Given that this was Guan Zhenyan, Sage didn’t just read the contract, he had whole teams of people reading and breaking it down on the Inner World. They scoured through the document multiple times from multiple angles. Revision after revision was made and then the altered contract was finally revealed to Guan Zhenyan, “I’ve taken the liberties of making a few changes.”
The projection’s eyes narrowed, and the new contract was read by and then revised by him in just a few minutes. This was checked again by Sage’s people and returned again. After they went back and forth three times then Sage finally signed the Blood Contract. As soon as he did, Guan Zhenyan handed him a Jade Tablet which he sent directly to the Inner World, so it could be properly studied by the teams there and memorized by his clone.
With this information gathered, Sage didn’t just head right for those debtors that had the items Guan Zhenyan was actually after. Instead he had a much more elaborate plan in store and he put it into action by going off the radar. He changed his appearance and switched vehicles, riding a Demonic Beast mount like many others did in the Tianxia Capital. He ascended thousands of floors, skipping past so many debtors, even important ones, which Guan Zhenyan was remarkably quiet about.
Sage climbed to the highest level of the capital that had a debtor and he quickly stormed in, releasing the Purple Mist Sect members at the last moment and forcing his way through a defensive array. The array had been analyzed and all the weak points were attacked by the Purple Mist Sect members with perfect timing. Then the whole group rushed in and subdued the debtor. The middle aged man was clueless as to what was going on. After having breakfast with his family he was grabbed when walking down the hall, surrounded and overwhelmed before he could react. The man held back, not wanting to start a fight that might endanger his family. Sage took this into account and had the whole group rush in close and grab the man with brute force. With none of them using any wide area attacks, then it would make their target hesitate.
Sage wrapped him up with silk and they dashed off, leaving just as quickly as they’d come, knocking aside a few guards with a few powerful strikes. With such a large team they could smash aside any hastily erected barriers and the Purple Mist Sect members' bodies were much stronger than humans when it came to physical strength. They were gone in mere moments and Sage brought out a different style of Demonic Beast for them to use as mounts. He’d arrived as just one, but now they left as a group of nine on different creatures. They brought this man to a secluded location they’d scouted before the attack and used a bit of coaxing to rob him in the name of the Dream Dealer. Then they left him behind and rode away on their mounts. After they traveled a dozen miles the Purple Mist Sect members disappeared from the backs of the mounts, just as Sage brought out the Red Comet again. The nine mounts ran off in different directions like the riders had split up to deter trackers.
Maybe a tracker is smart enough to realize that each mount has just gotten lighter all at the same time.
He flew very low to the ground and covered a few miles before changing his appearance and clothing again and getting out a new Demonic Beast mount. The man he’d chosen was not someone who had a valuable item, just one of many who owed a debt to Guan Zhenyan. Sage repeated this process, except he descended down a few hundred levels first. The members of the Chain Ocean Palace mainly resided between levels 20,000 and 30,000. Sage started to go after them randomly, picking one near 30,000 and then going back down and getting one near 20,000. Then he’d get two near the middle and then back up near the top again. He also varied the amount of time between his strikes to make it so there was no easily discernible pattern to who or when he’d capture one of the debtors. When combined with his practice of changing his identity and transportation before and after every attack it made him extremely hard to pin down.
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Sage also took his time to carefully investigate each of his targets before choosing to start an attack. He studied their Formation Arrays, the number of guards, home layout, work habits and travel habits. Sometimes he made use of locals to gather information, sometimes observed them in person, and for others he used the ‘Little Birdy’ techniques to get things done. No matter what he did there was always a chance to leave evidence and a trail behind, so Sage chose to just constantly vary his methods. Even if they found his trail and learned how he completed one attack, the next would happen in a different fashion.
The debtors were all overpowered and captured, brought away and tortured until they gave up enough to satisfy their debts. Then they were left behind in mostly unharmed condition and free to return to their normal lives. They came up with many methods of torture that were psychological, or humiliating in nature so they could leave as little injuries as possible. The few injuries they did inflict were only those that could be easily healed with Alchemical Pills, all so there was less for the Chain Ocean Palace to use as leverage against them. Or at least, that’s what it would look like to the palace members.
There was also another more insidious reason.
After the twentieth debtor was captured and robbed, Sage moved quickly to descend a hundred levels in less than a day and finally confronted one of the Debtors who owned a valuable material. Unlike the other attacks, Sage went alone and he wasn’t just dressed up as another random person, instead he wore a dark robe with a heavy hood. He attacked with the cliche look of a villain and didn’t use any Purple Mist Sect members at all. Instead, he used a technique that no one had ever associated with him.
The ‘Advancing Infernal Manual’, a technique that even the most normal person would call ‘Evil’, let alone those who were familiar with it and its effects. A horrible amalgamation of a tree and the flayed head of a wolf, sprouted from the ground. It rose up into the air and in place of limbs it merely grew more heads. A forest sized bouquet of skinless wolf heads, barking and snapping, curving through the air to reach for this unlucky old man.
Each of Sage’s techniques became gruesome and disgusting when used with Infernal Qi, transforming them into something that came out of a bad horror film, dripping viscous blood and smelling like rotting flesh. Sage fought as he had in the past, encircling a large area with Sacred Banyans and poisons, then slowly tightening the noose with more and more plants. Only this time, it was like the old man had been tossed into some sort of fleshy hell. This was far from the first time Sage had used these techniques and had altered the shapes and styles of attack to match the gruesome horrorscape he could now create. He covered the ground with many roots and vines which made it look like the ground had been replaced by the leathery skin of some sort of beast. Instead of many large trees interlocking their branches and vines to create fences and lattice-like cages to trap his enemies, Sage used a few really large Banyans and focused on moving them around which created these monstrous snapping heads.
While the old man was trying to avoid the huge beasts that were snapping at him, he couldn’t focus on the fact he was walking around on the relatively harmless seeming leathery ground. He was too distracted to realize that the Infernal Qi was slowly corrupting him. Sage’s Law of Corruption was all around him, making it hard to know where it was coming from. It was empowering everything and the Infernal Qi was twisting the old man’s mind, eroding his self control. Making him fight more and more ferociously, until he was just as vicious and bloodthirsty as the huge ‘beasts’ he was battling with.