As the White-robed Woman and the Hun Clan experts withdrew, the suffocating killing intent that had frozen time and space slowly ebbed away like a tide. Yet the once vibrant Yao Realm was now left in utter ruin. Shattered peaks, scorched earth, collapsed spatial barriers, and the lingering stench of blood and smoke in the air all silently spoke of the savagery of the battle that had just taken place.
In the silence of surviving the calamity, suppressed sobs began to rise sporadically before quickly spreading. The surviving Yao Clan descendants emerged from the broken walls and rubble where they had hidden, their faces still filled with fear and bewilderment. When they saw familiar faces and confirmed that they were still alive, immense grief and relief erupted together. Some fell to their knees, clutching the bodies of loved ones and weeping uncontrollably; some embraced tightly, feeling the reality of their reunion after the disaster; more simply stared at their utterly destroyed homeland, their eyes filled with helplessness and sorrow.
Yao Chen stood at the edge of the devastated Yao Ceremony Plaza. His long robe was stained with dust and blood, while his aged face was covered in exhaustion and emotions too complicated to describe.
He looked at those clansmen who were both familiar and unfamiliar to him, at Clan Leader Yao Dan's back in the distance, suddenly bent with age, and at the figures searching the ruins for survivors. A trace of relief rose in his heart—relief that the Yao Clan had not been completely erased, that the flame of this bloodline, which had endured for countless ages, had not been utterly extinguished today.
Space rippled slightly as a figure stepped out and landed upon the shattered ground of the Yao Realm. It was Gongsun Lin.
He looked somewhat disheveled.