The thought of not slaughtering indiscriminately was one thing, but once Li Yan had decided what to do, he would not show the slightest mercy. He had already set down a principle for dealing with these people.
Although he would not ultimately use these Nascent Souls for cultivation, it would not be so easy for them to make him let them go.
Li Yan was no righteous hero acting on Heaven's behalf, but he had his own code of conduct. To put it bluntly, it depended on whether he found something pleasing to the eye. This was also the temperament of certain old monsters who acted arbitrarily and alone.
If there were utterly evil people among them, Li Yan would only need a swift Soul Search. Those steeped in great evil naturally had countless wicked and vicious deeds to their name.
There was no need to conduct a detailed Soul Search at all. Li Yan would destroy them without hesitation. It was not about acting on Heaven's behalf; he simply felt that leaving such cultivators in the world would deprive the cultivation world of a measure of peace.
Li Yan would not deliberately do so-called good deeds, but things that could be done in passing could still be done. Sometimes, if you let someone go this once, the karma that followed might instead become even worse...
Li Yan stared at the ring in his hand. He did not immediately proceed to the next step. To put it bluntly, none of these remaining people were good people.
In the cultivation world, good people simply could not keep walking all the way forward. Moreover, the weakest among them were Spirit Transformation cultivators. Whose hands had not been stained with wrongfully dead ghosts? Who had never done something contrary to morality?
Yet comparatively