How dare you mention the Song family in front of me?

A single sword strike.
Everything around fell silent.
The ten high-and-mighty deities floating in the sky had not even had time to make a move.
They dropped to the ground like dumplings being tossed into a pot.
Revealing themselves as mere clay and wooden idols.
Yet those idols, once so revered and worshipped by mortals, shattered into smithereens now that they had lost the reinforcement of divine power.
Everyone stood at a loss, staring blankly at the shattered earth and rotten wood on the ground.
What had just happened?
Didn't that Chen Huangpi simply wave his sword and slash out a sword beam?
He was a cultivator, not a deity.
To strike at deities was nothing more than throwing eggs at stones.
So why was it the deities who died, instead of him?
Threads of ghostly light silently slipped into the Soul-Catching Registry.
"Eleven."
Chen Huangpi muttered to himself, "Including that cultivator, I've killed eleven, but it's still not enough. Ah-Gui is too badly injured; I need to kill a few more to wake it up."
With that, he turned his gaze toward the Golden Core cultivators.
"Senior, spare our lives! Spare us..."
"We never made a move against you..."
"Don't kill me, please don't kill me."
Chen Huangpi asked, "Do you wish to listen to my reasoning?"
"We are willing to listen, absolutely willing."
"Good, I do enjoy reasoning."
Chen Huangpi said calmly, "After I started killing, you indeed did not attack me directly. You were afraid of me. But the moment your masters decided to kill me, every single one of you harbored murderous intent toward me in your hearts."
"You wanted to kill me, so I must kill you."
"Do you accept this logic?"
The Golden Core cultivators shook their heads frantically.
What kind of crooked logic was this? If they accepted it, wouldn't it mean certain death?
But would refusing mean they wouldn't die?
Their frantic denial only made Chen Huangpi feel even more disgusted.
And so, he brought his fingers together into a sword gesture.
He didn't even bother swinging a proper sword; he simply flicked out a few Taisui Demon-Slaying sword beams. The Golden Core cultivators had nowhere to run and were slaughtered to the last man.
"That makes forty-5."
"Brother Chen, stop!"
Cao Huaying's voice was filled with utter terror. "I am the daughter of the Jiangbei Cao family! If you kill me, the Cao family will never let you go. Spare my life, and I swear to the heavens that the Cao family will never make things difficult for you!"
"Not only that, we will offer heavy gifts and publicly clear up this misunderstanding."
"Is the Cao family as formidable as the Song family?"
"Well... naturally not as powerful as the Song family."
Cao Huaying had no idea why Chen Huangpi suddenly brought up the Song family.
The Song family was a genuine, immensely powerful clan of the Great Kang Dynasty, with a heritage stretching back ancient times, enduring alongside the state itself.
A hundred, a thousand Cao families added together could never match the power of the Song family.
Chen Huangpi was laughed out of anger. "The Song family owes me money and refuses to pay it back. Your Cao family isn't even as good as the Song family, yet you talk of heavy gifts? Do you really take me for someone who has read books for nothing?"
Finished speaking, he slashed a sword toward the carriage.
With a booming crash.
The carriage exploded on the spot.
To Chen Huangpi's slight surprise, however.
Cao Huaying was not dead inside the carriage; instead, a shattered peach-wood substitute talisman had been left in her place.
Not far away, a streak of light—Cao Huaying's escaping avatar—was fleeing at top speed.
"A death-substitute peach talisman."
The brass oil lamp remarked, "The Twelfth Mistress used to carry that sort of trinket around. I didn't expect this little vixen to have one on her as well."
"She can't escape."
Chen Huangpi said as he gave chase.
Back at the original spot.
The many kneeling commoners looked at one another.
None knew who had started it.
Then, stealthily sneaking over to the path the people had walked, they glanced left and right before snatching up a piece of a deity's remains and preparing to run.
Yet just as the man started to run.
Chen Huangpi's voice rang out.
"This belongs to me. You cannot take it."
The man's face drained of color. He dropped instantly to his knees, kowtowing and begging for mercy, "Have mercy on this child, spare my life..."
"Alright, now you may take them."
The man looked up at the sound, but Chen Huangpi's figure was nowhere to be seen.
However, all the gourds he had been selling—specifically the ones stuffed with sticky rice filling—had vanished entirely into thin air.
In a daze, the man grinned broadly and muttered, "Look at that, this one loves the gourds I make. From now on, the sticky rice-filled ones cost one copper coin more."
...
Cao Huaying was fleeing.
Utilizing every means at her disposal, burning the very essence of her Nascent Soul to run.
She fled in utter disarray, looking thoroughly wretched.
Not a shred of the poise expected of a daughter of the Cao family remained.
"Madman, he's an absolute madman!"
Cao Huaying shrieked, "How can there be such a lunatic in this world? Why can he even kill deities? He's clearly just a cultivator! How can a sword made from a piece of rotten wood be so terrifying?"
For a cultivator, the Nascent Soul realm was the absolute limit.
No matter how talented you were, even if you were born at the Nascent Soul stage, that was as far as you could ever go in this lifetime.
If you wanted to ascend higher, the only path was to become a deity on the spot.
After all, the Cao family was merely a minor clan.
They were nothing more than vassals to the Song family of Xuzhou City.
Their foundation was too shallow, and their vision too limited.
If it were a member of the Song family, someone like Song Qiuyue, they would have realized instantly that Chen Huangpi had embarked upon an entirely different path of cultivation.
One far more powerful and extraordinary than the present methods.
Consequently, try as she might, Cao Huaying could only conclude that Chen Huangpi was so terrifying solely because of that seemingly ordinary wooden sword.
There were millions of commoners within Xuzhou City.
There were also countless cultivators and deities.
As Cao Huaying fled in panic, she ran into acquaintances among the cultivators.
"Isn't this Miss Cao?"
"Save me, save me!"
Cao Huaying shrieked, "There's a cultivator trying to kill me! Hurry and block him for me, and my Cao family will handsomely reward you later!"
"He's no scion of a noble clan, merely some wild rogue from the mountains."
"What? Such unbridled audacity!"
"Miss Cao, rest assured! We'd love to see who dares to make a move against you in broad daylight!"
Nascent Soul cultivators stepped forward one after another. Yet Cao Huaying refused to linger, continuing her frantic flight deeper into the city.
Seeing this, the Nascent Soul cultivators secretly shook their heads.
Although Cao Huaying was a daughter of the Cao family, her cultivation was merely at the early Nascent Soul stage, and living a life of luxury, she had probably never experienced any hardships in her entire life. Now, encountering a wild mountain rogue, she had been completely frightened out of her wits.
Right at that moment, a youth appeared in the field of vision of the Nascent Soul cultivators.
He looked to be around twelve or thirteen years old, holding a wooden sword in one hand, gripping a string of gourds in the other, with a weird-looking dog trailing behind him.
Chen Huangpi took a single step.
It was as if he had teleported through the void, arriving right before the cultivators in the blink of an eye.
"Kid, have you seen a wild rogue from the mountains?"
"No."
Chen Huangpi took a bite of a gourd, chewed, and asked, "Have you seen a female illiterate?"
"No."
"Only Miss Cao just ran past. Are you here for the reward from the Cao family too?"
"No, I'm here to kill her."
"..."
"Impudent scoundrel! How dare you toy with us! Take his head and claim the reward from the Cao family!"
The group of Nascent Soul cultivators flew into a rage. Brandishing hand seals, manipulating magical treasures, or casting formations, they swarmed toward Chen Huangpi from all directions to kill him.
Then, a flash of sword light.
A rhythmic series of thuds echoed across the ground as heads rolled.
Yet too few died to truly make it rivers of blood.
Chen Huangpi spat out a hawthorn pit and asked with genuine confusion, "City people are so strange. I don't even know them, why do they all want to kill me?"
"Are they truly not afraid of death?"
The brass oil lamp replied gloomily, "If you let the Fox Mountain Deity manifest its divine avatar, no cultivator would ever dare make a move against you."
"Yellow Second, I've done nothing to wrong you..."
The Fox Mountain Deity said in terror, "His eyes are bloodshot from killing. If there are no more cultivators coming to throw their lives away, won't he end up killing me too?"
Chen Huangpi smiled and said, "Don't be afraid. I'm not one for indiscriminate slaughter; I am a reasonable person."
...
Inside Xuzhou City.
Wang Taiyu sat on a cow-drawn cart, his expression expressionless as he headed toward the city gates.
His heart felt utterly numb at the moment.
Listening to the cries of peddlers hawking their wares outside the carriage.
And the noisy din of the bustling crowds.
No matter how Wang Taiyu listened, it all sounded grating to his ears.
Just two days ago, he had still been planning to tidy up Xuzhou City before his departure.
Within three days, he would have the commoners begin their autumn harvest and winter tillage.
And then slaughter every single local official who treated the commoners like dirt.
Yet the imperial edict brought by the imperial envoy had shattered all his plans.
Xuzhou City was doomed.
After nightfall, the city god of the Song Mansion would transform into an evil entity.
The entire city of Xuzhou would be turned into its nourishment.
Though Wang Taiyu had done everything in his power to drive out as many commoners as he could under various pretexts, there were simply too many people in Xuzhou City.
He could drive away ten percent of them.
Could he drive away ninety percent?
After all, the Song family had remained completely silent up to this point.
It was impossible that the Song family did not know; their silence meant they had already made a decision and tacitly allowed this to happen.
A branch lineage of the Song family was perishing here in Xuzhou City.
Why should these dirt-poor peasants be allowed to live?
Besides, with the imperial envoy watching closely, Wang Taiyu dared not push any further.
Inside the carriage of the ox-cart,
Wang Taiyu's shadow—the entity of the shadow itself—softly spoke, "Before you leave, won't you take one last look at those commoners?"
"I cannot see the commoners."
Wang Taiyu said dully, "I only see bleached bones and mountains of flesh and blood... No, there probably won't even be bones and flesh left; in the end, this place will merely become an empty ghost town. Since that is the case, why bother looking?"
"I simply do not understand why His Majesty has gone to such lengths."
The shadow entity did not reply.
For, in truth, the moment the imperial envoy arrived, it had already understood why.
The imperial envoy, just like itself, was a fellow creature selling its loyalty to the Sovereign.
Naturally, there were no secrets kept from it.
Moreover, this was merely a trivial matter after all.
Mm...
The Sovereign wished to experiment whether deities cultivating ancient methods and transforming into evil entities could be controlled by those nails.
Success or failure mattered little.
How could something like this not be considered a trivial matter?
Right at that moment.
A woman's terrified voice rang out, "Lord Grand Tutor, save me! I am Cao Huaying, daughter of the Cao family. I beg Lord Grand Tutor to save my life!"
"The Cao family? Come, let's go out and take a look."
Wang Taiyu sneered, pulled aside the curtain of the ox-cart, and stepped out.
His guards were currently blocking the thoroughly disheveled Cao Huaying.
Seeing Wang Taiyu, Cao Huaying felt a surge of reassurance.
This Grand Tutor of the walking-dog variety had countless tricks up his sleeve, numerous deities protecting him, and reportedly an imperial envoy guarding him in secret.
No matter how savage that Chen Huangpi was, he wouldn't dare to kill her right in front of him.
Yet the moment that thought crossed her mind.
She instantly felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Turning her head to look back.
She saw Chen Huangpi, sword in hand, eating a gourd, strolling over as leisurely as if he were shopping in a market.
Cao Huaying's face turned pale with fright, and she cried out in desperate supplication, "Lord Grand Tutor! He's the one trying to kill me! All the cultivators who escorted me out of the city, and the ten deities of my family, have been slaughtered by him!"
"This man is just a wild mountain rogue who defies the laws! He must not be allowed to live!"
Chen Huangpi looked at Wang Taiyu, tilted his head, and asked, "Are you going to kill me too?"
Wang Taiyu laughed helplessly. "You and I have no past grievances or recent enmity; why would I want to kill you? On the contrary, you possess such extraordinary cultivation at such a young age, yet why do you go around killing on a whim?"
Chen Huangpi replied, "Because they wanted to kill me, so I kill them."
"Very well."
Wang Taiyu nodded, then turned to Cao Huaying and asked, "Cao family girl, I just heard you say you wanted to leave the city?"
"Precisely."
"Ah, I understand now."
Wang Taiyu nodded, and then said to Chen Huangpi, "This Cao family girl disregards the law, distorts right and wrong, and dares to scream and shout in my presence. She truly deserves to die a thousand deaths! Little fellow, go ahead and finish her. Give her a quick death."
"What?"
Cao Huaying's expression contorted in terror.
Before she could utter another word, she saw a sword beam expanding endlessly within her vision.
Having killed Cao Huaying, Chen Huangpi looked at Wang Taiyu with mild surprise and said, "Old Grand Tutor, are you just like me—someone who believes in reasoning?"