Again? How many body parts is this weirdo gonna grow?

Since the condition was dire enough for Venerable Surari to use another of his hidden cards, then that meant Sage was already pushing him too far. The point of the monk’s move would be to free him from the current situation. As such, Sage would be foolish to give the monk what he wanted. Instead of changing his tactics, he kept doing the same thing without interruption to keep the pressure up. If this new move was going to help Surari to fight back, then Sage wasn’t going to make it easy on him. If he wanted to break out of the webs, then he’d have to overcome the many strings of silk that Sage was constantly layering upon him.

Unexpectedly, the two new heads that Surari spawned weren’t intended to break him out of the webbing. At least not directly. Instead, the two heads opened their eyes and stared at Sage, opening their mouths to release a loud shout. This sudden yell ignored the webs and struck Sage through his ears. Worst yet, it wasn’t just a wave of sound. If that was the case, then all the Sage would have to worry about would be losing his hearing. Instead, the sound was just a carrier for a more insidious attack. A wave of energy penetrated into his body and shot towards his Nascent Soul. Sage’s soul resisted the incoming attack, but the golden wave of energy broke through and entered Sage’s Spiritual Sea inside his Nascent Soul.

Upon reaching the sixth rank, the Spiritual Sea, and Core would merge into the Soul to form a Nascent Soul. This made it much harder for spirit based attacks to harm the mind, but it also meant that if they were successful they’d do far more damage because the Spiritual Sea, and the mind, were now part of the Nascent Soul. Damage to one meant damage to all. When the gold wave of energy entered Sage’s Spiritual Sea it transformed into a golden buddha. A huge giant landed upon the sea, standing upon the choppy water and slowly marching towards the island at the center with his palms pressed together and his bald head shining brightly.

The monk walked up to the gates of the castle and after giving a push they swung open. The giant monk shrunk in size so it could fit through the gates. It walked inside and into the hallway with its head nearly scraping the ceiling. Stomping inside, the large buddha smiled as it turned the corner but ended up in a hallway. It walked to the end of the hall and ran into a fork. It went to the left and walked down toward another fork. The happy smile of success slowly faded the longer it stomped around.

Outside Sage’s body, Venerable Surari’s two extra heads stopped yelling and tears of blood ran from the eyes of each of the three heads. Sage smiled at the monk, seeming quite unaffected by the man’s mental attack.

“How? What did you do?”

Sage didn’t bother to reply to the monk, and continued to run circles around him releasing more and more webbing. In combination with the Formation Array, Surari soon lost all ability to resist. It took a few minutes for the situation to turn from advantage to complete incapacitation. The monk was completely encased with the webbing and nearly entombed in a silk cocoon. Surari could barely move his body, but even after all that time his mental attack was still unsuccessful. Sage’s Poison Qi had enough time to recover and he used it to paralyze the monk completely. Once enough of the Ruby Blood poison’s concentration had built up enough, the monk’s chanting came to a stop. The extra arms and heads slowly shifted back into a golden mist and the golden light strengthening his body faded.

Once his strength faded and his body was paralyzed, Sage threw the metal skinned monk into the Inner World. At that time the golden buddha still trampling around inside Sage’s mind started to shrink. It was actually quite commendable for that muscle brain to have a mental attack as a secret weapon. Nobody would expect such a thing from the monk who relied so much upon pure physical strength. It was just too bad for him that Sage’s Infinite Immaterial Palace was the most powerful against a single mental attack like that. The fortress in his Spiritual Sea was a giant maze on the inside. Instead of resisting a mental attack like that or facing it head on, the attack was just trapped inside his mind and left to wander inside a maze. It would eventually injure him, but as long as he could end the battle quickly enough a mental attack like that would lose its driving force.

It was sort of contrary to his usual fighting style, as his usual tactic of drawing out a fight until he could win by attrition would suddenly be put on a timer. Even so, it was better than having his mind seriously injured or destroyed. At least it bought him time to change his plans, and with the help of the Soul Clone on his Inner World there were many things he could do with even the smallest bit of time.

That's not how I was hoping that would go. Being respectful with these debtors doesn’t seem to work, and matching strength with them only seems to make it worse.

Sage realized that the only way to avoid a fight might be to show off his most powerful options right from the get go to terrify them into compliance. This was opposite to everything he knew about fighting. He’d always been careful not to reveal too many of his tricks in public. If he showed off his secrets, and those who saw it were still alive afterwards they could spread that knowledge around. If others knew what he could do, they could figure out how to counter him and his trump cards would lose their value. Yet, now it seemed the only way he could intimidate these debtors into paying without a fight was to awe them with overwhelming force. The only person who had voluntarily paid was the weakest one and the most scared of Sage strength.

Eh, it’s too small a sample size for this to be conclusive, but looks like I’ll have plenty of chances to test it out. Then again, if they fight back I can get everything they’ve got instead of just what they owe. Hmm, if I threaten them hard enough then it’s possible to get everything as well.

Resolving to do more testing, Sage went back into the pagoda where Venerable Surari lived, ignoring the dirty looks as he returned exactly to the room of the monk and collecting the secret hiding spots that Surari had left behind. On the Inner World, Surari was even more helpless than he’d been at the end of the fight and the only way out for him was to spill all his secrets. They started by telling him there was no way off of this new world, to give the monk hope for survival. If there was no way that Surari could spread Sage’s secrets then there was a chance he could keep his life. Surari wasn’t a fool and he knew that most people wouldn’t hesitate to kill in order to keep their secrets from being revealed to the public. While he wasn’t thrilled to be trapped in another world, it meant there was a chance for him to live through this.

It was only after giving Surari hope for survival that they started to threaten him with torture to get the information they were looking for.