"We are willing… Arghhhh… willing to accept you as our master… Uwaaah… Spare me! Spare me! Arghhhh!" Yan Wanchi lay sprawled on the ground, clawing at the dirt with trembling hands, his bulging eyes locked onto Yun Wuji in desperation.
"We are willing… to recognize you as our master!" the other two Yama Ancestors cried out in desperation.
"Very good." Yun Wuji gave a slight wave, and the silver marks on their bodies vanished.
Their miserable wails went silent, and the Three Yama Ancestors collapsed to the floor. They gasped violently for air, their bodies trembling as every drop of blood and strand of hair spasmed without control. A foul-smelling liquid had soaked the front of their pants, pooling into a dark puddle beneath them.
Yun Wuji's gaze swept over the three before landing on their leader, Yan Wanchi. He stepped forward and stopped right in front of him. Looking down at Yan Wanchi's pitiful state, he slowly reached out a hand and said, "Hand over the Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron."
"What… what do you want it for?" Yan Wanchi asked weakly.
"To forcefully take over your Yama Realm, of course," Yun Wuji replied, eyes slanted with amusement. "You didn't actually think I came here just for the three of you, did you?"
The words "take over the Yama Realm" made the bodies of the Three Yama Ancestors, and even Yan Wu, to go stiff and rigid.
The Yama Realm, the realm the Three Yama Ancestors had built with countless efforts, blood, sweat, and tears, was going to be handed over to a mere junior!?
What a humiliation! What a ridiculous joke!
How could they possibly accept that!?
"It seems you still haven't accepted your new reality." They had hesitated for just a moment, but Yun Wuji immediately activated the Soul Mark again.
"Aghhhhhh!!" They writhed on the ground in agony, their death screams merging into a grim funeral dirge that echoed through the boundless darkness.
"Take… take it! Just stop this pain! Please… stop this pain!" The torture dragged on for less than ten more minutes before Yan Wanchi begged in the most pathetic way imaginable.
In this hell, nothing seemed sweeter or more beautiful than the release of death.
If it had been any other trio, they would have gone mad long ago under this torment.
"You are finally coming to your senses?" Yun Wuji said, stopping the Soul Mark on the ancestor's body.
Swoosh!
The moment Yun Wuji stopped, Yan Wanchi wasted no time. Without a hint of hesitation, he threw the Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron toward him, as if afraid that any delay would plunge him back into that sea of hellish pain.
Yun Wuji caught the cauldron and deactivated the Soul Mark. A wide grin spread across his face as he eyed the black cauldron, a square-shaped cauldron about two feet long.
With it, the Yama Realm had fully fallen into his hands.
The Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron wasn't just the carrier of the Yama Devil origin power. Unlike the Burning Moon Realm and the Soul Stealing Realm's devil origin artifacts, it had the tyrannical ability to withdraw all Yama Devil's power by force!
It was the devil origin artifact of the Yama Devils, the very lifeline of their inheritance and power!
With this artifact, he could directly withdraw the Yama Devil power from any of the Yama Devils, and with his Law of Nothingness, he could forcefully grant this power to another person, even if they didn't have the Yama Bloodline.
The only downside was that they would start at 8th level Divine Master and need a long time for their compatibility with Yama power to grow and their cultivation to reach 9th level Divine Master.
"Ancestors!" Yan Wu stared at the Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron in terror. If she hadn't been completely suppressed inside the formation, she would have ignored everything and lunged for the cauldron!
That was their lifeline. Even if Yun Wuji did nothing and simply left, once this generation of Yama Devils died out, they'd lose their legacy and power forever!
The three Yama Ancestors ignored her and remained lying on the ground. They didn't have the slightest strength to move. This woman had no idea what they had endured in that short period; if she did, she wouldn't have lasted even ten seconds through that pain.
...
In the Devil Palace of Eternal Darkness.
Only an hour had passed since Yun Wuji entered the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness when Yan Tianxiao gathered all the Yama Devils and Yama Ghosts to brief them on what had happened in the Soul Stealing Realm.
The Yama Realm had the highest number of late-stage Divine Masters among the three king realms: 14 Yama Devils in total, including the three Yama Ancestors, the Yama Emperor, and ten other Yama Devils.
"Your Majesty, the Devil Queen is extremely dangerous and cunning, but if she is truly sincere in her cooperation, then I believe we should join her in the war," said the Yama Devil Yan E. "We've been oppressed by the other Divine Regions for a million years. Now that we have a real chance to strike back, I think we should take it."
"My king! This humble one also thinks the same. Even if we lose, we still have a safe retreat route!" another Yama Devil added, his voice full of agitation. "In the past, when I left the Northern Divine Region, I became half crippled and was chased by those pigs, barely escaping back with my life."
Each and every person in the Northern Divine Region held a profound hatred toward the other Divine Regions, who had oppressed them for millions of years; this deep resentment included the three King Realms as well.
Yan Tianxiao remained silent, lost in thought. He was inclined to accept the Devil Queen's offer, not only because he wanted to wage war, but also because if he refused, the already wide gap between their two realms would only grow wider. One day, she would extend her claws toward his realm, and even with the protection of the Three Ancestors, he wouldn't be able to stop her.
Boom!
Just as the Yama Devils waited for the Yama Emperor's decision, a deafening explosion ripped through the air behind them.
When they turned around to see what was happening, they saw a column of black light flying out from the maw that was the entrance to the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness!
At the same time, a storm of darkness destroyed all thirty-six sealing barriers over the entrance.
BOOM
This was probably the most terrifying explosion the Yama Devil Realm had ever experienced since it was founded. The entire Devil Palace of Eternal Darkness was shaking, and the shockwave reached as far as thousands of kilometers away from the explosion.
"Wh… what's going on!?" Yan Jie exclaimed in shock. But before he could do anything else, his terror was magnified tenfold by the next thing that happened.
Rumble!
Crack
Black-colored cracks suddenly appeared across the gray sky above their heads. It barely took a second or two for them to spread throughout the globe that enveloped the entire Yama Imperial District.
The central palace was collapsing, and dark storms were ravaging its remnants. But Yan Jie, Yan Tianxiao, and the rest of the Yama Devils were too stunned by the black cracks above their heads to care right now.
It was because the breaking "sky" was none other than the great protective formation of the Yama Imperial District!
Rumble!
Another loud explosion came from the Devil Palace of Eternal Darkness, and the disastrous black storm suddenly began dissipating quickly. The cracks that covered the entire Great Yama Formation stopped just before it could collapse completely.
Yan Tianxiao and everyone else turned toward the heart of the Devil Palace of Eternal Darkness, the entrance to the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness, and stared.
It was because three crooked and tiny shadows were surfacing from the entrance. Their devilish power was so terrible that the world was frozen by their presence.
"An… ancestors!?" Yan Jie exclaimed in shock while dropping to his knees. His movement was pure reflex.
"An… cestors." Although Yan Tianxiao was saying ancestors, it was more of a murmur than a greeting. It was because he noticed that their auras were different from normal, although he couldn't tell exactly what was different.
'Did that guy Jiao Heng really succeed in freeing the Three Ancestors?'
Shocked and puzzled, Yan Tianxiao was about to kneel when he suddenly saw two more figures rising from the entrance to the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness.
They were Yun Wuji and Yan Wu, the latter following behind with her head lowered.
'What's going on?' Yan Tianxiao frowned as he noticed his daughter's expression was off. A bad feeling started creeping into his heart.
"Yan Tianxiao!" Yun Wuji stood before the three Yama Ancestors, with Yan Wu behind him, the four forming his guard. His eyes slanted toward the stunned man.
"Your three ancestors and your daughter have submitted to me." He spoke slowly, "I'm giving you all a chance to surrender as well."
"Submit, or face destruction."
Silence, an absolute silence, descended on the palace as everyone present stared at the young man with shock, disbelief, and anger.
"What!?" Yan Tianxiao was flabbergasted. He turned to his ancestors seeking an answer, but what he received thrust him into a hellish glacier of despair.
"Young Master Jiao is our new master. It's better if you all submit to him," Yan Wanchi, who was renamed Yan One by Yun Wuji, said in a grim, desolate voice.
Yun Wuji decided to rename them Yan One, Yan Two, and Yan Three, just like in the novel. It definitely wasn't because he didn't want to confuse readers who couldn't remember their names. Not at all!
Stunned and unable to accept what was happening before him, Yan Tianxiao turned to his daughter. "Wu'er…"
"Royal Father, it's hopeless," Yan Wu replied, barely meeting her father's eyes. "This man controls the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness, and he has the Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron. We can't go against him."
"The Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron!?" all the Yama Devils, including the Yama Emperor, shouted in shock.
"Royal father, what…" Yan Jie shot Yan Tianxiao a lost look, but he discovered that the Yama Emperor was shaking from head to toe.
What had happened in just one hour to make the Yama Ancestors and Yan Wu submit to Jiao Heng? From the looks of it, they were forced to obey him. What did he do to them?! How could a mere 1st level Divine Master subdue and enslave four God Emperors?!
"Just as you heard, I hold the lifeline of your Yama Realm. Your only choice is to submit to me," Yun Wuji said lazily, sweeping his eyes across everyone present.
He was really enjoying the show. The process of subduing a King Realm that was much stronger than both the Star God Realm and the Moon God Realm felt very satisfying.
Yan Tianxiao exhaled slowly. He didn't know what had happened, and he didn't care either. The Yama Realm was facing an existential crisis right now, and as the Yama Emperor, he had to stand up and stop it, no matter the cost!
Clang!
The Yama Devil Spear appeared before Yan Tianxiao. His body was shining with dark energy, and his hair was dancing lightly to his own power. The face of the strongest God Emperor in the Northern Divine Region was set with deep determination.
"Jiao Heng! I don't know what you did, but if you think that by using our ancestors and the Yama Devil Nether Crossing Cauldron, you can force us into submission, you're dreaming!" Yan Tianxiao said slowly and solemnly. "We will not surrender to anyone!"
...
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