章 222: Ambition Beyond The Starry Sky
The White Bat Tribe's outcome was devastating.
With their 5-Star Realm protectors defeated, the remaining rabble in the tribe were unable to put up a single trace of resistance. Even the 4-Star Realm warriors were like paper before Yaan, dying en mass to his blade.
And now, a sea of wreckage, flames and blood littered the land.
When Yaan first arrived on the Blood Plane, he quickly realised that he would need to kill if he wanted to cultivate properly. He knew that he could not let his emotions get in the way, but even so, he had subconsciously tried to minimise the causalities. He killed those that he needed to kill, but he tried to avoid harming the weak and helpless personally.
Of course, he almost immediately overstepped his own boundaries, accidentally killing a family of mortal Aztecs with his own two hands. Cultivators were simply too powerful, a moment of carelessness during battle could lead to the deaths of many mortals.
Having boundaries was a strange thing; after a person overstepped their boundaries just a single time, they would become more willing to do the same in the future. This would shift their boundaries to a new position, which eventually would be pushed back even further.
Unknowingly, Yaan's moral boundaries had been pushed so far back that he was even willing to orchestrate and personally participate in the total genocide of an entire tribe. There were 200 million human beings in the White Bat Tribe…
By the end of the day, this number had been reduced to a few thousand. The only survivors were those who were not present in the tribe when Yaan and his army arrived.
Yaan stared down at the ruined tribe with a gaze that could freeze over hell. The more he killed, the deeper the killing intent in his heart grew.
The more Slaughter Aura he refined, the closer he stepped towards the Vital Qi Spirit Realm. After he reached the 97% progression point, Yaan realised that his soul had already reached the peak level possible for a mortal soul!
It seemed that as he approached the boundary for the Vital Qi Spirit Realm, he had unknowingly been cultivating his mortal soul. Of course, the Spirit Plane Lord had already mentioned that he would have no difficulty with training his mortal soul, but forming his Spirit Soul would be a huge undertaking.
"This…did we go too far…?" Someone from a vassal tribesman underneath the Bloody Totem Tribe muttered to herself dazedly as she stared down at the ruins below. Thinking about the terrible things she had just done, the female warrior felt uncomfortable with herself.
Killing so many of the weak and helpless was not something that these warriors felt proud of.
The Blood Plane was cruel, but this…completely massacring an entire tribe, killing indiscriminately, sparing not even the mortals, the children…
Wasn't this simply going too far?
For a moment, the icy look in Yaan's eyes vanished, replaced by a clarity born from shock. The indifference was swept away from his mind, and as he took in the sights below him, a certain thought appeared in his mind once again.
'Just what sort of monster have I become…?'
The entire tribe was engulfed by ruin and flames. There was an eery silence and a powerful aura of death and unwillingness, emanating from every inch of the tribe. The stench of blood could be smelled, even half a mile above the ground. The entire region was littered with brutalised corpses, it was simply horrific to look at.
Yaan's heart felt cold, but now, for an entirely different reason. He was changing, and he wasn't sure if he liked what he was changing into…
In this brief moment of clarity, he frowned, realising that something was amiss with his condition.
'The killing intent I feel is too strange. If it was just a result of me killing too many people, it would not grow stronger alongside my cultivation. Wait, could it be related to the slaughter attribute that entered my soul?!'
When Yaan was cultivating under the Fragment of Qi, he developed Slaughter Qi, a Variant Qi. However, after he ascended to the Vital Qi Core Realm, this slaughterous attribute was displaced from his Qi, and according to the Fragment of Qi, it entered his soul!
Could it be that he was already being affected by the mysterious power of slaughter…?
"Silence!" The Bloody Totem Tribe Leader brought Yaan back from his musings as she shouted out angrily at the female warrior who spoke out. The woman paled, realising that she had stepped out of line. She quickly lowered her head and apologised.
"My apologies, Lord Red, Lord Tribe Leader! I misspoke…"
Yaan remained silent, but the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader narrowed her eyes, staring at the pale-faced woman, before looking around the crowd coldly.
"How could a grand ambition not be filled with difficulties such as this? Which prominent kingdom was not built upon the backs of countless atrocities and corpses? How could you short-sighted, mundane people, possibly understand mine and Senior Red's ambitions?!"
Her words struck a chord with Yaan. The icy killing intent returned in full force to Yaan's entire being, as he was reminded of why he was doing all of this.
'Right…why should I care abut the lives of others, when others have never once cared about my own life? Did the strong spare me a second thought when I was a weak, helpless child? So what if I become a monster? I am a heartless person, I do not feel pity for these people, I do not need to consider these useless emotions when taking action…'
Yaan told himself these lies, engrossing his heart in an even deeper illusion.
'My ambition…' He thought to himself, remembering once again the promise he made to himself after waking up on the Blood Plane.
'I will return home. No matter what it takes, no matter what I must become…I will return home.'
Returning home would be overcoming the fate that dragged him here, that was what Yaan told himself. After all, why else would a heartless being like him feel such a strong desire to return home?
The further Yaan deluded himself like this, the stronger his dao of illusions became. Likewise, the damage to his Dao Soul was reaching a truly terrible level.
But, the Dao Soul was not something that someone as weak as Yaan could perceive. Even most immortals could not 'see' their own Dao Soul, and no immortal could see the Dao Soul of another. Unlike the normal soul, which was a spiritual entity and could even be seen in the physical world under certain conditions, the Dao Soul was ethereal and vague, possessing no set appearance nor form.
"Senior, what are your instructions?" The Bloody Totem Tribe Leader turned away from her subordinates, facing Yaan with an expression of genuine respect.
Yaan became silent for a moment, staring down at the sorrowful sight below.
It all came down to his word. Whatever he said would become reality; if he wanted peace, there would be peace…if he wanted war, there would be war.
Yaan turned away from the ruins, and prepared himself to dive deeper into this unforgivable path that he had chosen to walk.
"Hunt down the surviving members of the White Bat Tribe, I want their bloodline to be eradicated. The other tribes in the province can be let off, but only if they submit to us without any resistance." Yaan responded calmly.
A few people swallowed when they heard this. The fact that he wanted to eradicate an entire tribe's bloodline was savage enough, but it was the implication this held for his further actions that left them all unable to speak.
The Bloody Totem Tribe Leader was not so frail, she spoke everyone's thoughts aloud without hesitation.
"Will we deal with the other provinces in the same manner?"
"Naturally." Yaan nodded. "Those provinces with a ruling tribe will have their ruling tribe eradicated. In those provinces without a ruling tribe, the tribe that has played the largest part in warring against us will be eradicated. This is the message that we will send to the kingdom, a message spelled out in the blood of the Lunar Song Tribe's vassal tribes."
"Good…good!" The Bloody Totem Tribe Leader exclaimed, her blood boiling as excitement coursed through her veins.
She knew in this moment that she was not wrong to place her hopes in this senior's hands!
The lives of the innocent did not matter to her. In her worldview, the 'innocent' were merely the weak, and the weak were the stepping stones for the successful!
She believed that those who only wished to live a peaceful, easy life, did not deserve to live in the first place. They did not understand that this life was not meant to be easy…in this life, safety was not meant to be a right of the people…
Because this life was a challenge, a challenge to see who could reach the top!
Ever since she was young, she had looked up at the starry sky and thought to herself…
When will I be able to reach the stars?
Well, she now understood that the stars did not truly exist. Although she didn't know why exactly there were stars in the sky, she now knew that they were merely a strange phenomena of that land. In a way, understanding this had already allowed her to reach those stars.
And now, her ambition went beyond that starry sky. She wanted to see how far she could climb in this world, she wanted to see what height she could elevate her tribe to in this world!
One day, perhaps, would their little tribe become the ruler of a kingdom?
The very thought made her blood boil, dispelling any concern she might have otherwise held for the lives of those around her.
So what if these people died? Their lives were simply too ordinary, they would never amount to anything, so why were they worth sparring?!
Yaan took a deep look at the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader. He had realised it when he first met her, and he realised it again now…this woman was the perfect pawn.
She was weak enough to control, and ambitious enough to be of use. She was capable when it came to leadership, and she obeyed his every command. Their goals aligned for now, so they could cooperate quite effectively.
"Handle everything in this province. I need to deal with the others."
"Of course, senior!"
Before Yaan could leave, she quickly added:
"Senior, please accept this scroll, it contains everything of importance that has happened during your period of secluded cultivation."
Yaan nodded and took the scroll. He had already gained a firm grasp of the situation during his journey towards this place when he listened in on the conversations within the various outposts across this border, but the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader's perspective was sure to be more useful.
With that, Yaan departed from the White Bat Province. The fallout had not yet settled in this province, but so long as the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader handled things properly, this province would fall into their hands.
Regardless, Yaan did not have the time to waste on a single province, as he still had 21 others to deal with.
He quickly read through the scroll detailing the various provinces, their strengths and their actions, as learned during the past year of war. With this, Yaan confirmed some of his previous thoughts and decided to continue with his original plan.
His next stop was the Lower World Province.
The province was rather unique, or at least, the tribes and people in the province were unique, in that the majority of the tribes were primarily based underground.
Again, this was a result of the natural environment in this place. Above ground, the soil was dry, barren and lacking Spiritual Power. It was difficult for ordinary plants to grow here, no matter special resources and elixirs.
But underground, in the region of around five to ten miles below the surface, the Spiritual Power within the earth became immense. It was so powerful that countless shining gemstones formed, providing the underground system of caverns with enough light for plant life to grow and thrive. The people and animals had long since moved underground to take advantage of this rich environment, rarely bothering to visit the surface world.
The underground labyrinth was not only rich with resources, but it was a natural safe haven, protecting the people from outside forces. Even powerful warriors would struggle to force their way into the tribes down here, because the earth at this depth was strangely durable, it was nearly impossible to damage on a large scale.
The high durability of the earth was not something unique to the Lower World Province, this was a feature of the Blood Plane. The high gravity and Spiritual Pressure caused the earth to compress to an unbelievable degree deep underground, creating powerful soil which could only be moved by equally powerful cultivators.
It was possible that the earth even deeper than ten miles down might be even more rich with resources than the earth at the depth where these tribes were built, but this depth was already the limit that these tribesmen could endure. The tribesmen who were able to survive down here were those with strong constitutions which were resistant to high pressures, but even they struggled to venture any further down.
In the same way that the Spiritual Pressure and gravity became greater at high altitudes, these pressures also increased the deeper one travelled underground.
At a depth of 15 miles, even 5-Star Realm warriors would feel uncomfortable, and at a depth of 20 miles, weaker 5-Star Realm warriors could end up being crushed to death under the pressure.
When Yaan stood above ground, he could not see any traces of the Lower World Province's tribes, with the exception of the outposts setup next to the Bloody Totem Tribe's borders. The power of their forces stationed at the border was nothing significant though. Truthfully, this province had been extremely reluctant to engage the Bloody Totem Province in battle.
These tribes were all isolationist in policy, they did not work well together. They did not want to even go above ground, no matter wage war against some province that they had no enmity with!
But alas, they were forced to fight by the Lunar Song Tribe's immortals.
They were very pitiful, but this was the closest province to the White Bat Province. The only real logic behind the order in which Yaan planned to attack the provinces, was the distance. It would be far faster if he simply travelled from one province to the next, since these provinces were usually measured in the tens of thousands of miles from end to end.
"They clearly held back, not wanting to get involved…but it doesn't matter. My message needs to be clear. Only like this will I be able to cultivate for an extended period of time in peace." Yaan muttered to himself whilst staring down at the earth, acting Reveal Truth and attempting to peer through the ground.
Reveal Truth was not really built for this purpose, it was a spell designed to reveal secrets, it was not for perceiving far-away distances blocked by thick segments of earth. Even so, it was the best investigatory method in Yaan's possession, so it would have to make do.
After a few minutes, he realised that he could not see through ten miles of compressed earth using this spell. Even so, he was able to locate a network of tunnels closer to the surface.
That said, Yaan chose not to go down. The network of tunnels was vast and convoluted, it would be easy to get lost, not to mention that it was a defensive utopia.
Even he would have trouble fighting against a powerful tribe down there. If they chose to suicide and made a large scale formation self destruct, it would cause billions of tons of earth to collapse inwards, crushing him to death.
"It isn't worth it…in that case, it is best to just eliminate all of the tribesmen who came to the surface to fight."
Yaan's gaze moved to the side, piercing through the sky and into the distance. Without further ado, he set off, returning once again to the Bloody Totem Tribe's border.
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