The Clan Head turned his head to another person across the room who was also standing. As soon as he did, this grandchild of his spoke up, “The Yue Clan’s forces are spread thin dealing with many bandit attacks upon their properties and also disgruntled mercenaries that are claiming mistreatment on their previous jobs.”

Without the Inner World it might have taken Sage some time to realize what was going on, but with so much time on his hands he could go through all his detailed journals and he found what he was looking for. With his memory jogged by the journal he connected the dots.

Jiao is finally getting her revenge!

The Clan that Jiao grew up in, the Zhu, had a deep seated rivalry with another Clan, the Yue. The Zhu raised and trained their women to be beautiful wives, marrying into other clans and gaining them influence throughout the world. The Yue Clan, on the other hand, also focused on manipulating others to their bidding, but they did it in a far less pleasant fashion. The members of their clan didn’t rely on their beautiful looks and sweet words. Instead they were masters of bewitching minds. Rather than catching flies with honey, they just rewrote their brains and made them believe anything they wanted. It was so terrifying to some that no analogy could do it justice. Suffice it to say, those who knew of them feared them, or loved them, because it was already too late.

Sage had once chanced upon Jiao when she was taking down one of the businesses owned by the Yi Yang Group. This group was created by the Yue Clan, in much the same way that Sage had built the Prosperity Company. The difference being that the Yi Yang Group was just as crooked as the Yue Clan and they frequently hired shady characters and gangs to help improve their business deals. The Yue Clan and Zhu Clan were rivals because of the numerous times they clashed over important people. They both liked to target the same sorts of young geniuses that would grow into important and powerful figures. Competing over the same ‘resources’ again and again put them at odds with each other.

With these plans already set in motion, Sage wasn’t going to go out of his way to stop or even disrupt them. While he was curious what set the Lang Clan against them, he was pretty sure that his wife, Jiao, had something to do with it. She might not even have caused it directly. It was far more likely she’d just told her children many stories to villainize the Yue and Yi Yang Group when they were younger and now that they’d finally run into them they were pleased to find a good target. While Sage had always wanted to keep a low profile and tried to instill these same values into his family he knew that many of them were hot-blooded and eager to show off their strength. The best he could do was to keep them from acting arrogantly to strangers. He had told them many stories and tested them all many times to make sure they didn’t break this one iron rule of his for them.

If they wished to try their luck against a stronger foe they knew he wasn’t going to stop them. The important part was to know the target and their capabilities. It was a bit of knowledge from Sun Tzu’s Art of War that he aimed to instill in them. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. In this world where any random beggar on the street could turn out to be a full blown Immortal in disguise, it was very foolish to bully strangers. Only when you knew who you were talking to and their background should you ever dare to show arrogance.

They’re showing such care and restraint. We sure raised them well.

He thought about offering his own assistance and using the Purple Mist Sect to immediately destroy the Yue Clan and Yi Yang Group, but he quickly discarded the idea. It was better to let the Lang Clan stand on its own. This was especially true because he knew his own leadership qualities were lacking. They were probably his second worst quality behind his social skills. While he had many thousands of years on the Inner World to socialize, it was not an area he cared about. The only people he cared about there were his own family and he had no need to befriend them and carouse. He was their ancestor and overlord of the world they lived in. He was already competent enough at workplace style interactions and polite smalltalk. After his family were sent out he realized he’d become a lot more distant and neglected socializing. Outside of the parties and day to day, he’d rarely spent any time with others.

Eh, seems all those bugs I merged with have rubbed off a little. I’ll need to be conscious of this change and work to rectify it.

Sage changed his schedule on the Inner World to include time for socializing while the meeting continued. There were a few other minor actions that the Clan was taking and there were researchers on the Inner World that were recording every detail for analysis. In fact, he was sure they’d be able to give suggestions and improvements to the Clans plans before the meeting finished if it weren’t for the fact that their data on the Clan was out of date. Everything discussed in the meeting would help patch this hole, but they also needed to collect some specific details once the meeting was finished. They had a running list of everything they needed to know and Sage would pass it over later.

After a few hours of talking the many issues and concerns that the Clan had called the meeting to address were discussed and what followed was a few hours of debate over a few controversial issues within the Clan. The first was a dispute between two of the younger generations over who had the right to court a woman from another group in Lionheart Town. Nobody in the room cared about the issue except the two young men and two of Sage’s grandchildren that seemed dead set on securing rights for their favored descendants. It was somewhat amusing for them to argue over something so silly for the first ten minutes, but once it reached the half-hour mark Yating threatened to punish both of them and their descendants if they didn’t shut up. Their faces went red with embarrassment and the others in the meeting quickly put forth solutions. The whole nonsense about ‘right to court’ was thrown out as a waste of time and the two Elders on this council were given some punishments for bringing it up.

Finally, the Clan Head turned his gaze towards Sage and gave him the permission he was looking for. Funny that he now had to get permission from his Son to take over the meeting, but it was also very rewarding. Sage rose from his seat and looked over all these descendants of his. Then, he smiled and shared why he’d returned.