the strike. Someone had hurled that spear from far outside the academy's sovereign boundaries. They had bypassed multiple layers of defensive barriers, cut through centuries-old security formations, and evaded senior faculty members capable of vaporizing elite cultivators without breaking a sweat. And they had done it accurately enough to pierce the exact room Rowan occupied.
