Sage had already retreated from the main battlefield with Ji Meng. Currently, he was sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall. He was breathing hard and using his left hand to hold his right arm together. One of those cuts from the battle had only barely missed severing his arm. Instead, it had sheared off flesh down to the bone, opening up a terrifying looking wound at his elbow that looked like he’d been shoved into a meat slicer. At the same time he was trying to regenerate from the injury, he was locked into another battle.

Past the door that Ji Meng was guarding, Sage’s Twin Soul had already infiltrated long ago. It skimmed the surface of the ground, only its eyes poking out to lead the way. It caught up with the party from the Yi Yang Group and Sage recognized the one who’d controlled the Hoplites to assault the Jade Horde’s factory. Surprisingly, that same person noticed the Twin Soul and spun around. The others kept running, but that dark cloaked figure formed a symbol with their fingers, and a beam of violet light shot forth from their eyes. That violet energy hit the Twin Soul and stopped it in its tracks. When the beam of light hit the Twin Soul, the light didn’t illuminate or reflect, it seemed to melt. It was like the beam of light had instantly transformed into a gel or slime and it splattered onto the Twin Soul.

Sage immediately wanted to escape from the unusual and unexpected attack. It had already been surprising enough when that person had noticed the Twin Soul in the darkness from such a long distance. Now they had such an effective attack, and it wasn’t destroying the Twin Soul, but restraining it. The violet light continued to beam upon it, and more and more of the gel was added. The Twin Soul tried to attack the gel, but it’s attacks passed harmlessly through the gel. Getting desperate, the Twin Soul transformed from a human like appearance to that of his dragon body and then attacked itself. Using its teeth to bite off its arms, legs, and tail. The Twin Soul flew away rapidly, disappearing into the ground. It reformed, returning to its original appearance but much smaller in size.

Back outside, Zhu Jiao’s men started to attack the door, but it had more defensive formations on it. Zhu Jiao ordered them aside and she picked up one of the thrown pillars, using it as a club to try and batter her way through the barrier. A few minutes later, she smashed the door in, but just as they entered the hidden tunnel it began to shake. Cursing furiously, they were forced to back out to avoid the tunnel collapsing atop them. Sage had assumed this sort of thing would happen, which was why he had sent his Twin Soul ahead. It’s just too bad that the enemy had a method of detecting and countering it, so the best he could do would be to follow the remains of the tunnel to its end and try to track them again with Hindsight. Even so, when the Twin Soul was chasing up to them, he’d felt at least three of the enemies had strength in the Fifth rank, and there was one other that seemed like a normal person. Having a normal person with them meant that it was an extremely special normal person, or it was someone very powerful hiding their strength.

If it was someone special, there would likely be other terrible tricks and traps left in their wake. If it was someone powerful, that meant they were laying a trap for them all, or they were holding back to prepare for a trap to spring on them. Either way, following them would put him into great risk. He’d only been following the thief to gather intel. If the enemy had been someone weak they might seek revenge, but otherwise, Sage merely wanted to know who his enemies were and how deep their enmities went. As long as they didn’t know his core secrets, he couldn’t care less if they were just being robbed out of greed. Of course, he’d retaliate in some manner because of his dead men, but he wouldn’t put the Jade Horde at risk waging utter war upon the Yi Yang Group.

From the looks of things, the Yi Yang Group had suffered greatly. While he didn’t enact his revenge exactly, the Yi Yang Group was about to be destroyed in the Flying Wind Province. He wouldn’t be able to recover the stolen goods, nor would he know if this was something ordered by anyone else, but it wasn’t a bad outcome. If they moved quickly, they might even be able to scoop up some of the Yi Yang Groups property. When his arm had finished healing up, he wrapped a bandage around it and walked over towards where Zhu Jiao was smashing the building to vent her anger.

When Sage approached, one of the men recognized him and waved him over, “Come friend. You helped us out there with Ji Meng. Thank you for the help!”

Sage bowed his head and then looked towards where Zhu Jiao was. She didn’t seem to notice his approach. Sage felt a bit of pain inside, but he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter if she spoke to him, he only had the urge to give her a hint, but it was fine to leave it as a message.

“It was nothing on my part. On behalf of the Jade Horde, I only wish to thank you, Heroes. Taking down the evil Yi Yang Group is a favor for all of us. Can you please just tell Lady Zhu: a clumsy oaf is sorry for the curse of his ineptitude.”

The man tilted his head, thinking the message to be strange, but he nodded anyways. Sage cupped his fist, and then bowed his head. After adding a few more bows towards Zhu Jiao’s other men, Sage turned and left the Yi Yang Group’s manor. He had thought of going after the Yi Yang Group’s resources, but the mercenaries and rogue cultivators that had spread out into the compound would already have found much of it by now. Instead Sage hurried over to where King and Black Saber were waiting. He immediately leapt up onto King’s wide back to join Black Saber and urged King into flight. Ten Copper City would soon be clean of any properties belonging to the Yi Yang Group, while he could compete with them, he didn’t even know which ones belonged to them so the locals would have an advantage over him.

They had a rough map of Flying Wind province. Even though it was not on their current list of Jade Horde expansion targets, it was still on the future targets list. The basic map pointed them towards the large towns nearest to the southern border of Flying Wind province. 10,000 Wave province was to the south so they would be able to assault properties furthest south in Flying Wind. They picked up the Hoplites and Vulture Geckos outside of town before taking off rapidly. The battle at the Yi Yang Group was just finishing so it wouldn’t be long before many saw the writing on the wall and then raced to be the ones to ‘bring the Yi Yang Group to justice’.

“Send three Vulture Geckos back to Horde Home on different routes. Have Whitestaff bring half her men to Orange Sky City, and make sure she doubles the guard before leaving.”

Black Saber nodded to Sage’s orders and some of the men diverted their flight paths. Orange Sky City was the city closest to Horde Home, better to take the closest target then push for the most valuable one. There was no telling how much time they would have, so better to rush. They brought the rest of the Vulture Geckos to the nearest city and Sage used the tricks from ‘How to be a Little Birdy’ to search for information. With some luck he caught a pickpocket and used the Hypnotic Eye to find a local information dealer.

Sage sat down at a table in the ‘Eight Spring Paradise Inn’. A waiter came into the room and Sage made his order, “Please bring me a glass of Ice Spirit Dew, and the Chef’s special menu.”

He received his drink and the menu a few minutes later. He downed the drink and savored the icy coolness flowing through his body. He opened the menu and there were quite a few strange food orders that all sounded terribly disgusting. The prices were also extremely high. In fact, the food orders were just filled with a simple code, reading from left to right instead of right to left. They were just prices for information topics. The price of the Ice Spirit Dew was like a cover charge to see the menu, it was also quite good, if a bit overpriced.

“I’d like to trade a bit of information. It’s a very hot commodity and very lucrative if you can move immediately. Pledge not to sell it within Orange Sky and Purple Cloud City and we will have a deal.”

The waiter nodded and said, “Just a moment,” before leaving the room.