Ye Man De looked to the sky and found it blocked by an emerald baldachin. A mighty tree he had never seen before had taken root at the center of the Ye Family Residence and spread its mighty crown across the whole estate.
But that was not the biggest shock for the Peak Golden Core Expert. In horror, he witnessed two figures that were pinned to the trunk of the mighty plant. Their arms, legs, and bodies pierced by vines as if sewn to the wood, were the Family Leader and the Old Family Ancestor!
The blood in his veins froze at the sight. He had only seen the Old Ancestor once before. The enigmatic figure commanded the aura of a quasi-immortal, and it was said he once fought the 8 Chakra Temple's Abbot to a draw! He was the pillar of the family for at least 10 generations.
His stomach churned seeing this great figure struggling against the constraints, black rotten blood flowing from the wounds. Their pallid skin and bloodshot eyes, as they were throwing themselves left to right while growling like beasts, made him throw up.
"The Ye Family is ruined…" Ye Man De mumbled as all hope left his soul. Their greatest leader had been reduced to mindless beasts, no better than the other warriors that shared the same fate. He couldn't watch any longer.
But when he turned his gaze away, the sights he saw did not improve. Their ostentatious buildings had been mostly destroyed, and the desolate streets of the residence were filled with "people". The monsters his comrades had turned into were bound in place by nets of roots, turning them into living, growling monuments of despair.
"To all survivors of the Ye Family, as few as there may be." Suddenly, a deep, dark voice echoed across the Ancestral Estate and the adjacent lands. This was no sound transmission but spoken and heard everywhere by sheer volume of the speaker.
"Let this be a lesson for all who thought they could touch the people of Urth without repercussion. From this day on, this is no longer your home, but a monument to the consequences of your deeds.
You shall never return here. Anyone who sets foot into the Ye Residence will suffer the same fate as your warriors and leaders. This is the Decree of Minas Mar, on behalf of our people," the voice boomed across the fields and sea, for all the refugees and Ye Man De to hear.
The cultivator swallowed hard, giving his former home, the monsters, and the tree a last look before he turned around and ran away. The pain of his wounds was negligible in the face of his desire to survive.
He had survived the first encounter, the battle, the deadly attack. He lost his family, his home, and his status, but he was lucky to have his life. He didn't hesitate to run away, even if it was the only thing he took along.
…
All tension left her body, and Evee sat down on the tree branch. With mixed feelings, she looked down at the ruined estate. The fights among the undead and cultivators had flattened most of it, and there was little left of the structure that had intrigued her before.
Roughly a quarter of the sprawling residence was covered in a poison mist that slowly decomposed the ruins that were left after the battle of the old ancestor and the undead hydra. That old coot had suddenly turned up while Evee sacrificed Family Leader Ye Mer to the tree sapling. She had left it to the hydra and stayed in the back as a supporter.
As someone who had lost her family and home to an apocalyptic invasion of otherworldly monsters, she would have lied if she said that she didn't feel weird, having become the perpetrator of such an event. Maybe that was why she held her undead back.
None of the undead under her control harmed fleeing women or children. She could see the vast crowd of smaller ships and flying shuttles out on the sea to the south. The only ones who died by her hands were the warriors and those who fought back.
Whatever the undead cultivators did... She might have caused it, but she didn't count it. The survivors may blame her for it, but not herself. These people had thrived on the corpses of Urth's people, so her pity was limited.
"Are you okay?" Edward asked her. He had arrived on the branch a moment ago. With all the undead cultivators bound by the tree sapling, Edward was free to move in the estate.
"Yeah…" Evee answered after giving it a thought for a moment.
"Were you serious with what you just said?" he asked, not mentioning that the chosen of Persephone had changed her voice to sound more intimidating.
"Yes, this is a monument for their deeds and for mine… the consequences. Anyway, let's go and see what we can loot," she changed the subject and stood up. She was interested in the formations of this place, but there was nothing to learn from the destroyed buildings.
"Are you..." "Sure? Yes. Come on, let's go." She interrupted her worried brother and distracted herself with the new subject.
Although much of the residence was flattened, the inner parts where the main family and higher-ups had lived were intact, and she surmised that any kinds of books concerning those subjects would be there.
The inner residence was a complex of several interconnected buildings and manors, with individual palaces and courtyards. As the last bastion with the highest defense, it had suffered the least damage of the whole estate.
"Go and look for any studies or libraries," Evee summoned a group of high-ranking undead to scout the labyrinthine complex for any literature that could be of interest. Meanwhile, Edward and Evee followed the broadest street to the central palace, probably the residence of the main family's leader and his direct descendants.
"Wow, they really splurged on the decoration. This must be their most holy place," Edward commented with a whistle. As they walked along the road, the surrounding buildings looked more and more ostentatious.
Tiles of dark jade covered the floor. Pillars of red jasper decorated with intricate carvings and encrusted with gold stood at every corner. The lavish waste of precious stone and metal almost hurt the eyes by the time they arrived in the central palace,
They climbed up the stairs of silver and entered the main hall in the center of the ancestral residence. In this place, the color scheme flipped. The floor was covered in red tiles carved with intricate pictograms and scenes of people.
A craftsman with
Looking around, Evee was distracted by the waste of wealth pumped into the place. The room was filled with a thick atmosphere of mana. Seeing the golden inlays threading not only through the pillars, but also the red tiles, the Immortal Witch grew suspicious.
Following her hunch, she started inspecting the room more closely and found a secret entrance hidden behind the expansive throne. Despite being little more than a shaft right behind the throne, hidden by a movable tile, she had the feeling that everything in this place was built to hide this.
The only reason she found it was that it was left open; otherwise, she would have never expected something like this. The shaft had nothing pretentious like the surrounding estate. It was carved straight into the bedrock with holes as handles for climbing hewn into the sides.
"Do you think that is where that old ancestor was hiding?" Edward asked, seeing the hole. The Old Ancestor of the Ye Family, with a level so high even Evee couldn't see it, had suddenly appeared when she was about to end the Family Leader. Whether he was an immortal or not, she didn't know, but he was not part of their intel. She had even been forced to summon the Hydra...
"That is possible. Maybe he forgot to close the entrance behind him in his hurry to save the leader?" Evee agreed that this was a possibility.
"Should we go down there? I bet the Old Ancestor guarded the really important things," Edward suggested. Evee pondered for a moment and agreed. Considering all the displayed splendor up here, what was so precious or important that it had to be hidden in this kind of place?