Yao Jun was currently walking through a bleak city, following a large yet empty road that led from the entrance of the city to the center. This city was in the shape of a circle, two large roads cutting through the city and forming a cross that split the city into four parts. The buildings in this city had wooden roofs covered in leaves and were made from gray stone, giving the entire city a somewhat bleak atmosphere and look.
At the very center of the city, where the two large roads intersected, stood a large and once-luxurious mansion. The entire mansion was decorated with faded shades of red and gold, four tall towers surrounding the mansion, each one marking one of the cardinal directions. The towers were covered in dust and dirt, turning their previously pristine white color into a dirty gray. Both the towers and the mansion were ruined and in disarray, with several holes smashed into the walls and all the valuable decorations looted.
The entire city was devoid of life, all the buildings looted and abandoned. As he walked along the road, Yao Jun was able to see several skeletons in the various side alleys, their bones picked clean by stray animals or Demonic beasts. There was only one living person currently in this city, hiding out within the ruined mansion and searching through the basement for any valuables. This person was the one that Yao Jun had come here for, the second-to-last person on this planet whose memories he had to alter.
This city actually had a connection with Yao Jun, which was why he was taking the time to walk through the street and observing the city. He was the reason this city had ended up like this, the reason it had been looted and abandoned. The name of this city was Ash Barrens city, and it was the first place he arrived after escaping from the confinement of the Guo clan.
He had seen the horrible things that the rulers of this city did, seen the horrible things that happened throughout the entire city. He had made up his mind and killed the rulers of this city, in the process awakening Guo Luo's God Gate. He wasn't there to see what happened afterward, but looking at the current state of the city, it was easy to guess what had gone down.
With no rulers to hold them down, to threaten them, it was likely that chaos had broken out among the citizens. Some started looting what they wanted, leading others to do the same before everything valuable was stolen. This looting and chaos likely spread like a plague, everyone scrambling to get their hands on as much as they could, or just scrambling to protect what was theirs.
In the end, the chaos probably became too much, those who didn't participate in the looting choosing to flee from the city. As the things that could be looted decreased, the others likely also chose to flee from the city, looking for a different place where they could sell what they had acquired. And in the end, all that was left was an empty city and rotting skeletons, a ghost town created by Yao Jun's actions.
It was here where he once uttered the words that he would burn down the tree that was this rotten world and plant it anew amidst the ashes. He thought that he could change the entire world by killing bad people, monsters clad in human skin, creating a safe place for people to live. Looking back at it, he could only feel like laughing, laughing at how much he had changed.
He was no longer even thinking about creating a world safe for people, he just wanted to become so strong that no one would ever even dare dream of touching those close to him. The gaze of his that had once only seen this planet had grown to encompass the entire multiverse, but in the process, the number of things he sought to protect had shrunk drastically.
He might occasionally save people if they were in trouble in front of him, but that was only in passing. He had already lost that desire he had in the past, the desire to create a better world for everyone to live in. His desire now could only be called selfish, seeking only to protect those close to him, even willing to kill however many he had to for that goal.
And he was fine with that, he had already realized that even if it was possible to change the world and make it better, that was not a task for him. He was no hero, he was just someone who was desperately trying to not end up alone and hurt, struggling with all his might to protect those he considered close. If doing this required him to reach the peak or to become the ultimate villain in someone else's life, then he would do just that, because Yao Jun was nothing if not selfish.
Yao Jun entered the mansion through the ruined entrance, heading for the stairs that led down into the basement. The basement was a large open hall, with 18 spiraling pillars connecting the floor to the ceiling above it. At the leftmost corner of the room, one of the pillars had been moved to the side, revealing another set of descending stairs, a metal lid that looked rather heavy thrown to the side of the stairs.
Yao Jun walked to the brown stone stairs and descended them, entering a smaller room filled with shelves made from black wood, each shelf filled with small crystal or metal boxes. There was currently a black-haired and orange-eyed woman rummaging through these boxes, checking the contents to see if anything here was worth her time.
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The woman hadn't noticed him before, but once he stepped into the room, she immediately became aware of him. She swiftly turned around, drawing a silver flute from her interspatial ring and shouting out as she moved to place the flute against her lips.
"Who are...?!"
Her words were forcibly stopped by Yao Jun, who had stepped forward so fast that she hadn't even been able to see him move. He grabbed onto her face, his Qi flooding into her head and causing her to let out a pained screech as her memories were forcibly altered.
Yao Jun wasn't as skillful with his poison or mental energy as Du Xiao or Little Gray were. He had several laws he needed to practice, so it was unlikely that he would ever be as skillful with any one of his laws as someone who had been born with that law. Because of this, when he was the one altering and erasing people's memories, the process took a bit longer and was quite a bit more painful.
He mixed his law of poison with his mental energy, corroding the woman's memories until they vanished, and then used his mental energy to implant illusions into her head, making her believe that these illusions were her memories. Once the process was done, he let go of the woman's head and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious thanks to a poison he had slipped into her body while altering her memories.
He grabbed her interspatial ring and forcibly broke the seal she had placed on it, searching through its contents for the item he was looking for. It didn't take him long to find a finger-size jade cylinder, removing it from the interspatial ring and taking it for himself. He placed the ring back on the woman's finger and waved his hand, teleporting the woman away from the city.
He then walked out of the hidden treasury and headed for the central hall of the mansion. The central hall still looked much the same as it did back when he first entered it all those years ago. Overly extravagant pillars lined the walls, a red carpet covered the ground and two staircases made from polished wood were located at the end of the room, leading up to two balconies that traveled along the walls. Of course, by now the pillars had been picked clean of jewels and the carpet was torn up in some places, dust covering everything.
Yao Jun walked to the middle of the hall and took a simple wooden chair out of his interspatial ring, placing it down and sitting down on it. He then brought out the jade cylinder he had just taken from the woman, inserting his Qi into it and using it to send out a message. After sending out the message, he put away the jade cylinder and proceeded to wait.
He didn't have to wait long, only a few minutes before he noticed the arrival of the person he had been waiting for. The ceiling of the mansion shattered, a man breaking through it and landing in the hall, only a few tens of meters away from Yao Jun.
The person who had arrived was someone who went by the name of Silas, and he was someone from the Heaven's Gate sect. Silas was about as tall as Yao Jun and had short brown hair, deep green eyes, and a small scar that went from the bottom of his nose down to his chin, splitting his mouth in half.
The most notable thing about Silas was his cultivation, he had already reached the early stage of the Earthly Deity realm, likely only a short step away from the middle stage. Silas looked Yao Jun up and down, his eyes narrowing slightly as he spoke out.
"You're not Maribel. I assume that you have a reason for calling me using her communication jade?"
Maribel was the name of the woman whose memories Yao Jun had just altered, she came from the same sect as Silas. Yao Jun stood up from his seat, putting the chair back into his interspatial ring and facing Silas, the atmosphere growing tenser as he calmly spoke up, space around them already starting to seal up and preventing any messages from being sent out.
"You're the overseer of this operation, so you're the last person whose memories I need to alter."
Yao Jun had learned about the existence of Silas the moment they started to alter the memories of the people within the headquarters of the Yao clan. Silas was the one who made sure that the various people taking part in this mission, finding out why the seal on this planet had been shattered, didn't start killing each other because of the grudges between their sects and clans.
To do this, the various sects and clans sent over an Earthly Deity, someone strong enough to force the other people taking part in this mission to follow orders. He spent most of his time on a ship flying a good distance above the planet, quietly cultivating and using his mere presence as a threat to force the others to follow any orders he might give. Only once Yao Jun altered Silas' memories could he consider his plan to hide what had happened on this planet a success. Silas' expression sank slightly, a gray saber that was filled with honeycomb-like holes appearing in his grasp.
"Oh, you wish to alter my memories? Are you sure you aren't trying to bite off more than you can chew?"
Silas' body started to release more pressure, the mansion crumbling without him having to make a single move. The buildings in the city started to dissolve and turn to gray smoke that encircled the entire city, forming a prison with no escape. Yao Jun looked at the dissolving buildings and the smoke that was getting closer and closer, his expression still as calm as always as his sword appeared in his grasp and his lips curled up faintly.
"I'm glad that we're doing this here. There are no possible spies that might be watching, it's just the two of us, so there is no need to hold anything back."
Ever since Yao Jun last met one of Peyton's slaves on Four-Peaks planet and his identity had been discovered, he had to constantly hide some of his strength. There was no telling what Peyton might do, so Yao Jun constantly had to keep some strength in reserve to catch him off-guard. This, of course, meant that he had to keep his strength hidden in all the fights he took part in, lest one of Peyton's spies might accidentally see his full strength and report to his master.
But Yao Jun had already altered the memories of all the outside people who had arrived on this planet, erasing himself from their minds. The only exceptions to this memory altering were Mardon and Mariam, but even they had their memories searched by Yao Jun, making sure that they weren't spies for Peyton. On this planet, there was no one who could tell Peyton anything about Yao Jun's full strength. Right here, right now, he was free to fight with everything he had.