The Demon clan kills all living beings, and the creatures of the Southern Region regret it.

It was laughable. The Demon Race went on every day about how the Witch Race fed on demon beasts and members of the Demon Race, calling them cruel, bloodthirsty, and steeped in evil.

Yet the Demon Race itself often devoured its own.

It was hard to imagine what would happen when a pig demon and a tiger demon crossed paths, with the pig demon clearly weaker than the tiger demon.

That was why the different tribes within the Demon Race were rife with conflict.

Today, a tiger demon ate a pig demon. Tomorrow, a stronger pig demon might want to find out what tiger demon tasted like. And besides, why should only tiger demons get to eat pig demons? Why not the other way around? Such thoughts bred defiance.

In the past, with the Witch Race as their greatest enemy, the demons might have had deep grievances against one another, but they dared not turn on their own. If the Witches caught them at it, they would kill them all, whether they were tiger demons or pig demons.

But now, hadn't the Witch Race withdrawn from the Primordial World?

With their greatest external enemy gone, internal strife was bound to begin.

Of course, if the conflict had been limited to direct infighting within the Demon Race, it might still have been kept in check. Di Jun and Tai Yi were still alive, after all. They might turn a blind eye to small schemes, but if anyone went too far, they would kill every last one of them, tiger demon or pig demon alike!

The problem was that after Di Jun and Tai Yi declared the Demon Race the undisputed Sovereign of the Primordial World, the demons grew arrogant.

And why wouldn't they? Look at the Primordial World as it stood: aside from Di Jun and Tai Yi, the Demon Race had three mighty Quasi-Sages—Nuwa, Fuxi, and Kunpeng.

All five had reached the mid-stage Quasi-Sage realm and severed their second corpses. Tai Yi had even broken through to the late stage, making him unquestionably the strongest demon.

Under these circumstances, Di Jun and Tai Yi became increasingly domineering in their conduct.

The Demon Race had entered a period of frenzied expansion. Along the way, they were bound to encounter tribes unwilling to submit.

In the past, with the Witch Race still around, Di Jun and Tai Yi had shown some restraint and been willing to negotiate terms.

Kunpeng was the perfect example.

Kunpeng had been a dominant power in the Northern Darkness, living well as its overlord. But what could he do when Di Jun and Tai Yi set their sights on him?

In the end, under pressure from the two working together, Kunpeng had no choice but to submit to the Demon Race.

Even so, Di Jun and Tai Yi had treated him well. They had received him with courtesy and granted him the exalted title of Demon Master, placing him just beneath the Demon Race's one emperor and three sovereigns. He was, in truth, the fifth most important figure in the Demon Race—in later generations, he would have been accorded the status of a chancellor.

But that had been then. Under the current circumstances, if Kunpeng encountered Di Jun and Tai Yi again, there would be no talk of a Demon Master's position. At most, they would give him a rank half a level above the Ten Great Demon Gods, while ensuring he held no real authority.

Mm...

It was rather like Randeng's later standing in the Chan Sect.

If Kunpeng could expect no more than that, then tribes whose strength and influence were far beneath his had it even worse.

This time, Di Jun and Tai Yi would show no mercy.

Submit, or die. There would be no room for negotiation.

With Di Jun and Tai Yi acting so tyrannically, it was only natural that the high-ranking figures beneath them—the Ten Great Demon Gods and the Demon Saints—would become just as cruel and domineering.

When the Demon Race turned cruel, the Witch Race couldn't hold a candle to them.

Just look at the three demons of Lion Camel Ridge during the Journey to the West. They had eaten everyone in the entire Lion Camel Kingdom. The original text of Journey to the West described it this way: "Skulls piled up like hills, bones stood thick as a forest. Human hair had matted into felt; human flesh had rotted into dust. Human sinews dangled from the trees, dried and glinting like silver. Truly, it was a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, rank with a stench impossible to bear."

Even at their most murderous and savage, the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race had never gone that far.

At least, in none of the myths had the Witch Race ever been said to treat the Human Race—or any other living beings—with such cruelty.

The entire Primordial World was thrown into chaos.

The demons slaughtered one another in a frenzy, and they treated other races with the utmost cruelty and tyranny.

In just a thousand years, the Demon Race had wiped out at least hundreds of thousands of tribes. The number of living beings who perished reached tens of thousands of billions.

Since the Demon Race's expansion was focused on the Northern Region, the entire region became a living hell. Countless creatures' wails and screams rose to the Ninth Heaven and shook the Netherworld below.

Of course, even as they screamed and wailed, many creatures realized the truth only in their final moments.

"You demons have always claimed that the Witch Race is the source of chaos, feeding on the flesh and blood of all the Primordial World's living beings. I never saw the Witches do such a thing. But today, I see you demons devouring tens of billions of living beings from my Gale Tiger Tribe. The proof is as plain as day!"

"So it was all a lie. The Witch Race was nowhere near as cruel and tyrannical as you claimed. All the accusations against them were just you demons slandering them for the very things you yourselves do!"

"It's a pity we realized the truth too late. Far too late!"

"I regret it! I truly regret it!"

Unfortunately, no matter how bitterly the chief of the Gale Tiger Tribe repented, all he got in reply was: "What are you babbling on about? Forget it. You'll quiet down once you're in my belly!"

The Demon Race's atrocities soon shocked the other mighty figures, and even Hongjun, far away in the Purple Heaven Palace.

There was no helping it. Tens of thousands of billions of living beings had died.

And this was the ancient era, the most prosperous age in the history of the Primordial World.

Of the dead, nearly one in a thousand had been Innate Beings.

Most importantly, among them were tens of thousands of Innate Beings and even hundreds of Innate Demon Gods.

They had truly stirred up a hornet's nest.

In the Heavenly Dao's eyes, only beings that had developed sentience could be called living beings. Only after becoming living beings could they be entered into its registry of "people."

But under the Heavenly Dao, beings of different origins were not valued equally.

An Innate Being was worth at least a hundred million ordinary living beings in the Heavenly Dao's eyes, while an Innate Demon God was worth more than ten thousand Innate Beings.

This was not because the Heavenly Dao was unfair. Every Innate Being had, to some extent, a share of Pangu's Merit of Opening the Heavens. And Innate Demon Gods could practically be considered Pangu's descendants. After all, which Innate Demon God born in the Primordial World had no connection to Pangu?

So when the Demon Race slaughtered tens of thousands of Innate Beings and hundreds of Innate Demon Gods, they truly incurred the Heavenly Dao's wrath.

But the Demon Race was, after all, the protagonist of this era's calamity. And the Heavenly Dao still needed them to keep the Witch Race in check, so it did not directly bring down heavenly punishment.

Even so, where none of the Demon Race's high-ranking figures could see, their already considerable merit began to plummet, while their Karmic Force surged.

More importantly, even Nuwa could not escape the rise and fall of merit and Karmic Force.

After all, Nuwa, you were the Empress Wa of the Demon Race.

As the Demon Race's empress, you couldn't claim all the benefits, then pretend to have nothing to do with it whenever the Demon Race committed evil.