A few minutes later, a different waiter entered the room and held out an oathstone, “I pledge not to allow this information to be sold within Orange Sky and Purple Cloud City.”
“Good. I need the name and location of every property that the Yi Yang Group owns in Orange Sky and Purple Cloud City. The Yi Yang Group is finished in Flying Wind province, whether you take the properties yourself or sell the information to others that’s up to you. It should be starting to spread from Ten Copper City as we speak.”
The waiter nodded and left the room, sending out messengers even as he retrieved the information on the Yi Yang Group’s properties himself. He brought the scrolls into the room with Sage. Sage gave them a quick once over before committing the information to a Memory Sphere. He wanted to stick around and swap more information with this group, but they were racing time. Sage returned to the rest of his group and they took off for Purple Cloud City. It was not the closest city to Orange Sky, but it was one of the largest and when they passed through on the way to Ten Copper City, Sage was gathering information. He remembered hearing about a large property owned by the Yi Yang Group in that town and now that they were falling he felt it was fated for him to target it.
Sage had only brought a limited number of troops with him to Purple Cloud City. Since the news of the Yi Yang Group’s treachery and downfall had not spread this far out yet, in order to take these properties he would be needing to directly assault them. The Lord of the Purple Cloud City would, more likely than not, react negatively to an outsider stealing property. The city belonged to the City Lord. It would be their prerogative on whether or not properties were allowed to change hands. Especially when the ones losing the property were not willing. Instead, the idea would be to make such properties quickly change hands without anyone noticing. In a few days, when the news spread, it wouldn’t be too late to return the properties back to the City Lord, minus all the accumulated resources and wealth, of course.
They might come to a new agreement with the City Lord, or they might not. The important point is to pick a target rich with resources and to take it without anyone noticing. If the City Guards were alerted, then they might not have enough time to finish their work, and it would likely prevent them from hitting any other targets. Sage had to make a decision for their first target. The Yi Yang Group was very geared towards altering minds, so most of their smaller businesses were geared towards providing high end services rather than selling actual goods. It was a good choice for them, but also meant far less options for Sage to choose from. In essence it broke down into two choices. The first was an herb store. A few Doctors were under the employ of the Yi Yang Group, and they loved to prescribe harmless but expensive medicines to their customers, who of course had to purchase them from their own Yi Yang Group Pharmacy.
The other option was the Yi Yang Group’s local headquarters. The other local Yi Yang Group properties: inns, taverns, brothels, and gambling houses. Each would be a gamble. They would have no idea how much money they had on hand. It might be a very profitable week, or it could be a very slow one. They were better to skip. The smaller businesses would eventually send their large profits up to the local headquarters which then eventually would make its way up to the next larger stop. So, if they arrived at the right time the local headquarters might have many times more resources than the smaller local shops.
The pharmacy would be the safe choice, as even if they’d sent profits back to the headquarters, they would still keep a large supply of natural resources to craft their medicines. Or, they could take the risk that the local headquarters had a large stockpile ready to be shipped. In either scenario, if they were quick and careful enough they might be able to take more than one location. In the interest of speed, Sage chose to target the Pharmacy first. If the Yi Yang Group had anyone with a Golden Core in Purple Cloud City, it was most likely they were assigned to the headquarters. With Sage, King, and Black Saber they would likely prevail over the headquarters, but it might cause a large commotion. Better to move quickly.
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They left most of the Vulture Geckos outside of town with only a few Hoplites to watch over them. Then the rest of the men made their way towards the Yi Yang Group Pharmacy. They took different paths through the city and purchased cloaks or big hats along the way to hide their identities. It would be no good to have a uniformly dressed military unit assembling in one place in the city. People would definitely notice something was going on. The Hoplites gathered up in large groups at every intersection around the Pharmacy. They didn’t bother anybody or make any demands, but the large groups of men clogging up the paths made most of the people take alternate routes to avoid the traffic.
After a quarter hour of this, Black Saber whistled and the groups of men started creating distractions. Most of the distractions were fake disagreements. The men would start arguing, shoving and cursing at each other. With so many of them involved the altercation would block the whole path and people would naturally stay back to keep from becoming involved. Some acted drunk, others acted like rival gangs, and there was even a group that had a fake merchant yelling at disrespectful customers offering insulting prices. Along the way, King had swapped to his human appearance. Sage explained it as him rushing ahead to meet them at Purple Cloud City, and hiding the huge Breach Hawk inside a Beast Bag.
Black Saber oversaw things outside while King and Sage stepped into the building. Sage put up a large Windscreen outside the Pharmacy and it was draining his energy rapidly. He had already studied their defensive formations before they made their move so as soon as he stepped inside he only waited for King to move into position before he acted. He changed the front sign to ‘closed’ and then tossed out a half dozen Formation Plates to a few specific places in the building. The two clerks on duty were confused and then at almost the exact same time realized there was a problem and cried out for help. King delivered a very precise blow to their temples and knocked them both out.
Sage ran over and quickly tied them up with Steelsilk, following behind King as the Hawk took on the rest of the occupants of the Pharmacy. Most of them were weak clerks, but two of them were much stronger. One was the head of the shop, and roughly the same strength as Sage, the peak of the fourth rank, but not yet broken through to the fifth. King caught him off guard and knocked him out with only a few strikes. Unfortunately, that man was meeting with a much stronger gentleman who was a match for King. The man didn’t know what was going on, and he exchanged a few blows with King before the head of the shop was knocked out. Once he was alone, the man attempted to escape.
Too bad for him, King wasn’t alone either. The Twin Soul attacked while the man was leaping through the air, diving into a spiritual sea and battling with the man’s soul. Even with that distraction, he passed through another room and dodged at attack from King by diving through a window. Black Saber was waiting for him outside and the man suffered a heavy wound, getting a deep slash against his chest. Black Saber and King cornered him in an alleyway and brought him back inside. Sage finished clearing the place out, the half dozen employees quickly gathered into a small courtyard, each of them gagged and tied up. Black Saber stepped out and made a hand gesture at some of the Hoplites and the many distractions came to an end. Each group send a few people to the other groups and the conflicts eventually came to an end with the people involved dispersing.
One group of Hoplites loitered outside the now closed Pharmacy, while another went inside to gather resources. The rest of them moved on to the next target. While Sage was transferring everything in the Pharmacy into the Universe Ring, the Hoplites were setting a perimeter around the Yi Yang Group’s local headquarters. With the two stronger men unconscious, they left the whole lot of them tied up inside the Pharmacy and left with the place stripped bare. They had no plans to retain control over the location, they were more interested in stealing from people that the public would soon be berating as criminals. Would anyone seek justice for a group of heinous criminals?