Zuo Chen then waved his hand around at the surrounding bodies and then glared at the two remaining survivors. "What are you all waiting for? An invitation? Get on and get to your village!"
Yu Sai and the other person suddenly came to their senses and high-tailed it for Gu Yue Village. The comrades they had left behind... they would have liked to bring their bodies and gu worms back to the village, but there was no way that they could do so at this time.
"Boss," Zuo Lin said. "How many people does it actually take to deliver a message?"
Zuo Chen smiled. "Only one." He then killed the Gu Master next to Ye Zan.
Yu Sai, to his credit, did not stop at all, not until he was at Gu Yue Village.
"Check their corpses if they have anything," Zuo Chen said.
While normally people would have detonated their gu worms, there's a chance that they had either forgotten to, or thought that their plan would be able to retrieve them.
"Nothing here," Zuo Ming said. They did have some primeval stones on them, as well as some food, but Zuo Chen was honestly disappointed by their haul.
"Do you even think they have something worth stealing?" Zuo Ming asked. From whatever they had seen, the surrounding area was rather barren. There might be a possibility that they were trying to get milk from a dead cow.
"Don't worry, I have no doubt that they must have something worth taking at the very least. Their clan head must have at least a modest treasure hoard," Zuo Chen said. "In the meantime, let's go relax and wait for the response."
Later, in Gu Yue Village, Ye Zan had already spoken about what had happened to the clan hall elders several times.
"How many people were there again?" The one who was asking this was Gu Yue Fang Yuan, who had just arrived.
"There were three of them. One of them was a Rank 4 Gu Master, and the others were Rank 3."
Some of the elders' faces paled.
Demonic Gu Masters usually did not work together which was one of the advantages the righteous path had over them. The demonic path was a solitary path by its very nature, after all. One demonic Gu Master was bad enough, but a group of them was downright terrifying. Demonic Gu Masters tended to have greater battle strength than righteous path Gu Masters simply by the harsh nature of rising up the ranks of the demonic path.
To see that three of them had gathered to challenge and extort Gu Yue Village no doubt unsettled them.
"Can you describe what kind of gu worms they had or their techniques?" Fang Yuan asked Yu Sai.
Yu Sai stuttered- truth be told was that he had blanked out many of the details of the attacks and couldn't give much useful information regarding their enemy's battle strength or stratagems to Fang Yuan.
This encounter had been scarier than anything he'd had to deal with during the wolf tide, after all.
"There was just a lot of blood everywhere-" Yu Sai continued his nonsensical spiel before actually remembering something useful. "Wait- the blood- it started to move in an odd way once they were dead. Like it was flowing into a weapon before striking someone else."
"Blood Path..." Fang Yuan said. "Any information we can dig up on them based on their appearances?"
He had never heard of someone called 'Blood Tiger' before, but there were countless demonic and lone cultivators in the world. This person was likely a nobody who had died without much fanfare back in his previous life.
"No," Qing Shu said. "I've asked the other clans as well, the name isn't familiar to them."
Yu Sai was dismissed and the elders began talking among themselves.
"Who knew that it would come to this..."
"We were already short on manpower and now this happened..."
"Asking for 100,000 primeval stones, are they out of their mind?"
"There's no way we can agree to that - or else every single idiot will be at our doorstep asking for more..."
"Do not worry," Fang Yuan said, waving his hand, ending the meeting quickly. "I will deal with this."
It was a pity that the Tie Clan had not come by to investigate yet, else he could've used them as a pawn to deal with this person.
News of what had happened to the mountain had clearly spread to the point that now there were sharks circling the water. Whoever this demonic Gu Master was, they had clearly smelled blood and had, therefore, thought it was a ripe time to try to gain some benefits.
Fang Yuan could not really blame them. He might have tried the same thing himself in his previous life.
That didn't mean that he wasn't going to kill them. He only needed to be sure of their strength first, and to whether or not he needed to bring the Dollhouse with him when attacking them.
Fang Yuan made his way down beneath the underground cavern to the Dollhouse. "Greetings, senior brother!" the House Spirit called out to him as he walked in.
Fang Yuan made his way to Bai Ning Bing's room. Bai Ning Bing was still in somewhat of a depression. She did not want to go outside or show her face to anyone, and therefore had spent nearly all of her time lounging here, like some kind of jobless recluse.
"What is it?" she asked, seeing Fang Yuan walk in.
"I want to kill some people," Fang Yuan said simply. "I have a feeling you might be interested..."
Bai Ning Bing's pupils dilated slightly. There was nothing more that she enjoyed more than excitement, something that had been sorely lacking.
"And just who are these people?" Although she had very little attachment to the Bai Clan, she wouldn't want to go around wantonly slaughtering them.
"Idiots who think that they can extort me," Fang Yuan said, giving Bai Ning Bing a very short rundown of what had happened.
Bai Ning Bing frowned. "How are you going to find them in the first place?"
"I was going to ask you that question," Fang Yuan said. "Don't you have this Immortal Gu House? Don't you think it has a way for tracking them?"
The doll, the House Spirit, walked in at Fang Yuan's voice asking for it. "What is it?"
"Do you have any way of tracking someone?" Fang Yuan asked.
"There is indeed a way, but it's not very good," the House Spirit replied.
Gu Houses were usually dedicated to one certain aspect and could do that aspect better than they could other general things. Most Gu Houses could do things like healing, attacking, defending, and fleeing, all to some extent, but there was generally a specialization that they excelled at.
This Gu House was a Puppet Path Gu House, which specialized in sending out puppets for attack. Who knew what kind of tracking capabilities it had?
"I would need something, though, to narrow down our search," she replied.
"They have the blood of my clansmen on their hands," Fang Yuan said. If this had been him back in his previous life, there was a blood path method that would have solved this conundrum rather easily. However, he lacked the requisite gu worms right now.
The other issue was that many people in Gu Yue Village shared his bloodline as well. If he tried to use that kind of investigative method here, it would likely just lead him to a living Gu Yue clansman who had been sent out to do some kind of task, if not back to the village itself.
"I know!" the House Spirit said. "We can send out Tracker puppets after them, as well as Hunter puppets! They might be able to scout it out!" As she clapped her hands, other puppets began emerging from the recesses of the house. The Tracker puppets were dressed in simple clothes made of fur. The Hunter puppets, on the other hand, carried weapons with them whether being swords or spears.
"Get out and find these people!" the House Spirit said as the Hunters and Trackers saluted before marching out.