Sage learned of the issues facing Wu Chang and let him handle the fallout as delicately as possible. Given his position as the City Lord for so many years, he would have a much greater handle on the political situation and etiquette than Sage did. Sage urged Wu Chang to buy them as much time as possible. He didn’t have to appease them, he just had to keep them from ganging up together and launching an attack.

They needed to buy time to build their foundations in Lionheart Town. The main reason they’d staged those attacks had been to pull Wu Chang to their side. If that action also got them kicked out of Lionheart Town it would be pretty counter-productive. Especially considering the main reason he went so far out of his way to recruit Wu Chang was to get control of Lionheart Town! Sage sent a few Falcons to the two counties that were in opposition to them, urging them to rapidly gather information about the Prefects, their backgrounds, and the strength of the counties.

Owning a city was a lot of work, but it also produced a lot of wealth. County Prefect’s were even more powerful. County Prefects, just like big clans, had their own cities. The county capitals, as they were known, were cities many times larger than normal. In addition, they collected taxes and resources from their subordinate cities. The wealth of a Prefect was many times larger than that of a City Lord. Usually their individual strength wasn’t that much greater than a City Lord, but they had larger forces and more money to throw at their problems.

The Prefects are angry at losing a source of revenue. Their benefits have been affected.

Sage knew that in order to placate the two Prefects, they would need to make up for their loss of benefits. It was quite likely they only cared because the slaver group in their territory was giving them a cut of the profits they made.

Heh, they might even have extorted the slavers into giving them a cut! Who knows how many of these ‘honorable leaders’ are just big gangsters.

Even if they were just officially recognized gangsters, they were still powerful and Sage would have to find a method to placate them. Unfortunately, he’d already used most of his simple ideas to build businesses at the Holy Flame Sect. If he were to start reproducing the same items here, he’d be giving away clues to his identity and creating hidden enemies for himself. The problem of outfitting the Jade Horde had been solved with the income from the Cloudmetal Charcoal mine, but they had just used up their full inventory creating weapons to equip the five thousand members of the Jade Horde they’d just finished training. They were working now to rebuild their stockpile and fulfill the orders for the Cloudmetal Consortium.

When combined with the million Spirit Stones that were owed by Wu Chang to the Hatchet Gang and Artful Life Alliance, Sage was pressured by the lack of funds. It was possible he could gather a large amount of Spirit Stones by sending a message to Wan Ling. He was quite sure that the Prosperity Company was making piles of money due to their direct partnership with the Holy Flame Sect. The only problem would be that such funds would be hard to explain. The company had likely grown much larger and if they were to send a large amount of capital somewhere it was possible to leave a trail pointing directly to Sage.

Too bad I didn’t save some of those ideas for now. Time to pawn something…

Of course, he didn’t actually head to a pawn shop. He told Black Saber and Wu Chang to hold out for a few months and he would return with funds. After that he matured a large Chameleon Mantis and then entered its newly created internal space. He set the Mantis on a trip towards the capital of 10,000 Wave Province. The larger a city was, the more wealthy the inhabitants would be. On the way, he entered the Universe Ring and went to check Hei Bai’s Storage Ring. He’d already sold most of his valuable goods at that auction before his Human Seal was exposed. Since then he hadn’t really built anything valuable that wasn’t now being produced by the Jade Horde. Hopefully, the ‘necromancer’ didn’t let him down.

Sage sent his consciousness into the Storage Ring, looking into the extradimensional space. The ring had the markings of a standard style, but upon seeing the inside, it was far larger than Sage thought. The outside of the ring had been modified not to reflect the true inner dimensions. The ‘standard’ and smallest Storage Ring was about the size of a closet, 6ft or so tall with a 3 by 6 inner area and cost about 4000 Spirit Stones. A large ring, like what this was marked as, was about double that size. Creating a pleasing 6ft cube within. A Storage Ring had a small round setting like a signet, which is where the special material that created the space was at. Since most of them seemed to come from the same group, people learned to recognize their capacity by their design.

The band of a small storage ring was smooth and unadorned. Those with large spaces would have a sort of braided rope design on the band. Each strand that the rope was braided with signified a 6 foot cube of space within. A single cube space would just consist of the ring’s band being twisted without any extra strands. This specific ring had four strands in the braid, so Sage had assumed it would have four cubes within. He was expecting to see a space with a 12 by 12 floor and a 6 ft height. Instead he was amazed to see a space with a 36 by 36 floor, to a height of 18 ft. Surprised, he exited the ring without even looking at the loot inside and examining the ring again. A closer look showed a tiny design had been engraved onto each of the strands of the ring band like tiny vines. That vine-like design reminded him of the look of the 27 strand braid ‘Full Cube’ Storage Ring. The ‘Full Cube’ was a 3 by 3 array of 6 foot cubes. Only then did he realize the subtle marking on the Storage Ring was actually signifying that it was four ‘Full Cube’ spaces instead of four single cubes.

Not counting the sliver of the Universe Ring, he’d never seen a Storage Ring this large. He didn’t realize what he had until just now. Only then did he break into laughter. A Storage Ring that could hold four full cubes was valued around 1 million Spirit Stones. Just by selling the ring he could completely solve Wu Chang’s debt to stabilize Lionheart Town, or make a significant bribe to those Prefects. He laughed crazily for a minute till he thought about the Universe Ring itself.

Wait… how much could I get for the Universe Ring?

Sage quickly put aside that thought. The assistance he’d gained from Tao Ba had been priceless already, and he felt that he’d only seen the tip of the iceberg. Even without thinking about how it was entrusted to him by the Lang Clan Ancestor, he wouldn’t wish to even let others know about such a valuable item, let alone sell it.

Now, in a much better mood, Sage delved into the Storage Ring and took a look around at the treasure that Hei had collected.