North Ghu Mountain

Yaan's declaration left the Northern elites feeling stunned senseless. His words carried a feeling of absolute confidence, however, he had just said something quite insane…

He was going to wipe out the entire Ghu Clan…by the end of the day?

What was this man saying right now?

But when they remembered the earlier incident, and how he had killed three Nirvana Realm powerhouses so easily, everyone found that they were unable to refute him.

Elia watched from behind Yaan in amazement.

His approach to dealing with the righteous faction was unlike anything she had ever seen before. He didn't use the usual tactic of being reasonable and trying to maintain friendly relations; he was just tyrannical, stating his intentions without giving anyone the chance to argue with him. This was simply too extreme compared to Elia's typical experiences with handling the relations between her sect and the other groups…that said, she actually couldn't help but laugh in amusement when she saw the stunned faces staring back at them, while Yaan nodded to himself in satisfaction.

Yaan turned around and smiled at Elia.

"Right, that's settled. I'll leave everything else here to you, Elia. I'm going out for a bit…I'll be back before the sun goes down."

Elia's smile froze when Yaan suddenly vanished after leaving her with this line. For a moment, there was silence…then in the next moment, every single one of the elites sharply turned towards her and began hounding her with a barrage of questions.

Elia's frozen smile became extremely forced and her eye twitched ever so slightly.

'Seriously, Yaan?'

Yaan had never been one for tact. He didn't have the patience to calmly deal with the leaders of the righteous path. He had always preferred to get straight to the point, suppress people with his strength, then leave the tedious matters to someone else. And now, Elia had become that 'someone else'.

This was also why Yaan had decided to make Elia the new leader of the province - he didn't want to deal with something so tiresome himself. Elia seemed to have integrated herself into the righteous path quite nicely, she was much more suited towards this sort of job compared to him.

Cultivators developed many skills as they grew older, often including the skill of dealing with complex social relationships between various large organisations. Yaan had long since realised that he wasn't suited for this, and it was more effective to choose someone else to deal with the person to person contact side of things. He had done exactly this on the Blood Plane with the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader, and now, he was doing the same thing again, only now, Elia was his social butterfly connection between himself and the rest of the world.

This was Yaan's strength – he was an expert at delegating responsibility.

Yaan departed from Heavenly Path Mountain and made his way towards the old Yuso Mountain – which, after being taken over by the Ghu Clan, had been renamed 'North Ghu Mountain'.

As Yaan walked through the sky, leaving the forest beneath him as a blur, he couldn't help but ponder over something curious.

'In the Ghu Province, the Greenwood Mountain Range is often called the 'North', but isn't this completely wrong? The Northernmost point on the planet is the entrance into the Primordial Devil's inheritance, so everywhere else is South of that place…this suggests that even the Ghu Clan doesn't properly understand the geography on Planet Yushu. The immortals in the Demonic North really do restrict the free exchange of information amongst Foundation Step cultivators, since even a clan as large as the Ghu Clan is so clueless about the world. This is truly a demonic mindset; the immortals in the North are so mistrusting that they are still trying to keep all of those below them in the dark in order to suppress them. In a war between the disjointed North and the united South, how can the North possibly win…?'

There were many things that Yaan didn't understand, but all would be made clear soon enough. Once he reached the Immortal Step, he would become a true powerhouse on this planet, which would allow him to learn about everything that currently confused him.

For now though, he focussed his mind on the present. He had a powerful clan to wipe out – he couldn't get careless, or else someone might escape.

As for his worries about facing the Ghu Clan's might? Yaan had none.

The Ghu Clan was not an immortal clan. They were powerful, but immortals were just too rare. In terms of clans below the immortal level, the Ghu Clan was definitely near the top of this range; any clan that could urge three Peak Origin Soul Realm cultivators to step into the Nirvana Realm at a moment's notice was anything but ordinary. But even so, Yaan wasn't concerned.

On the Blood Plane, he had even dared to target the Lunar Song Tribe, an actual immortal tribe ruled by four immortal kings. Compared to the Lunar Song Tribe, the Ghu Clan was insignificant.

Yaan arrived above North Ghu Mountain within minutes. He travelled hundreds of miles in this time, yet he wasn't even using close to his fastest speed. He was still adjusting to his newfound power and cultivation, the likes of which he had never possessed on the Qi Plane before.

On the Blood Plane, a typical Nirvana Realm expert could travel around 10,000 miles in an hour, but the suppression on the Blood Plane was quite severe and only became increasingly obvious at higher cultivation realms. Although the Qi Plane was much larger compared to the Blood Plane, most of the Qi Plane was quite literally empty space, and the world suppression was much weaker, especially in the regions of space between stars and planets.

Although there was some degree of suppression caused by Spiritual Pressure and gravity on Planet Yushu, it was much lower compared to the Blood Plane. After testing his speed at various levels, Yaan estimated that the greatest speed he could maintain for an extended period of time would allow him to travel around 50,000-100,000 miles per hour.

Of course, this was much faster than a typical Nirvana Realm expert, this was closer to a weaker immortal's travel speed.

The Ghu Province, which had once been a colossal entity to Yaan, suddenly felt quite small. The Greenwood Mountain Range covered the entire 'Northern' border of the Province, stretching out for around 2,500 miles across nine mountains. Going from this border to the far reaches of the South was a stretch of 10,000 miles, whilst the Southern Border was much narrower, at only 400 miles from East to West.

When Yaan said that he would eradicate the Ghu Clan before nightfall, he wasn't exaggerating in the least. If he wanted to, he could travel across the entire Ghu Province in less than a quarter of an hour.

Yaan stopped above Yuso Mountain after silently phasing through the formation without being detected. Although his understanding of formations wasn't as good as the main body's, since that comprehension had mostly been inherited by the Dao Clone of Mind, he still possessed some degree of intuitive comprehension in this art. Regardless, his illusion dao allowed him to pass through any formation which was below the immortal level undetected anyway.

For a while, Yaan stared down at the mountain and let out a sigh. When he activated Reveal Truth, he could finally see the glowing Spirit Heart in the depths of this mountain - the same Spirit Heart that he had used to bargain with the Ghu Clan back then, resulting in the eradication of the Yuso Clan, the clan that had crippled his cultivation on this very mountain…

When Yaan thought about all that had happened back then, he couldn't help but sigh emotionally. He now knew that his Qi refining cultivation being crippled was no accident, it was a mysterious result brought on by the Primordial Sage due to her interfering with his karmic fate and making it such that he would naturally be drawn towards body tempering throughout his life.

Finding the Fiend Transformation Technique, his cultivation being crippled, and how he then stumbled across the Primordial Devil's inheritance…all of it was the Sage's doing. She could do all of that, just by manipulating his karmic fate.

Yaan shook his head and cleared these thoughts from his mind. He examined the Ghu Clan down below, curious to see how they had changed things since taking over.

Compared to the Yuso Clan of the past, there were far fewer Ghu Clansmen occupying the upper half of the mountain. Everyone who was permitted to live in this near-perfect cultivation environment was a high ranking clan member at Rank 4 or Rank 5.

Lower down the mountain, were the Rank 3 clansmen…

Further down were the lower realm cultivators…

Then all around the base of the mountain, were dozens of the Ghu Clan's infamous 'mortal settlements'. Yaan watched with a plain expression as the mortal children in these settlements were forced to slaughter one another, until only one in every hundred children was left alive. This was one of the Ghu Clan's first trials for their members to overcome…it was barbaric, even by demonic standards.

Until reaching Rank 3, Ghu Clansmen were constantly fighting one another to the death. Even at Rank 3, when they were given more clan responsibilities and permitted to leave the clan's homelands, they were still encouraged to kill the others at their level. It was only after reaching Rank 4 that the Ghu Clansmen were forbidden from targeting their own, and they became 'united' under their clan's tyrannical rules.

The stench of blood surrounded this mountain, and after watching the various goings on for a few minutes, Yaan had seen enough. A cold, ruthless look appeared in his eyes.

He had made his decision.

"June…what you said before, about you having no issue with killing…is this really true?" Yaan asked quietly.

The wooden sword in his hand flashed with a white light. Nobody else would be able to understand this response, but Yaan understood it clearly.

She was saying that she knew what he wanted to do, and she was fine with it. No matter what Yaan decided on doing, she would follow him…no matter what.

She was his sword, and a sword was designed to kill…Yaan's sword, in particular, was designed to kill.

Silently, Yaan raised his sword above his head, then slashed down a single time.

The sky turned red, as if the clouds had turned into countless lakes of blood filled with mountains of corpses. As the wooden sword silently descended, it was as if the dull blade phased through the millions of lives on and around the mountain.

Only a few of the more powerful cultivators were able to look up in shock, but this was all they managed to achieve in their final moments. As for the weaker cultivators and mortals, they were oblivious to the calamity that had befallen them, right up until the end.

This was Yaan's mercy; he had no desire to make these pitiful mortals suffer.

The crimson sky shone with a bloody light as millions of bodies dropped to the ground. Yaan stood there for some time, holding the sword still, even as the illusion faded away. Eventually, the world became eerily still. Yaan was the only living being within tens of miles of this place.

Without a word, he turned away from the mountain and took a step towards the South. After he left, the corpses of the deceased mysteriously collapsed into countless fragments of golden light, dropping down into the mountain below and nourishing the Spirit Heart. By the time Yaan could no longer be seen, the mountain was silent, and no traces of life or death could be found, aside from that of the mountain itself.

As Yaan blurred through the sky, heading towards North Ghu City, he couldn't help but sigh.

"I really don't like killing mortals, and especially not children…but every single one of those people, even the children, were beyond saving, tainted by their clan's ways. Those people…have no place in my Heavenly Path Province. I will not allow any potential threats to remain within my home."