In the Inner World it had already been many hundreds of years since he’d been to the Psychic World and captured thousands of Flares. There were many generations of people that had been born and died on the planet. Many had become Cultivators and lived that whole time, but others had no idea there was any other world out there, taking their stories to be the fantasies of the old.

Sage couldn’t enter the Inner World. He could only send his consciousness inside, and there was no way he could micromanage an entire world on his own. He could only focus on the broad strokes and empower others to act on his interests. Those few women, King’s wives, lived like Queens and in exchange they pushed the natives to grow stronger. They couldn’t do much to help Sage if they weren’t strong. It’s just too bad that those in the Inner World were limited in their growth. Since it was created within him, those in the Inner World could never become more powerful than he could.

Now that they were inside, Ruanfu and her siblings were trying to assemble a team of reinforcements. Sure, they could find thousands of third rank people, but they weren’t any better than the Dragoons. They may be more intelligent, but they weren’t as unified or willing to die. They didn’t even target those in Formation Building. While they’d be helpful, they’d still need hundreds of them to make a difference. No, they were targeting the Core Formation Cultivators. The problem was finding them and convincing them to fight. While they may be occupants of Sage’s Inner World, he wasn’t omnipotent or omniscient. There were already millions of people on the planet and he had no way of tracking them all. If their location was known to him, he could go to find them and likely handle them quite easily, but would he?

Being an overbearing tyrant was not something Sage wanted to be. At least not to fully aware, living and breathing humans. Certainly he wished them to be productive, but he didn’t want to take away their choice and free will. The best that Ruanfu and her siblings could do was explain to them the situation. If Sage died, then the Inner World would be destroyed. Although it wasn’t so simple to explain that the world they lived on was inside someone else’s body, the fact remained that everything they knew and had could disappear.

The Tiankong Siblings had already assembled a hundred Core Formation Cultivators, but it seemed they hit a wall. Those that still remained were too stubborn to join, preferring to ‘go down with the ship’ so to speak, running their own tiny kingdoms until the end. That, or they remained completely hidden, wanting to stay out of things entirely.

One hundred rank fives. That was enough to make a huge difference in their earlier battle and the Tiankong Siblings were excited to go for another round. They didn’t care about the crazy prices some of these people had set, or the somewhat dubious motivations some of them held. Many of them fought not to protect their world, but to be released from it. They made contracts with Oath Stones, promising to fight on Sage’s behalf in return for being let out from the Inner World. Others wished to protect their families, signing agreements to protect their descendants if they didn’t make it. The strangest were not from Clans or Sects, but Cultists. Over the years, the circumstances of their ancestors turned into a form of worship, venerating Sage as a form of deity. While they thought it was weird, it all but guaranteed their loyalty to the cause.

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After assembling the large force, they were frustrated to find out about the giant tortoise outside. These rank 5 cultivators would have made a big difference in the battle to protect Lionheart Town, but they couldn’t do much against that giant monster. Even worse, Sage informed them that their pursuers were not as limited in number as they thought. Many more of them had started to show up to help chase after Sage. During that initial attack, they had brought four groups of twenty five. Things weren’t so simple anymore. Wan Ling sent news that the Artful Life Alliance, the Violet Light Sect, the Fu Clan, and whatever power Whitestaff was aligned with had taken Lionheart Town and divided up his properties.

Fortunately, they couldn’t take the airship business from Thousand Treasures, but by taking the production facility they stopped the flow of goods. The contract was with the Prosperity Company, so they were helpless to take the deal over. The Dragoons that manufactured the engines would die before they shared the secret and they refused to work for others. Not receiving as many resources as they’d hoped for meant the enemy had sent more manpower after Sage. They were to receive a big reward for turning him over and also some of them were quite convinced he carried a fortune.

Unable to help out against that huge tortoise, the Tiankong Siblings spent their time training and drilling with the cultivators they’d gathered, arming them with Formation Armor from the Dragoons and practicing group tactics with them. Sage was kept abreast of the developments, having to restrict the number of reports they made to twice a year, which was about twice daily for him.

Too bad I don’t have any of those higher rank training manuals. It would be nice to have a structure for learning how to use Laws.

The higher powers of the world wanted to stay in charge and kept their ways of understanding law all to themselves. Rank five cultivators were enough to battle the vast majority of the Demonic Beasts in the wilds so they were enough to control human civilization and keep the resources flowing.

Without a surefire way to raise any Nascent Souls, Sage was at a definite disadvantage. Two against four, five with that giant tortoise on his tail. He had sensed the Fu Clan Nascent Soul when he was running earlier, just waiting for him to make a mistake. That Nascent Soul’s presence had kept him from making a more deadly counter attack, worried he’d put himself at risk. If that Nascent Soul wasn’t watching him the whole time, he might have been able to use the giant tortoise to kill far more of the enemy. As it was, he was forced back to a single option. Flee. Buy time.

The more time he could buy, the greater the chances of those in the Inner World making breakthroughs. Even so, things weren’t looking good. The chances of one of these people making a sudden breakthrough were miniscule. After forming their core, it was far more likely for a cultivator to never advance again in their lives. The odds were very much in favor of never discovering a law. For those that did, they had much higher chances of slowly advancing, but the huge majority of rank fives never took that step. Without any guidance, it was just too hard to stumble onto the right path. There were many cultivation techniques that could take someone to the fifth rank. You only needed to train diligently and one day you could form your core. There were risks along the way, but the way was clear.

Without any guarantees of assistance, Sage was left with hope. He had one final card to play, but it was something of a hail mary. A longshot with little chance of success. Would he be forced to take the risk or would he get lucky and find another way out?