Sage felt an initial wave of terror when he activated the peach wood ring. The sudden sight of that violently swirling vortex startled him. A moment later, he realized there was nothing to be worried about. His consciousness had been drawn in, but that was the same method for that of even the cheapest Storage Bag. Nothing else happened to him, so he just carefully observed what was going on. He sent his awareness closer to the swirling liquid and then he sensed it wasn’t empty. Within those swirling waters he saw the outline of a shadowy figure. A ghostly silhouette drifting through the water.

Could it be?

He tried to will forth one of those shadowy outlines from the water and found his guess to be correct. A spirit of some sort was slowly drawn outwards from the swirling water, the ghostly shape letting out a harrowing wail. It turned its gaze towards him, even though it had no face or eyes, Sage could feel it staring. A sense of deep aggression weighed upon him and at that point he released the spirit back into the swirling water. The ghostly shape was drawn back into the spinning whirlpool and disappeared once more. Sage waited to make sure nothing else weird happened and then drew his consciousness back out of the ring.

Hah, a Soul Locker!

Sage had heard of such items before, but they were quite uncommon. In essence, they were basically a Storage Bag or Beast Bag, but for ghosts, spirits, and souls. A Storage Bag was an extradimensional space, but had no other requirements. Then there was Beast Bags, which had to get air and Qi from the outside world to sustain the living things inside. They were also rated by the maximum power and intellect of a creature that they could store. It wasn’t just a strict measure of intellect or force either, it was something to do with the inherent nature of the beast. It was for this reason that people couldn’t be stored inside Beast Bags, nor could things like Dragons or other high ranking beasts. A mutated crocodile that had reached rank 6 could be held in a bag, but a newborn baby could not. It was an unusual rule of the world that not many knew how it worked.

A Soul Locker was equally mysterious. Soul Cultivators were rare and so were the devices and tools that they used. Keeping spirits contained had its own special requirements, and it was something Sage had no concrete knowledge of. As such, he had no idea what went into crafting the Peach Ring. At the very least, it seemed he could use the Soul Locker, but as he saw it did not give the owner any control over the spirits it contained. It reminded him of the cages for Demonic Beasts. Even if you bought a cage with a beast inside, it only contained them, it didn’t give you a method to control them. The Soul Locker was pretty useless to him as this point as he couldn’t really make use of the spirits. Well, that’s not true… he could feed them to his Twin Soul.

Putting aside that wasteful thought, he left the Universe Ring and finished cleaning up the mess that was the destroyed Slaver compound. He didn’t want to leave a bunch of unactivated traps, nor did he want there to be a huge underground maze just waiting for bandits to start living in it. Once they’d finished demolishing the greater portion of it, he took the remainder of the two Legions and arranged their march. A few days later they returned to Lionheart Town and regrouped with Black Saber and Wu Chang. The new Legions performed pretty well, and Sage’s side had suffered the worst, losing nearly half a Legion in the two confrontations. They accepted the losses and reorganized the troops, forming five strong legions.

Sage was satisfied with the results of their actions, nearly wiping out the slave dealers in the 10,000 Wave Province and fulfilling Wu Chang’s conditions to join the Jade Horde. They’d also expanded one legion into five by recruiting city guards from Lionheart Town and there were even more being trained. That raised their strength from 3 legions up to 8 legions and quite close to the 10 legions that Sage was aiming for. Of course, he didn’t want to restrict the growth of his force, but if they got too large it would draw too much attention. Not to mention they needed more powerhouse cultivators to lead the large units.

“Haha, well done! I feel quite relaxed now that we’ve cleaned up the province! My dream has been realized after so long.”

Wu Chang was all smiles, clapping people on the back and ordering the serving staff to prepare a great feast. Just like a conqueror returning successfully from war, he declared a holiday in Lionheart Town and sent people out to start decorating the streets with colorful paper lanterns. Surprisingly, the usually dour Black Saber seemed moved by Wu Chang’s excitement. He was smiling and brought out one of his favorite expensive liquors to celebrate with Wu Chang while the banquet was being prepared.

Sage joined in with the festivities and he brought King, Ruanfu and their partners out to join in the fun. Many people were freed by both his unit and the other four legions, but Sage kept the others within the Universe Ring as he hadn’t yet decided what to do with them. After a night of celebrating he locked himself into a room to cultivate, something that the hungover Wu Chang and Black Saber copied him to do, taking a day to recuperate. King and his women went back to the Inner World so he could arrange five more weddings. Ruanfu took Wanqian Lei into Lionheart Town to play, making the boy carry her shopping bags and see the sights with her.

Sage went into the Universe Ring again to speak to Chushou Feng, checking up on the status of the people they’d freed. The Hoplite village leader smiled with his exceedingly creepy tentacle lips, “So far we’ve learned that most of them were sent to that slaver group by the Hatchet Gang. Gambling debts, enmities, and plenty of other bad decisions led to them ending up in the hands of the Hatchet Gang. What would you like us to do with them now, Sir?”

Sage wasn’t quite sure himself. They were lacking a human population in the Inner World, but it was definitely not fair to send people to a completely different world without their consent. Certainly, it was far better than a life as a slave, but the Inner World was still a savage wilderness. He also didn’t want to just release them directly as their time in the Universe Ring would certainly raise suspicion.

Seems I have no choice but to use that method.

Sage let out an uneasy sigh before responding, “Bring those that are healthy to me, one at a time.”

Despite how creepy he sounded, he wasn’t violating anyone, at least not physically. Instead, he loosened the Human Seal and his eyes shifted to that strange vertically slit configuration. The ellipsis was wide in the center like a normal circular pupil was overlaid upon it. Around that black pupil was a narrow red outline, and as soon as the first person entered the room with him, a yellow glow came from his eyes and that circular black area in the center of his vertical pupils started to undulate from side to side.

The Hypnotic Eye. The ability he’d gained from that strange toad, and one which was a violation of a person’s mind. He tried to use it as sparingly as possible, considering it could completely subvert a person’s free will. Those who were one rank lower than him could be mesmerized when their eyes met. While mesmerized, if they were two ranks lower he could even implant hypnotic suggestions, and if they were three ranks lower he had nearly complete control, as long as they weren’t performing any actions harmful to themselves at least. Their subconscious mind would shock them back to awareness if he tried to make them do anything truly abhorrent to their sensibilities.

Considering that the vast majority of these captives were normal people, it was pretty trivial for him to make them forget what they’d seen. They would only remember being saved by the Jade Horde from the Slaver Outpost and then wake up outside Lionheart Town being escorted by some Hoplites. There were only a few of the people that were rank 2 and only a single one of the people was at rank 3 and outside of Sage’s complete control. For that man Sage implanted the suggestion that he’d been drugged and heavily injured. He told him he was in deep shock and that is why he only remembered the Hoplite camp and not the journey back to town.

It wasn’t perfect, but he was the only witness. Even if he did piece his memories back together again later, the other people who were freed couldn’t corroborate his story and what would he get out of causing trouble with the City Lord of Lionheart Town?