Sage held back his laughter and rushed into action. Despite the purpose Ruanfu wanted the golden eagle, Sage also found it to be an exceptional beast. Given the seemingly infinite number of beasts in the world, this wasn’t one he could immediately identify, but it was definitely exquisite. After the experience of battling King the first time, Sage had improved his methods. A large cannon like object appeared in his hands, the barrel of it was strangely shaped. Instead of a circular muzzle, the opening was a wide and narrow rectangle. King knew what to do and kicked up his pace, pitting his speed against that of the golden eagle.

The eagle was about two thirds the size of King, so it definitely wasn’t small and the lightning crackling along its wings created thunderous booms in the air. In pursuit, King’s huge body seemed to slice through the air without a feather on its body being disturbed. The power of electricity versus the power of space. King wanted to overtake the golden eagle, but the best he could do was match its pace.

It was more than enough for Sage. He closed his right eye and when it opened again, power surged out of it. A hint of the void of space there in his eye, peering into the future and tracking the motions the eagle could make. He leveled the cannon towards the golden eagle and sent his Qi into it, activating many embedded Spirit Stones. A glow came from the muzzle and then the cannon lit up with array symbols when Sage pulled the trigger.

Boom!

A dark shape rocketed out of the cannon and flew towards the golden eagle. The eagle swerved and dodged the path of the incoming object. The flying object was now visible to it, a metallic disc spinning as it flew. The Formation Plate lit up as it flew past the eagle and hundreds of glowing vines exploded outwards. Nearly half of them were instantly destroyed by the lightning crackling along the surface of the golden eagle’s body, but the rest of them wrapped around it and encumbered its wings. The golden eagle fell out of the sky like a rock, plummeting towards the ground.

King dove after it, and Sage put away the ‘Plate Cannon’, bringing out an improvement upon the Harpoon Cannon. Four sharp points protruded from the front of the massive square muzzle and when he pulled the trigger they launched out towards the golden eagle. As they flew the harpoons spread apart and a huge net of woven steel silk ropes expanded between them. He’d essentially just combined four Harpoon Cannons and attached them to the corners of a huge net instead of individual lines. It couldn’t pin something down like a single strong line anchored on both sides could, but it was very effective at tangling up the limbs.

Most animals would struggle out of a net in just a few minutes, during which time a hunter would attack them, disorienting them and making it harder to escape the net. On the other hand, it was far more dangerous to a bird in flight. If they were tangled up they’d quickly fall out of the sky and take grievous injuries from their impact with the ground. Being so powerful, there was little chance such a fall would result in death, but if it was timed right to make use of a Demonic Bird’s astounding speed it could do quite some damage. The three of them had used these tactics many times before in the past to capture dozens of flying beasts and Sage was quite experienced at gauging when to fire the net.

The golden eagle plummeted towards the ground, the sound of wood cracking filled the air before there was a single huge boom and a cloud of dust rose up. Unlike their normal process, Ruanfu jumped off of King before Sage did and her Human Seal flickered. The little white haired girl suddenly replaced by a feathered dragon. She was already fifty feet long with an equally large wingspan, already beating King in size. It was now quite apparent that she looked like a cross between a wyvern and a hawk, two big wings and two legs with large and imposing talons. Her beak had grown larger and had a sharp hook at the tip, one which she stabbed into the golden eagle’s side.

Downy white feathers beat the wind, causing Ruanfu to smash down against the golden eagle. She dove down atop the eagle, balling up her talons legs like fists and smashing them into the tangled up golden eagle. Then she poked at it a few times with her beak until the eagle finally let out a defeated squawk and laid still. The big white bird wyvern looked up at the sky and screeched a few times, then she curled her long and serpentine neck, body and tail around the golden eagle’s neck and shoulders to celebrate her victory.

Sage could only laugh and feel a bit sorry for the golden eagle. King took them down to land and Sage walked over carefully before bringing all four of them into the Universe Ring within the center of a large formation. Once they had them temporarily sealed enough for him to bring into the ring, the formation was put here to ensure their safety as he applied a Human Seal. It was also a safeguard in the case that anyone tried to follow him into the Universe Ring. They’d find themselves inside the formation and heavily restricted.

When the seal was complete, Ruanfu returned to her human form and she was holding onto the hand of a blond haired teenage boy. The boy did not look happy in the least. He looked like a teenager that had been forced to babysit, or in this case a teen that had a little girl following him around and telling him she was going to marry him. If the boy had been younger or the girl more ‘developed’, there probably wouldn’t be such a sour look on the golden eagle’s face. Sage simply laughed, “Ruanfu, bring our new eagle friend over to the Tiankong Palace. Take him through the orientation. Let’s see, he needs a name. We’ll keep it simple and call him, Jin Ying.”

The name was very basic, Jin meant metal and more specifically gold, while Ying was eagle. Definitely not a name he spent much effort on. With Ruanfu distracted taking the eagle to where they kept the Memory Spheres and introducing him to all her ‘aunties’, Sage took King and they continued on their journey. Without the little girl to cause trouble they were a bit more efficient in their search and takedown of a few more dangerous beasts. Any Demonic Beasts above the third rank, that wasn’t a bird or insect, was killed by them. They couldn’t get them all, but they could clear a safer zone of a few miles around the proposed Hoplite village.

The goal being to give them time to build up their defenses before any stronger beasts migrated back into the territory. Sage and King continued this tactic until they had a dozen villages built up within the Bronze Tiger province. All but one of the Seven Stars had already been replaced. Two of them were former Bandit Leaders that Sage ran into. With King’s help they made short work of the defenses of the bandit camps and recruited them to his side. One of the bandit leaders was actually over level 50, but King was more powerful than him. Sage added more pressure, but the bandit chose to surrender when Sage told him of his plans to conquer and not kill them. The man called himself Black Saber, the leader of the Blood Saber Gang. The other bandit leader, Whitestaff, was conquered in a similar fashion, though she was only at level 50, the peak of Foundation Building.

Three of the other Seven Stars came from another mercenary team that the Jade Horde absorbed. They were impressed by the organization and equipment of the Hoplites. The three were known as the Strongfist brothers, and were quite powerful. The three used a strange fist technique that had them crawling over and spinning each other around like a team of acrobats. Though they were honorable, powerful in combat, and great leaders, they were terrible at resource management. Even the mercenaries that joined them had similar problems, all the money they earned was immediately spent again on binge drinking, gambling, and brothels. Every time they finished a job they would party till they were broke again and forced to take another job. They were happy to join up and have someone else take care of calculating expenses and buying equipment.

The last two of the Seven Stars were named Abbot Kunga and Bi Hongbing. Abbot Kunga was a Buddhist practitioner, and the rumor was that he was repenting for his past sins. The last of the Seven Stars, Bi Hongbing was the only one of the original 21 recruits that hadn’t been replaced. She had stumbled into a fortuitous encounter while out on a mission that helped her break into the fourth rank. Hongbing meant ‘Red Ice’ and she cultivated a strange technique that let her manipulate blood like it was water. Her unusual methods allowed her to keep her spot in the Seven Stars even though some of the other new recruits had exceeded her cultivation level.

Sage was quite pleased with how things were going and he slowed down their rapid expansion efforts. He let the Jade Horde build up more organically now, and put his focus on espionage. New training exercises were started, ones that were geared towards increasing their teamwork and testing people for leadership positions. They were also filled with many secret tests to pick out suitable agents. Tests to choose who would be taught the secret techniques from the Little Birdy manual.