Less than an hour after they entered the empty field, the 600 soldiers of the Jade Horde were ordered into formation. The Legionnaire, Zhang Tu, was there with them and in charge of the unit. They weren’t a full legion, but Zhang Tu was commanding them personally. He seemed to receive orders from somewhere, looking up into the sky for a moment before ordering the troops into six defensive formations. Shortly after he did so, 50 of the men, vanished. The rest of them got a little uneasy, but Zhang Tu commanded them with an iron fist. Of course, the Hoplites were utterly calm, even in this odd situation, but the human members of the Jade Horde were all quite worried. They had no idea how they got there, or where they were being sent to.

When the last group disappeared from the empty field, Zhang Tu went along with them. They were the most nervous given how everyone else had already disappeared, but they trusted in their legionnaire and they felt the air pressure shift suddenly. They found themselves crowding into a small hallway. Zhang Tu was looking at something and then nodded his head and ordered a squad through a doorway and into a small room. Inside the room was a large spout. One large enough for a human to fit through. It was the exit of a large slide or chute and it ended just an inch or so above floor level. They weren’t allowed to get too close, with only one squad in the room at a time. Zhang Tu pointed out a huge stone on the ceiling that had a groove around it, a booty trap that could completely smash the center of the room.

They weren’t the only ones. Twelve groups of fifty soldiers were each guarding a similar room. Some of them were guarding the bottom of a ladder, a set of heavy doors, the bottom of a staircase, the base of a fireman-like pole, or even the end of a ramp. These were the entrance points of the maze beneath the Slaver’s main building. They were also the best choke points that Sage could think of. He’d used a secluded space in the Universe Ring to transport 600 members of the Jade Horde. He’d linked with a Chameleon Mantis and infiltrated to the core of the enemy compound, then released a dozen groups of fifty troops. With the Slavers sieged from the outside and their secret exit now blockaded with men, he had cut off all their options.

Of course, the enemy didn’t know that yet. He wasn’t sure if there was any sort of secret monitoring devices for down in the labyrinth, so he moved quickly. Distributing the troops and then flying the little mantis back up to the second floor of the building. Then, he carefully moved to the center of the floor. This floor was packed with metal cages. They were chained together with no walls in between them and even stacked double high and four deep. This formed ‘cubes’ of eight cages with a walkway around them, creating terribly inhumane conditions. They had no walls for any sort of privacy and the patrolling guards could see them at all times. It even bred a terrible desire for the prisoners to want to make their captors happy as it would be an excuse for them to get out of the terrible cages.

The palm sized mantis carefully flew through the room, bearing the same color as the ceiling and taking a flight path that would keep it from passing nearby any of the patrolling guards. A few prisoners noticed the insect in flight, which was also the reason he had been very careful when surveilling this floor earlier, but right now he couldn’t afford to waste time. There was no telling when one of them might decide to check out the maze and discover the Jade Horde waiting there. When it finally landed in the center of the room, enough of the prisoners had already been staring at it long enough to draw the attention of the guards.

All they could see was the motion of a small object. It was hard to make out what it was, seeing only the contrast between it and the cages, then losing it again when it blended into the background. Then the motion stopped and the guards moved over to check it out. It seemed to be completely gone, but then they saw the nearby prisoners staring at a spot on the floor. One of them reached out with the tip of his spear, aiming it towards a slightly blurry area on the ground.

Clang!

The spear was stopped by the appearance of a huge metal disc. The pathway between the cages was only about five feet wide, but this giant disc was a full twelve feet in diameter and about a foot thick. The top of the disc had 8 circles that were three and a half feet wide, with each of those 8 circles having 8 more plate sized discs inside. The 64 small discs, 8 large discs, and of course the largest main disc all lit up. Tiny shapes, designs, patterns and unusual glowing characters appeared all over them, each little mark glowing with a different intensity of light and energy. At the same time, to make room for the huge platform like disc, many of the nearest cages disappeared, taking their occupants with them.

It was of course Sage’s Formation Machine, which burst to life with the input of his much more powerful Qi than in the past. He hadn’t yet advanced in rank as a Formation Master, still at the peak of 5 stars. On the other hand, his cultivation rank had increased which meant he had a lot more energy to supply to the Formation Plates. Of course, these plates were individually only in the 2nd and 3rd rank, given the cheap materials he had used to craft them, but the Formation Machine allowed them to combine their strength to achieve a much greater effect.

The 8 groups of Formation Plates were each dedicated to a different function. The central group was dedicated to controlling the others, making the decisions on when to switch between different states. A second main group was dedicated to expanding the area the formations affected and dividing it into smaller control groups. A third suddenly filled the whole floor with thick obscuring mist, the eight formations aiming to obscure a different sense. The fourth group scanned for energy fluctuations, those making attacks, and marked them for the fifth group. The fifth group of arrays layered misdirection arrays to lead the marked targets towards each other. The sixth confused the marked targets and convinced them that the other targets were their enemies. The seventh was a fallback, putting up defensive barriers around an area, and the eighth group was dedicated to making the Formation Machine’s controller, Sage, immune to all the effects.

The net effect was to scramble all the guards, and prisoners, senses. Those who lashed out violently would get led towards each other and tricked into thinking they were enemies. Of course, all the formations thrown at them weren’t very high level, so any cultivators of rank 4 or those with special capabilities were likely to be able to avoid the confusion. For them, there would be defensive shields put in their way to slow them down. The combined effect was quite powerful, but also extremely energy intensive. Sage poured in 90% of his Qi and left behind a dozen Spirit Jades and hundreds of Spirit Stones to power it. Even so, the Formation Machine was unlikely to last more than a few minutes.

The mantis had been carrying a small gold ring, one which flew off of it and then a human figure appeared wearing the ring on its finger. That figure, Sage, closed his eyes and activated Foresight with the remainder of his Qi. He didn’t plan on using any other abilities and his natural energy regeneration rate was just barely enough to keep up with the expenditure. The Formation Machine only needed to buy him a little time as he rapidly ran around the room, scooping up the cages into the Universe Ring. Saving the imprisoned people in the most crude and quick method he could think of.

He ran down the narrow pathways between the stacked cages and they disappeared as he passed. It made him think he was engaged in the most disturbing sort of shopping spree imaginable, cage after cage of human merchandise disappeared into thin air. The cages were delivered to the village of Hoplites that he had living in the Universe Ring, the simple bug folk were tasked with freeing them and tending to their wounds.

The central building of this compound was quite large, and with the many guards to skirt around it took quite some time to run back and forth collecting the cages of trapped mortals. Fortunately, by the time that the Formation Machine came to a stop, he’d rescued most of the slaves.