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Yiling was a dangerous city.It always had been, but back before the Patriarch it was dangerous for the people living there. So close to the burial mounds steeped in resentful energy and haunted by the ghost of a past long forgotten.He tamed it and the people there learned that they could too. If they only tried.They'd always been dangerous, forced to deal with death and destruction in a way the outside world did not. Now they held the means to be dangerous in other ways. It was just that, before the remnants, before the massacre, Yiling hadn't had a reason to be dangerous to cultivators.They were here to help them, right?But if they were the good guys, the light to Yiling's darkness, then why?Why kill the only one to ever try to help?Why kill the toddler? What crime did he commit?The old women many who gossiped with the young ladies when she could?The doctor who treated them kindly and showed them techniques to clear resentful energy from themselves?Tears still stung An Bai's eyes when she thought of it. She was a merchant now, she'd been a mere teenager of thirteen the year the cultivators stormed the burial mounds, She'd been friends with some of the women who lived there.They'd all been killed.They'd watch the clans attack.The ones in white, hailed as the purest most righteous clan.How righteous a murder they had commited!The death of the Yiling patriarch. An Bai shook her head as she watched the cultivators walk past her stand. They never bought anything, only patrolled.Yiling was dangerous, after all. They'd patrolled these streets for years. Thirteen long, long years.Still searching for those who had escaped the blood bath, though there were none.Sometimes they took citizens from their homes for using one of their patriarch's inventions. The compass of evil came in handy for getting rid of pests in their gardens and homes, but were something the cultivators took pride in ripping from their hands.Claiming they were 'too dangerous' for civilian use.An Bai had to physically bite her tongue to keep the insults at bay, everytime it happend. She'd seen them use it, after all, how much more dangerous could it be for a civilian.These cultivators were a bit smaller, but they were dressed in white and gold.The same colors as always. Although purple was missing from the group this time.She carefully organized her seed bags, acting like she hadn't been watching them warily. Yiling was where the 'demonic cultivators' were captured from and taken away by the Jiang.Purple bastards, the lot of 'em.She heard rumours that those who were captured never made it out. Although she had seen some of them return they were never quite the same.Quiet sometimes, scared out of their minds and whipped by that damn lighting whip of the bastard running the sect.Other times they were explosive, angry. Furious.The angry ones tended to retreat into the burial mounds for weeks on end. It was safer for them there, where the cultivator's still hesitate to tread.It was always a dance of hiding and lying when patrols came through.Some of the more daring citzens showed their hatred outright.But An Bai couldn't afford the trouble it would bring.