Bloodbath

The branch masters who had once stood on the same side as Zhu Man Cang felt their hearts tighten. Combined with Gui Xiao's strange behavior and condition today, everyone suddenly had a bad feeling.

Some quick-witted people soon connected Gui Xiao's "overnight white hair" with his bizarre actions today.

Wan Heng, a steadfast member of Gui Xiao's faction, had been frightened by everything that had happened so far. He vaguely had a guess, but he truly did not dare think any further.

The anger born of fear made him leap to his feet. He shouted, "Holy Son! What exactly did you do to Lord Gui? Lord Gui Xiao could never usually be like this. What underhanded trick did you use behind the scenes?"

Mu Feng saw through Wan Heng's fierce yet timid appearance at a glance. Mu Feng's thinking was simple and brutal: sweep away everyone who stood in his way. After Zhu Man Cang, Wan Heng would be the first person Mu Feng purged.

"Oh?" Mu Feng sneered. "What method do you think I could use to make a Soul Douluo obey my every word? You think far too highly of me."

"You! You!"

How could Wan Heng possibly know what Mu Feng had done? If Mu Feng had not used some underhanded scheme, then what was happening before them made no sense. Yet no one could explain it, and Wan Heng choked with frustration, unable to say another word.

Seeing that Wan Heng had fallen silent, Mu Feng turned to Gui Xiao beside him and asked, "Lord Gui, how do you think such insolence should be handled?"

At once, everyone in the room turned their eyes toward Gui Xiao.

Gui Xiao did not hesitate in the slightest. He said coldly, "Defying the Holy Son and offending one's superior—death is no great loss."

With that, he sprang from his chair without another word. His right hand curled into a claw as he released his martial soul. Two bony wings spread from his back, and he flew toward Wan Heng.

A Soul King locked onto by the aura of a Soul Douluo was crushed beneath a mountain-like pressure. Wan Heng could not move at all; even opening his mouth to speak was extremely difficult.

Gui Xiao seized Wan Heng in his grip as though he were holding a chick.

"M-My lord..."

Wan Heng's legs kicked helplessly in the air. Before he even had the chance to activate his martial soul, Gui Xiao instantly sealed his acupoints. His voice grew weaker and weaker until it was nearly inaudible. Yet the conference room had long since fallen deathly silent, and everyone focused intently on Wan Heng.

When even his final faint gasp disappeared, Wan Heng's head lolled to one side and he went still. Gui Xiao casually flung him into a corner like discarded trash.

Everyone instantly fell silent in terror. Several branch masters who had previously opposed Mu Feng hurriedly looked toward the entrance, searching for a chance to escape. But the conference room doors had already been shut when Mu Feng entered, not to mention that he had stationed Black and White Impermanence there in advance.

Seeing that all hope of escape had been utterly crushed, these fence-sitters immediately scrambled from their seats and knelt on the ground. The man at the front said in a trembling voice, "Spare us, Holy Son. We were blinded by evil thoughts before and acted foolishly. I hope the Holy Son can give us another chance."

The others hurriedly echoed him. "Yes, yes, yes! Please give us another chance, Holy Son."

Aside from Mu Feng's trusted subordinates who had worked under him before, everyone else knelt on the floor and awaited his judgment.

"Yan Sha, Shao Hui..." Mu Feng selected seven or eight people from among the dozen kneeling men. Those whose names were called were overjoyed. They had only just begged the Holy Son for mercy, and now he had called their names. It seemed they might still escape this disaster today.

Mu Feng said, "Kill these people."

"Yes."

The people whose names had been called instantly collapsed to the ground, then cried out, "No! Holy Son, you can't do this!"

With their lives at stake, few were willing to sit and wait for death. They hurriedly rose to their feet, their auras surging. For a moment, all manner of martial souls and Soul Rings of every color filled the room as they prepared to join forces for one final stand.

Gui Xiao activated his fourth Soul Ring, Soul-Eroding Shriek. The chanting of every soul skill within the range of the sonic assault was interrupted, while their minds were simultaneously struck by corrosive attacks.

As they clutched their heads and focused on defending themselves, Gui Xiao's first Soul Ring flashed. His arms transformed into two Corroded Bone Crow Claws, and together with Black and White at the door, he easily killed the branch masters Mu Feng had named.

A thin layer of blood covered the floor of the conference room. Mu Feng sat high above them, looking down at the corpses. Eight people had died in succession, yet the remaining four branch masters could not detect the slightest emotional fluctuation on the Holy Son's face.

Now that those who needed dealing with had been dealt with, Mu Feng no longer needed to keep a stern face. He smiled instead. "Now that these obstacles within the Holy Church have been cleared away, we will certainly be short-handed for a while. I'll have to trouble you branch masters to put in more effort and ensure the Holy Church's work is not delayed because of this."

Yet the blood of the branch masters Mu Feng had just ordered killed had not even cooled. His smile was enough to make their scalps crawl.

Mu Feng warned, "Everyone will continue following the rules I established before. As for those people recruited previously who violated those rules, you branch masters should deal with them when you return."

Two of the four branch masters Mu Feng had left alive had operated here for a long time. They still had enough subordinates under them to handle this mess.

"For now, suspend the Holy Church's expansion and remove all the filth," Mu Feng ordered, then tossed out four Rejuvenation Pills.

Even within the Holy Spirit Cult, a Rejuvenation Pill was extremely hard to obtain. Mu Feng had casually thrown out four of them. At critical moments, these were life-saving treasures.

The tactic of giving a stick and then a sweet reward never failed, but Mu Feng's blow had hurt far too much. As a result, everyone still remained timid and submissive.

"All right, that will be all. Go and get busy, everyone."

The moment they heard those words, everyone felt as if they had been pardoned. One after another, they rushed for the door. The guards stationed at the ground-level entrance discovered that only four of the branch masters who had gone in came running out, each one looking frantic.

Curious, one guard turned his head to look inside, only to meet Mu Feng's eyes as he came out. Mu Feng instructed, "Clean up the conference room inside later."

"Yes."

With Gui Xiao and the other two remaining here to restrain and manage the Holy Church's growth according to Mu Feng's development plan, that would be enough.

Mu Feng also ordered Wei Yan, the head of propaganda, to slow down. They would temporarily stop recruiting new believers until they had thoroughly absorbed the Holy Church's existing territory. They would kick out the freeloading swindlers and properly do some psychological work among the current believers.

Under Gui Xiao's leadership, the Holy Church's pyramid-scheme-like expansion methods had been entirely for the sake of making the numbers look good. Judging from the feedback of faith power, Gui Xiao's methods had been an utter failure in terms of actual development.

There were plenty of believers, but very few could provide him with faith power. They were all freeloading frauds. Even with the resources Zhongli Wu sent over every month, they should not have been squandered like this.

Thinking of this, Mu Feng suddenly felt that relying solely on Zhongli Wu's support placed many limits on the Holy Church's development. It was time to establish some industries like the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Sect and become self-sufficient, lest Zhongli Wu cut off supplies someday and the Holy Church collapse on its own because it ran out of money.

After issuing his orders, Mu Feng found a stream and washed the bloody smell from himself before returning to Shrek Academy.

Now that all authority had been gathered into his hands, he still faced the same problem as before: where could he find capable people to use?