When Yi Xue somewhat confusedly uttered her mother's name, all the pieces fell into place for Liang Chen. Why her name sounded so familiar, why he felt that she looked so familiar, why her bloodline looked so familiar to him, he immediately understood everything he had occasionally wondered in the past.
And as Liang Chen understood the truth, Yi Xue felt an immense dread wash over her, the sensation so intense that it felt like her soul was going to simply dissolve. But the sensation luckily vanished as quickly as it arrived, Yi Xue noticing that Liang Chen's left hand was tightly grasping his right wrist, his fingers twitching slightly.
Liang Chen had gone through Qing Lan Yong's memories in the past, and although he hadn't bothered memorizing each and every one of them, there were still some that stuck with him. And one of the memories that stuck with him was the name of the Bai clan maidservant that Qing Lan Yong had gotten a child with, the act that resulted in his parents having to act as scapegoats.
The maidservant's name was Yi Xinyi, and the moment Liang Chen heard that name he scoured through his memories to dig up everything he learned from Qing Lan Yong. And it was this rapid search that allowed him to learn the truth, Yi Xue was the daughter of Qing Lan Yong and Yi Xinyi, she was the child that was the reason his parents had to die.
She was still just a young child when Qing Lan Yong had last seen her so Liang Chen hadn't made the connection the moment he met her and saw her bloodline. But she had ended up in a place where the flow of time was drastically increased, so while Liang Chen expected Qing Lan Yong's daughter to be no more than a child, she had already grown up to a young lady.
In the instant where realization hit him, his right arm had shot forward instinctively in an attempt to eradicate the source of Liang Chen's wrath. But he managed to stop himself just in time and force his arm back, grasping his wrist so hard that he could feel his bones creaking beneath his grasp. No matter how angry he was, no matter how sad he was at the loss, he knew that Yi Xue couldn't be held responsible.
A child bore no sins, especially when the only thing they had done was get born. No, the sin that was the unjust death of Liang Chen's parents still fell on the Qing clan, on Qing Lan Yong. And no matter how much it pained him, part of the sin fell onto him as well. Were it not for their desire to protect him from the Qing clan's fury, his parents could have easily fled the execution and lived.
But they didn't. They laid down their lives so he could live, so that he could see the bright dawn that he was named after. And in the end, he found his own dawn, smiling at him so cheekily that it was blinding, and he finally understood why his parents had acted as they did. But even that bright dawn couldn't extinguish the flames burning in him, his hatred and wrath had already become part of him.
So he moved forward, he pointed his wrath at the heights of the heavens, and he swore to burn until there was no longer anything left to point his wrath at, no matter how naive others might find those thoughts. Liang Chen closed his eyes and stopped gripping his wrist, clear marks visible where he had been clenching his hand. Calmness had returned to Liang Chen's eyes when he opened them again, Yi Xue stuck with a confused feeling due to the sense of dread that had washed over her.
"Your father, his name is Qing Lan Yong, isn't it?"
Liang Chen already knew the answer but he still wanted to hear it from her, he wanted to be completely certain that his own thoughts were correct. And Yi Xue didn't fail him, all confusion vanishing from her as her entire being lit up when Liang Chen spoke her father's name. She couldn't help but lean closer, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"It was, it was! Did you know him? What was he like? Was he really as just as Aunty said, was he really that good of a person? Was he humble? Was he handsome? .... Do you know who killed him?"
Yi Xue bombarded Liang Chen with questions, unaware that he was the worst possible person she could ask when it came to her father. A soft gust of wind pushed Yi Xue back so she wasn't right in Liang Chen's face any longer, Liang Chen giving a slight shake of his head.
"I am not suited to answer those questions, you can find the answer yourself in the future. Your father was indeed ambushed right before you were forced to leave, but he didn't die. I last saw him not too long before I met you, he left the planet to search for a way to bring back those that died in the ambush. As for who ambushed him, it would be people from the Sealing God Empyrean's sect, a sect that covers almost the entirety of the universe we came from."
Liang Chen avoided talking too much about Qing Lan Yong and instead moved Yi Xue's focus onto the fact that her father was still alive, or at least had been when Liang Chen last saw him. And as he expected, her eyes started practically shining with the light of ecstasy and hope, the flames of hatred burning deep within her pupils, a look that Liang Chen was all too familiar with. Yi Xue hurriedly sucked in a few breaths to restrain her shining expression, giving Liang Chen a grateful bow with a surprisingly serious expression.
"Thank you for telling me about my father's well-being and about those who attacked him. When I have the strength to take on that sect, I hope that Sect Master will allow me to leave to deal with them."
One of Liang Chen's eyebrows ticked up when he was referred to as Sect Master, the title feeling exceedingly unfamiliar to him. But he never planned on restraining Yi Xue's actions, nor did he plan on telling her what her father had done to him, he simply gave a casual nod of his head.
"Go for it, but I've got a grudge with the ruler of that sect, so I might have already taken care of them by the time you have the strength to do so."
The Sealing God Empyrean had not only tried to kill Liang Chen but he had also caused Liang Chen's one and only sister to die, he fell into the category of people that Liang Chen could not forgive. Yi Xue nodded her head seriously and looked as if she wanted to say more but Liang Chen directed her attention towards the people that had temporarily stopped showing off their laws.
She understood Liang Chen's intention and quieted down so that the other new members of the sect could finish displaying their laws. Liang Chen quietly watched as the people started showing off again, his eyes not showing a hint of his emotions. Saying that children were without sin was all fine and good, but Liang Chen would be lying if he said that he didn't feel a sliver of resentment towards Yi Xue, a very small part of him wondering what might have happened if she was never born.
But he crushed those thoughts the moment they were born in his mind, and he most certainly wouldn't take his wrath out on Yi Xue. The moment he took his anger out on her, he would be no better than the people he was slaying in the name of his wrath.
He finished observing the laws of the people that had just joined his sect, doing his best to learn their names and faces while he was at it. When the last person finished showing off their laws, Liang Chen started to hand out cultivation manuals, splitting some people with the same laws into groups to make sure that he had cultivation manuals and techniques for everyone.
He ordered everyone to focus on their manuals and told them to go to Yi Xue if they had any questions, if she couldn't answer the questions then they could call for him. Everyone eagerly split off to check out the manuals that they had been given, Liang Chen leaving the orb while sending a quick message to Yumao through the ring. Liang Chen appeared within a rather large alley covered in shadows, Yumao happily flapping his wings as he grew to his full size of nearly seven metres. Liang Chen hopped onto Yumao's head and sat down, softly stroking the feathers that ran down Yumao's entire back.
"Let's go, I've waited long enough."
Liang Chen couldn't take out his wrath on Yi Xue, but there was someone in this city he could take his wrath out on, the Golden Dawn sect. The sect was a division of the Golden Branch sect and it was they that had sent Jue Po Bia after Liang Chen, it was also they who sent the other assassins that self-destructed after him. They were already on his kill-list, venting his wrath was just a little added benefit.
Yumao raised his head and let out a loud hiss, flapping his wings and shooting into the sky like a black streak. Information about the Golden Dawn sect was included in the information about the Golden Branch sect that he had bought so Liang Chen already knew where it was located, pointing Yumao in the right direction.
He detected four more attacks shooting through the air and heading for him as they flew towards the sect, but Yumao easily dealt with the attacks by flapping his wings and unleashing a viscous wave of darkness that swallowed up the attacks. The attacks didn't matter much to Liang Chen, but the four loud explosions that sounded out after the attacks failed echoed through his chest. He didn't even have to head to the explosions to see the destruction, to smell the scent of burnt flesh as people howled and grieved. He clenched his hand tightly while narrowing his eyes, pointing at a building that just entered his view.
"Go."
Yumao didn't let out another sound and simply soared straight at the building, a large star-shaped mansion that was coloured a dim yellow, a neat forest as well as some smaller stone stages surrounding the entire mansion. The area around the mansion was bustling with activity, thousands of people already standing ready while wearing either armour or robes that were certainly enhanced with arrays.
Five people flew up from the mansion as Liang Chen approached, transparent wings growing from their backs. Liang Chen stood up from his seated position, his grey spear appearing in his grasp as the distance between them and the sect rapidly shrank. The five people stopped moving up and hovered in the air next to each other, the graceful woman standing at the centre crossing his arms and snorting coldly at Liang Chen.
"Humph, did you really think you could sneak attack us by coming from the air? We knew you were coming the moment you left Sand's Journey city and have long prepared thanks to the timely orders from above. Activate the arra...!"
The woman's words were cut off by something shooting past here, a thunderous rumbling coming from behind her as the entire star-shaped mansion crumbled. The thing that crushed the mansion moved so fast that the impact unleashed a shockwave that blew away the forest surrounding the mansion, the people that had lined up so neatly getting tossed in all directions.
The five people flying in the air turned around with somewhat stilted movements, their gazes landing on Liang Chen, who was now standing in the midst of the ruins of the mansion. He held his spear in a somewhat loose grip, the maw-shaped tip piercing into the ground as he turned his head to glance at the people in the air, not an ounce of mercy visible in his gaze.
"And? So what if you know that I'm coming?"
The hearts of the five people skipped a beat when Liang Chen spoke, their breaths freezing in their throats as they sensed the dreadful aura he was unleashing by just standing there. He was right, it didn't matter if they knew he was coming. If you knew that a meteor was coming but you were unable to do anything to stop it, what did it matter if you knew it was coming? At that time, all you could do was wait for death. The graceful woman instantly realized this fact, sweeping out her arm while calling out a final desperate order.
"Self-de...gh!"
Her words were once again cut off, the shadows cast by her own wings stretching out and burrowing through her body, filling her throat with so much blood that the words couldn't leave her lips. The four people next to her didn't fare better, their own shadows turning on them as Yumao easily dealt with all of them.
This was a very small division of the Golden Branch sect, the graceful woman at the centre was the sect master, and she had only reached the very peak of the Soaring Immortal realm, maybe half a step into the Primordial Immortal realm. Faced with Liang Chen and Yumao, she was no more than a lamb facing the butcher. Liang Chen swept the surrounding people with a sharp gaze, none of them daring to move as he kicked off the ground and shot into the air, stopping in front of the woman.
"I'm so tired of your sacrifice plays, have some respect for the people that chose to follow you, that ended up believing in you."
Liang Chen's hand shot forward when he finished his words, grasping onto the woman's face and flooding her mind and soul with his poison and law of time to speed up the effect of the poison. The woman immediately lost control of herself and became no more than a doll, obediently telling Liang Chen every little thing about the Golden Dawn sect and whatever she knew about the Golden Branch sect.
Liang Chen repeated the process on the four other people that Yumao had taken care of, learning about every little thing the Golden Dawn sect had done in the last several hundred years. And to his surprise, of the thousands of disciples below him, the number of people who actually knew about the Golden Branch sect and the other things that the sect had done was surprisingly low.
He expected all of them to be a part of it and had prepared to kill every last person below him. But in truth, only a little less than half were actually in on everything, the rest were just citizens who had joined the sect over time and had no idea what they were doing in the darkness.
Liang Chen descended to the ground again and mercilessly killed those who had been working for the Golden Branch sect, sparing those who had simply joined the sect. Of course, he received quite a number of hateful glares, he was, after all, ruining their sect and killing people they considered their friends. Liang Chen took in all the hateful glares with a sweeping glance, throwing out a few metallic scrolls he had fished out from the sect master's interspatial ring.
"Read these if you want to know the truth about your sect. Of course, you are free to hate me nonetheless, it doesn't really matter to me. But if you want revenge, then come directly for me, if you drag others into it then you cannot blame me for my actions."
His words were cold and emotionless, sending icy shivers down the spines of all who heard him. He quickly swept through the treasury of the sect and took about half of it for himself, Liang Chen then proceeded to gesture towards what remained of the treasury and then jumped back onto Yumao's head, who then flapped his wings and flew away. He didn't take the entire treasury because those that were spared had relied on the sect to secure their livelihood, the remaining parts of the treasury were left for them.
Liang Chen didn't think much about his actions, nor did he care what people would think about them, he already knew that the Tranquil Lake and the Golden Branch sect would distort any information about him into something vile. And he was right, news quickly spread of the Wrathful Scourge Lords massacre of an innocent sect, news spread of the terrorist attacks he organized around the city. And before long, the title of the Wrathful Scourge Lord spread further and further through the universe.