The situation had really turned for the worse following the destruction of the bane-ring. Fortunately, the people around Tianming weren't too powerful, and Yuehe had deteriorated due to her age. Tianming was considering immediately running away.

"Enough! It's all fate!" Yuehe yelled.

"Granny!"

"I will hear no more. This is the fruit of his own actions! It's one thing that he lost, but the fact that he resorted to a surprise attack has completely embarrassed our clan!" Yuehe breathed a long, teary sigh.

"Granny, how could you say that? He's your own grandson, yet you're defending that outsider!" Huiye Yin said.

"What would you want to do then? Kill him? Can you?"

"Waaaah!" Huiye Yin cried immediately, knowing that Tianming's talent had now completely superseded Huiyue Jie's. The Huiyue Clan would now regard Tianming with far more importance than they did now, and it all started when Huiyue Jie had asked her to bully Huiye Shi. With their father out fighting the killer, her brother losing a bane-ring, and her grandmother protecting Tianming, she felt utterly horrible.

With an innocent look, Tianming said, "I'm sorry."

It happened far too quickly. While he apologized on the surface, he was actually quite confused. However, there was no way he would figure this had anything to do with Sovereign Xi.

"You, leave for now!" Yuehe said.

"Thank you, Granny!"

Was the old woman really supporting him because of his talent? Did she really think that surprise attack from her grandson was underhanded? None of that mattered. Since she motioned him to leave, he wouldn't stay there any longer.

With Tianming gone, Yuehe told the rest, "Find someone to monitor him! Seal the Veneramoon Formation immediately. Shift it to forbid any member of the divine moonrace from leaving!"

"Understood."

"You all leave first. I’ll leave with my grandson."

The others obediently listened to her. Huiye Yin had initially wanted to stay, but Yuehe chased her away. Then Huiyue Jie turned over with a face full of bloody tears. However, he opened his arms wide and began to chuckle.

"Granny, I look pathetic now, right?" he said with a hint of madness.

"Yes." She knelt down and stroked his hair.

"However, that nightmare that has plagued me for life is finally over."

"Congratulations."

She sighed as her tears continued to flow.

......

The divine moon hall of the Huiyue Clan was now nothing but rubble with corpses littering the area around it. The Huiyue Clan had completely fallen to its lowest depths, with many of those corpses being Heptaglory Sky ascendants. They had all breathed their last breaths.

A rumbling sound soon came from the ruins of the hall. There was a slender man within the mist around the rubble. Stretching out his pale fingers, he clenched the neck of a bearded middle-aged man who was entirely covered in blood with his armor broken. His face contorted in pain, thanks to his utterly torn arm, the consequence of which was the destruction of all his bane-rings. He was already at death's doorstep.

He was none other than the clan leader and lord of Huiyue City, Huiyue Tianyu, the champion of the residents of the city. Nobody could have predicted that he would ever end up in his current state. Nothing but the corpses beneath him bore witness to this scene. Apart from him, everyone that had attacked the killer was dead.

The white-robed man was also covered in blood, but none of it was his. Like a cold machine, he punched Huiyue Tianyu ten times with his other hand, completely crushing his organs and spine, his heart especially. Power began leaking out of his countless astral discs. He was as good as dead.

After a long time, the white-robed man breathed a sigh, looking a little tired. "Reinforcements from the royalty of Divine Moon Skycity are too late, I'm afraid. Thanks to that, I had lots of fun killing today."

Black blood began flowing out of Huiyue Tianyu's mouth. With the last of his strength, he swept away the mist from the face of the man. "You... you are a specter...."

He finally realized the truth, but he wouldn't live to tell of it.

"Yes, you've guessed right." The mist around his face scattered, revealing his shiny white head. His pale eyes were incredibly cold. Stroking his prey's hair with his other hand, he smiled. "Don't be divine moonrace in your next life."

"I... I want to know why!" he struggled to say.

"You wouldn't believe me."

"I will. The only person in the Divine Moon Realm that can take you on is Sovereign Xi. I'll believe whatever you say!" Tears were already streaming from his impassioned eyes.

"Is that so?" He wiped away the tears and smiled. "I came from the Ninefold Hell. Some of you killed my wife and kin. It just so happens that we hold a grudge for our two-hundred-millennia-long imprisonment as well, so I came to pay it back. My goal is to wipe out the divine moonrace, starting with Huiyue City."

Huiyue Tianyu heaved labored breaths, shivering as he stared wide-eyed at the man with terror. Had he not heard it from the killer himself, he would never have believed that someone at his level could have come from the Ninefold Hell. "You will be... exterminated... by Orderia...."

"That isn't necessarily so. I can take your stellunar source and use it to reignite the Ninefold Hell's core. Then, we'll go to the realm of chaos and endlessly wander within it. At the very least, we have a place to call home. That’s pleasant enough, don't you think?"

He loosened his hand and dropped the man to the ground. His gaze began blurring as he looked pitifully at the wretch. He was suffering from killing so many, as if he were killing them out of mercy to spare them the pains of living.

"Die...." That was the last word Huiyue Tianyu managed to utter before he blacked out. His raised hand fell lifelessly to the ground.