During the almost eight hundred years that Bai Qi cultivated, sought knowledge, fought countless beings, and even ruled, he had been considered a righteous cultivator. Himself? He considered that he wasn't evil, and that was good enough. He never had the goals or mindset of a saint, and even if he did something on the extremes of what one of them would do... It was always because of pure self-interest. Be it knowledge, connections, material goods, or even just because he felt like it.

During the few months, not even a year of his life as Wu Guang, he continued to act and think in the same manner. Granted, something did change inside him while absorbing Wu Guang's memories and remaining consciousness, but the change was akin to a ripple in an enormous lake. One that had been completely calmed after entering the Soul realm.

Even so, now that he rushed to what could be possibly his last battle, considering that his body could not currently resist him using anything more powerful than his cultivation allowed for... He was absolutely calm, having accepted that it was something that he must do.

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What had happened just a few minutes before, while he intended to return to the beach came from the 'Demonic Plateau'.

Part of the mission or favor asked by Chen Jiahao was to keep a look at it, especially during the Death Rain. And Wu Guang had decided to accomplish it with methods that no one would expect. As always.

He set up an alarm formation, one that would allow him to immediately sense, count, locate, and possibly even identify any being that crossed the line, just about three hundred feet from the cliff's base. And the alarm had just reached him.

Surprisingly, however surprising could be anything that came from the insane minds of the Eagles, the formation showed him that it was being crossed from... inside. It should have been impossible, considering the unclimbable cliff, and the plateau that even without death rain was deadly to cultivators, but what if it wasn't a cultivator, or in fact, was not even a living being?

Indeed, what Wu Guang had sensed were undeath.

He would have ignored such a threat as he knew the level of this plane undeath, but...

***

The Eagle Kingdom had created, used, and continued to enact an enormous amount of plans.

Some whereas simple and expected as the small groups of ships that blocked Half-Island from its more logical allies, Green Pastures and Fiery Island. Some were more advanced, using the Black Eagles to destabilize the powers or to find traitors amongst the defenders.

Some of these plans were the doings of the recent years or even months. And some, like the Wang family that had lived on the island and even formed part of one of its main powers dated back to the first months after the Islands War.

As expected, not every one of these plans worked out as intended, and some weren't even used. Still, there was only one plan that had been called out as unacceptable even by Wang Zuo, the leader of the Black Eagles.

And yet, that exact plan was the one set in motion and reaching its peak phase at this moment...

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*Splat*

Du Tao chuckled seeing how another one of the slow and dumb reanimated corpses fell down from the nearly two thousand feet tall cliff.

The first 'undeath' had broken into pieces from the fall, but with more and more jumping down, something akin to a cushion had been formed, one that allowed the following up to land without breaking... too much.

"From this moment, the plan will go along on its own. There should be no one coming close now, and even if someone did by accident, the amount is enough to require an entire extermination unit. Not that it would change anything..." Du Tao turned towards his two companions and continued

"It's time for us to move out"

"Where to?" A woman's voice asked.

"To the Mountains. The Prime Minister orders were clear, activate the plan, and then dispose of every Black Eagle and their local pets that took part in it"

"Un" The cloak rustled as if she had nodded, and after a brief moment, the three of them left, moving towards the east.

***

"Haa..." Wu Guang exhaled heavily stopping just two miles from where he sensed that the formation had, and continued to be breached right now.

Not wanting to risk his already dangerous condition, he had not used movement techniques, preferring to use only the one that his body allowed. Thankfully it seemed he still was in time, as he had not seen or sensed any of the undeath yet. Which meant that they were massing near the cliff.

"Now the question is what's their objective, and if the three bastards are still here" Wu Guang muttered while sitting down and slowly beginning to prepare. The fact that the formation was still active, meant that no one stronger than the 2nd level Sage had appeared. Even so, the current Wu Guang would be probably not a match for him, at least in combat. But if he managed to glean into their plans, and maybe arrange some incidents, there was a chance for him to stall enough for at least someone to arrive.

He did not want to think that everyone may have died, but even in that case, Rui Qingkai would arrive at the beach at some point to check. For some reason, he had not received, or not answered the glyph that Wu Guang sent during the battle, and this meant that he was in the dark about the situation.

Whatever he saw or found on his arrival, he would try to search for Wu Guang. And Wu Guang had made sure to leave some tracks of his qi for the Senior to follow.

It took almost half an hour for Wu Guang to prepare and disguise his senses enough to allow him to spy on the location where the undeath, and probably the Eagles were. The former was because he intended to use them from almost two miles, out of the Sage realm normal reach, while the latter was to avoid being found out. After all, he simply would be not able to seriously fight back, at least not without risking turning into a cripple.

Not to mention that he wanted to remain concealed and try to learn about the objective of bringing undeath here on the wildlands. They were not strong enough to pose a threat to an experienced mortal, and then numbers that had crossed the alarm formation were lower than a thousand, so why even bother?

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Creating, stealing, and transporting the undeath should have been an almost impossible task. Still, the people who were behind it managed to get a few thousand of them unto the Demonic Plateau, via a pass in the Great Mountains that even the local people did not know about. Before continuing, each corpse had been covered with a mixture made of Heaven's Rock, allowing them not only to resist the inevitable 'Death Rain', but also gather a fair amount of it in a pair of special containers attached to their backs.

Then the undeath, infused with the simplest commands were sent to walk in an almost straight line. As the Plateau was impossible to trudge for cultivators because of their qi not being replenished and techniques not working, it was a blind play. Still, somehow it succeeded. Some of the undeath fell, most probably because the fake life force that sustained them had seeped out, but still, almost two thousand had arrived at the edge of the Plateau and continued walking - falling from the cliff.

From there, their last command would make the still moving ones gather on a spot.

One could think that there was no true reason for this plan, the strength of the undeath considered, but...

The reason was not combat or deception, no, it was to bring the poisonous death rain out...

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"Why they would do something like this?" Wu Guang muttered while observing the half-rotten corpses, which had been broken and corroded even more during their long trek gather into a single group.

He could simply not understand the reason for such a thing to be done. Granted, the death rain was supposedly extremely poisonous and could dissolve almost anything, but...

Even with each undeath only carrying out some of it more than half of it was being lost in the fall. It would not be enough to do any serious damage, would it be?

***

The answer came in the most unpleasant manner possible, with a greenish, foul-smelling drop falling near Wu Guang's position, an entire mile from the corpses...

*Pshhh*

Just a breath later, a new drop fell from the skies and Wu Guang raised his head in alarm

"WHAT?!" He could not help to exclaim, as the red clouds that supposedly only appeared over the 'Demonic Plateau' had inched closer!

He immediately moved back and without caring for his body extended his aura to the sides. The line of clouds had indeed moved slightly, but only in the half-mile occupied by the undeath.

There was no time to guess how, or why... If the undeath were not eliminated and the clouds followed them, that would mean that the remnant days of the death rain would cover the Wildlands!

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Such was the plan that Prime Minister Kiang had sent his own men to enforce.

Concocted by the Black Eagles, the actual way to manipulate the clouds had come from the Venerable All-Seeing himself. No one knew, and probably no one would ever know why the latter was so interested in the Death Rain, ordering some to be brought to him, but... When he proclaimed that a single bucket of this strange substance was enough to call upon the clouds, somehow no one had doubted him.

The plan was later canceled, on the premise that if the Death Rain covered the Wildlands, a big part of the habitable territory, meant for their people, would turn into a wasteland or worse...

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Wu Guang's mind raced but he could not find any realistic way of action.

Destroying them was easy, but that was on the premise that the containers on their backs did not spill over the attacker.

And even if he destroyed some of them while avoiding the death rain, how was he supposed to deal with the hundreds of them?

And the worse part was that Wu Guang could not say if the clouds followed the undeath, or they followed the death rain on them.

That meant that he had to deal with both the Undeath and the Death Rain.

"Primal magma!" Suddenly an idea appeared in his already tired mind. He had a good amount of it and like any extreme yang...

Without losing time, Wu Guang called out for a small blob of the magma that practically filled up his Void pool and after singling out one of the sparse death raindrops falling a few dozens of feet from him, threw the magma against it...

*PsssPSShhh*

"Now if I just could..." Finding out that he had at least some manner to counteract the Death Rain, Wu Guang decided to act.

He knew that it would be an extremely arduous task, one that his body would probably not resist. After all, the amount of magma he had was by far not enough...

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Six hours later, Same spot.

Smoldering rocks...

Signs of explosions...

A noxious greenish vapor...

Pieces of bone...

Scorched marks visible even on the black cliff...

And a young man dressed in common grey robes amidst all the destruction, strewn on the ground and showing no signs of life...

"Wu Guang!" A raspy voice was heard, and just a moment later a figure appeared in the distance.

"Wu Guang!" The voice was heard again, and the figure grew closer.

At this point, one would see that the figure, wrapped in some old cloth was not walking on the ground, no, but the very air itself!

A few moments later, it probably saw the scene of the battle, as now silently the figure began moving, almost running through the air towards the young man.

And without slowing down, heavily landed.

*Thump*

"Alive!" An almost joyful exclamation was heard as the figure bent down and examined the man's body.

"I need to get him to her. If we can not help, then she ought to know who can" A quick, worried mutter followed the examination and the figure gently placed the body on its shoulder and took flight, disappearing towards the east...

There weren't any observers, but if by some chance there was one, then probably the person would be extremely shocked after seeing the scaly extremities that had extended from below the cloth...