Sage had made sure to check around with his Spiritual Sense before entering the Universe Ring. A night of drinking had spiraled out of control and led him somewhere he’d never expected. While he wasn’t the killer, he still was the one taking the heat.

The real killer must be somewhere laughing their ass off.

Hiding within the Universe Ring he had a choice in front of him. He could wait till they cleared out of the tavern and then try to determine who had done it using his Timeless Eyes. The problem was that the longer he waited, the longer it would take him to look into the past to see what happened. If he came back four days later he’d have to sit there maintaining the technique for a full day just to return to the time of the crime. Even then, who knew when that trap was set, it could have been a few days earlier or it could have been weeks. If he sat in one of those rooms for days they’d think he was up to something. He could push his vision back to the time of the crime before going into the tavern, but there’s no telling how long he’d have to sit in there rewinding. His energy wasn’t unlimited, even with pills, Spirit Stones, and a cultivator’s body, he’d get too fatigued after a few days of maintaining the technique without rest. If he wanted to see who did it, he would have to act fast.

The other option was to just stay hidden. There was still more than a week till Song Lu Tian and the other geniuses were set to return from Thunder Mountain Bridge. There was nothing stopping him from just keeping hidden and letting things cool off a bit. It didn’t seem like the killer had attempted to frame him for the murder, and Tang Zhelan was killing off regular folk because they weren’t kicked out of their hotel rooms fast enough… he deserved it. All he could hope was that somebody would notice that Tang Zhelan died in a different method than that guard he’d killed with his Twin Soul. It was a long shot, but maybe then they’d realize he wasn’t the actual killer.

It does not feel good to be falsely accused.

After giving it some time to stew, Sage didn’t want to take the risk. Even if he found out who the real killer was, did he want to bring them to justice to clear his name? Of course not! That guy had it coming, if he wasn’t accidentally involved he would have been commending the mysterious killer. He didn’t plan on sticking around here much longer anyway. After he finished his business with Song Lu Tian and the Zhu Clan, he’d be leaving immediately. Then he could head back to the Holy Flame Sect in a whole different kingdom. Even when he returned to the Dou Kingdom in the future, he’d head to 10,000 Wave Province. The Tang Clan was powerful, but they were from a completely different part of the Dou Kingdom. In a few years, they’d probably stop caring about the death of one member altogether.

Sage chose to stay hidden. He pulled out a memory sphere and dove into the library of techniques he received from the Timeless Master. He’d looked for disguising techniques from the Holy Flame Sect, but after finding the Human Seal he hadn’t had the need. Now he did.

While browsing, he split his attention to Thunder Mountain Bridge. He’d stopped the Charming Lance Beetle’s growth at about the same size as a small SUV. Any larger and it would be too cumbersome for travel. This place also had a restriction against high cultivation level so it couldn’t get past rank 3. Now that it was larger, Sage put to use the Hive Body technique and it became an armored carrier for the ant colony. He had it walking slowly, ants streaming out in every direction to explore the terrain.

Using the ants to scout was a little tricky. Since he wasn’t linked to them there wasn’t any direct communication. All he could do is observe their behavior. On the plus side, he was modifying their behavior with every generation. He’d tested some of these tactics out when he was battling with Grey Beard. He didn’t know when he had assimilated with one of the Stonecutter Ants, but their ancestral memories were present when he recovered his mind with the help of the Silver Liberator Butterfly. Since then he’d been trying to understand the information and alter it to serve his purposes. For such a tiny creature, they were remarkably intelligent. The memories were essentially the rulebook for how to perform the different ant jobs in a colony. They each emit their own scent that denotes their job, when they haven’t smelled a certain job in enough time then some of them switch jobs and pick up the slack.

Individually, they were very similar to computer programs or robots. Acting out their set roles, yet also very cooperative and altruistic. If they’re trapped or attacked they release distress pheromones and other ants come to save them. When they find food they leave scent trails which others follow, adding their own scent trails. The stronger the scents become, the more other ants get drawn to the task and by doing so strengthen that scent even more. With the task handled the pheromones dissipate and the ants disperse to other tasks. It was quite like a form of distributed computing, adding processing power to the most important tasks without any sort of controlling hierarchy, the tasks would increase or decrease their own demand for resources.

What Sage had been doing was creating new behaviors. Firstly, a set of states. When a certain pheromone was present, all of the ants except the Queen, nurse, and larvae, would switch jobs. They would organize themselves using their pheromones and the number in each job just like normal. The new jobs were actually created similar to a military ranking system. Sage thought of them like Generals, Colonels, Majors, Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants, and Soldiers. A Sergeant would be present for every group of ten soldiers. A Lieutenant would be present among every ten Sergeants. A Captain for every ten Lieutenants, and so on. The ants would then only care about the scent of those in their same profession and the nearest ant of a higher rank. They follow the ant of the higher rank and keep equal distance away from those with the same rank as themselves.

The ants would then naturally form up into an army. Sage could then use his Hypnotic Eyes to give complex orders to only a few of the ants and have the commands ripple through the whole of the group. Of course, it was still a work in progress. The organization of the ants into groups and controlling their movement was very similar to programming flocking behaviors. That was of course studying how to create simple artificial intelligence controlling the movement of agents, actors or npc’s. Each of these individuals need to know the position and direction of their neighbors, and then with three simple rules they will form different flocking formations or behaviors. Cohesion, creating a cohesive group by having an agent head toward the average position of their neighbors, ie the center of the group. Alignment, head towards the average heading of their neighbors. Finally, Separation. Change direction to avoid hitting their neighbors.

Giving greater priority to different rules with create different formations. For example, low cohesion and high alignment. The group would spread out loosely, but they would all head in the same direction. They could sweep across the land like a carpet. With different ranking he might also set a Low alignment for commanders. This would put them into tight groups, but each group would split up from the others. Each smaller group’s heading would differ more and more from the one above it.

The more complex commands took a bit of trial and error.