Two shichen later.
Mu Jinyu followed the Divine Sense imprint and caught up with the migrating Hanchi Tribe on an ice plain.
"Brother Mu, you're back."
The Barbarian King looked back amid the wary cries of people and beasts, seeing it was Mu Jinyu who had come, his face showed joy, he shouted at his restless tribesmen, greeting with a smile.
"Hmm."
Mu Jinyu nodded lightly, his gaze slowly sweeping over the thousands of barbarians on the plain.
The Hanchi Tribe's barbarians did not number so many, it was likely that other Barbarian Tribes had received the Barbarian King's notice and joined forces with the Hanchi Tribe.
The other Barbarian Tribes, who had been watching Mu Jinyu warily, relaxed upon seeing Mu Jinyu was acquainted with the Barbarian King and began to calm their beastly mounts.
"How is it? Have the Blood Witch Clan people found you?" Mu Jinyu asked.
"No," the Barbarian King shook his head.
"Hmm, haven't the Heavenly Palace people come yet?" Mu Jinyu frowned and asked. He looked around the crowd and didn't find any humans, let alone any Ninth Layer Hedao Realm cultivators. He thought to himself that most of the day had passed, why hadn't the Heavenly Palace sent anyone yet?
Was his master going to temper him again and just perfunctorily asked him without actually sending anyone?
If that were so, and he couldn't emerge from the Extremely Cold Hell in time, while the Blood Witch Clan had already caught up with the Hanchi Tribe, wouldn't it be disastrous?
"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!!"
As Mu Jinyu was thinking unhappily, several sounds of rushing through the air suddenly came from the sky.
The Barbarian King and Mu Jinyu looked up simultaneously and saw several figures suddenly appearing in the sky, all clad in black robes, obscuring their figures and features.
They were the past Sect Leaders of the Kunlun Ruins, who had severed all ties with major sects and joined as Conjoining Elders in the Heavenly Palace.
"Are you just arriving now?" Mu Jinyu asked as he recognized the familiar attire.
"No," the leading man in the black robe replied in a hoarse voice, "Reporting to the Young Master, we arrived more than an hour ago, but didn't show ourselves to avoid alerting the enemy."
"Hmm, you've worked hard." Hearing their response, Mu Jinyu felt that his master wasn't as unreliable as he had suspected.
The men in black robes who had come to the Northern Plains saw Mu Jinyu's calm demeanor and the words "you've worked hard," and their lips twitched slightly under their robes.
That sure sounded ironic.
Not long ago, they had seen Mu Jinyu as a thorn in their side, eager to get rid of him.
In the end, when nearly all sect leaders perished in Mu Jinyu's hands, one of them had to personally confront him.
As a result, Elder Chen still died at Mu Jinyu's hands.
Then they prepared to send a dozen people to leave Mu Jinyu no escape route, who knew, the Master of the Heavenly Palace showed up to find Mu Jinyu.
They thought the calamity named Mu Jinyu would be over then, but the news came that Mu Jinyu was actually the direct disciple of the Master of the Heavenly Palace.
Previously, the Heavenly Palace's indifference to the hunt for Mu Jinyu was merely the Palace Master's way of honing him.
This outcome was quite a joke to them!
Now they could do nothing about Mu Jinyu, and they had offended him deeply.
Although Mu Jinyu could accept this reversal of identity calmly, considering himself the Young Master of the Heavenly Palace, not all of them could easily accept such a change.
Though Mu Jinyu couldn't see their expressions, he sensed the emotional turmoil among the men in black robes with his words, a feeling of helplessness and indignant reluctance.
A fleeting smile in his eyes disappeared, and Mu Jinyu didn't mind these things; only seven or eight Heavenly Palace Elders came, although their cultivation was all at the Peak Ninth Layer Hedao Realm, with his current strength, although unable to kill them all, he could still escape.
He naturally wouldn't fear them.
"Let's go, let's find those remaining Blood Witch Clan members ourselves."
Mu Jinyu said indifferently, his eyes flashed, then transmitted the memory images he'd previously obtained from the soul search of Blood Witch Tribespeople to their minds.
These images provided clues to the current whereabouts of those remnant Blood Witch Clan members.
Though most of the day had passed, and those remnants might not still be in place waiting for death, tracking them would still lead to some traces, and finding them would be easy.
Afterward, Mu Jinyu and six men in black robes split up to search for the scattered remnants of the Blood Witch Clan throughout the Northern Plains, leaving one behind to guard the Barbarian Tribe against being overwhelmed if the Shaman Ancestor caught up.
...
"Kill!"
"Damn humans, we have no enmity with you, why are you pursuing us?!"
"Ah!!"
On the ice plain, three Blood Witch Clan members were forced out of the depths of the ground by Mu Jinyu, staring at him with eyes full of hatred and questioning bitterly.
They claimed they had no feud with Mu Jinyu and couldn't understand why he wanted to kill them?!
Mu Jinyu's expression was cold, he didn't answer, directly wielding the Dragon Spear, its edge swiftly tearing the three non-Hedao Realm Blood Witches into shreds!
Although he indeed did not know these three Blood Witch Clan members or what evil deeds they had done, from the methods he'd seen used by the Kui Dragon Tribe Chieftain Shi Kui, and those of five Blood Witch Hedao experts, he knew these people weren't meant to exist in this world.
"Hoo..."
With a void grip of his left hand, Mu Jinyu gathered their souls into his palm.
In his palm, faint glowing orbs appeared, with three human faces that resembled those Blood Witch Clan people he killed earlier.
Expressionless, Mu Jinyu began soul searching them, checking if he'd mistakenly killed them, whether they died in vain!
The result was clear, he had not killed wrongly.
Over the years, these three had slaughtered over a thousand barbarians, using extremely brutal methods. Clearly, they could just kill the captured barbarians, but instead tortured them with variegated cruelty until they died in morbid resentment, using it to cultivate Blood Witchcraft...
"Directly killing you was too merciful,"
Mu Jinyu remarked coldly, then annihilated their souls before continuing to search for the remaining Blood Witch Clan members' whereabouts.
Most of the day passed.
With Mu Jinyu and six Heavenly Palace Peak Ninth Layer Hedao experts hunting them down, the surviving twenty-some Blood Witches, unable to escape the Northern Plains, were ferreted out and entirely eradicated.
Only the last Shaman Ancestor of the Blood Witch Clan remained.
"One more to go, but I've searched the entire Northern Plains without finding a single clue. Could it be that he's already left the Northern Plains?"
"Hmm, I feel the same. Is it possible the so-called Shaman Ancestor never existed, just a myth they concocted and finally believed to be true?"
The six men in black robes regrouped with Mu Jinyu, reporting their results and the inability to find the Shaman Ancestor.
"No, this person must exist!" Mu Jinyu shook his head, confident there was an eighth-level Hedao Realm Shaman Ancestor still alive among the Blood Witch Clan.
"And with such a Witch Oath, he certainly can't leave the Northern Plains."
The six men in black cloaks laughed bitterly, "But we really can't find that Shaman Ancestor."
Mu Jinyu also frowned, pondering why the Shaman Ancestor remained elusive.
Then, a sudden flash of insight came to him, recalling a faint sense of dread he'd felt half a day ago, before entering the Extremely Cold Hell.
"That seemed... to be in that direction..."
Mu Jinyu turned his head, looking toward the northwest.