In essence, this strange formation unfocused the attack, spreading its power over an extremely wide area and making it easy to resist. The Sky Lance fired a third time at the same spot, trying to blast its way through the barrier around the area. The three from the Chain Ocean Palace were already uneasy about this strange situation and were eager to leave. They were only sent to investigate and the younger woman was supposed to be in charge, but these other two had ignored her reservations and chose to try and rely upon the strength of the Chain Ocean Palace’s name.

Unfortunately, they’d kicked an iron board this time and Sage was no pushover. The way he saw it, if he let these three go, they’d just go gather more reinforcements. He also wasn’t foolish enough to kill them directly. Instead, he’d just keep them captive for a while until he was somewhere else far away and not alone and isolated in the middle of the wilderness. His current location would be too easy to send an army to assault. The people of the Chain Ocean Palace wouldn’t dare to send a huge force to directly attack him if he was within one of the more public and populated parts of the Tianxia Capital, but they’d have no qualms about doing the same in his current location.

While the three from the Chain Ocean Sect were busy blasting away at the surrounding formation to seek a way out, Sage had switched his vision from using the Timeless Eyes on one eye to both of them. At the same time, a third eye opened up on his forehead, released by a slight alteration of the Master Seal. This third eye was one of the Sea Locust’s eyes and shifted through different visual spectrums. This mass of visual information was not only sorted through Sage’s Adjutor, but also a large team on the Inner World. They rapidly analyzed the construction techniques of the Flying Ship in order to unravel the Formation Arrays carved into its hull. The third level of the Timeless Eyes, Principle Vision, would take minutes, if not hours, of close study to form a powerful crux for sealing purposes, but it was also a great help for the purposes of studying an array.

Upon the Flying Ship the younger woman glared at the middle-aged man, “Stop wasting our energy!”

After the third shot, the man was ready to fire again, but was stopped by the woman’s shout. Now seeing the angry look on her face, a real rarity, the man realized how brash he was being. Worse yet, he had worked with the older woman to ignore her orders. From the looks of things, they would be getting in trouble once they returned to the Chain Ocean Palace. He glanced over to the older woman and the two of them shared a look for a second before jointly coming to the same conclusion and bowing their heads to the younger woman.

“Please forgive me for overstepping my bounds.”

“Please punish me for acting out of turn.”

The older woman was more extreme in her apology, directly asking for punishment. The young woman let out a sigh, “You can get punished later, for now we have to break out of this barrier. Xia Jing, you control the ship’s formations to defend against their attacks.”

The middle aged man nodded and kept his hands on the controls of the Flying Ship while the woman turned to the older woman, “Deng Jian, probe the barrier outside and find a weak point.”

There was no hesitation from the older woman either, she brought out a sword and then a set of small sheets of paper. They were tall and narrow, covered in large characters and surrounded by swirling and curved symbols. The paper lit up and then attached to the sword, wrapping around it and pasting themselves on. The many talismans glowed with power as they enhanced the sword and rode along with it as it flew through the air. The Flying Sword shot through the sky and its point collided with the huge barrier surrounding the whole plateau. It made the barrier ripple as it bounced off, the sword flipping through the air and then swooping back around to stab into another part of the barrier.

While the other two were working, the young woman was going through all her different communication methods to try and find something that wasn’t being blocked so she could call for help. Unfortunately, everything she tried was being obstructed by the barrier around them. The barrier around them was a truly powerful trapping array and it made her wonder why this foe of theirs would go to so much trouble as setting up such a powerful and expensive array just to capture one of their members to pay a debt. Wouldn’t an array like this be worth just as much as what Chu Shuai owed?

She had no idea how wrong she was as this was not an expensive permanent array but a simple one set up by Sage in just a few minutes. The technology of the Inner World had advanced greatly and by using an Adjutor, they could rapidly calculate every variable needed for a Formation Array, and then using the time differential of the Inner World, manufacture Formation Cores that perfectly fit the conditions. These Formation Cores were similar to Formation Plates in their shape and style, but their use was more like the actual nodes of a fully fledged Formation Array, but in a more compact and portable style. Instead of needing to reshape the landscape and then carve large symbols into stone, or plant precious materials in very specific pits, they only had to place these Formation Cores in the exact positions to form a full sized Formation Array. Since they were crafted in a similar way to a Formation Plate, they were much less durable than a normal formation, but their power was in no way lacking.

Being able to set up a sect level Formation Array in just a few minutes was definitely something nobody else could do and helped give Sage the confidence to take up this debt collecting job in the capital. There were many Nascent Souls and even Immortals present in the capital and just having forty tier 6 Purple Mist Sect members wasn’t enough to give him confidence. It was actually the formation expertise of the Inner World and that immense defensive ability that he was relying upon. Even if the whole Chain Ocean Palace came to assault him, he had the resources of a whole planet to keep reinforcing and powering a defensive array.

Of course, Sage didn’t want to enter any protracted battle with a great power like the Chain Ocean Palace, so he was trying to be as careful as possible. It was just that at this time, capturing these three would be more beneficial than letting them escape. Even better, since they’d started the fight with him, he could claim the spoils of war by defeating them without getting in trouble. Their stubborness not to pay for Chu Shuai would end up with them losing far more instead.

That Flying Ship should pay off Chu Shuai’s debt quite well, won’t it?