A crisp cracking sound was heard as the core condensation realm patriarch died instantly. Lin Mu let the body fall to the side as he moved on to the musicians. But before extending his hand, he took out the communication jade slip and checked something.
"Hmm... not in the list." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
Jing Luo had checked all three clans and had made a list of the people that were absolutely needed to be eliminated. The three clans didn’t all have people that needed to die. There were several innocent people living among them as well.
Besides, they didn’t need the entire clan to die, rather they just needed to take out the key members of the clan so that they would be weakened permanently. Kind of similar to that of the Mu clan’s situation.
Lin Mu left the room and appeared in the corridor.
His hand spread to the two directions and clasped the necks of the guards before snapping them as well. Step by step, he moved through the clan and eliminated the members of the clan.
In less than ten minutes, half of the Shu clan was dead.
"Now let’s see where they keep their valuables..." Lin Mu muttered as his spirit sense searched for a vault or safe in detail.
In a few seconds, Lin Mu spotted a suspicious area that was located under one of the bedrooms of the clan. This was evidently the bedroom of the patriarch and was an obvious choice to keep stuff in.
Lin Mu directly uprooted the tiles that were fixed to the ground and revealed the small underground room that was filled with all the valuables of the Shu clan. Lin Mu knew that this was merely a small part of the Shu clan’s fortune, as most of their money was in the form of property and fixed assets.
But he wouldn’t leave this part of their fortune behind as it would still help the remnants of the Shu clan, which they didn’t want. Even if they were innocent, it was obvious that they would want to revive their clan and help fulfill their dead member’s wishes.
That would turn out to be a problem for Lin Mu and his plan, and thus it could not be possible to just leave it for them. Storing all of them away for later, Lin Mu took his leave.
"They should still be under the effects of the Severing heart sutra for an hour... should give me enough time to take care of the other clans." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
If the effect of the severing heart sutra wore out quickly, the Shu clan might have raised an alarm and that was not something that Lin Mu wanted. If that happened, the city would be in a sensitive state and it would end up making things tough for Lin Mu.
The remaining Shu clan’s men were lucky that Lin Mu’s cultivation base was higher and the severing heart sutra could work longer, or he might have ended up needing to kill the entire clan to silence them.
With one clan down, Lin Mu flew to the next one. This one was the Hui clan and was located to the north of the city. There were a lot of pleasure pavilions, taverns, and similar establishments located near it as well.
"So this is the Hui clan... they are apparently involved in the pleasure business and trade in specialized women for that... though it doesn’t matter to them if they are willing or not..." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
It was now that Lin Mu was suddenly reminded of someone.
"Wasn’t Yue sent by the Hui clan to the Alluring Wisteria Pavilion as well?" Lin Mu suddenly recognized.
For a moment, he remembered the woman who was bubbly on her own and had tried to serve him so hard, only to get rejected. But then Lin Mu realized that if she was in the Wu Lim city when the Red Tide happened, then she was probably dead by now.
"I can only avenge you in this way for now perhaps..." Lin Mu muttered to himself, not knowing why he was even caring about someone who was only there in his life for a few hours.
In the next moment, his eyes turned cold as the chants of the severing heart sutra came out of his lips, spreading across the entire Hui clan.
This time, Lin Mu had a lot of people that were needed to be killed. The Hui clan in total had fewer members than all of the other members of the merchant council, except for the Mu clan.
In total, Lin Mu could only sense fifty members in the compound, but the number of servants they had was massive. They had over four hundred servants in the entire place, which put the ratio at roughly one member to eight servants.
Plus, there wasn’t just one type of servant in there. There were pleasure servants and other such kinds mixed in there as well.
Some worked there voluntarily, but most were here as they were forced. Even if slavery was outlawed in the Fenlong Kingdom, bonded labor was not.
A gust of wind spread as Lin Mu flew through the clan, killing the members with a single flick of his hand. If he wanted to, he could have simply sent a spirit weapon to slaughter them all, but this was a bit more mild method that they had tactically chosen.
Not only did Lin Mu and Jing Luo want to reduce the power of the merchant council members that were not in their favor, but they also wanted to strike fear into the hearts of others. That way, even if they had thoughts about betraying them, they would not dare act on it.
Plus, in the short term, they would not know that this was done by Lin Mu and Jing Luo and what was most likely to happen was that the fault will fall on the party that had done something similar to this before.