The lips of the people behind Zhan Chankong moved, but ultimately, nothing came out of their mouths.
Ren Baqian's persuasion had caused their fighting spirit to crumble in several ways.
First of all, the aboriginals had never had the custom of forcing the other party to surrender. They would only go all out and risk their lives.
Second, the goal of the majority of the people in the Golden Ring Residence was to get out of Tianjing Basin or to simply follow in the footsteps of their great elder.
For the former, Ren Baqian's words had already included this point and managed to reduce the number of rebels. As for the latter, since the great elder of their residence was already dead, did they still need to court death?
Third, if they were really going to die, that wouldn't be an issue, but it would be too vicious if their families were killed as well. Either everyone lives or everyone dies—there wasn't a best of both worlds option. Thus, this caused them to cower once again.
"Not bad! A wise man submits to the circumstances!" Ren Baqin nodded. That little girl wouldn't have to lead a solitary and impoverished life or end up getting sold to a brothel.
If he imparted his erhu skills to his only disciple and she ended up in a brothel, that would be something that he could never endure.
However, at this moment, someone walked out of the crowd. Everyone was alarmed when they saw his movements.
"Attendant Peng? What are you doing?"
"I won't blame all of you for surrendering. Also, I won't implicate any of you. Great Elder was my benefactor. Since I'm incompetent and can't take revenge for him, I'm too embarrassed to live on. In this case, I might as well join him in the underworld and wait upon him!" One person stood apart from the crowd and stared intensely at Ren Baqian. He was that extremely pale-looking attendant from before.
After hearing what Attendant Peng said, everyone felt ashamed of themselves. Even Zhan Chankong was emotionally moved by what was said.
Several of the people behind him shifted their positions slightly to the side. After that, a man walked out of the crowd, stood beside Attendant Peng, and said, "I'm all alone without any family. I have already lived enough. I will accompany you on your final journey."
"Me too! Great Elder treated me pretty well. I'll go down and accompany him."
"Me too!"
Five or six people consecutively walked to Attendant Peng's side. Among them, there was even an internal attendant.
At this instant, more people began wavering. Even Zhan Chankong was struggling with his decision.
In fact, Ren Baqian actually admired these people. Just relying on their loyalty, they could actually sacrifice their precious lives. However, this could also be seen as a weakness because they were too rash.
As a sect leader, Zhan Changkong was actually influenced by others and disregarded his wife and children for a moment. He was practically garbage.
Initially, Ren Baqian's impression of Zhan Changkong was pretty good since he had gifted his daughter to him. Those were brownie points.
However, after witnessing this, his impression of Zhan Changkong plummeted.
Sitting on the back of a fork-horned cow, Ren Baqian said in a cold voice, "So many of you are actually influenced by others when it's your own lives. One moment, you guys decide to surrender. The next moment, you decide not to. The bunch of you don't even have your own views. If I were to put it nicely, you guys are a bunch of loyal and affectionate fellows. If I were to say it bluntly, you guys are just a bunch of brainless cowards."
When Ren Baqian said these words, apart from those who had already stood out from the crowd, everyone else bowed their heads.
Zhan Changkong also sighed. He looked at Attendant Peng and the others with a guilty expression on his face.
On the other hand, Attendant Peng said carefreely, "Chief, you don't have to feel guilty. This is my choice. Everyone, we'll make our move first. In the future, if we ever meet in the underworld, let's drink and chat merrily together."
Ren Baqian revealed a look of admiration for Attendant Peng. This guy was pretty good.
Such a pity.
It wasn't only him, even the winged cavalry behind him were also full of admiration for Attendant Peng.
After all, they were all brave men who fought on the bloody battlefield, and their favorite kind of people were vehement and heroic; the type who could joke about death.
Ren Baqian waved his hands and commanded, "Send them to hell!"
"Sir Ren, let me do the honors." One of the winged cavalry warriors cupped his hands at Ren Baqian, leaped high in the air, unsheathed his saber in midair, and slashed it at Attendant Peng.
A few saber gleams flashed past. Each and every severed head soared into the sky.
"Dig a hole and bury them! Tie the others up and inform the your comrades that the people here have surrendered. Go easy on them," Ren Baqian instructed the winged cavalry.
After tying up Zhan Changkong and the rest, Ren Baqian rode on his mount and headed toward the Golden Ring Residence.
Before he arrived, there were ten subordinates that went inside to scout ahead in case there were any assassins or ambushes.
When he entered the residence, he only saw a chaotic scene. There were even a few servants who hadn't escaped in time and were shivering while kneeling on the ground.
He could still remember the location of the Golden Ring Residence's hall and didn't need anyone to lead the way. Upon arriving in the hall, he looked up at the ceiling and realized that the 17 pearls were already missing.
The captain of the winged cavalry came in and inquired, "Sir, what should we do next?"
"Look at what other valuable things are around and wrap them up. Then, ask those people outside. I'm sure they know best regarding where the valuables are kept. Also, get them to hand over the 17 pearls." Ren Baqian muttered to himself after he spoke. Then, he continued, "Check with them and determine if they have any libraries and get them to surrender any secret martial arts manuals to us. They can duplicate a copy and leave it as an inheritance, but the original copy has to be taken away."
He came up with the idea of taking away these secret martial arts manuals on the spot. After all, he might be able to gain something good from these big sects. Even if he couldn't use it, it would be good to enrich the stash in Qingxin Palace Hall. Furthermore, he could also bring them back to Earth and hand them over to the nation. The more manuals he had, the better the effect of using supercomputers to analyze these manuals. After all, supercomputers weren't gods, and they also required sufficient information to perform better analyses.
Take AlphaGo for example. Without thousands of states of play stored inside its database, AlphaGo wouldn't have been able to achieve such a level.
[AlphaGo: computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by Alphabet Inc.'s Google DeepMind in London.]
When night fell, those people who tried to escape into the mountains had been caught.
From the beginning, Zhan Changkong had been locked in a room. He could only laugh bitterly when he saw Painting Fairy, who had a swollen patch on her face as well as two broken arms, and Zhan Caixian being thrown into the same room while tied up securely.
Upon seeing Zhan Changkong in the room, Painting Fairy's panic-stricken eyes immediately settled down. She then smiled and asked, "Do I look ugly now?"
"No! You are as beautiful as ever!" Zhan Changkong shook his head and replied.
"When I went up the mountain, it seemed like I had forgotten something. Later on, I recalled that I once said I was going to accompany you when you died. However, I was also worried about Xian'er, worried that she wouldn't be able to survive on her own.
[Xian'er: Zhan Caixian's nickname]
Presently, everything is well, and we don't have to think so much. Our family is together now. Death is nothing. " Painting Fairy's eyes were filled with affection.
"I have let the both of you down," Zhan Changkong said in a gloomy voice.
"You did nothing to let us down. Whether we live or die, that will be our fate." Painting Fairy smiled. "It's just that we brought suffering to our Xian'er."
"I'm not suffering. So long as I'm with both Father and Mother, I am content."
Seeing that both his wife and daughter had the same thoughts, he felt devastated. Soon after, he pulled himself together and said, "However, it seems like we won't die anytime soon."
He then repeated Ren Baqian's words to the both of them.
"Because of what he said, I surrendered."
Painting Fairy smiled and said, "I knew that my husband wasn't a craven and cowardly person. Seeing that you are fine, I immediately understood that there must be a reason behind this."
Zhan Chankong felt even guiltier after hearing what she said.
…
For the entire night, Ren Baqian checked over the treasures and secret manuals that they had plundered.
There were a lot of valuable things. After all, these things had all been stockpiled by the Golden Ring Residence over an unknown number of years. It was already difficult to put a price tag on the value of just those 17 pearls.
As for the secret martial arts manuals, he flipped through them casually before putting them down. He couldn't distinguish which manuals were good or bad. As such, he instructed someone to bring these secret martial arts manuals and documents to Zhan Chankong so that he could brief someone, have them copy everything, and keep the new copies as the inheritance of Golden Ring Residence.
Such an action also calmed the hearts of all the people in the Golden Ring Residence as they understood that Ren Baqian really wasn't going to kill them.
The next day, Ren Baqian got Zhan Changkong to arrange for someone to contact the disciples in the surrounding cities and have them surrender.
After all, the Golden Ring Residence had been here for many years. It didn't only include the people in the residence, but also many other disciples in the surrounding cities who had become officials. This great network of relationships also had many complications.
When the second batch of 5,000 soldiers from the Protectorate of the South arrived in Tianjing Basin, three of the five cities would definitely open their gates and surrender.
This was also a verification of Ren Baqian's initiative to get these people to surrender.