This man, once he removed his black robe and revealed his face, was genuinely terrifying to look at.
His entire body was covered in dark blue skin, but across that dark blue skin were blood-red lines running everywhere.
Upon closer inspection, those lines were not markings at all — they were wounds. Gaping, bloody wounds arranged in a pattern across his entire body, both eerie and horrifying.
The strangest part was that although the wounds looked fresh, no blood was flowing out of them, as if sealed shut. Yet one could see blood still flowing within the wounds themselves — a truly revolting sight.
And this man's eyes were white, his gaze utterly uncanny.
At a single glance, he did not look like a human at all. He looked more like a monster.
"The Blood Devouring Demon Clan."
"You — you're from the Blood Devouring Demon Clan?!"
Panicked voices erupted from the crowd.
At the same time, the entire gathering descended into chaos. An aura of terror blanketed the vast sea of people.
In that moment, everyone was struck with a mixture of shock and dread. The older and more experienced cultivators, in particular — the ones with the greatest age — wore expressions of fear that were even more intense.
The Blood Devouring Demon Clan was infamous throughout the entire Ancestral Martial Starfield.
This clan did not occupy any Upper Realm of its own. It did not even possess a Mortal Realm or a Lower Realm.
Yet during the height of its power, the Blood Devouring Demon Clan had spread across the entirety of the Ancestral Martial Starfield. They were virtually everywhere. The sheer number of their members and the vastness of their reach made them arguably the most numerous faction in the entire starfield.
Moreover, the Blood Devouring Demon Clan was extraordinarily united. Instances of infighting within the clan were virtually nonexistent.
Most importantly, the Blood Devouring Demon Clan harbored an enormous number of powerful experts. They were, by every measure, a formidable force.
And it was precisely because they were so powerful that the Starfield Master Realm came to view them as a thorn in their side.
As the saying goes, two tigers cannot share the same mountain — let alone when one of those tigers was the Starfield Master Realm, a hegemon that would not tolerate any threat to its supremacy.
At last, a great war erupted over nine thousand years ago.
Initially, it was simply a war between the Starfield Master Realm and the Blood Devouring Demon Clan.
But once the war began, the Blood Devouring Demon Clan — in order to bolster their fighting strength — secretly began massacring cultivators from various worlds.
And this eventually came to light.
The revelation sparked outrage across the board, drawing faction after faction throughout the Ancestral Martial Starfield into the conflict.
That war engulfed the entire starfield and ultimately ended in the crushing defeat of the Blood Devouring Demon Clan.
During that great war, the top powerhouses now dominating the Starfield Master Realm were still young — or children — and many had not even been born yet.
But they all knew of the war's brutality. They all knew of the Blood Devouring Demon Clan's ferocity.
Over nine thousand years had passed since any trace of the Blood Devouring Demon Clan had been found. The clan's story had become nothing more than a tale passed down through generations.
Everyone believed the Blood Devouring Demon Clan had been completely annihilated — that the once-mighty clan had become a thing of the past.
But now, this man's appearance was unmistakably that of the Blood Devouring Demon Clan — a form unique to them alone.
Those wound-like patterns across his body were the marks of the Blood Devouring Technique.
For only by cultivating the Blood Devouring Technique could one acquire wounds like these.
But then — why had a member of the Blood Devouring Demon Clan, who had vanished for over nine thousand years, suddenly appeared now?