Sage snatched a few of the little rice grains out of the sky, intercepting them as they tried to rejoin the mass that flowed around Six Grains. He put them into a jade container and then pasted a few sealing talismans on, before sending them to the Inner World to be studied. He was pretty sure this would interrupt the connection between them, but even if it didn’t, the grains had lost most of their energy and were easy for him to overpower. Considering their properties, Sage guessed that Six Grains crafted them himself as he was bound to have many lost or destroyed in every battle.

Then again, maybe that’s why he chose to work as a guardian. If his main weapon gets weaker every time he fights, then a job where he rarely has to fight would make sense.

Whatever the case, Sage was curious how such a thing was made and how similar it was to the Formation Weapons that Sage had figured out how to forge so long ago. There was probably also some commonality with the dragon headed hose they were wielding. Someone related to these people seemed to be very good at making cooperative Magical Tools. The tiny rice grain Magical Tools that worked together seamlessly were actually even less impressive than the Magical Tool that allowed many people to pool their law power together. It was just unfortunate that it would be much more difficult to steal.

Sage circled around the outside of the Spire, riding upon the Flaming Chariot and looking down upon them in his spiked black armor. He attempted to look imposing, mainly to buy some more time as every moment that passed more and more of his Qi was being sent into the Infernal Banyan to strengthen the cage it had formed around the Spire.

With the Spire completely surrounded, it was now only a matter of time before the Parasitic Roots could overcome their energy reserves. The thick layer of Infernal Qi they were giving off was filled with the Law of Corruption and should interrupt communications. The only thing Sage was worried about now was if they had any other secret weapons, or if they grew spiteful enough to destroy everything valuable before he broke down the defensive barrier. Sage didn’t really care about all their accumulated riches all that much, but it would put him in quite a pinch if they destroyed the one treasure that Guan Zhenyan needed.

Even if the guy was a jerk, Sage had promised to do this task so that the two of them would be even and he would no longer have to worry about interacting with him. It wasn’t really that Sage considered himself an extremely honorable person, but more that he was worried about Guan Zhenyan’s background. From what he’d pieced together, the man was just slumming it here because of his injury. If Guan Zhenyan was ever fully healed or ever received help from whatever place he hailed from, then Sage did not want to be on the man’s hit list. He’d also found out that karma was more than just an idea from Earth. He saw accounts of actual karma manipulating Cultivators and power systems when he was in the Depths. There were also systems related to the forging of deals and promises, so he wanted to make sure this agreement he made was upheld. It was also the reason he’d been careful with his words when buying and selling since those days.

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The Infernal Banyan continued its very subdued attacks, the Parasitic Roots extending in only a few places at a time in order to draw the attention of the Core Formation Cultivators that were operating that dragon headed Magical Tool. He was constantly pumping Qi into the two Blacksilver Pawns to build up towards an overwhelming strike. He was happy to let them recover for a while and prepare for another counter attack. These attacks he was making followed his old style of winning by attrition, so the longer things dragged out, the greater his advantage would become. These tactics seemed to be a perfect fit with the Infernal Qi as they seemed far more dangerous than just creating trees, causing his enemies to be more on guard and disturbing their mental state to a greater degree. Even if their toughness was lower than the normal Sacred Banyan, the Infernal Qi also slowly infected them, gradually turning them towards ‘evil’.

Six Grains landed upon the Spire and seemed to link his energy up with it, taking control of the defensive formations. He’d wanted to repel Sage personally, but he’d been on the losing side so now he was going to use his home field advantage. The power of the defensive formation intensified, but Sage had been building up power in the Infernal Banyan just for this situation. Suddenly a dozen of the root balls extended thick black hairs at the same time. They sunk into very specific locations at carefully calculated angles. Sage had plenty of time to calculate the weak points of the array, studying it very carefully when it was not active and then having his Adjutor feed calculations to the research teams once the fight had started.

With the defenses of the Spire being personally controlled by a Nascent Soul they immediately doubled in strength, but before the barrier could act to repel the mass of blood dripping tentacles that surrounded them, it suddenly faltered. The oblong shield that surrounded the Spire flickered, and the huge amount of power they felt within it seemed to be bleeding away. They felt waves of Qi flooding the air around the Spire, like a balloon deflating, except the leaked air was spilling inwards instead of outwards. The power in the barrier spilled into the area it was trying to protect and they could all feel the density of energy around them increasing. In a time of peace they would be excited to be in such an environment that could boost their speed of Cultivation, but right now it was a sign of a big problem.

With Six Grains controlling the array, Sage couldn’t easily break through. That was the purpose of having a controller after all. As soon as Sage attacked the weak points, Six Grains rerouted the array’s energy through different nodes in the formation. These paths were not the most optimal, but it allowed the energy to flow and the barrier to regain most of its strength. Sage was carefully watching the fluctuations of the barrier and the surrounding energy in the air and under the ground. These minor changes and fluctuations were used by Sage’s Adjutor to compute different solutions with many formulas that were devised from the study of many books of charts and conditions. They’d already built many mathematical models on the structure and operation of every Formation Array that Sage had ever acquired as well as the thousands that the people on the Inner World had invented over time. Since every group used their own customized Formation Arrays, they had to slowly discover the mysteries of the formation that the Chain Ocean Palace used.

Sage entered a battle of formations with Six Grains, using the power of an Adjutor and the Inner World to make up for the lack of information as well as the control of a Nascent Soul. The more accurately they could guess the weak nodes of the formation, the less energy they had to expend to cause damage to the defensive barrier. Normally, the study of a formation like this might take weeks, but Sage was able to pin point the weaknesses in minutes. Six Grains was extremely stressed as he was also busy making calculations. Operating an array also needed the expertise of a Formation Master as they had to know how to alter its structure to get the most effect. Normally, he’d have plenty of time to find the best changes to get the greatest effect, but this enemy was finding the weak points too quickly and he had to switch to alternate nodes without having enough time to pick out the most effective ones.

The Spire’s energy was bleeding away far too quickly.