The Clan's End (Aftermath)

Three days had passed since the battle between the Heaven clan and the Black Dog Bandits. As expected, the bandits won and the story spread to Cyrus and surrounding towns. However, it wasn't the usual tale of the bandits crushing and slaughtering helpless innocents; it was painted as a story of how the defeated Heaven clan became a nightmare for the bandits. Even after the battle, they had trouble sleeping and experienced symptoms of mental illness due to the battle.

Not only had the suicidal clansmen left a deep impression, what happened after the battle was over scarred them for life.

Once the High Elder took his last breath and was blasted apart by the Sky Realm master, the rest of the clansmen died soon after. The battle resulted in much higher casualties than he originally expected, so Roy still had a grave face despite ordering the lower ranked bandits to search the place for treasure. Though only one in the Earth Realm died, even the Sky Realm master had to rush back to the capital with heavy injuries, and though he only fought in the late part of the battle, Roy had many wounds on his body. He hated the fact that he was wounded by opponents several levels below him, but his injuries were light compared to the other two Earth Realm bandits.

After those above Soul Realm left the battlefield, everyone else mechanically searched for loot. Normally this would be the most exciting part, but based on how some bandits would jump in fright from looking at dead men with their eyes open, it was obvious that the aftereffects of fighting crazy warriors was strong.

One unlucky group of Mortal Realm bandits was assigned the task of searching the deceased sanctum. They thought it would be a quick look, but that changed when they spotted a particular coffin. Unlike the other plainly designed graves, this one was decorated with glittering jewellery. Normally, one would question why only this grave was so gaudy and be more careful, but the bandits seemed to be mesmerized by the grave. Instead of calling their superior like they were supposed to, they gulped down their saliva and went closer.

'Just one, just one piece.'

This was the last thought most of them had before meeting their fate. The moment one of them touched the grave, the entire sanctum lit up with a blood red light that spread throughout the clan.

"What is this?!"

Of the recuperating Earth Realm bandits, Roy was the first to notice this phenomenon, but because of what happened within the red light, he was hesitant to enter the area of the clan.

The group that was in the sanctum, had their vitality quickly sucked out and the corpses of many deceased ancestors rose from their graves and walked out of the sanctum. All of these corpses had cultivations of at least Soul Realm and quite a few were even in the Earth Realm. Since none of these corpses left the vicinity of the clan, Roy and others who were already out didn't dare interfere so those left in the clan could only accept their fate as they were eaten alive by any corpse that came after them.

"Ahhh!!!"

"No, no no! No! Stop!!"

"Please, don't-ahhhh!!!"

The array master in the Black Dog Bandits who was away from the danger could tell that the clan had become the setting of an offensive array, but he didn't know how it activated or operated. What he did know was that there was no hope for those who were stuck in the clan.

Shui had secretly set up this array so not even Bartos knew about its existence. This array was a last resort that Shui set up in case the clan was annihilated. It was made before he knew of the attack, but he always tried to be prepared for anything. The array had a multi-layered mechanism that started with an illusion array that only affected someone without the bloodline of the Heaven clan. Furthermore, this illusion array was also connected to the detection array and would only activate once the number of living Heaven clansmen was overwhelmingly inferior to the number of living outsiders. If there were any clansmen who were still alive at this point, they were either traitors or were going to die soon anyways so Shui saw no problem with this activation condition.

Once an outsider was lured closer to the fake grave created by the illusion array, they would trigger a special array that would suck out their vitality and use it as the power source of the offensive array. The vitality of the outsiders would flow to the stronger corpses in the sanctum and with the aid of a temporary reanimation array, their bodies would act in accordance to the sole order imprinted on them by the array, to eliminate all life. If his skill with arrays was higher, Shui might have been able to to add more detail to the order so that the corpses could join the battle, but there was also the problem of whether or not others would be okay with seeing their ancestors become something akin to zombies.

Why was he okay with turning them into such beings? It was quite simple. Even though they were his ancestors, he didn't know them. Besides, if they were really members of the clan they should be grateful that he would use their bodies to take revenge, that was Shui's reasoning.

Since they were already dead, they could only be stopped by completely destroying their bodies as they could replenish their energy by eating living flesh. Although this array was created for the purpose of revenge and to ensure that his mother's grave was not defiled, Shui was well-aware of how dangerous it was. However, since they could only move in the vicinity of the reanimation array, the zombie-like creatures were restricted to the clan until all life was extinguished.

Those who were safe from this disaster, stood still and watched their comrades being eaten and torn limb from limb. By this point, not a single one thought about saving them. There was no barrier stopping them this time, they just didn't want to die. In fact, many of them wanted to run away, but they were also afraid that if they ran too soon the zombie-like creatures would target them instead. And so, they waited until the last scream reached them and one by one, the horrific creatures returned to the sanctum.

When this story reached Lilia's group, most of them had mixed feelings. Their ancestors had risen from the grave and taken revenge for their clan, such a story made them both relieved and afraid. And if that was the case for them, imagine how the other citizens felt. In fact, the fear this story brought touched even the mayor of Cyrus. He considered organizing a force to burn the clan and put those troubled souls to rest, but since there was no activity after the bandits left, he didn't want to be rash and incur large casualties without any rewards.

Not just the people in Cyrus, among everyone who heard of this story, there was only one group of siblings who had a good idea of who caused this incident.