Inside the Universe Ring, Sage had just turned and was walking away from the cell that held Hei Bai. At that moment, a familiar, but sloppy person appeared in front of him. The man’s hair was an utter mess as usual and his clothing was only half on his body. The fellow had a long pipe in his hands, which he took a long toke from before saying anything.

Sage didn’t feel like dealing with the man’s antics at the moment, so he just walked right into him. Sage passed through without any resistance, ignoring Guan Zhenyan’s projection. The man didn’t seem to be bothered by the disrespectful gesture, just turning around and calling out, “So who is this kid in here? Did you finally bring someone interesting around?”

Sage stopped, and turned back to glare at him, “She’s a vicious one, don’t play around.”

Guan Zhenyan smiled, looking happy to see something that got a rise out of Sage. Then his eyes went blank for a moment and he frowned, “Looks like they found out I’m gone. Uh oh, they are here.”

“They? Who are they? Where is here?”

Sage immediately sent his awareness outside of the Universe Ring to see if danger had arrived. After carefully checking the surroundings the mountain peak the ring was hidden on seemed just as quiet and peaceful as before.

Guan Zhenyan just waved the pipe in his hand, “Relax. They won’t know about you for a few months, and then they still have to track you down.”

He still had no idea who ‘they’ were, and it didn’t look like Guan Zhenyan wanted to explain. Sage stared at him, but the man just continued to gently toke on his pipe and puff out small clouds of smoke in the shapes of little animals. The smoke animals ran and frolicked through the air before dissipating, and from the look on his face the man looked completely unperturbed.

At that instant everything shook. There was a loud rumble and the ground shuddered like there’d been an earthquake. It only lasted a few seconds and then stopped. He looked around and checked outside the Universe Ring, but again nothing seemed different. Then there was a shimmer in the air and a white haired boy with a pot belly appeared next to him.

Tao Ba had a bashful look on his face, “Sorry. They found out about the extra energy use and disabled it.”

Extra energy use? ‘They’ again? Who is it this time?

Guan Zhenyan took another puff and looked upwards for a moment before nodding, “Uh oh, they cut you off. The restrictions disappeared.”

“Wait, what?”

A Dragoon ran over to him in a hurry, interrupting his follow up question. The man with a tentacle chin looked panicked, “Lord! She’s escaped!”

Sage blinked.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Hei Bai! She killed Sister Pan!”

The Dragoon was in such a fluster he seemed to be spitting things out at random, Sage held up his hand, “Calm down, explain properly!”

“The restrictions suddenly disappeared! Hei Bai killed Sister Pan and then smashed her way out!”

Sage looked over to Tao Ba and the boy nodded sheepishly, “That rumble was caused by her attack. When she did that she got sent out. Sorry. You don’t have the authority to keep anyone here against their will.”

“I know you aren’t in charge, but didn’t you say you could keep him under control? Shouldn’t a weakling like Hei Bai be much easier?”

Tao Ba nodded, “Well of course. I can keep him under control. Just… you don’t have that privilege. We were just unlucky. They usually go centuries without anyone checking the power logs.”

So, I was stealing power illegally and the power company just found out and cut me off? Is that it? Wait a second, what about-

His eyes slid over to Guan Zhenyan and he suddenly remembered hearing: ‘the restrictions disappeared’. The man just continued to puff his pipe and didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. After being stared at for a few moments he looked back and chuckled, “You think I didn’t want to be in here? Haha. Silly Mantis. Did you think you stood up to the chariot and won?”

He let me win?

Sage sighed. He looked at the Dragoon. This fellow along with that ‘Sister Pan’ were the pair of Dragoons that lived in his storage area. It was fully enclosed underground space and only the two of them were here to help him catalog all of his possessions. They weren’t allowed to interact with the others above ground so there would be no smuggling or other shenanigans to worry about.

“I’m sorry about your Sister Pan. Prepare a proper funeral for her. You can be relieved of your duties and return to the surface.”

He was going to have to beat that damn necromancer a third time. What was he going to say to Xiezi? At least she didn’t have anything.

“I do not deserve it Lord. Please punish me. We have failed at our only duty.”

Aww, shit.

He’d only just left the area, so he wasn’t too far away from where Hei Bai was being held captive. Unfortunately, while he was checking the outside she seemed to have broken out. The short conversation with Guan Zhenyan was more than enough time for her to kill a lone Dragoon and worse yet, rush through his storage area. Fortunately, after losing the Universe Ring and going on the run, he’d learned his lesson and all his valuable things were kept on the Inner World in a similarly secret area many miles under the ground. He mostly used the Universe Ring to sort and catalogue things before putting them into storage on the Inner World. Since the Inner World was part of his Dantian, he didn’t take things directly there, using the powerful formations in the Universe Ring to contain them while he checked them for traps or danger.

Only when he was perfectly sure of their safety did he then send them into his Inner World. So, most of what Hei Bai had taken were all basic resources. Food, water, standard Storage Rings, clothing, simple weapons, along with low rank pills and natural treasures. Unfortunately, that was not all. Because of the stasis ability of the Universe Ring, he also stored the fragile resources there. They were kept in a very secure corner, so there was no way that Hei Bai-

Following the path she’d made through the store house, of course, she went directly from the prison area directly to the ‘cold storage’ area like she knew it was there. This can’t be bad luck, right? Was this her plan? How could she possibly know anything about what I keep in here?

Sage could see the path she’d carved through this area, the many resources that were carefully placed and floating in mid-air were knocked aside. He felt the loss of a few hard to find natural treasures, things that were harvested from the Inner World that had slow maturation times but that he couldn’t sell many of without drawing attention. Now, they were gone.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. The most painful thing was the other section of this area. Not only did he store natural treasures here, the other abundant resource was insect eggs. Millions of them. While he didn’t have the resources to raise and support so many, there were still many breeding programs on the ranches in the Universe Ring as well as on the Inner World. Many strange hybrids had been created and this was the area where he stored all of them. With his abilities, and the care of his minions, they could hatch as many as they needed. Usually, from a mutated batch they’d only hatch one or two to test their results while the other hundreds from that spawning were put into storage with detailed notes and categorization.

Hei Bai had rampaged through this place, and it was left in a mess. Who knows how many eggs she’d taken? What purpose did she have for so many insect eggs? Didn’t she work with skeletons and souls? Did she even have time to read the descriptions or did she just snatch things at random?

He walked through the mess she’d left behind and then he stopped in place as he saw the very core of the area. There were two very important eggs missing.