The law of the void, the nemesis of all creation, it was something that shouldn't be able to exist. Under the might of this law, the defensive array that Yan Qingye was hiding within cracked like glass and fell apart, each shard erased from existence. If she powered the array herself then it would be a different story, but right now it could only be powered by Spirit Stones and was unable to show its full might, it was doomed to shatter in front of Liang Chen. With her final bastion crushed so easily, Yan Qingye couldn't help but use her feet to push herself away from Liang Chen, waving her hands in front of her.
"Wait, wait! We can talk, I can exp...!"
Her words were cut off by Liang Chen, who had stepped into the room and appeared directly in front of her. His left hand clamped down on her throat and blocked both her breathing and her words. He raised her up from the ground and into the air, her feet dangling as his grip grew tighter and tighter, his gaze piercing straight through her.
"I'm so tired of talking. I swear that's all you bastards do, you talk and talk in an attempt to justify yourselves or to shift the blame, and I'm so fucking tired of it."
He clenched his left hand and crushed Yan Qinqye's throat, his fingers actually digging into her skin and dragging out her crushed throat when he pulled back his arm. Yan Qingye fell to the ground and clutched at her torn open throat, but she couldn't even gasp for air, much less whimper in pain or panic. Liang Chen stood over her and looked down at her with merciless eyes while raising his right foot.
"You have no right to bear that appearance, and you can take your words and explanations with you as you vanish."
He brought down his foot in a heavy stomp, Yan Qingye's skull shattering and collapsing under the force contained within his foot. Her head was crushed like an over-ripe melon and splattered the walls of the room, but Liang Chen would not even spare these bloodstains. Yan Qingye's corpse, as well as the bloodstains splattered around the room, started to vanish under Liang Chen's merciless gaze.
Before long, every single part of Yan Qingye's body had been completely erased from existence. It was removed from existence itself, it couldn't even return to the Sphere of Existence and become energy that could be used for something else in the future. Liang Chen didn't even give the room around him a single glance after he finished off Yan Qingye, his law of the void extended and started to swallow even the room itself.
Liang Chen turned around and left the room as it started to vanish behind him, stepping into empty air and plummeting to the ground, where he landed with a rumbling cracking sound as the earth beneath him shattered. He raised his head and looked at Yumao, who was already descending to the ground, stopping him with a soft shake of his head.
"I'm gonna spend a bit of time here, can I ask you to keep an eye on out for those people that are being gathered by Qing Lan Yong? Don't let a single one of them escape the city."
Yumao flapped his wings and let out a hiss in acknowledgment, flapping his wings once more and turning into a black blur that vanished into the distance. Liang Chen heard even more panicked screams coming from the city when Yumao departed, he had probably become a symbol of fear to quite a few people after his domineering display earlier.
But Liang Chen didn't bother with the panicked screams, starting to systematically move around the ruins of the palace and using his law of the void to erase it from existence. He slowly made his way across the ruins, stopping to rest when he drained all his Qi, four days passing in a flash. Once the sun set on the fourth day, what was once a sprawling palace that took up about 50 kilometers of space had been reduced to a stretch of flat and barren land with no trace of its former grandeur or the person who lived there for a period of time.
Liang Chen let out a long breath after the task was finished, calmly leaving the area and making his way through the streets as he headed for the area where Qing Lan Yong had been leaving the people he knew worked with the Sealing God Empyrean. He already finished delivering everyone on the second day, by the time the third day ended he had already left the planet to start his hunt for a Bloodwind Code.
Liang Chen's gaze moved across the empty streets as he walked, his pupils drifting over the barred windows and tightly locked doors. There weren't even any animals wandering the streets, every living being had either fled or locked themselves up while hoping for the best.
Liang Chen couldn't help but let out a sigh upon seeing the scene, feeling somewhat complex. It wasn't too long since he was just a normal youth, he would have probably done just like these people if faced with such a situation. But he wasn't a normal youth any longer, now he was the one that instilled this fear and dread into people, a calamity that they all prayed would just leave them alone. He had changed, just like everyone else, he had been twisted and changed by the reality of the world.
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He shook his head and threw away the thoughts. There was no point in thinking about how he had changed, he didn't regret his choices or who he had become. This was the path he had chosen for himself, he would walk it as far as he could and he would walk it with pride.
He rounded a corner and reached the plaza where Qing Lan Yong had left the people he gathered up, a star-shaped plaza that was paved with vibrant violet stones. Liang Chen's gaze landed on the group of 192 people that had been gathered up, each of them cowering in fear while glancing at Yumao, who was coiled up and watching them with cold eyes.
Liang Chen's arrival immediately attracted the attention of the people, Yumao letting out a hissing sound and slithering over. He shrank when he reached Liang Chen's feet, crawling up while still shrinking, reaching his normal tiny size just as he curled up on top of Liang Chen's head. He tapped Liang Chen with the bottom of his jaw, pestering him for praise and a reward. A soft smile spread on Liang Chen's face as he took out some scraps of dried meat from his interspatial ring, feeding Yumao while walking towards the group of people.
One of the men at the front of the group stood up and opened his mouth, but Liang Chen's hand grasped his throat before he managed to even start his sentence. His soft smile vanished and was replaced by his usual cold expression, his left arm raising as he placed a finger in front of his mouth.
"No more words."
Liang Chen unleashed his poison after he finished his simple statement, breaking down any defensive walls that the man might have around his mind and soul, thoroughly blanking his mind. He then had the man transfer over all his memories so that Liang Chen could see everything for himself. He let go of the man once he was done seeing everything, immediately moving on to the next person, spreading out a cloud of poison to immobilize the entire group of people so that no one could flee.
He spent three hours moving through the entire group, forcing each and every one of them to hand over all their memories, giving Liang Chen a much clearer image of their actions as well as the people involved. He closed his eyes after seeing the memories of the last person, connecting with the grand array and tracking down a further 147 people. He had sensed their energies after seeing all the memories so it was easy to find them with the array, allowing him to quickly point out their locations to Yumao.
They were all still located within or close to the city so Yumao only needed to spend four hours collecting all of them, tossing them to the ground within the plaza. He repeated the process of searching their memories, eventually sending Yumao out once more to pick up more people and then repeating the process again.
Only two days after he actually stepped into the plaza did he finish this, a grand total of 6183 people having been brought together, all of them cowering in fear after having regained their minds. Among the 6183 people was also Wyrm King Huang Dong, who was once promised by Yan Qingye that he could marry Yan Ling. But even this enemy, who once wounded Liang Chen so badly that Yan Ling had to give him some of her Storm God blood, did not get a second glance from Liang Chen, they were too far apart now. Liang Chen's cold eyes swept all the people present, his gaze piercing through each and every one of them and filling them with dread. He finished his sweeping glance and then pointed out with his left arm.
"Despicable, every last one of you. The world is better off without you."
All of the people gathered before him suddenly clutched at their throats, pink foam starting to froth out of their mouths as they fell to their knees, their windpipes swelling and closing up. Liang Chen remained cold as he overlooked the scene, an eerie calm in his eyes as he watched everyone present choke to death.
In truth, not all of the people here had worked with the Sealing God Empyrean, only about 80% of them had. The remaining 20% were people who Liang Chen had seen commit horrible deeds as he went through the memories of other people, the sheer extent of their vileness made him sick to his stomach, they had ruined and torn apart countless families, ravaged or even sold far too many young children. They were a blight upon life itself, a cancerous growth that had to be cut out.
The sky above the city lit up with shimmering bolts of lightning once the last person choked to death, thousands of brown bolts descending from the sky and turning the corpses to ash with their tremendous heat. Liang Chen picked up the interspatial rings that they were wearing and then left the area, stepping onto Yumao's back and starting a quick journey around the planet.
He spent an entire two weeks erasing every trace of information he could find about Yan Qingyu, destroying every book, jade slip, painting, or legend about her. In the end, her name was only remembered by a handful of people, and with time they would wither and die, Yan Qingye's name withering along with them.
Liang Chen stood on the back of Yumao, gazing down at the planet beneath him. The Storm Wolf sect, Ghost Soul sect, and the Fiendgod sect had all been destroyed. The upper echelons of the Moon Dragon sect and the Dawn's Blade Alliance had all been killed by Liang Chen, resulting in the sects quietly disbanding as they tried to flee Liang Chen's wrath. Thousands of years of cultivation and gathering of power had all been undone just like that, the structure of power on the planet had been utterly shattered and left in an irreparable state.
Liang Chen could already see that chaos would likely soon envelop the planet, minor sects and clans vying for supremacy to fill up the void left behind by the major powers. But what he didn't know was that the people vying for supremacy all knew one thing, Dragon's Gate only had a single true ruler, the Scourge King that broke it down and left it in a state that it would likely never recover from.