After the tearful reunion, Ye Zong noticed the people off to the side waiting. The City Lord was in a great mood, thanking everyone for their help and support. The contract between Shen Yue and the Divine Family had then been signed and witnessed.
"Are you sure there is nothing else I can do for you, Shen Yue? You have saved my wife where all others failed!" Asked Ye Zong as Shen Yue was saying his goodbyes, there was no need to rush his relationship with the Ye Family after the goodwill he had gained today.
"The land you have granted me is already too much, I only did what any citizen of Glory City would have done." Shen Yue humbly replied.
The City Lord had given him a considerable stretch of land that had yet to be claimed. Shen Yue also had the right to claim any land he recovers and develops from the wilderness. The reason was that it is the furthest piece of land to the east, bordering the demon beast infested Infinite Forrest.
"Although worthless now, as soon as I train up some slav... followers, this will be my gateway to the Heavenly Fate Plateau." He thought to himself. This was a weak human settlement that has survived by hiding. They have little resources and few fighters, a perfect hidden base once he takes it over.
"Well if you're sure. If you need anything you can always come to me, my family owes you a great debt." Said Ye Zong seriously, forgetting status and giving Shen Yue a salute. Shen Yue would be honoured if he cared about that sort of thing.
"City Lord has shown me too much respect, Shen Yue is not worthy! Please, Lord, you have already shown me immense favour!" Doing the whole humble thing had really worn him out. After a few more back and forth of 'not worthy' he finally made his getaway with Chen Zhenlong. He would now be staying in his own private courtyard in the Divine Family compound.
Nineteen days later and he needed to change his occupation to Slave Master. The slave inscription he was designing had ended up turning into a secret technique! The Library of Heaven's Path was really too overpowered!
Shen Yue had spent most of his time manually upgrading anything that remotely had to do with his ideal betrayal countermeasure. Inside his mental library, he gathered all the revised books and ordered them to compile to create a flawless slave inscription.
The end result was a technique, that while the target was unconscious, would partially draw their soul out ready to be marked. He would then use an advanced version of Soul Separating to inscribe a personal seal onto their soul that linked to a permeant inscription seal he would have to create in his soul realm.
This seal would then be capable of killing the target instantly with a thought, causing extreme pain or influencing their emotions! It didn't even matter what cultivation realm they could train too, if they created multiple fate souls, they would all have a link to the inscription seal.
Truly a godlike technique! Unfortunately, he would need to be gold ranked to be able to create the inscription seal in his soul realm.
With that option unavailable due to wanting to wait for his ultimate technique, he had to go with option 'B'. Only compiling the three updated slave techniques he got from his Family's restricted library, gave him a decent inscription that would link the target to a seal stone, needing one for every person he wished to mark.
With a drop of the person's blood and an inscription, Shen Yue could use his soul force to create a seal. If the marked person became a traitor the seal stone would become red. Shen Yue would then be able to kill them by crushing the seal stone. It could even be used as a rough locator/radar and work inside interspatial rings!
This would fit his needs until he reached gold rank and seal stones where reasonably cheap. After going over his slave induction speech, he asked his maid Mei to gather her parents that had moved into his courtyard with her. This was to prevent Shen Hong from using them to leverage Mei into betraying him.
The only problem was her older brother refused to move in and serve him, stating he had his own life and was safe with his bronze fighter status! What an idiot! With no other choice, he could only keep an eye on his new servants and rush the creation of his slave inscription.
"I have asked you here today because I have finalised my plans to create my own organisation. As you know, I was betrayed by my own Family. This has made me cautious in trusting people and forced me to think of a way to prevent this from happening again.
You have chosen to follow me, making me happier than you will ever know, but the time has come to make a decision. If you continue to serve me, I will impart a cultivation technique tailor-made for each of you. This technique will ensure you reach at least black-gold rank demon spiritualist within a year. This I can promise you with one hundred percent confidence!
If you choose to leave, that is also ok. I will give you three thousand demon spirit coins for your service so far and wish you happiness in whatever you choose to do with your lives.
Unfortunately, to be able to trust you with my secrets I will need to have you swear an oath and receive a loyalty mark. If this is too much, I understand."
Shen Yue then watched as his three servants looked at each other and came to a decision. They quickly knelt and then, as if rehearsed, spoke their oath.
"We swear allegiance to our Lord!"
With a wide grin, Shen Yue led them to his personal workspace and proceeded to mark his now fully trusted minions! Each mark took around fifteen minutes to complete with his limited soul force. He needed to rest in between seals to regain his spent soul force.
Although this wouldn't stop his minions from betraying him or spreading his techniques, it would at least be a fail safe for them literally stabbing him in the back. He would conveniently forget to mention the ability to kill them instantly. He doubted even Nie Li could decode his seal mark after the adjustments his library had done to it, it was after all an original inscription!
Even this city, as medieval as it was, had a justice system and copyright laws. This came in the form of the Saint Judgement Hall. This is a courthouse in Glory City that enforces the demon spiritualist code of conduct. This code of conduct has been around for three thousand years and is almost universally followed.
All Shen Yue had to do was create an organisation and have them register said techniques, being careful to close any loopholes that might be exploited. Nie Li thought himself a virtuous patriot of Glory City and claimed to do anything to protect it. But in the end, he was nothing more than a selfish moron.
He could have uplifted the City's people, letting them recover territory lost to demon beasts. He even knew of other human settlements that were struggling to survive. Nie Li only gave minor aid to them if they crossed his path.
But that's not the problem Shen Yue had with Nie Li, he even plotted to destroy the barrier seal placed on Tiny World by a Supreme expert. Because of this protective seal, experts from outside the Tiny World cannot enter it. Only original natives that have reached a high enough cultivation can travel between it and the Draconic Ruins Realm. Even the Sage-Emperor could not break this seal, making it one of the only safe havens in this universe!
Glory City was situated in the Divine continent. It was one of six main continents that make up the Tiny World. However, the Divine Continent is often used when referring to the world as a whole. This is because ninety-nine percent of the world is ruled by demon beasts!
Shen Yue was not generous enough to liberate Tiny World for free, he planned on turning it into his personal world! The only thing negative about the seal was it could only be opened once every five years. But Shen Yue had confidence, that when he was powerful enough, his cheat library could fix this.
"Grab a soul crystal and let's test your soul form and attribute." Ordered Shen Yue.
"Soul form, young master?" Asked Su Qiang, his wife Zhang Jing was also curious.
"Everyone thinks that only a person's attribute will determine their cultivation technique, but what they don't know is that soul form also plays a part. There are thousands of different soul forms. They can make the difference between reaching bronze rank or black-gold rank with the same technique. Unfortunately, most of this knowledge has been lost, and even I don't know what techniques are compatible with which soul realm. We can only try them and then test for compatibility." Explained Shen Yue.
Shen Yue didn't have any books on soul form, he was just using his knowledge of the original novel to bullshit. He did, however, have a massive cheat ability that could spot flaws with a person's cultivation. After an hour of trial and error, he had created the best compatible cultivation technique for each of them.
-Su Qiang – Red soul realm, Scarlet Sun soul form, Fire attribute.
-Zhang Jing – Yellow soul realm, Winged Snake soul form, Wind Lightning attribute.
-Su Mei – Orange soul realm, Heavenly Thundercloud soul form, Lightning Fire attribute.
All pretty low-end soul realms and forms but easy enough to match to techniques. Since these techniques were tailor-made for his minions, he didn't bother to give them names, just labelling them as part of his new clan's techniques.
Attributes were also not really well described in the original novel. It was only after reading a book, by a cultivator named Sanctumdeer, that he had a better understanding. There were seven main attributes that all others were derived from.
Wind (Light blue)
Water (Dark Blue)
Fire (Red)
Lightning (Orange)
Earth (Green)
Holy (Yellow)
Dark (Purple)
Leaving his minions to train, Shen Yue went off to plan world domination. He would need a few organisations that wouldn't overlap if they covered too many professions. He had already decided to create a new Family.
He decided to give it the domineering name of Nemesis, the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall. His organisations would also have domineering names.
-Heavenly Crafting Guild – Would be in charge of enchanting and blacksmithing.
-Immortal Elixir Guild – Alchemists Associations worst nightmare.
-Celestial Brotherhood – A mercenary group that would hunt for herbs and demon materials.
He would also have to have a group to police these organisations and keep information loss to a minimum. His recruitment pool would, of course, be the many poor commoners that populated Glory City. The current population of the last know bastion of humanity numbered in the millions.
Within Glory City, the number of demon spiritualists is in the thousands, while fighters are in the tens of thousands. With this untapped source, he could build up an army from scratch. After taking them from the slums and providing them with a better life, he hoped they would be appreciative enough not to betray him.
Shen Yue knew better than to just rely on gratitude though, look at what Ye Han did! Even if he was from Earth where human life was sacred, if someone jeopardised his life or livelihood, he would have no qualms killing them!