Returning to the job of a debt collector, Sage started to descend the Tianxia Capital once again. He’d put aside the jobs that Guan Zhenyan had arranged for him in order to pursue more information about the Ghostwood tree that ended up with only more questions that needed answering. It wasn’t all a loss though as he’d expanded the scope of knowledge available to the Inner World. Despite the high level of the Tianxia Capital, the techniques there weren’t strictly that much more powerful than those the Lang Clan already used. They had tens of thousands of years to improve them after all, so on a purely power and efficiency level it wasn’t a big jump.

Instead, it was more useful to open new doors of research. There were so many meridians in the body and Qi Pores for them to be emitted from that the number of resultant combinations was a number that needed scientific notation to properly quantify. When Qi Natures and other unusual Natural Treasures were also added into the mix it seemed there were infinite options for Cultivation and Qi Techniques. The library of techniques gave them many new starting points that were tried and true techniques. This drastically narrowed the possibilities for the researchers and made it into a new process of optimization and alteration rather than inventing whole new things from scratch.

Guan Zhenyan was not pleased by this all though, as Sage had skipped past multiple jobs on his rapid ascent to reach the Clear Sky Academy. Now that he was done, Sage descended a few thousand floors to pick up where he left off. He was still many thousands away from the level where Voctem had made his home, but it still took him many days to descend. Thankfully, the rate of descent was much quicker than the ascent as he’d already purchased the license to enter all these levels. When he was ascending to new levels, the main delay in the process was merely waiting in line to pay the fees for the next ten levels. Given the size of the levels and the flow of traffic, he could still only descend a certain number of levels in a day, so it still took some time to get back to where he left off.

Just like the last few debtors he’d collected for, Sage didn’t give his true purpose until he got closer and then suddenly released the team of eight from the Purple Mist Sect. Without an explanation he subdued the target as well as the three other people in the room, giving them no time to prepare a resistance. Unlike Count Voctem and Venerable Surari the last few debtors were like the first few in that they were uninteresting and barely worth mentioning. Especially after refining his tactics, even if they had some interesting techniques, Sage didn’t give them the time to show them off. Technically, if he allowed them to be the aggressor against him, he was then somewhat justified in defeating and capturing them. Even so, the process was so much more difficult if he let them attack first, and even if they didn’t attack it became a headache to try and recover what they owed to the ‘Dream Dealer’.

After intimidating the man they got enough resources out of him to trade for the value owed to Guan Zhenyan. Then they left in a flurry, moving on towards the next target. Sage didn’t waste any more time at this point, climbing dozens of levels a day and reaching a debtor once every few. After the rapid descent, he made a similarly rapid ascent until reaching level 19,046. This was the level that Guan Zhenyan had warned him about.

“Do you not understand who you’re dealing with? I’m a member of the Chain Ocean Palace,” the man gave Sage a wide smirk, waiting to see the fear and regret on Sage’s face. This look never came and Sage just chuckled, “Do you think I care who that is? I’m here on behalf of the Dream Dealer to collect on your debts. That is all that matters to me.”

The man was already subdued, poisoned and tied up, ready to be sent to the Inner World if necessary, but Sage was trying not to send any more of these offenders to the Inner World as it would just be introducing a new criminal and also letting these people know he had a storage treasure that could contain living beings. It would be even more apparent if they were on the Inner World for an extended period for interrogation as there would be a noticeable time difference. Instead, they kept them in the outside world, trapped and helpless while bringing out the contract from Guan Zhenyan. Then they started to take apart the debtor’s home, piece by piece. Not because they would find anything, but merely to apply psychological pressure as they removed the person’s storage treasures. If they did not submit to the intimidation, then forcibly broke the person’s connection to their storage treasures.

“You wouldn’t dare to break my connection with those! The Chain Ocean Palace would never let you off! It’s not just my things inside, you can’t mess it up!”

Sage merely gave the man a cold stare, “You can give us what you owe, or I’ll take it from you the hard way. Have you decided to give us what’s owed?”

“I don’t have enough to give you! You can’t go in there and take the Chain Ocean Palace’s goods or they’ll have both our heads. Please, just let me loose and I’ll go get you everything I have.”

“Let you go? Nice try. Just tell us where it is and we’ll get it out for you. Do you think we care about whatever secret hiding place you have? After you pay what you owe we’ll never see each other again.”

The man froze and Sage knew what was going on. He nodded to the Purple Mist Sect members that were holding the man down and going through the painful process of breaking his connection to a handful of storage treasures. The more expensive a storage treasure was, the more of a connection it could establish to its owner as a safety precaution. For a high quality Storage Ring, the defenses were strong enough that the owner had to be killed before the connection was severed. At least that was the usual method to break into a Storage Ring. In the library of the Clear Sky Academy they found some techniques to break the connection by force. The downside being they needed to have the owner as a captive, which meant it wasn’t a method to steal Storage Rings, but more of a way to break into them without having to kill the prior owner.

All the threats didn’t stop them from completing their task and they cleared out the storage treasures to recover the value owed to Guan Zhenyan on the contract. Afterwards, they left the man and Sage left to gather information. Guan Zhenyan would not give him the full details, so he had to collect them on his own. It was with this that he learned the Chain Ocean Palace was not just any other group that the man was trying to intimidate them with. With some effort they gathered some concrete information and it seemed the Chain Ocean Palace was quite powerful and wielded significant influence among the upper levels of the Tianxia Capital.

Looks like that fellow wasn’t lying. No wonder he was so adamant.