With this somewhat disconnected mindset, would it make the people in his life more like characters in a game and less like real people? This idea was somewhat worrisome, but for those he cared about, he could simply take them into the Inner World or maybe he would just figure out a way to move his consciousness back to how it had been. Either way, it was something to deal with in the future. At the moment he was studying the ‘negotiation’ and everything seemed to be going quite well.

All of these Elders were Nascent Souls and if they put their minds to it, they could take total control over their facial features and biological rhythms. With how powerful their senses were they would be able to sense a change in heart rate or body temperature quite easily, let alone the expressions on a person’s face. Normally, they wouldn’t go to such effort to control their body to such an extent, but in this tense situation every single one of them were acting with an unnatural calmness and a stony face. There were no outward signs that anything was wrong, and both sides seemed to be contemplating what level of compromise they would accept.

Well, that’s how other observers would see things. Sage spilled a drink, knocking it onto an intricately tiled floor. Without saying anything a servant rushed into the room and started to clean up the mess. He started to test all his options, plotting a move and then observing how the future would change. It really did feel quite like a turn based game where he could not only see the hit chance and how much damage he could inflict on his enemies, but he could even see what those enemies were planning to do and how those plans might change depending on what action he takes. In the outside world, Sage had suddenly started to act much more like his old self. With a body that felt more like an avatar in a game, many of the unconscious habitual motions and expressions he used to make became muted. If he was in a conversation with someone he would likely pay close attention to these sort of non-verbal cues, but at the moment he was standing in an Observation Airship and using Foresight to try to gather information about the battle, so his face became just as blank as the Elders he was observing.

He was starting to get eager to enter the battle, so he constantly tested out different ways for him to join the fight. Until told otherwise he was supposed to stay at the ready and refrain from entering the fight, but he wasn’t planning on obeying those orders if a really great opportunity came. Unfortunately, he was a little too far away to be immediately impactful. He found more than a few methods he could take that would give him an advantage against the Fu Clan Nascent Souls, but inflicting a wound upon the enemy would not make up for going against the orders he’d already agreed to abide by. He was willing to take action if he found a way to very quickly defeat or kill one of the Fu Clan, but he couldn’t find any methods, they were too tightly wound and ready for an attack.

One moment the leadership of the two clans were calmly discussing terms to end the battle and then without any warning the eighteen Nascent Souls simultaneously threw attacks at each other. Contrary to the earlier conflict that was something of a match between siege weapons and insect tamers, this battle was a war of laws. A third of the combatants actually leapt into the air and took their battle to the sky. Four different types of Wind Laws twisted the air providing different types of flight. One person was standing on some sort of disc shaped magic device and using it to surf through the air while the last one was standing on the back of a giant centipede that had a pair of wings on each of its body segments instead of legs.

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The man on the Flying Tool was one of the Fu Clan’s peak Nascent Souls, an old man with a thickly armored suit. Three of the people using wind laws were on his side, one of them was that man wearing the masquerade mask with a tuft of three red feathers on his forehead. He was using a Wind natured Qi technique to create wings out of the wind. The second was the older man with a bandana over the top half of his face. His piercing eyes were staring out of a set of holes cut into the bandana and his whole body was covered in a layer of glowing sand. Somehow he’d turned his Qi into extremely small particles and turned those particles of Qi into individual sand grains. The fine particles of dust on the ground were whipped up by a powerful wind blowing around him and formed into a small scale sandstorm that carried him aloft. The third wind user on the Fu Clan’s side was an old woman, and the other peak Nascent Soul in the Fu Clan.

Only two from the Chong Clan had taken flight and they quickly realized they would have to give up any hopes of air superiority. The man on the giant centipede was the lead Elder of the Wu Faction, but he was only level 64. Beside him was one of the Wa Clan Elders, an old man wearing a leathery brown toad suit and hopping onto spinning discs of wind that he was spitting out. He hopped from one disc to another like they were lily pads, moving with a surprising grace which was quite at odds with his somewhat disgusting appearance. The Wa Elder was level 67, but they had to go up against two 70s along with the level 69 man in the bandana and level 68 fellow with red feathers. The top four Nascent Souls of the Fu Clan were all airborne and the Chong Clan seemed at a stark disadvantage.

Then, the four weakest Elders of the Chong Clan suddenly joined the aerial battle. The three Xie Faction Triplets were new Nascent Souls, but they stood back to back and waved their hands to release a trio of red ribbons. Those rapidly flying streaks of light were of course their Scarlet Winged Scorpions and the three lights flew together in a weaving pattern like a cord braided through the sky. Along with them, the weaker Elder of the Wu stomped upon the ground and a gout of water shot up. He waved his hand across this geyser and the water scattered into a fine mist. The mist thickened and he jumped onto it. The cloud of water vapor swept forward like a wave and then flowed upwards. This Elder, Wu Yun, was only level 62, but he still charged fearlessly into the sky to help face the uneven odds.

The new Chong Matriarch, Xie Bian, was not foolish enough to think she could catch the Fu Clan peak Nascent Souls in the air, so she made them come to her. She leapt into the air just as the ground beneath her exploded apart. A massive object shot up out of the ground like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean. Xie Bian landed upon the top of this object while it was already rushing toward the still landbound members of the Fu Clan. The shards of rock and dirt that were blasted away suddenly paused in the air and then came flying back towards the huge figure. The cloud of dust obscured the view of this fast moving behemoth, but quite suddenly the cloud was pulled in and the air cleared showing what that giant object was. It had a pair of truck sized pincers, held in front of it like a wall along with a giant stinger rising into the sky like a crane. The dark purple carapace of Ancestor Scorpion carried a sort of sinister luster from where it peeked out between large plates of stone armor. The Matriarch made a gesture and the armor plates changed shapes. Those coating the huge pincers thinned out and long pointed spires thrust forward. They were aimed towards the three new Nascent Souls on the Fu Clan’s side.