For others, the miasma was extremely terrible, and the whole place felt like immediate death no matter where it was tested. During those times of weakness every few decades, there would be areas of weakness and cultivators would choose them as their point of entry. Obviously, Sage started his search with the areas that didn’t get weakened, and roamed around the perimeter of the poison miasma. While collecting Seething Purple Cobras, he also took note of the strength of the poison.

Once he’d basically done a full lap, there were hundreds of cobras sent to the Inner World, with dozens of them at the sixth tier. His Soul Clone was waiting for them on the island of poison miasma, capturing them, applying Human Seals and starting to indoctrinate them. They could remain a prisoner, trapped in a human body, or they could become his subordinate, given control of their own seal and joining a new Sect. In the last conflict, the Dragoons were of limited use. While their physical features and undying loyalty were definitely an improvement over the Hoplites, they were still a species of weak bugs that he’d modified. As he learned more about Bloodlines, Sage realized he didn’t know enough to push the Dragoons much further.

He thought about formally recruiting and training the Human Cultivators. Many of them had made a good showing during the battle, but the majority of them had already left. They fulfilled their part of the deal and earned themselves their freedom in the outside world. Thousands of years had already passed on the Inner World since that battle, so for most of the humans it was now a distant memory. Especially since Ruanfu and the other Tiankongs hadn’t returned. The other problem with human cultivators was that it wasn’t assured they would ever get past the fifth rank. Without any systematic study of laws, there was no guaranteed path to power.

On the other hand, for Demonic Beasts, those with strong bloodlines were all but guaranteed to reach a certain tier once they had spent enough time accumulating resources. All they had to do was keep eating other demonic beasts and building up their energy. Now that Sage had found the Seething Purple Cobra that could reach tier 6 with the Poison Miasma, why wouldn’t he capture them all and put them to work! The Soul Clone started to train the cobras, building a Sect from the ground up. He formed a large ring of mountains on the Insect Continent, with the miasma trapped in the valley between them. This continent was completely overrun with plants and all the many insect and animal species that Sage had gathered. Dragoon City was at the other side of the continent, the place where many millions of Dragoons lived and trained.

While he was here, he also captured a hundred or so Thousand Quill Blue Dogs. They were given a similar treatment as the Seething Purple Cobras, but they weren’t going to join his new Sect. They were sent to the Prosperity Company to act as guards and security forces.

Dogs can be tamed easier than other animals, right?

Given the huge amount of Poison Miasma, Sage felt the Seething Purple Cobras were more deadly than the dogs, so he made them the main focus for his Sect. If there were any problems for the Prosperity Company, the Soul Clone could just head over and resolve them, but he only sent the Thousand Quill Blue Dogs over to the Prosperity Company after carefully testing their loyalty. It wasn’t foolproof like the Hoplites, but they were given contracts that guaranteed their offspring would be free. They were also given generous terms as guards. In exchange for their Human Seals they had to work for the company for a century and then they would be free. Since Demonic Beasts had a lifespan measured in the millennia, it was a great deal for them. Sage figured that after working for the Prosperity Company for a century, most of them would already be used to it and keep working for a larger salary.

Back in the outside world, Sage had finished his lap and now had a good idea of the strength of the Poison Miasma and started to explore the zones that were the most powerful. After a few days of searching he narrowed it down to two areas with the greatest concentration and slowed down again to carefully scour the mile wide areas.

Ahh, I think I’ve narrowed it down. It seems to be emitting from the two strongest dens of Seething Purple Cobras.

He’d already caught all the cobras, but the two strongest groups happened to originate from these two zones of strongest concentration. It was possible the cobras were the cause, but he found that unlikely. He figured it was the other way around and the cobras were the strongest because they’d made this place their den. He gazed down into one of the holes and then leaped inside. The Seething Purple Cobras were about the same size as a King Cobra from earth, thin as a wrist and a dozen feet long. Even with a dozen of them making this a home, the hole wasn’t very large, so Sage had to start doing some excavating. He brought out his Blacksilver Pawns and combined them into the Knight to start doing some heavy lifting. The hole wasn’t large enough for so many bodies at the same time. After a few minutes of work, he found what he was looking for.

There was a small crack at the deepest part of the snake nest, and he could feel the poison miasma emitting from it. With the confirmation of what he was looking for, the Blacksilver Knight picked up the pace, smashing apart the surrounding rock and soil, bashing the place apart and chasing the source of the small crack. Rock and soil was blasted away, transforming the small hole and smaller crack into a twenty foot deep pit. The crack was continuously excavated, cracking the rocks and then tearing them back to keep following the trail. Then the Blacksilver Knight cleared away the rubble in the surrounding area to clear a path and started back on widening the crack. There was a loud crash and the latest rock was broken in half, but unlike before the floodgates seemed to be opened. The small crack was no longer small, and a head sized hole was formed on the side of a rock which suddenly emitted a powerful gust of the poison miasma.

The miasma was not a form of gas, but it seemed to move around like one, pouring out in great quantities from this hole. The sudden explosion of thick miasma was startling, but given that it didn’t actually have any physical form to it, the Blacksilver Knight wasn’t actually impeded by it. Without having any internal organs, the Knight was completely unaffected and reached into the hole. It grabbed the rock on one side and pried upon it, tearing out a large chunk. Then it continued the process, pulling off more rocks and widening the hole. The rocks that it tore off were tossed aside and while watching Sage noticed that the most recent rocks were not the same as the others.

With a little bit of Spirit Power, one of the rocks flew over to him, floating in front of him so he could get a good look. The outer surface, like what the Knight was seeing, was rough and unfinished, but on the opposite side of the rock, it had a smooth surface that was inscribed with small characters. Sage used his Spirit Power to guide a bit of Qi into the characters and he felt the remnant energy of a formation. If there was a chamber with a formation array around it, there was definitely something important here.