"This is really unexpected…"

The young face of Blade was greatly distorted by a big frown as he stared at the ground for a few seconds…

'It's indeed unexpected…'

I couldn't help but agree with Blade's statement deep down in my heart, what we found out was really a bit too exaggerated when compared to my original expectations.

'At least it's not too late…'

Since we managed to take hold of the Fire House's division master's clone, who seemed to go by the name of Crane, we moved on to the next step of the plan, information extraction.

A quick check using mental energy made it obvious that this clone was made using another human body as a vessel that was possessed by a completely separated part of Crane's mentality and altered to be similar to his own body so he could use it with ease.

In fact, according to Blade, this clone looked exactly like Crane, with the only difference being it had a beard of black hair instead of his original red, the method behind making this clone was probably one of the demons' secret methods, but the reason behind the construction of this clone was pretty obvious…

For a prominent division master of a top sect like the Elemental Blade Sect to act as a demon seed, it was obvious that he couldn't do so from within considering the great formation that put the whole sect under Blade's surveillance.

As such, and taking into consideration the clone's special ability of having a direct communication link with the original source of the mentality, this was simply the perfect tool of communication and taking care of his dirty work as a demon seed without being exposed.

Of course, once Blade found this place with Light's guidance, he had already sealed the whole underground space we were currently in with his own mentality, so the original Crane shouldn't know that he messed up for now as this clone of his acted independently and only used the mentality link to relay information and orders for most of the time…

This was in fact, just a small part of the information we have extracted…

"The only reason I gave you a chance to prove your assumptions was only because I have read about the existence of the ancient demons through the secret records of the sect, but to think they have been planning all of this under my nose…"

Looking at the clone that already had its eyes rolled as drool slipped out of its open mouth, Blade lamented as his frown only grew deeper…

He may have maintained his composure while he was executing his part of the plan till now, however, now that it worked out successfully, finding out the fact that Crane, who pretended to be a friend of his, had actually used his favor towards him to do what he wanted, eventually making the situation reach its current critical stage seemed to have taken a toll on his mind.

"It's their nature, it's not suitable to talk about this right now, but I can assure you that this is not my first time witnessing how insidious these demons could be…"

I already planned on elaborating more about my experience, albeit not that detailedly, so giving Blade a few words now to stabilize his emotions was better than leaving it as it is.

After all, we had already almost committed a taboo by invading the clone's mind space, this time, using both of our mental energies and by relying on my experience of exploring Sprout's mind space, we simply went all out.

Unlike how I still had use to Sprout and how he could be considered to have been a very sad case of how community can be scarring, we had to kill the clone sooner or later, so we literality scavenged for information without caring about the safety of the clone, only how complete a piece of info would be, and what we found was worth Blade's reaction…

This clone which was already in a vegetative state by the time we were done, had simply done too much to turn the whole Nature Domain into a complete warzone!

The number of bases that the clone had activated was simply outrageous!

Just like the case which I was thrown into by chance, the clone had been traveling through the whole domain for the last year, delivering the preliminary keys to random targets and turning them into the keys themselves all in preparation for one big explosion…

Even the number of bases itself was beyond my imagination, there had been barely 3 or 4 bases that were activated in the Light Domain and if only they didn't have the corrupted Sky Dragon as a trump card they wouldn't have even stood a chance, but this time, tens of bases were scattered all over the domain!

It was pretty obvious by now how critical the state of the domain was…

"There is no excuse for being too blind and simply focusing on my own progress… I had simply been trying to breakthrough to the next stage for the last two years, leaving everything to Crane and the others, but…"

Blade simply denied my attempt as he scolded himself, he looked too different from his calm all-knowing personality when I first met him, but it was totally understandable…

After all, in the mix of memories we got from the clone, there was a good number of them that elaborated how Crane's friendship with Blade which almost reached the level of brotherhood was simply nothing but a facade that Crane employed.

He was just the smart type of guy that knew how to make use of situations as he managed to roleplay as a true friend for a whole 10 years for the benefits he would receive out of it, he wasn't even a demon seed by then, it had only been two years that he came into contact with them and decided to join them for the same reason, benefits.

"That's completely true, excuses wouldn't solve anything, but you still have the chance to fix everything, don't you?"

There was still hope for the domain!