Sage smiled at all these familiar faces in the room taking a moment to appreciate their achievements both internally and then verbally, “I am so very proud of how much you’ve all accomplished. I visited Golden Cricket Cove before returning and I’m quite happy to see that you not only implemented the plans we discussed but also made further improvements. You’ve all done a great job. I’ve also come bearing many gifts, but rather than explain them all one by one it will be far easier to just bring you all to your birthplace for a while.”

As he spoke he looked to each of his children and finally stopped on Yating, “Can you schedule a week for everyone in the clan to enter my Inner World? You can spread it out over a few months so nothing is compromised.”

The Clan Head nodded to him, “Shall we consider it as a reward for our actions against the Yi Yang Group?”

Sage smiled, “That would be perfect. Those who perform better will receive their gifts sooner than the others.”

“Perfect.”

Yating called the meeting to an end after a few more miscellaneous things were brought up. After the meeting he left quickly to avoid getting swarmed by everyone at once. Instead he went directly back to his own house, one that he had only lived in a few years before leaving for the Depths. His wives usually stayed here and there was a whole staff taking care of the place even if neither of them were present. After hearing about the plans targeting the Yi Yang Group, Sage assumed Jiao was there personally plotting and Ling could be on any number of business trips. He could send them a message, but he was sure he’d have his hands full with private meetings for the next few days. After living together for hundreds of years, being apart for a few decades was nothing for them.

Walking into what should be his private study, Sage realized he wasn’t alone. He smiled and looked over to a shadowed corner, “Why do you always have to sneak up on me, Yahui?”

The person in question stepped out of the shadows and shook his head, “It’s not fair that you have people on duty being more alert of your surroundings than you are. I always used to scare you in your world.”

The two of them laughed and quickly moved on to the reason that Yahui had come here directly before the others even realized he’d left. Sage passed him a Storage Ring filled with Messaging Jades and ciphers for all the agents that he’d left in the Depths as well as contacts within the Prosperity Company branches he’d started there. As the spymaster of the Lang Clan, Yahui would take over everything he’d left down there.

I’m quite liking being the irresponsible grandpa type. It’s so nice to have a big responsible family to take over and do all the tedious work for me.

Outside of that deal for the Oyster growing technique, Sage didn’t really have any specific plans or plots for the agents he’d left in the Depths. They were mainly there to continue gathering information that the Lang Clan could use later. Not only was it a place where they could likely collect a lot of wealth from, the presence of so many other types of cultivators made it a great place to collect information on these other powers. The only real downside was the undersea environment meant they couldn’t get a real measure of the other cultivator’s abilities. There was no telling how many capabilities were made useless when they were all fighting under the sea. There were many of Sage’s abilities that were extremely weak or ineffective in the Depths and he was sure he wasn’t the only one.

They had to keep in mind that their intel on these other cultivators was limited in that way. Even so, it was a good source of information considering they had basically zero on these other groups otherwise. Sage was sure the ancestors knew more in this regard but they certainly weren’t sharing it. Since Sage still had no idea where they’d all come from or technically where the Depths even was, it wasn’t that unusual for them to be kept in the dark. It seemed that there was no worry of running into them in the Dou Kingdom or likely even in the whole of the Tianxia Empire. Sage could only guess it was one of those things deemed ‘above his pay grade’, information that was withheld from the whole of the Lang Clan for who knows how long because it was something out of their reach and would only serve to act as a distraction.

For all I know maybe some old head of the Lang Clan was tired of the comparisons and destroyed all the info so the later generations could feel they were at the top. Maybe the knowledge of how small they were in the world demoralized them?

Whatever the reason was, he always felt that knowledge was power. Collecting information on these other groups was never a bad thing in his eyes. What was more interesting was these other types of cultivators had their own equipment and consumables. It was highly possible that there were some interactions that could be used to their advantage. What if these other types of cultivators had weapons or items that could circumvent Formation Arrays or defensive Talismans? Not only would they need to be on guard against them, they could also use these weapons against their enemies in the Dou Kingdom. Even if it was unlikely for them to produce these items on their own without using other types of cultivation, they could still try and purchase them for emergencies.

They might also look into trading resources. There was a good chance that wherever these other cultivators were from, they’d have different common resources than the Lang Clan had access to. There was likely to be at least one or two resources that were common for these other cultivators that were rare for the Lang Clan and vice versa. The fee for a trip to the Depths was quite substantial, but as long as they could bring along enough storage treasures he was sure it could be worthwhile. It would be even easier if he were to go, but it runs into the same issue he had before. Sage didn’t want anyone to find out about his capabilities so he’d have to restrict his trades to more reasonable amounts. Some of the Lang Clan on the Inner World had discussed sending out proxies from their world to act as intermediaries to do the trades. Then he could collect far larger volumes without giving away his identity, but Sage was worried that even trading such large amounts of goods in a short span would be suspicious. He was already able to collect a large number of Spirit Pearls at every city of the Depths he visited. If he were to completely clean them out then he was pretty sure the locals would start talking to each other and realize something unusual was going on. It was perfectly acceptable to just do things in a normal fashion. Their profit margins might not be as high, but it would be much safer.

After Yahui left, the rest of his children started showing up one by one. Turns out they’d been arguing after the meeting left and finally had to draw straws to decide the order they got to visit him. He was actually pleasantly surprised to find out that out of the six who were paying him a visit tonight only two of them tried to push a secondary objective on him. Funny enough, it was Bingqing and Yujie, two of Jiao’s daughters.