บท 47: Scheming Against the World
Yaan's plan this time stemmed from something Rui had once mentioned to him in passing; below Yuso Mountain, lay a spirit heart, the core to a network of spirit veins!
It was only in the past few months that Yaan remembered this matter. One day, when Nadda happened to mention the extreme value of a spirit heart, Yaan recalled that Rui said the same thing. After Nadda revealed that there were no known spirit hearts in the entire Ghu Province, Yaan realised that the Ghu Clan was oblivious to the existence of the spirit heart below Yuso Mountain! If they knew that the Yuso Clan was built atop a spirit heart, they would have crushed the clan long ago, taking that mountain for themselves!
Yaan realised that this information was valuable, shockingly valuable! However, he also realised that trying to sell this knowledge to the Ghu Clan was extremely dangerous. He needed to be seriously careful if he wanted to sell this information, and truthfully, he ended up determining that the potential benefit simply wasn't worth the risk.
However, it was different now. When Nadda came to him and mentioned that he wanted to hold a corpse puppet auction, various ideas that Yaan had been musing over for the past few months suddenly gathered together in his mind. He realised that he could not only sell the information of the location of the spirit heart, but also use the Ghu Clan's attack on the Yuso Clan to wipe out that clan, thus gathering countless valuable corpses, whilst also stirring up the anxiety within the city!
With an anxious population, those who intended to explore the inheritance would feel more scared and would therefore spend more on corpse puppets to increase their strength quickly. This was perfect, because they would have plenty of corpses from the Yuso Clan!
But still, Yaan didn't dare be careless. He didn't go straight to a Ghu Clan Elder, as he had no certainty that they wouldn't use some strange method to forcefully extract the information out of him. It might even result in the loss of his life if they decided to keep the spirit heart's existence a secret known only to them.
So, Yaan went through Ghu Nadda. With Nadda's status, he was able to convince his great grandfather to arrange him an audience with the North Ghu City Lord, the Origin Soul Realm Ghu Clan Grand Elder who watched over this city. Upon meeting the City Lord, Nadda cautiously explained that he had an anonymous contact who knew the location of a spirit heart.
Naturally, the City Lord was immediately filled with desire. Capturing a spirit heart would be the greatest of merits for the clan, whilst it would allow the clan to build up a sixth key base of operations within the Ghu Province! The City Lord wanted Nadda to reveal the identity of this person right away, however, Yaan and Nadda had expected this to happen. Before the City Lord could extract the knowledge from his mind, Nadda quickly told the greed-filled Grand Elder that if the he made contact with Nadda's 'anonymous connection', or if the City Lord sent anyone else to make contact with that person, then the person in question would be afflicted by oath poison and die.
Indeed, this was the truth! Nadda knew that Origin Soul realm Qi masters had some truly bizarre methods. He was unsure, but it was certainly a possibility that the City Lord would be able to extract the information from Nadda's mind directly, then track down Yaan to do the same! This was why, before Nadda went to see the City Lord, Yaan took a risk; he made another poison oath! In this oath, he stated that he would not meet the City Lord until the City Lord took the Rank 5 poison oath that Yaan had written out for him!
This might seem like a strange oath to take, but the City Lord understood right away as Nadda explained. Even if he forcefully searched through Nadda's mind and identified Yaan, he would be unable to then find Yaan and extract the knowledge of the spirit heart's location from him. If he tried to do so, Yaan would die immediately, and the crucial information would die with him! Of course, this put Yaan in an extremely dangerous position, since the City Lord could now kill him just by looking at him, or even just by sending someone else to look at him! But that was irrelevant, since it would be easy for the City Lord to kill him anyway. The biggest danger was that the City Lord would not believe Nadda about Yaan taking the poison oath…
Indeed, the wise powerhouse didn't believe Nadda immediately. He ended up continuing with his initial actions, extracting the memory directly from Nadda's mind forcefully! Nadda felt so tiny and exposed in that moment, but at least he came away uninjured, and the City Lord was able to confirm that everything Nadda had said until now was the truth. Nadda had been prepared to swear his own poison oath to confirm that he wasn't lying, but he supposed this worked too…
Finally, the City Lord believed Nadda's bold claim, that his acquaintance knew the location of a spirit heart. Nadda was finally able to relax at this point as he handed to the City Lord a prepared Rank 5 poison oath. This was the oath he agreed on with Yaan and the City Lord needed to swear this oath prior to making contact with Yaan. The oath was as follows:
'I will bring no harm to Yaan, Ghu Nadda's connection in the matter of the spirit heart. I will not harm him personally or via others, neither directly nor indirectly. I will engage in a fair exchange for the location of the spirit heart and will abide by the final agreed upon terms of the deal.'
The City Lord did not agree immediately, but first presented Nadda with a device and sent him away. Following his instructions, Nadda used the strange spiritual treasure to record Yaan taking yet another poison oath, in this oath swearing that he did indeed know the location of a spirit heart within the Ghu Province!
Finally, after watching back the recording, the North Ghu City Lord took the Rank 5 poison oath prepared by Yaan, under Ghu Nadda's nervous watch. Nadda confirmed that the overbearing man had indeed taken the oath, allowing Yaan to finally meet with this person!
From there, it was a matter of negotiating terms. Yaan did not reveal the location of the spirit heart right away, despite suffering from the unrelenting pressure of this Origin Soul realm powerhouse. The City Lord was impressed by his ability to remain relatively calm under this pressure and withheld, allowing Yaan to state his terms.
Firstly, Yaan explained that he wanted to use this assault on the Yuso Clan to facilitate a corpse auction, which would later be held by Nadda under the Ghu Clan. Because of this, they naturally wanted all of the Yuso Clan corpses. This was of course impossible though, there were too many corpses, and they wouldn't give away the Origin Soul realm corpses. In the end, the City Lord agreed to have the Ghu Clan refine as many of the corpses into corpse puppets as possible and to give those puppets to Yaan and Nadda. They would not be given the Origin Soul realm corpses, whilst the Ghu Clan would only be able to refine around half of the Yuso Clan corpses in time for their auction, but that was already plenty.
On top of this, the Ghu Clan would not hold any other corpse auctions until Nadda and Yaan had finished their own. Nadda was one of the key players in North Ghu City's corpse trade anyway, it wasn't a problem for the Ghu Clan to give him this chance. In this auction, he and Yaan would be splitting the profits half and half, as they agreed beforehand.
Beyond obtaining more corpses however, Yaan wanted to create a demand for more corpse puppets within the city. After discussing this with the City Lord, the Ghu Clan Grand Elder agreed to make use of the Undead Corpse Sect in the assault, using them as the vanguard. Like this, the Undead Corpse Sect would certainly lose many of their corpse puppets in the battle. The Undead Corpse Sect was always a big contender in the inheritance, so they were sure to desperately purchase whatever corpses they could procure upon returning to North Ghu City.
The last ingredient needed to create a successful corpse auction, was fear. The reason that corpses could be sold at a much higher price in the lead up to the inheritance opening, was exactly because of this fear. People would splash out in those final few weeks as their anxiety steadily built up, doing whatever they could to increase their strength rapidly.
Yaan wanted to use the assault on the Yuso Clan to build up the unspoken fear that pervaded North Ghu City.
His condition for the City Lord, was that they must make a huge spectacle of leaving North Ghu City. As for who caused this spectacle and how they achieved it, Yaan didn't care. What he wanted was for the great factions of the province to create a scene, increasing the anxiety of those who watched cluelessly from below!
He also asked that they make an even bigger spectacle of their return, openly showing every Yuso Clan corpse to the city residents below.
The final condition of Yaan's was that the City Lord needed to give him 'compensation of appropriate value within ten years, or until Yaan no longer requests more'. Since Yaan had no idea how much a spirit heart was actually worth, he needed the City Lord to agree to this, since it would force him to repay Yaan with money and resources equating to the true worth of the spirit heart.
All of these conditions were written out on a piece of parchment and signed by hand. Since the conditions in this deal were mentioned within the Rank 5 poison oath, the City Lord was bound by the poison oath to abide by the contents of the parchment.
And with that, the deal that would soon shake North Ghu City had been settled.
Whilst Yaan relaxed in his temple abode, practising his sword arts calmly whilst patiently awaiting the City Lord's move, the city became increasingly crowded, with people flocking from far and wide for the opening of the North Ghu Inheritance. Soon enough, one month passed by. The big factions held onto the expectation that the Ghu Clan would take this opportunity to hold an auction like they usually did prior to each inheritance opening. In fact, they would normally hold multiple auctions of varying scales and purposes, including that infamous underground auction…
However, a full month passed by, leaving just two months until the opening, and not a peep was heard from the Ghu Clan! Nobody knew that the Ghu Clan was busy right now, they had no time for auctions, not to mention that they had agreed not to hold any corpse auctions before Yaan and Nadda held theirs.
People grew restless over the following two weeks. In fact, some started to realise that every Ghu Clan member within the city was wearing a deep, murderous expression. The number of Ghu Clansmen present was also very high compared to normal times, though this could possibly be attributed to the coming inheritance exploration. Still, it felt as if they were preparing for something else…
Since there were many different large scale factions currently occupying the city, the murderous auras exuded from the Ghu Clansmen led to a building tension amongst everyone in the city. With the nine Northern factions present, people naturally worried that the Ghu Clansmen were preparing for some sort of terrifying battle within the city itself!
There was another strange matter. There wasn't long left before the opening of the inheritance, yet the Undead Coffin Sect was nowhere to be seen! Not a single member, not a soul in the whole city! This sect was the only one out of the nine Northern factions to attend the inheritance opening every single year, since they had a good relationship with the Ghu Clan…so where were they?!
Whilst people were worrying over the strangeness exhibited by the Ghu Province's most powerful factions, an unrelated rumour began to spread amongst the masses as people discussed that all too familiar 90% death rate figure. Many individuals disregarded this figure, everyone who wasn't stupid knew that most of the deaths were from those weaker Qi masters with weak backings, right?
However, a new rumour appeared from seemingly nowhere. From the first instance this rumour was spoken, it took only a few hours to travel like wildfire, spreading out into each and every region of the entire city!
This rumour claimed that the reason for the big factions, particularly the Ghu Clan, experiencing far fewer losses in the inheritance, was all thanks to their corpse puppets! When people looked into the statistics, they found that it really was true that the more corpse puppets a group took with them, the fewer living casualties they would suffer!
Naturally, this rumour was Yaan's idea. With Nadda's various connections, it wasn't difficult to spread a rumour across the city in a short period of time.
Many people again shot this rumour down, saying people were mixing up causation and correlation. The reason those groups with more corpse puppets suffered from fewer casualties, was simply because any group able to afford an army of corpse puppets was far stronger than the others in the first place!
Some individuals felt worried, but the majority of course understood that this last counter argument should be right. That said, it was undeniable that people hesitated…perhaps they should buy a corpse puppet, just to be safe…
Exactly one month before the opening of the inheritance, everything seemed to unfold far too rapidly. Nobody missed the sight of every Zue Clansman within the city, shooting up into the sky and rushing North at their fastest possible speed!
Yaan also saw this, blinking as he watched from his temple garden. After a moment, a smile appeared on his face.
"So this is the City Lord's spectacle, huh? He's actually using the Zue Clan to satisfy that condition, but also to bait the Yuso Clansmen within the city into a trap! So he really did draw in the other eight factions to cooperate, impressive…"
Soon after, people watched in bewilderment as the Yuso Clan delegates chased after the hurrying Zue Clan! People began to panic….for two of the top groups to be so desperate looking, just what was going on?! Fear spread through the city, and now, even those who neither knew nor cared about the disputes between the Ghu Province's largest factions, started to feel increasingly tense. This added to their nerves regarding the upcoming inheritance, causing their apprehension towards the inheritance to reach an all time high. Those who intended to explore this death trap were nervous to begin with, but now, the various developments caused their anxieties to all blend together, transforming into outright fear!
For ten straight days following the Zue and Yuso Clans' sudden departure, the city seemingly fell into silence. It was unknown when they left, but people realised over these days that the Ghu Clansmen were also seemingly absent from their own city! It wasn't just the Ghu Clansmen though…none of the nine Northern factions who had made the journey to the city seemed to be present right now, they all vanished at the exact same time!
During these ten days, the fear and anxiety festered and started to drive people mad. And then, after ten days, the Ghu Clan suddenly reappeared! They flew in from the North, naturally attracting attention as they ignored the usual city entrance procedures.
They all had deep killing intent in their eyes. Some were covered in blood, others were clearly injured…but every single clansman was surrounded by a horde of corpses. Some of these corpses were simply corpses, others had clearly been refined into puppets. This gave others the feeling that all of those unrefined corpses would soon be refined into corpse puppets!
"Wait a moment…" An old and worldly man from below furrowed his brows and muttered, before his eyes suddenly shot open and he gasped deeply.
"Th-that's, that's Great Elder Yuso Dune!" The disbelief was clear in his words. Yuso Dune was a Great Elder of the Yuso Clan, a renowned Peak Spirit Core realm powerhouse! How did he die, and why was his corpse floating there in the air, besides a Ghu Clansman?!
However, the shock was far from over.
Womp!
From nowhere, a tall and muscular middle aged man with a short black beard appeared standing in the air. His dark hair fluttered crazily, even though there was no wind. Everyone below inadvertently gasped.
"Origin Soul realm being!"
"Oh my god, it, it's the North Ghu City Lord!"
"Hey, wait a minute…those three behind him…aren't they…?"
Slowly, the chatter became silence. The sudden appearance of the North Ghu City Lord above the most crowded and prosperous region of the city was shocking enough, but floating behind him, were three figures that some people also recognised. Even if you didn't recognise them, anyone would be able to understand…
"Three…Origin Soul…Corpses…?"
"They, they, they, th-they're from the Yuso Clan! It's the three Yuso Clan leaders from the Northern border!"
The chatter below was explosive, a mixture of shock, terror, awe and confusion filled the masses! They realised now, that all of these corpses, were Yuso Clansmen…the entire Yuso Clan was drifting through the air behind the Ghu Clan horde, it was a certified sea of corpses!
However, the North Ghu City Lord only wore an indifferent expression, as if the worries of those people had nothing to do with him.
Soon after the Ghu Clan, followed some Elders and disciples from each of the other eight Northern factions. None of them dared to even look in the City Lord's direction though. The power he displayed earlier was simply far too terrifying. It made them feel like ants looking up to a god…even the Origin Soul realm clan leaders of the Zue, Bo and Lin Clans felt this way.
"Good, looks like it all worked out well." Yaan looked up and nodded with a satisfied smile. He was glad to see that the North Ghu City Lord honoured their promise, showcasing the corpses of the Yuso Clan to the masses in the city below. With this, they had already advertised their wares to the Qi masters in the city, whilst the terror felt by the inheritance-explorers should have now reached its peak. Hopefully, this fear would prompt them to spend their money on anything that could increase their strength in a short period of time.
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