Sage followed the crowd and watched these events playing out from only a dozen yards back. The crowd gathered outside the front door and looked into the building, watching Zhu Jiao destroy the front hall. When she gave the order they all rushed inwards. Seeing that she wasn’t moving Sage found himself standing in the corner of the front hall before he realized why. The crowd had carried him along with them and he’d initially planned on moving to loot the manor. Something had stopped him, and his gaze landed upon Zhu Jiao. She crossed her arms and took a wide stance, then she turned her head back and laughed at the Yi Yang Group members she could sense hiding in the next room.

The man with the heavily armored arms was standing at the ready, and he had to deflect another two volleys of hidden weapons before the Yi Yang Group stopped making the attempts. The crowd rushed forward ahead of Zhu Jiao and her men. The sneak attacks and traps they’d prepared to welcome her with were used on common mercenaries or ruined by others smashing through them. When Zhu Jiao saw people rush forward to take the hits for her, she tried to speed up to put herself back in the front. Her own men surrounded her and held her back. It was already enough that she’d led the first charge, and they were not happy with how much risk she was putting herself in.

A few sacrificed their lives to clear the path for the many. Before long, they had reached the innermost room of the manor and a single large fellow was standing there. When he waved his arm a black mist rolled out like a wave. It moved slowly, stretching across the room towards the large crowd who moved to surround him. Then the man snapped his fingers and part of the wave seemed to explode. The black mist disappeared in perfect vertical slice. A half dozen people in the crowd cried out with pain, falling to the ground as various limbs were severed. The man snapped his fingers again, and the mist disappeared again, like it was perfectly cut by a passing beam of energy. That slice passed through another couple people, one of them being split vertically from head to stern. Another lost their leg at mid-calf and the fingers from one hand.

“Come back! Retreat! He’s too strong for you!”

Zhu Jiao yelled at the crowd of cultivators that were shielding her, but they didn’t listen. Rushing forward and using their numbers to assault the lone defender. They had all noticed the man was standing in front of a curtained wall. The curtain had not been pulled back into place properly and they could see the bottom corner of a door.

“The Yi Yang Group is trying to escape. We have to push through!”

One of the people in the crowd started to assume command. They attacked in unison while others pushed past to attack the door the enemy was guarding. Zhu Jiao knew they didn’t recognize the man so she called out to them.

“Get back, that’s Ji Meng of the Yin Cutting Mist. He’s the head of the Yi Yang Group, there’s no way you can stand up against him!”

She tried to call them all back, but it was too late. Nearly half of them were sliced into bits before they could even react. The rest just suffered grievous wounds and fell to the ground. The man didn’t do much. He merely unleashed a wave of black mist and then snapped his fingers a dozen times in rapid succession. By the time the mist had faded away completely, no one else was left standing. One of those invisible cuts had even flown towards Zhu Jiao. One of her men moved to intercept it, but she dove into the man and pushed him aside. The Yin Cutting Mist flashed past invisibly and Zhu Jiao lost some of her hair and half her sleeve, the man she tackled out of the way had intended to use a giant sword as a shield to protect them both. After being knocked aside the man stood up and noticed that the door sized sword in his hands was now shorn short. A perfect diagonal cut ended the sword only a few inches past the handguard.

“You have to avoid it! Don’t let him hit you!”

The man stomped the ground and more black mist flew out, this time rolling towards Zhu Jiao and her group. After seeing it a dozen times, Sage already had some ideas on how this Yin Cutting Mist worked. The mist would dissolve before the cut arrived. The cut was invisible, but the mist gave away where it was coming from. There also seemed to be a very specific range. When he sliced through the crowd earlier, even though nothing could stop it, each cut only traveled about ten yards. To reach different ranges the cloud of black mist would expand towards them before it exploded into cuts, and once he made a cut, the mist stopped expanding. When a cut flew out, the mist in that spot disappeared. It looked like he was sending invisible blades out from his body which disturbed the mist. Because of the way the mist dissolved and also how cuts only came through the mist, Sage guessed that the mist itself made the cuts. Even with those weaknesses identified, the Yin Cutting Mist still seemed to be an extremely powerful technique. Worse yet, from the waves of power emitting from the man, Sage felt he was in the upper stages of rank 5. Something which only a handful of the mercenaries and rogue cultivators in the crowd could stand up to.

Zhu Jiao charged towards Ji Meng, but a lone figure dashed in front of her, gliding through the air and extending the distance between them. Sage was not recognized by his own fiancee given that his appearance was different than when they met. Not just his appearance, but even his aura and energy were changed by his metamorphosis and altered Human Seal. With Foresight he dashed to the front and drew Ji Meng’s attacks. He put himself in line with Zhu Jiao and about 20 yards ahead of her. When the mist rolled out, Ji Meng was forced to send an attack at Sage to slow him down. Zhu Jiao couldn’t see the attack coming because Sage was blocking her vision of the mist.

Sage jumped aside and Zhu Jiao only saw the mist part in front of her. She thought it was the end, since the man blocking her vision had now given her no time to react. Instead, she was amazed when nothing touched her and she could keep rushing forward. Sage, on the other hand, had to leap to the sides a few more times. Each motion brought him in front of one of Zhu Jiao’s men, and he forced Ji Meng to fire more mist blades prematurely. He darted back and forth, using his Falling Leaf Steps and Foresight to trigger the attacks before the others were in range. They advanced rapidly, avoiding wave after wave of Yin Cutting Mist.

“The blades only extend three zhang from the mist!”

Sage shouted out a warning, converting the distance into the native measurement term of a zhang, which was about ten and a half feet. The others had roughly figured it out, but with his confirmation they moved confidently towards Ji Meng. Too bad Ji Meng didn’t want to cooperate. He waved his arm to send out a semi-circle of mist. Some of the men darted to the side to get around it, and another leapt into the air. The mist was only about chest high and simple enough to leap over. Then Ji Meng stomped his foot and the black mist blasted out in a full hemisphere. He snapped his fingers and the two men that had ran to the sides got some of their limbs sliced off. Zhu Jiao cried out as the man who’d leapt into the air was bisected. His movement technique let him change directions in mid-air, but only once. He dodged the first blade coming his way only to be killed by the second.

Zhu Jiao performed a quick pirouette, sidestepping one blade, and then spinning out of the way of a second. She stomped hard onto the ground with one leg and her body was catapulted forward. Passing through the third wave of mist that Ji Meng had just summoned. She’d closed with the man before he could snap his fingers. She held her hand flat and stabbed her arm forward. The tips of her fingers stabbed into Ji Meng’s chest, and her hand disappeared inside. There was the loud sound of bones cracking and Zhu Jiao pulled her hand out, clenching a bloody heart between her fingers.

“Bring my Uncle Wei back!”