Charm Clan Resolution

At this moment, a year had passed since Zhao Yuling had suppressed and killed the Charm Clan's Half-step Invincible King.

Pigsty Land.

This was the most barren place in the Barbarian Domain, and also the most chaotic. More than a thousand clans below the third rank lived here.

No matter what those clans had once been like, once they arrived here, their decline was inevitable. To rise again, they would need a miracle.

But nothing was absolute. Some clans were born with peculiar cultivation needs and relied relatively little on resources. Suited to chaos, they could barely maintain their clan rank in this Pigsty Land.

Of course, merely maintain it.

After all, the conditions in Pigsty Land were truly abysmal!

The five major upper third-rank clans were the five strongest powers in Pigsty Land, as well as its only five third-rank clans.

The Charm Clan was one of them.

They fed on the soul desires of living beings.

In Pigsty Land, there was no shortage of weak creatures without the protection of powerful experts. They could be described as inexhaustible and ever-abundant.

Yet while the number of living beings was indeed plentiful, their quality was so poor it made the Charm Clan choke.

Devouring the desires of living beings should have been what they loved most, what they enjoyed doing most. But in Pigsty Land, the vast majority of creatures gave them no desire to bite down at all. It was like a person seeing shit—their very souls recoiled in disgust.

Even those they could stomach were as tasteless as chewing wax.

Of course, poor taste was not the main issue. The main issue was that the worse they tasted, the less use they were to them.

Otherwise, if it were merely a little unpleasant, what did it matter?

If they were effective, perhaps after eating them long enough, they might even develop a different flavor.

Precisely because the effect was so poor, the Charm Clan reminisced about the days of several centuries ago at every moment.

The Xia Clan!

Among clans of the same rank, they had the most delicious souls.

Even the worst-tasting among that clan could be considered high-grade in Pigsty Land.

Their ordinary people were even better than the acquired-realm beings of most clans.

Those among them with even a little talent were already rare delicacies in Pigsty Land, comparable to the flavor of innate-realm living beings.

As for those monstrous geniuses and heaven's chosen with exceptional talent, one could turn Pigsty Land upside down and still never find such a flavor!

The powerful members of the Charm Clan yearned for them day and night.

Thus, after several centuries had passed, the supreme existence of the clan announced that he had completely erased the soul-tracing mark that the Xia Clan's supreme existence had once implanted into their entire clan with a clan-suppressing secret treasure.

The Charm Clan could not wait to select a batch of outstanding juniors and send them to the Xia Clan territory they had been watching day and night.

This was the strategy they had settled on.

Take it slow.

Use the Xia Clan to nurture outstanding juniors into powerful experts.

Batch after batch, forming a virtuous cycle.

Until they could completely crush the Xia Clan, then raise them in captivity.

They could no longer mobilize the entire clan as they had in the past.

That would provoke a fierce backlash, leaving both sides wounded, blood flowing like rivers.

That was not what they wanted to see!

This time, they appeared exceptionally patient.

Yet barely a dozen years had passed.

The first batch of outstanding juniors brought back terrible news.

Of those who had entered Xia Clan territory, most had been exposed and killed. Even a clan elder had fallen.

It had only been a dozen or so years. The plan had barely begun, yet it had suffered such a blow.

It was completely different from what they had expected.

Charm Clan territory.

Council Hall.

Dozens of black-robed figures sat cross-legged.

Rolling yin qi surged and churned, making the entire hall wail and roar.

At the center sat Mei Ying, the current Clan Chief of the Charm Clan. He spoke in a deep voice.

"Yu Hen is dead. Of the ten juniors we sent out, only two remain. We have also been exposed to the Xia Clan's gaze."

"What do you all think we should do next?"

The moment Mei Ying's words fell, the yin qi around the Charm Clan members surged even more violently. Some even revealed killing intent.

"We were exposed so quickly, and Yu Hen died as well. I say it was because of him. His aura was too strong. I said long ago that the Xia Clan might not be without hidden reserves. It would have been best not to let an expert who exceeded the boundary enter. He was greedy, yet refused to heed our warnings!"

"Enough. Yu Hen is already dead. There is no meaning in pursuing this any further. What we need to decide is what to do next!"

"Should we temporarily abandon our plans and wait?"

"Or continue?"

"Wait? We have already waited for centuries! I cannot wait any longer. Why was Yu Hen so determined to go? His lifespan was nearing its end. If he could not advance further, he would return to silence—and I am the same!"

"But if we do not wait, the Xia Clan is already on guard. Though we have heard no news of powerful experts within their clan these years, and they seem to have declined to the utmost, we still cannot let down our guard."

"That clan excels most at concealing its strength. Five hundred years ago, if we had not misjudged them and failed to expect that they had so many powerful experts, how would we have fallen into such a predicament all at once?"

"The Xia Clan is already highly wary of us. If we press them too hard, what if we repeat the disaster of centuries ago?"

A group of clan elders began discussing.

Some among them had waited for this day for far too long. They were already ravenous with hunger and unwilling to give up so easily.

At their level, the souls of ordinary living beings no longer had any use for them.

They had reached the limit of their current realm. To advance further, they needed to devour existences of the same level.

But how could beings at their level be so easily hunted?

Moreover, each of them needed more than one such being to break through.

Thus, the Xia Clan's heaven's chosen, who could surpass their level, became targets that made their mouths water.

They could defeat them, capture them, and their numbers were quite considerable.

If they could capture every Xia Clan heaven's chosen, the strength of the Charm Clan could directly rise by more than one level.

But some Charm Clan members were later entrants. They had not waited very long and still had time to continue waiting.

Faced with the arguments on both sides, Mei Ying did not immediately make a decision. Instead, he looked toward a figure who had kept his eyes closed from beginning to end.

"The supreme one should already know about this matter, yes? What is his opinion?"

The closed-eyed figure was Yu Xiu, the personal attendant of the Charm Clan's supreme existence. His cultivation was nothing remarkable among those present, but because of his special status, no Charm dared look down on him.

Yu Xiu opened his eyes, swept his gaze over the hall, and only then spoke.

"The supreme one went to the Xia Clan border long ago to take a look. He said that the Xia Clan's supreme existence still remains in this world. Since we have already been exposed, the plan may be delayed for now."

"However, the supreme one has already confirmed that even if the Xia Clan's supreme existence used a state of feigned death to delay his return to silence, he can hold on for thirty more years at most."

"When that time comes, the supreme one will personally lay out the plan, enslave the Xia Clan, and revitalize the Charm Clan!"

The moment these words were spoken, the eyes of the Charm Clan members lit up. They suddenly became energized, and the surging yin qi around them ceased its churning.

Over the years, the Xia Clan, driven into barren lands, had grown ever weaker with the passing of time.

Meanwhile, the Charm Clan in Pigsty Land had maintained its clan strength without decline.

Yet even so, before the soul-tracing mark left by the Xia Clan's secret treasure had been broken, they had never dared send powerful experts to probe them or destroy the secret treasure. Was it not because they feared that existence?

Now, that existence had a definite time of return to silence.

Thirty years!

If they gritted their teeth and nourished themselves a little more, they could still endure it!

PS: Thanks to the great Ta Huang Shi Jie for the one-hundred grand reward.