With the deviations in the route using the blood mist to cover their tracks it took a week and a half before they reached the Xiangling empire with a medium sized town being the first civilisation they see.
The first few days of the trip was spent with him being isolated within his cultivation room absorbing the dense blood Qi from the battle flag. With the addition of a new element his inner world once again expanded to create a new area.
Similar to how the snow and mountain area are themed based off the element this new one was no different being a land of blood red dirt, trees and lakes. Due to its properties of being dense in blood Qi and everything smelling and looking like blood it wasn't the best area to expand to and didn't have many uses.
The biggest advantage he found with the blood Qi ridden land is to exploit the fact it has infinite blood Qi and has set up the battle flag to absorb the blood Qi 24/7 and even has set up new missions for his guild so he can capture animals and bad people and have their souls added to its collection ready to fight.
Unfortunately, the battle flag is only a grade 5 artifact and has limitations on the strength of souls it can absorb. This however didn't affect him much as he plans to use it for the numbers rather than quality. So he is filling it with low strength but annoying creature souls.
Like special slugs that create large gas clouds, or spiders with sticky webs and other stuff. Even as souls these abilities are still useable but uses a mixture of blood Qi and soul strength to produce the effects.
The flag was also limited with the amount of blood Qi it can absorb and under a week of unlimited supply it filled itself unable to take more. The materials used to create the flag limit it from being able to upgrade itself and now requires him to reforge it using better materials to increase its strength. Luckily, he already knows which material he wants to use and has said material under lock and key.
As he is not strong enough to reforge the flag yet and doesn't want others to do it as he wants to boost it further during refinement using runes he leave the flag to nurture the souls contained within with blood Qi making them stronger with the limit being equivalent to peak stage 4 in strength.
It would take many months for even the already high strength souls to reach the limit so he just lets it run in the background, while he continues with his adventure.
Their large carriage drew many people's attention but unlike the people from his empire who looked at it and chatted about it with envy, wonder and excitement. The people here looked terrified, like a carriage was their worst nightmare.
The group looked out the window with some of the girls waving at children passing by. Unfortunately, the children never saw as they heads where being forced to look at the ground by their parents, not daring to look up.
Chang could already tell why they where like this even without the information provided by his spy's. Noble suppression! The nobles suppressed their subjects preventing any of them from acting against them and scraped them for all their worth before casting them out.
A fancy carriage like his is a common sign for someone of high status and the trauma the civilians have been through make them terrified of all people of status at this point.
After being on the road for a while they decided to stay the night and stopped in front of yet another Divine Grace Temple owned establishment. Unlike the one in his empire the one here was a little worse for wear as most of the nobles and even the emperor's family are rumoured to have secret support from the evil sects. So, sects following a god of good like the divine grade temple, are supressed and less predominant.
When he left the carriage, many eyes fell upon him and his women. Both hooded and muscular people where stationed outside the hotel scaring off ant potential customers. The workers within the hotel looked towards them with sadness and pity.
The clear leader of the group was a classic muscular man with scars and the whole works. He basically screamed side villain. His vulgar and lustful eyes supported Chang's thoughts and already knew how this was going to go.
"Brat scram. This hotel is off limits."
The leader yelled with arrogance. After saying the words and taking another look over his group the greed inside of him swelled up.
"Leave the woman, carriage and beast and I might just allow you to leave in one piece."
The men behind him took their weapons out similarly showing a lustful look hoping to get a taste of the women after their boss. Chang just looked at him with a cold and monotone look, like what he said didn't matter.
He sighed and spoke to himself out loud. "Seems people here really do have less braincells than back home. Yan Yin the leader it a level 9 stage 2 so you can have him, while the rest of you girls should pick an opponent similar in strength. This isn't to train you but more so you can get used to killing. Little Huo I want you to fight the 3 weakest over there. They are of similar power to you and seem like the type interested in younger girls."
The girls nodded their heads while the started moving forward releasing their trained battle intent and directing it towards their chosen target. The leader faltered a little feeling battle intent wondering if these where actually disciples of some sect.
Arrogance however once again took over as he thought no matter what sect they are from, so long as no one know then they won't get found out. They have the town under their thumb, so they knew they could get away with it.
His deep putrid voice once again sounded out. "Brat I don't care what sect you come from but we control this town. Don't expect anyone to come get revenge. They would never know who did it. Men deal with those other women; this young lass here seems like she wants a taste of me before even getting prepared.
Also, one of you go deal with that brat at the back. How dare he look down on us."
The men yelled in excitement and charged forward looking at the women like they were already theirs.
The battle started with various weapons being thrown around creating loud clanging noises. The men where by no means strong but because of his girls lack of experience in life and death fights against other humans they hesitated is some strikes. They where also similar in strength but the men having no hesitation to strike down against others gave them the advantage. A few where not having that problem however Yan Yin didn't falter even a second and each strike carried the intent to kill.
Surprising Chang, Xian Huo was also fighting to kill. Her 3 opponents where the weakest of the bunch being even weaker than her but they had team work and where against an alchemist.
At first, she was very timid being only on defence but a comment by one of the men sent her into a rage and her strikes became a lot more passionate. His hunch about the 3 men's preference was correct and one of the men spoke about their previous younger victims and what they plan for her.
As a young woman herself the words snapped her out of her timidness and hesitation as she now fully thought how these scums didn't deserve to live and cause more suffering.
Her strength soon overwhelmed them due to her training against beasts and she had disarmed all of them and left them heavily injured. She was about to finish them off but Chang stepped in before that.
"Little Huo men like these shouldn't be allowed a swift death. You are still young but have already experienced a lot of the darkness within the world and have come out the other side still alive. You are gentle by nature but you should learn to be more ruthless when needed.
Make them suffer before death. Make them feel the rage and anguish of their victims. Then break their minds never allowing them the pleasure of death. Although I did want you to build up a tolerance against taking human lives, torture and breaking their minds does just a good job. So long as you learn to not hesitate to kill then you have learnt the lesson."
She nodded her head and with rage in her eyes she started to slice away at them with him even giving her a little torture package filled with pills and other weird tools for them to suffer with. Before finally destroying their minds using a pill created by Chang that locks their mind away inside a perpetual illusion of suffering.