9 Aftermath

Discord Link: https://discord.gg/NMmtDbwHVQ

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(3rd Person POV)

As the matter with the Divine Family concluded, the state of Glory City was beginning to look up.

Huyan Xiong, Ye Xiu, Shen Hong, and Ye Zong were all sat in the City Lord's Mansion discussing what had just transpired.

Revolving the matter inside the city would have taken far longer, however, with the combined effort of these four Black-Gold-ranked cultivators, the city was cleaned up almost instantly.

Though many buildings were still destroyed, all attacking members of the Dark Guild had either been captured or killed. Those that were captured were either currently being investigated or were waiting to be investigated.

"How did this happen?" Ye Zong questioned, his voice tinged with anger. The last time Glory City had been directly attacked like this was 100 years ago when the City Lord before Ye Mo was still in power.

An attack like this wasn't only unprecedented, but also a mark of shame for Ye Zong. Not only had his rep been damaged, - some people blamed him for not being able to foresee and thwart the attack - but countless citizens of Glory City had also been killed.

Zong's question was met with silence all around, each one of them bowing their heads in shame.

"I don't know what to say, City Lord," Shen Hong replied, his tone bitter, but if one looked closely for a brief moment they would see the mocking glance he had sent Zong. With Zong's head being too focused on how to strike back at the Dark Guild, he, of course, missed this slight.

Before Zong had a chance to reply to Hong, everyone looked toward the door, and more importantly Chen Zhelong who had just walked through it with an apologetic look on his face.

"I apologize for the delay– I had to clean up the trash in the courtyard," he apologized as he walked over and sat on the one remaining seat.

As Chen Zhenlong took his seat, the atmosphere only became more tense. Ye Zong's anger had yet to subside, and with Chen Zhenlong's untimely arrival, his rage had only been fueled.

Zong remained quiet for a few more moments before addressing Huyan Xiong. "How many citizens died?" he questioned.

Xiong paused before speaking, "3000. 2500 were civilians, 400 were bronze-ranked, 99 were silver-ranked and we had one Gold-ranked casualty. This is my rough estimate from what I sensed, it is possible that there are many more."

'Seems like the attack was a success,' Hong mused.

He had allowed the Dark Guild to attack his family, but only with the two Black-Gold cultivators, and because of that even though some members of the Sacred Family did end up meeting their demise, it wasn't a big deal compared to how many members of every other major family had died.

This all wasn't even including the fact that everyone was too worried about rebuilding and setting up proper funerals to think about what the Sacred Family had done. Not to mention the fact that their reputation had practically been restored with how much Shen Hong had contributed to the city's defense.

The members of the city all viewed Hong as a hero and instead decided to blame all the faults of the Sacred Family on the original head. With this, even if more cases of the Sacred Family's exploits with inscriptions came to light, the current Sacred Family would remain unaffected.

"So much death, does the Dark Guild have no remorse!" Ye Xiu shouted, shaking his head in disbelief.

"It was a smart attack," Xiong cut in, "100 attacked, 98 are dead, 2 survived. Every member of the Dark Guild was prepared to kill themself at a moment's notice– they all wielded different nefarious techniques. Some exploded themselves. It's clear they didn't attack to prove their superiority, but rather to take out as many lives as possible."

"None of us thought the Dark Guild would become this powerful. In the past, they attacked on a small scale. They resorted to kidnapping and attacking the families on the outskirts, but never once did they target the entire city. It's clear our current defenses will no longer work. Even with their secret techniques, the only reason they managed to do so much damage is because they managed to catch us off guard," Zhenlong added as everyone nodded.

"Not only that, but someone in the city betrayed us and let them in. I recognized some of the people who were attacking as members of the city, so it wasn't like they all charged to the city, rather they were already here bidding their time until they were ordered to attack," Hong spoke.

"This meeting is dismissed for now– Xiong in our next meeting I want all the official numbers, the total death toll of us, and our enemies. Also, Xiu, contact Shuo and make sure the people in captivity speak, I don't care how he does it, but I want all the information they have. Understood? Good then everyone is free to leave."

As everyone left the building, only two people remained seated: Ye Zong and Chen Zhenlong.

"What is it you wish to speak to me about?" Zong asked softly, now that it was only the two of them, it wasn't the City Lord speaking to the Divine Family Patriarch, but rather two friends.

"You know during the attack the Dark Guild targeted my son," Zhenlong began, "It wasn't like he just happened to come by him, it was definitely planned. If it wasn't for the fact that Jing was far more cunning than his opponent had expected, he would currently be dead. My son and your daughter are already both known as geniuses and if the Dark Guild is willing to target my son so blatantly, then they'll be willing to do the same with Ziyun. Make sure she's protected all the time."

Zong nodded solemnly, "Thank you," he bowed his head slightly, "I've already lost my wife, I won't lose my daughter."

"Good, I wouldn't want anything bad happening to my god-daughter," Zhenlong smiled before it was promptly replaced by a frown.

He then extended his Soul Force, forming a barrier around the two that blocked out any noise. Zong raised a brow at his friend's actions but said nothing.

[A/N: I know this hasn't been done before without the use of inscriptions, but with how much other crazy stuff has been done with Soul Force, I don't think a technique that allows you to form a sound barrier is too crazy.]

Only after the sound barrier was up did Zhenlong speak.

"Sorry for the barrier, but this isn't something that should be heard by anyone else," Zhenlong clarified as Zong shot him a look that said 'go on'.

"Don't you think this is all a bit fishy?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" Zong questioned.

"Just as the Sacred Family's reputation begins to go down, two days afterward the entire City is under attack. Not to mention that everyone else had their house raided by countless cultivators whereas the Sacred Family only had two opponents. And even though the two Black-Gold cultivators had many chances to kill the rest of the Sacred Family they chose to wait for Hong to make his appearance."

"To be honest, I was thinking the same thing. From what Hong told me they fled after he used his Demon Spirit transformation. Why didn't they transform themselves if their main goal was to kill him."

"We both know how strong he is… powerful, but not enough to beat two Demon Spiritualists simultaneously," Zhenlong added.

"Indeed. And from what Hong was telling me, he was fighting two five-star Black-Gold cultivators. Considering how six years ago, when you were still three-star, you nearly managed to best him, I doubt he'd survive that long against two five-stars."

As the two bounced ideas off one another, the suspicion in their eyes only grew.

"I find a hard time believing all this, but it seems like the attack was truly orchestrated to divert attention from the Sacred Family," Zong muttered, as killing intent began to bubble from him.

Zhenlong nodded. "It's possible. Think about it, the attack on the city was so devastating that everyone is focused on rebuilding. The Dark Guild's actions overshadowed any negative attention towards the Sacred Family. And now, with Hong being seen as a hero, it's less likely that anyone will dig deeper into anything regarding the Sacred Family."

Hiding a frown, Zong spoke. "Why would the Dark Guild agree to this?" he questioned. Everything Zhenlong and him had talked about seemed plausible, except for this. The Dark Guild was selfish and brutal, they wouldn't sacrifice their organization for someone else's rep.

Zhenlong paused, falling into contemplative silence. "The Dark Guild might have just seen an opportunity to create chaos. Or," Zhenlong hesitated, "The two have an alliance."

"We should stop here. I'll personally conduct an investigation on the Sacred Family. Their family is one of our city's three main pillars, slandering their name isn't beneficial. If proof of our concerns is there then they'll be exterminated, if not we can sleep well knowing we have a powerful ally."

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Hey guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'm sorry if it was really dialogue-heavy, but it was necessary considering what happened in the last chapter. Also, I've tried to make the characters smarter than their cannon counterparts (they were all actual idiots) but at the same time, I tried to keep the pride their character has, seen specifically with Shen Hong.

I'ma be totally honest with you, timeline wise I still got no clue. For all my other stories my editor and I spend a good two or three days planning the timeline and events, but for this story we've just been writing whatever comes to mind at the time lmao. We didn't even decide on the MC's name until the first chapter was done, so any advice would be nice.

By the way, what kind of Demon Beast do you think he should get? I haven't even thought about that until now lol.

Anyway, have a great rest of your day, and drop your power stones. A bit of a short chapter with only 1.7k words again, but like previously mentioned hopefully next chapter is back up to 2k.