Dave had been expecting to see some earthen fortifications as he approached the village. In his mind the enemy had taken the village and had enough time to maybe dig some shallow ditches. Yet then he remembered that this was a primitive world without firearms. A quick glance around the village revealed the enemies to be occupying the villagers houses, having kicked them out. The villagers of Favored tree were milling around an open area between the forest and the village. Dave could not be certain that those were all the people of the village, so he had to lure out the enemies.
A quick flare-up of his domain made his presence known.
Hostile cultivators in green robes flowed out of the buildings and took off after him.
Dave baited them out of the village and made them follow him for a good distance, before he lowered himself to the ground. The other cultivators surrounded him.
“You came alone, are you tired of living?” A man with a magnificent white beard asked him.
“No, I came here to see what the commotion was about.” Dave lied skillfully.
“Your clothes are in the colors of the Lone Mountain sect. A sect we of the Deep Verdant are currently at war with. Your nascent soul realm will not save you against our combined forces of core formation elders. While we had not heard about a nascent soul cultivator in the Lone Mountain sect, we have no choice but to assume that you are an enemy due to your dress and timing. If you are not, you can only blame your bad luck.” The bearded man said and motioned for the others to attack.
Dave brought up his domain at concentrated it to the very limit. Most of the core formation cultivators lost consciousness immediately, the bearded man was mid-motion of pulling out a sword from his spacial ring, but even he faltered and fell to the ground. When all the cultivators surrounding him were on the ground, Dave dropped his domain and waited. Whenever a cultivator regained consciousness, he flared his domain again and sapped the heat out of all the unfortunate cultivators.
He expected that a few of the weaker ones would freeze to death, however there was very little he could do about that. Some sacrifices needed to be made and this was by far the least bloody resolution he could come up with on the spot. At first he had planned to simply turn them all into ice statues, but when he saw how his domain affected them, he had decided to keep as many as possible alive. Had the cold frozen their limbs solid immediately, there would have been very little choice besides killing them. Something in their cultivation allowed them to resist the heat-sapping nature of his domain, instead of just freezing solid like everything else.
A few hundred cycles of knocking out the Deep Verdant cultivators later, a beat-up core elder wearing tattered robes of the Lone Mountain sect arrived. Luckily he stayed outside of the limit of his domain and shouted: “We killed the cultivators left behind in the village to guard it. You can move back to the village now.”
Dave answered him by shouting back: “Can you tell the sect leader that I have about thirty prisoners around the core formation stage lying unconscious here.”
The elder left in the direction of the village and a few minutes later the sect leader and his posse of cultivators arrived to take care of the situation.
“Thankfully we have a large amount of newly ascended core formation specialists waiting at home, otherwise we would have to cull their numbers from fear of a prisoner rebellion. With this victory we should be able to negotiate a favorable peace-treaty, unless the Deep Verdant wants to lose a substantial amount of their battle potential. They did not even know about your strength, otherwise they would not have followed you so readily. Their lack of knowledge of our most famous cultivator, means that they have no substantial intelligence on our sect at all. Truly favorable.”
“How will you contain them all?” Dave asked the sect leader.
“We have a few qi-restraining shackles and the rest will be under constant surveillance by two core formation disciples in case they try anything funny. The negotiations should not take long, due to this overwhelming victory.”
“Where will you keep them all, there is no way the prison is large enough to contain them humanely?” Dave reiterated his question.
“We will probably erect a camp for them outside of our sect to ensure that they do not cause trouble within our sect.” The sect master said and then he continued,”I would be nice if you joined the retinue of negotiators that we are going to send to the Deep Verdant. It would help to ensure that they are not attacked.”
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“Sure, when do they leave?” Dave answered him readily.
“They leave once we have gathered the right people for the job and ensured that these prisoners cannot cause any further trouble.” The sect master said with a raised eyebrow.
“Sounds good, I'll stay with the prisoners and help as some additional muscle.” Dave said.
They slowly gathered the prisoners that survived, ensuring that none of them were fighting back after the ice-bath they had received. Then they headed back to the sect with the prisoners in tow.
When they arrived back at the sect, the sect leader told Dave to wait at the gate for the other members of their diplomatic team to arrive. The first guy who showed up was a scholarly type with a frail body and relatively androgynous face. A few burly men arrived a little later and finally, the sect leader's granddaughter turned up at the gate.
“What are you doing here Mo? What if we get attacked by the Deep Verdant sect? Why is your grandfather putting you in such a vulnerable position?” Dave burst out before she had a chance to defend herself.
“You're worse than grandpa. He let me go after he considered that you are on this mission as well and I need the diplomatic experience.” She pouted.
“What if they take you hostage, what would your grandfather be left with?” Dave said before he could stop himself.
“You'll just have to stay close to me, grandpa would understand if that became the case. He always preaches to me about accepting measured risks.” She said with a little water in her eyes.
“Let us be off.” The scholarly man said and lifted off on his sword.
They were flying above the territory of the Deep Verdant when they encountered other cultivators. A small group of five. Approaching slowly they made their way over and hovered in front of Dave's group.
“Are you the negotiators from Lone Mountain here to negotiate the secession of Favored Tree?” The leader of their group asked.
The scholarly person in their own group flew to the front and said: “The situation has changed substantially. We are here to negotiate an end to hostilities, in return for the fighters we have taken prisoner.”
“Preposterous! Wan, take them back to the sect while we check the state of our forces.” He shouted across the gap between the flying swords.
One of the Deep Verdant disciples broke off and followed them at decent distance.
When they reached the Deep Verdant, the first thing they noticed was that the houses were not on the ground in the forest. Housing was arranged far in the air on enormous trees. It was majestic to behold. Maybe there were predators or flooding that had driven them to build that far into the air. Dave decided to wave over their guide that had been following them at a distance. It took him a while but eventually he got him close enough to shout a question: “Why do you people build houses so far up on trees?”
“The ground is very muddy and most importantly the qi at the ground is tainted with rot-qi, making cultivation down there very dangerous. We moved up into the trees as a result.” He answered politely, from a distance.
A series of rope bridges connected the housing areas with different facilities. As they came closer to the center of the populated area, a lot more people moved around. Eventually they reached a designated landing area. A flat, wooden roof between several trees, it had been painted orange for better visibility.
They landed.
A local moved closer to them from a group of other cultivators at the edge of the platform and said: “Are you from the Lone Mountain sect. We have been expecting your arrival, when is the capitulation?” Then he, and his group laughed.
The scholarly cultivator stepped forwards and said: “Once you have checked the state of your military force, we can bring an end to these unfortunate hostilities.” Then he continued: “Wan, can you bring us to our temporary accommodations while your sect figures out the actual state of the war?”
Wan obliged and soon they were sitting in a wooden house suspended on a tree. The architecture was ingenious, using wood-joinery to fasten the building to the surrounding trees. A great deal of effort must have been invested into building just a single house. Maybe it was less complicated for cultivator to build, as they could fly around and lift entire buildings with ease. However it did not diminish the incredible feat of woodworking every single house represented.
They had to wait the entire afternoon, before anyone in the Deep verdant even remembered that they were waiting in their sect. Presumably the news of their defeat at the hands of the Lone Mountain sect had distracted them severely.
Eventually, late in the evening, an elderly man arrived to negotiate. He and the scholarly man from their group talked at length about how the Deep Verdant would cede their claim to the village of Favored Tree, in return for the cessation of hostilities and the repatriation of their prisoners. In the end their negotiator had managed to bargain for an additional minor tithe of cultivation resources which would last for one year after end of hostilities.
The negotiations ended and two of the burly members, from the protection detail, left for the Lone Mountain sect to proclaim the success of negotiations and have all the prisoners released in a timely manner.
The rest of Dave's diplomatic team went to sleep in their treehouse.