Xiezi had a flat look on her face. She merely nodded her head and then rose to her feet, climbing out of the bed she’d been recuperating on.

“Let me out of here.”

“When we reach Golden Cricket C-,” as Sage spoke, he was interrupted by Xiezi.

“Now.”

Tujiu flew down to the ground. Sage and Xiezi appeared next to him. Sage bowed his head, “Tujiu can take you home.”

Xiezi shook her head. She looked around at their surroundings for a minute before turning around and walking away. Sage was about to offer to send others instead, but he held his tongue. She was a Core Formation Cultivator, and while Hei Bai had outclassed her, there were only a few hundred people per province that could compete with her. As long as she stayed away from any powerful Demonic Beasts she was pretty safe. She was actually safer than going with Tujiu, since flying high in the air meant people could see them from many miles away.

With Xiezi leaving them, Sage hopped up onto Tujiu’s back and asked him to continue. Sage was in no mood to waste time, so they flew directly towards the nearest Merciful Mollusk Transportation Point. For some reason, they only seemed to exist within 10,000 Wave Province, which meant they had to travel through Righteous Wind Province first. Even so, it would cut out half of their travel time back to Lionheart Town. The Merciful Mollusk was truly strange. For an organization as powerful as they seemed, why was it that they were restricted to a single province? What was their relationship with the Chong Clan? Were they hidden from them? Were they known to the other first rate powers?

A few weeks later they paid a fee and traveled through the Transportation Array to a place a few hours from Lionheart Town. They flew back and were pleased to see that everything was still standing. They hadn’t received any messages of bad news, but they’d been gone a while, it was easy to worry. Once they touched down and Sage leapt off his back, Tujiu let out a loud sigh and switched to his human form, “Finally back! That took way too long!”

He’d been holding it in too long, the vulture was normally quite violent and easy to anger. Sage had put him on his best behavior so it had taken him quite some effort to hold in his comments whenever they were in a meeting or social event. The only reason he had agreed was that Sage told him he could skip his next two turns guarding Lionheart Town if he did his job properly. Now that he was back, that meant he could do whatever he wanted for a very long time!

Since he’d been gone for 2 years because of the incident with the Thundercloud Sect, Sage still had a lot of catching up to do with the many projects in Lionheart Town. He also had to ‘invent’ some more devices for Wan Ling to sell. While Lionheart Town was a good advertisement, the amount of customers that wished to rebuild a whole city were not going to be many. After Sage told her of everything that happened with the Chong Clan and at the Zhu Clan, her eyes narrowed.

“So, now you’ve gotten caught up in a war? How is that going to affect our business? Are they going to target Lionheart Town? Do we need to move our manufacturing facility again? Be straight with me. Should I go back to the Holy Flame Sect?”

“I don’t know. So far it seems like both factions of the Chong Clan are just trying to gain political support to make the other agree to their demands. Then again, it may just be the final build-up of force before war starts.”

He paused, thinking for a while, “Our defenses here are very strong, and I don’t think we’re even an important target. They might ignore us completely, or strike immediately to reduce the opposition’s allies. I think the former is more likely as they should know about how many Dragoons we have as well as the formations we built after taking back over. I tried to make it known that I don’t wish to participate. If they make a surprise attack on us, that would just drive me to support their opposition. We’re a hard target that isn’t very committed to the conflict. If they have any brains they’ll leave us alone, but the factions aren’t united.”

Wan Ling paced back and forth as he talked, “Sound like you’ve thought things through pretty well. So, do you want me to leave? We don’t own any towns or cities in the Holy Flame Sect to remodel, but there’s still a few of these ideas that I can do something with.”

“There is still so much we can do to expand here, but there is still risk involved. Hmm, what if you hide among the normal citizens? It’s considered acceptable if there is collateral damage in a battle between Cultivators, but they aren’t deliberately allowed to hurt mortals, and high rank fighters have to move their battles away from them. So, if anything happens, you just have to hide among the mortals. If we build an underground shelter, it should also protect you from most of the collateral damage.”

Wan Ling thought about it for a while, “Alright. That might work. We’ve barely made any headway here, it would be embarrassing to go back already. Now, can you get to work on some more of your weird magical devices? We need another big seller.”

While he was still a bit worried about what happened to Xiezi and what might happen with the Chong Clan factions, he didn’t feel like wasting any more time. He went back to his rooms in the Lang Clan Compound and started doing research. The only problem was that in the past he’d basically just adapted whatever device came into his head at the time and came up with a way to make it work as a magical tool. It was a little odd to be trying to innovate on purpose.

That said, he did have something he wanted to investigate, but it wasn’t a magical tool. Instead, it was something he’d been thinking about since he adapted the Fireflies into a light source. They were just like the Alarm Crickets that he’d got from his early years at the Holy Flame Sect. Insects used as tools. Visiting the Chong Clan had also reminded him of the Centipedes that the Wu Faction used. They were following this path, mutating their centipedes into weapons and armor. Yet, they didn’t seem to have the true Insect Immortal Index like he did. From what he guessed, they had an enhanced Mutate technique, and they had already created so many useful variants. With the full technique that he had, Sage was confident he could put them to shame.

Unfortunately, his research session was not as long as he wanted it to be. There was a massive booming noise that came from outside. The sound seemed like it came from far away, yet it was loud enough to make the room he was studying in shake. Heading outside, he saw that the Seven Layer Barrier around Lionheart Town had been activated. A brilliant purple light stained the sky. It came from the second layer of the barrier, the one at ten and a half miles which activated automatically anytime there was a large enough power approaching.

What the hell is that?