If you want to leave, fine, but leave my things behind

【Year Twenty-Nine, age fifty-five.】

【The Qingqiu Sect had been destroyed.】

【You accepted no form of surrender or negotiation.】

【You ordered the entire army to leave no living thing behind—not even the chickens or dogs.】

【For a time, corpses piled up across Qingqiu Mountain, heads rolled everywhere, blood flowed like rivers, and the waterways were choked with bodies.】

【Later, you remembered Feiyu Sect’s methods of refining corpses.】

【So you refused to spare even the dead.】

【You ordered the entire army to burn Qingqiu Mountain to the ground. Apart from scorched earth, nothing was to remain.】

【“That’s too ruthless…”】

【The horrific destruction of the Qingqiu Sect frightened the Feiyu Sect out of its wits.】

【The Feiyu Sect cultivators stationed in Qingqiu Sect’s territory immediately knelt and surrendered. One of Feiyu Sect’s Supreme Elders even declared that he was willing to submit the entire territory, pay tribute for generations, and remain a slave forever.】

【Feiyu Sect’s sincerity moved the higher-ups of the Tiansha Alliance.】

【“Sect Master, it looks like Feiyu Sect is truly terrified. Why don’t we accept their surrender? It would give us a chance to pause the fighting and let the soldiers rest for a while.”】

【“Rest? Rest for what? Haven’t you heard the saying: one drumbeat inspires courage, the second weakens it, and by the third it is exhausted? Let me tell you this: there can only be one power on Huoguang Star, and that is our Tiansha Sect! We said we would unify the entire star. If we’re missing even one city, one village, or one stone, then it doesn’t count as unification!”】

【You beheaded Feiyu Sect’s Supreme Elder to consecrate the battle standard. The day after destroying Qingqiu Sect, you ordered the advance on Feiyu Sect to continue.】

【By this point, the Tiansha Alliance had taken over all the territory that once belonged to Qingqiu Sect. Its total territory now covered half of Huoguang Star.】

【Taking Qingqiu Sect brought more than just territory—it also brought a sudden fortune in resources!】

【By the time you emerged from Qingqiu Sect’s main treasury, your Hutian space was already packed to the brim. You simply couldn’t fit anything else inside.】

【Even so, the treasury still contained a dazzling array of cultivation resources.】

【After all, Qingqiu Sect was a top-tier sect on a second-tier star—and not on a remote second-tier star like Lingwei Star, but one close to a first-tier star. Of course it had abundant resources.】

【You personally sorted through everything several times before allowing the others inside to inventory the spoils.】

【“Damn it, why is the Hutian space so small? If only I could bring Da Chun along—then I could just use a small world to store everything!”】

【You sighed in frustration and vowed to properly develop this divine ability.】

【But to be fair, you couldn’t keep everything for yourself.】

【All those people in the Tiansha Alliance had followed you through life-and-death battles, risking their necks alongside you.】

【If they won the war and didn’t get a single benefit, that wouldn’t be reasonable either.】

【Though you would eventually kill the donkey once the mill was done, for now you still needed it to keep turning the mill. They had to receive some benefits.】

【With Qingqiu Sect destroyed and Feiyu Sect in imminent danger,】

【all the large and small powers across Huoguang Star panicked—especially after learning that the Tiansha Alliance was determined to unify the entire star and would accept no form of surrender.】

【A familiar mass exodus began to unfold across Huoguang Star.】

【The spaceport was packed with people, and starships clogged the sky.】

【Poor Huoguang Star had only one spaceport.】

【That was because the spaceport generated far too much profit. In the past, the three great sects had all wanted a piece of the action.】

【Building three spaceports would have created competition, so the three sects had wisely operated a single one together, maximizing their profits.】

【Everyone traveling to or from Huoguang Star had to pass through this spaceport, and naturally, everyone had to pay a toll.】

【Now the boomerang had come flying back into their own faces.】

【After the Tiansha Sect launched its war of unification, Feiyu Sect and Qingqiu Sect had immediately expelled all Tiansha Sect personnel from the spaceport.】

【Now that Qingqiu Sect had fallen, Feiyu Sect alone was completely incapable of resisting the Tiansha Sect’s advance.】

【Before long, the only spaceport on the star was under the control of one of your personal guard units.】

【When traffic through the spaceport resumed, you arrived above it, standing in midair with your feet planted on a mass of black clouds.】

【“Greetings, Sect Master!”】

【The entire army stationed at the spaceport dropped to its knees and hailed you.】

【The residents and cultivators from all over Huoguang Star who were preparing to leave felt a mountain-like pressure bearing down on them. Even though they were unwilling, they had no choice but to kneel and pay their respects.】

【“Greetings, fellow people of Huoguang Star. May I ask what brings everyone here today?”】

【You were obviously pretending not to know.】

【One particularly bold person answered you.】

【“We want to take off from the spaceport, enter the interstellar routes, and travel to other planets!”】

【You nodded slightly.】

【“Oh, yes. Huoguang Star has certainly been plagued by war lately, leaving its people destitute and miserable. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d want to leave and take refuge elsewhere.”】

【Never mind how this war had started.】

【“True Lord! Please let us leave! Huoguang Star belongs to you now. Once we’re gone, there’ll be even fewer people here to obstruct you!”】

【That line was probably spoken by the leader of one of the various powers.】

【Now, as people fled Huoguang Star, entire sects were leaving together.】

【You nodded again.】

【“You make a fair point. But I think you may leave, provided you don’t take my belongings with you.”】

【“Your belongings? We haven’t taken anything of yours!”】

【“Oh, my friend, listen to yourself. Huoguang Star belongs to me now, so everything on it should belong to me too, right? But look at what you’ve packed into your storage bags—pills, magical artifacts, source stones… My heavens, guess what? They’re all made from the plants, trees, and other materials of this very star!”】

【“What are you planning to do?”】

【“You may keep your starships, and you can take some supplies for the journey. As for the rest of your worldly possessions, hand them back to me.”】

【That was the purpose of your visit today: to establish a rule.】

【Anyone was allowed to leave Huoguang Star, but no one could take any additional cultivation resources with them. Even calligraphy, paintings, antiques, and treasures—items of little significance to cultivators but highly valuable to ordinary people—were forbidden.】

【In other words, they could leave if they wanted, but they had to leave looking like paupers.】

【Furthermore, until Huoguang Star had been unified and social order restored, the spaceport would allow departures only. No one would be allowed to enter.】

【If anyone happened to possess a starship capable of taking off and landing freely without relying on the spaceport, then that was their own ability. There was nothing you could do about it.】

【After you finished announcing the rules, someone immediately grew furious.】

【“That’s tyrannical! That’s greed! The entire planet belongs to you, and yet you even want to take away everything we own!”】

【You replied,】

【“That doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t leave, you won’t have to hand anything over, will you?”】

【“Damn it! If we don’t leave, you’ll kill us sooner or later! How can we stay?!”】

【“What are you talking about? I’m standing right here, and whom have I killed? I’m discussing this reasonably with all of you, aren’t I?”】

【The crowd began to stir.】

【Some protested, some cursed, and some were so angry they burst into tears.】

【You weren’t angry at all. You simply let them vent. In the end, they were free to leave—but they weren’t allowed to take anything with them.】

【“Second-tier stars really are more fun…”】

【You were already reluctant to leave this place, to be honest.