---Southern Ye Family---
"Quite impressive, to think all of this belongs to a single family..." Evee commented as she and Edward took in the scene before them. They were looking at what looked like one massive, maze-like palace that stretched across the hills of the southern shoreline.
Buildings of various sizes, styles, and apparent ages were rising up randomly among the expansive manors in the style of the Voracious Cloud Continent. The whole complex not only integrated shrines, pagodas, watchtowers, and defensive buildings, but the whole area existed on several levels, with floating islands filling the sky above the complex.
It looked chaotic, like an organically grown pattern, yet there seemed to be a method to the madness. The immortal witch had more than enough experience concerning wards and spells; even if she wasn't privy to the inner workings of the continent's formations, she could guess that there was a grand plan behind the architecture of this place.
This was the Southern Ye Family ancestral home, her and Edward's target. The power structure of the XiGuang Province was not only shaped by sects, but there were also many powerful family clans on par with these sects. Unlike sects, these families were a bridge between cultivators and the secular world.
Which was a nice way of saying that they circumvented the segregation and were able to exploit commoners through descendants who did not cultivate. According to Master Mountain, it was an acknowledged gray area of the pact. Not that Evee was here for their transgressions against their own people.
The Ye Family was not only one of the driving forces of the Southern Sect Alliance, but they were also one of the few places where none of the Urthan's that entered survived. Despite Marco and the Luminous Mountain Sect working together to compile information, Minas Mar still didn't know what exactly happened to the people the Ye Family brought here.
Based on the fact that they were all adults who had already entered the system and were too old for cultivation, according to Master Mountain, they presumed them dead. No rescue mission had been sent here since there were no confirmed survivors.
"In a way, they are the most complicated opponent," Edward mumbled. He alluded to the fact, that the other family involved in the attacks on Urth were similar in that they lacked any kind of information about the whereabouts of the people they seized. Unlike the sects, these massive clans had a terrifying control over the information that left their walls.
The Chosen of Persephone looked coldly at the Ye Family's ancestral home before them.
"It's not like it will help them now," she stated as a matter of fact.
This continent was quite the treasure trove for a necromancer like her. Apparently, there were only a few dangerous cultivation techniques that dealt with corpse control or anything comparable to Necromancy. That meant this would, with its massive population had a rich supply of filled cemeteries.
As they watched, a dark tide surrounded the sprawling chaos from all sides.
...
Ye Tian watched the spectacle from the top floor of his palace. As the son of a collateral family, his palace was close to the outer walls, allowing him a good view of the landscape outside their estate. Today, the vast woods showed a distinct change.
Appearing from among the trees were dastardly figures that were hard to look at. For the first time, he regretted the superior vision he gained after he started cultivating. Dirty skeletons and rotten corpses, bewitched to once again wander among the living, were appearing between the trees.
He swallowed hard at the sight, as he suppressed his gagging. These things were still caked in mud and rot, as if they had just crawled out from their graves. Even at this distance, he felt a hostility, as if they came to take revenge on the living, simply for being alive.
Their bodies were barely covered in rags, if at all, and they carried crude weapons in their hand. Mostly stones, branches, and sharpened sticks. As he watched, more and more appeared from the forest, and the green strip between the walls of the estate and the forest seemed filled with bodies. There were thousands, maybe even more than 10 000.
Although the sight was hard on his stomach, it was... fascinating. The cultivator was not afraid. At best, these creatures were on par with someone in the early stages of the Qi Gathering Realm. Even a motivated commoner could probably take one on.
Where did they come from? Were they created? Was it a natural phenomenon?
What intrigued him was their origin. He had heard stories about moving corpses from dungeon tales and rumors about dark practitioners. Apparently, there were even techniques for a cultivator to stay alive in their dead body.
Having only ever heard of these things on a small scale, seeing an army suddenly shamble out of the woods right at his doorstep was riveting. As he watched, the warriors of the Ye Family mobilized. These revenants stood no chance.
"It's such a shame. Maybe I should go and capture a couple before the warriors kill them all?" Ye Tian thought to himself. If he could decipher the secret of their origin, maybe he could create his own army? With that power, he might gain enough recognition to rise to the main family.
Alas, these things were really nothing special. They looked horrible, but they were just paper tigers before trained warriors in the foundation realm. Maybe their secrets would not be as useful to him as he suspected... What was the point of an army if it was this powerless? They had nothing but their numbers.
He had just voiced this thought in his mind, and reality promptly proved him wrong. Before they knew it, the warriors had lost their formation, drawn into individual fights by the weak enemy. Only for the weak enemy to suddenly show its hidden fangs.
Individual warriors were drowned in a sea of bodies, tired and unable to resist. The team of warriors, counting roughly 200, had already lost half their men by the time they realized that they had been screwed over. They quickly reformed back into smaller groups with whoever was close to them, which allowed them to survive.
"Are these things really that smart, or is someone controlling them?" Ye Tian pondered. Outside the estate's walls, the first troop of warriors in charge of guarding the north gate were struggling for their lives, but it was not Ye Tian's obligation to run out there and help, although he could. If the outer hall was unable to protect the sect from immediate threat, then what was the point of having one?
"Stay in formation! Don't make the same mistake. Make way to the remaining men."
There it was. The alarms had been ringing for a while, and the guards of the outer hall finally assembled. They would turn the tide.
When they joined, the strip outside the walls was already littered with corpses, and now a force of 500 warriors came down on the rotting bodies like a divine hammer. They tore through the hordes without even flinching at the rotten flesh and bones splashing around.
They reached the surrounded warriors without a problem and quickly took them among their ranks. As the young master expected, there was nothing to worry about. He watched the commencing slaughter. Minutes went by. An hour went by. Doubts came to him.
There were always more coming. Corpses piled up to mountains, but more came from the forests, replenishing their ranks. How were there always more coming?