When the three arrived simultaneously, they all had puzzled looks on their faces. Seeing the three arrive with Xie Li, Curo put down the document in his hands and said with a solemn expression, “The Meng Clan and the Han Clan will soon lay siege to this Mine.”
Hearing this, Ji Long was startled while Qing Zhao and Jing Fang exchanged a cold glance. Curo sorted out several documents and handed them to the three and explained, “They seem to be stocking up on materials needed to refine Formation Bases for the Eternal Prison Formation. Also, they seem to slowly inching their troops closer and closer to the designated areas to lay down this large scale Formation.”
Hearing this, Jing Fang and Qing Zhao opened their eyes wide as Ji Long asked solemnly, “What is the Eternal Prison Formation?” Before Curo could answer, Jing Fang said in a cold tone, not hiding his killing intent in the slightest, “The very same Formation that trapped me for countless years. Inside the Formation, the Qi will become nearly non existent, communication from the outside world will be cut off and the Formation itself is extremely hard to break.”
Hearing this, Ji Long sucked in a cold breath as he glanced at Curo and asked, “How did you discover this?” Curo took out a jade slip from his Spacial Ring and passed it to Ji Long and said, “This is the Formation Diagram of the Eternal Prison Formation. I happened to acquire it by luck from one of the Nine Clans Saints. When I saw all the reports something struck me as odd and when I looked at the Formation Diagram, it made sense to me.”
Hearing this, Ji Long accepted the jade slip and after sending in some Qi, a Diagram appeared in his mind. When he became acquainted with the Diagram, he looked over the reports and after a moments thought, it truly seemed as though Curo had said. He then asked, “They want to trap us here? What is the benefit of it?” Curo looked towards Jing Fang and Qing Zhao. Following his gaze, Ji Long could immediately understand why. He sighed as he answered his own question, “If they manage to trap these two here, our side would lose two Peak Heavenly Sovereigns. Not to mention the blow to the Hidden Dragon Academy, the entire Alliance will suffer greatly.” Curo nodded his head.
This scheme may seem like it was targeting the Ji Clan in revenge but in reality, their objective was to trap the two Peak Heavenly Sovereigns here. Even if the two worked together, they would need over a thousand years to break through this Formation. If the Nine Clans suddenly launched the Final War in this time frame, then the Alliance was bound to lose.
Ji Long then said in thought, “So, currently, we have three options: To either withdraw all forces from here and leave the Mine to them. Second option is to have the Heavenly Sovereigns leave and then either we get sealed in here or we get slaughtered by the Clans. Third option is to have everyone sealed here….” Hearing this, Curo nodded his head.
He then glanced towards Jing Fang and Qing Zhao. They had been uncharacteristically quiet today. Seeing the gaze, Jing Fang sighed in a heavy tone, “The choice of what we should do will be up to you.” Hearing this, Curo looked at them with a helpless look and said, “We can’t stop them from laying down this Formation. There are multitudes of different ways they can set it down and we can’t obstruct them from doing so. At the same time, we can’t exactly give up this Mine either. If we do, then the plan to slowly bleed them out would also backfire as they would have the support of this Top Grade Mine.”
Curo shook his head and sighed. Ji Long pondered for a moment and said suddenly, “However, can’t we set up a trap for them?” Curo looked towards his Father and Ji Long continued explaining, “Now that we know what their plan is, we can obstruct it by cutting off their supplies. By using the Roaming Dragon Division, we can disrupt their trade routes. By putting up missions that are exclusive to killing the people that obtained these resources and taking them. Also, we can have the Ji Clan armies patrol between the various known places the armies have started gathering and kill them as well.”
Curo thought about it for a moment before he could only agree that this was the best course of action. How well it played out, only time would tell. Ji Long then hurriedly left to make preparations for the counter attack and only Curo, Jing Fang, Qing Zhao and Xie Li remained in the office. Xie Li glanced between the three nervously as Jing Fang asked, “Are you dissatisfied that we didn’t offer a solution?”
Curo shook his head and bluntly said, “This Mine has become our Ji Clan’s territory, we can’t always rely on the two of you to offer the solution. We have to take care of our own territory by ourselves.” Hearing this, Jing Fang nodded his head and said, “If we dictate too much on how to do everything, wouldn’t your Ji Clan become our puppet in the eyes of the others? We can offer our assistance to deal with certain situations but we can’t always protect you from everything.”
Curo nodded his head and sighed. He then towards Qing Zhao and said, “To be honest, I am surprised that Senior Qing Zhao didn’t say anything about me using the Roaming Dragon Division in this manner.” Qing Zhao just shrugged and said, “In the end, all of these mission will harm the Nine Clans while at the same time, help keep this place safe. Since this is one of the most forward bases we have, there isn’t anything wrong with it.” Curo gave a weak smile to his words and after Qing Zhao and Jing Fang said a few more words, they left.
Curo summoned the young man that he had known from the Foreign Affairs department and told him the situation. Although, in the beginning, he had been absent minded, when Curo explained the threat looming over them, he grew vigilant. After discussing the best course of action with Curo, the man left to create the several missions to intercept the Meng and Han Clan’s merchants. They had divided it as so; The Roaming Dragon Division will focus on disrupting them from getting the materials needed and also gathering information on them while Ji Long and the Ji Clan would focus on disrupting them from setting up camp to create the Formation.
In only a few hours, the young man had created over a hundred different missions that varied from Easy to High Danger rating with rewards in accordance to the strength of the group. Also, the rewards for the information were doubled. Curo could only sigh at how effective this fellow was. It was noon already and Curo had finished with his daily documents and reports. With nothing better to do, he started skimming through the books that were on his shelves. There were several on various Clans, Sects and Academies lost to time or that had declined over the passage of time. There were also several that held the history of presently powerhouse Clans or Sects. As Curo was briefly glancing at the several books, he found one that piqued his interest. It was a book on a certain figure from the time before the Nine Clans arrived, a time before the various Academies and Clans rose to prominence. This figure was named Chen Cang. He had swept the Realm with an imposing manner and reigned supreme for countless years.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The book told many stories of his incredible feats in Puppet Crafting. With an army of puppets at his side, he swept through the worlds unhindered and unmatched. However, what struck Curo as odd were two things, firstly, there were no mentions of Clan he left behind or being affiliated to a Sect. From the start to the finish, he had been a vagrant cultivator, drifting from one place to another with no attachments anywhere.
The second thing that struck him as odd was that before he disappeared, he had left behind one sentence, “If the Heavens will it, I will rise above the Realm and break the shackles that bind our Realmverse. Once we rejoin the vast Cultivation World, we will bring slaughter to the ones that sealed us.”
This struck Curo as odd. “Is there even a bigger stage our there after the various Realms?” As he thought that to himself, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Since he couldn’t find the answer no matter how much he pondered on it, he decided to just remember this piece of information and not dwell on it for now. After the man had disappeared, he had been never heard of again. No corpse had been found or a legacy that he had left behind. Some rumours had said that he had succeeded and left the Realm but Curo somehow felt that it wasn’t right.
If it were, then there would be no way that he would allow the Nine Clans to run rampant in his home like that. The most logical conclusion was that he had failed in what ever he was attempting and had perished. At the end of the book, there was an incomplete map. However, when Curo saw this map, he was shocked for a moment before pulling out a small piece of paper. This paper had been something he had looted from a Heavenly Saint’s corpse.
Since it had been only a map fragment, Curo had not been able to make heads or tails of it but now seeing the rest of the map and how this fragment fitted perfectly to the spot that was blank before, he couldn’t help but wryly smile. “Are the Heavens helping me or am I slowly drawing a disaster towards me?” As this thought passed in his head, his gaze fell on the now complete map. It was a map of the Qi Stone Mine and of the several thousands of kilo meters surrounding it.
Curo mused to himself, “Seems like the person that found this Qi Stone Mine was someone that was actually after the treasure that this map leads to. However, since he had the incomplete map, he couldn’t find it and had to settle down for the Mine.” Being able to find a Top Grade Mine was something that was definitely a meritorious deed for the Clan. However, now that Curo had completed the map, he noticed something strange.
There was no indication on where the treasure was. As he pondered on it, he tried infusing Qi into the map but it had no reaction. With a sigh, he sent his Qi Sense over it and was alarmed to discover that the map had changed. He pondered for a moment before taking the piece he had put in and tried again but this time, the map stayed the same. Curo opened his eyes in surprise as he put the missing fragment back and studied the map with his Qi Sense.
Written in words only seen with Qi Sense were only a few sentences, “I, Chen Cang, have been unmatched in this world but even still, I dreaded the Heavenly Tribulation. In the end, I didn’t succeed and could only fade away. However, I refuse to let my Legacy be forgotten by the annals of time and have left this map to whoever is fated enough to gather the 7 fragments and complete it. When you find my Legacy, you will learn of what happened all those years ago. I wish you luck.”
Besides these words, there was a detailed map that lead to the place Chen Cang had left his Legacy. What made Curo not know whether to laugh or cry was that this Legacy was directly under the Ji City. The entrance to it was a few kilo meters out of the City and even a Heavenly Sovereign wouldn’t be able to find it if they didn’t know what to look for. This showed that the man was exceedingly accomplished in the Art of Formations.
Curo then studied the book several times over as he pondered. If he wanted to make their Ji Clan into a true powerhouse, then they needed their own special trait. Like in the Primordial Times, the Jing Clan for example had their Nether Dragon Blood that made them unique. Currently, there are several Clans like the Xue Clan that is compromised of purely Sword Cultivators or the Xi Clan that focuses on Pill Refinement.
If Curo would be able to obtain this Legacy, he wanted to use it to turn the Ji Clan into a Puppet Master Clan. Puppet Masters were accomplished in both Formations and Artefact Forging, so there was also the possibility of making the Clan focus on three different direction.
In the next several weeks, the whole City was extremely bustling with activity. The Ji Clan armies were always being deployed to new places that they did not patrol before. However, what amazed everyone was that every time ended in a bloody battle with the Meng and Han Clan armies.
Although, there were several times that the Ji Clan was forced to retreat, most of the times, the had the upper hand and exterminated the armies. The Roaming Dragon Squads were especially busy as they kept accepting one mission after another. Although, there were some Squads that had to return empty handed or with casualties, most of the Squads managed to complete their missions with ease and no casualties. During those weeks, the number of Squads that tried to pressure the Division to give them more rewards decreased severely once an entire squad was beaten black and blue by Curo.
This had caused a bit of an uproar amongst the Squads and most had to purse their lips that the easy times were over. Now, once someone even tried to bring up the subject of more rewards than promised, the clerk would immediately say, “I am not qualified to raise the rewards, if you feel you are being treated unjustly, please go and talk to the Head of the Branch Division.”
This deterred all those that wanted to squeeze out a benefit. However, there were truly some that had managed to obtain benefits after Curo decided that their merits truly did deserve them. With less problems being caused by the Squads, the Branch also managed to calm down in their activity and the people were able to rest for the first time in a long while.
Nearly a month after Curo had become the Branch Head, in Curo’s office, there were five people; Ji Long, uncle Zheng, Curo, Xie Li and the young man from the Foreign Affairs Department, Jin Zhao. Cuo then broke the silence and said, “I am going to go into a very dangerous place. I have no idea how long I will be gone and I will leave the matters in the City up to all of you. Especially you Jin Zhao, I leave the Roaming Dragon Division Branch in your hands. Xie Li will assist you while I am gone.”