Sage moved confidently, having already plotted a route that would take him to every member of the Artful Life Alliance. With so many different groups as part of their alliance, there was no way for him to take them all out before news of his assaults could spread to the others. No matter what he did, whichever groups he went after last would always be prepared for him. So he chose to simply stop his attacks. He was sure they had already planned something nasty for him and were now just waiting for him to show up. That’s why he was on his way towards Endless Valley, the province to the northeast of 10,000 Wave.

Abbot Kunga, one of the original leaders that Sage had recruited into the Jade Horde was still operating in Endless Valley and that meant he could find a few agents from the information network. These days, Wan Ling was in control of the information network, so all of the information was funneled to her. The whole network operated in a sort of cell structure, so even Wan Ling had no idea who exactly all of their agents were. Sage had no way to just approach someone on the street to get in touch. He only personally knew the first few generations of Falconers, those that he trained. Those Falconers then trained Falcons independently and then those Falcons were the ones that went out and recruited agents to collect information.

Sage had a few methods he could try and signal to a Falcon, but that wouldn’t work if he didn’t know where they were. All he was sure of was that the capital city of each province would have at least one falcon, but as large as the cities were it would take him quite some time to make contact. That was why he went to Endless Valley. By making contact with Abbot Kunga he could find one of the Falcons hiding among the Jade Horde. Among the Horde, there were War Falcons that were openly espionage agents for the Horde to use, but there were also other Falcons that were part of the information network, reporting upon the Horde’s activities. He wanted to see if they had any information on how the Artful Life Alliance had been preparing for him.

For some reason the Merciful Mollusk organization was only established within the 10,000 Wave Province so he could only use their Transportation Arrays to head to the border of Endless Valley. From there he moved on foot, running down the simple road and realizing how very crude it was. With how dangerous the wilderness in this world was, the roads between towns and cities were extremely simple. They were little more than paths cleared of trees. In many places they were overgrown with plants as there weren't even enough travelers to trample the vegetation into dirt. That said, there were also many places where the road had been scoured clean, with huge swathes of burned or destroyed trees and plants to the sides, which he guessed were places where the plant life seemed dangerous and got preemptively wiped out by a passing traveler.

Sage didn’t bother to use a Warp Worm or flying insect to travel this time because he was far from any of his enemies and at his current strength those insects had become far too weak. The amount of resources required to raise one of them to a high level was basically on an exponential scale. He could raise them to rank 2 in mere minutes, and he could push them to rank 3 with his own energy. They could also reach the same level after a few decades on the Inner World. Raising them to the fourth rank took hundreds or thousands of years, or the consumption of various rare treasures. Getting them to the fifth rank took breaking past their innate limits and the amount of resources required was absurd. When he’d been at the 5th rank himself, he could use large numbers of 3rd rank bugs to overwhelm opponents, but now that he was a Nascent Soul the bugs he’d used for so long were only useful for utility. Compared to his now immense physical ability, he didn’t want to travel slowly inside a flying bug, airship, or at an even slower pace underground in a Warp Worm.

He was reminded of both the weakness of his insects as well as how he might improve the road system around Lionheart Town once he took it back over. It was at this time while he was traveling and on guard against attacks by Demonic Beasts when he suddenly felt a flash of danger. The motion of his feet immediately shifted from the 3rd of the Falling Leaf Steps, Leaf on the Wind, switching to the 2nd step, Leaf Gently Falling. He had been gliding over the ground between steps with a swaying arc like trajectory, but he was now spinning and twirling to the side. Drifting with an unpredictable motion and quickly lifting his arms to block his vital spots. His motion was just in time to receive the head of a wickedly barbed arrow. The sharp point stabbed into his forearm and lodged itself into the bone. Even with the immense toughness of his inhuman body it still penetrated deep. With his body sealed into a human form, his flesh did not have the toughness of his spider body’s exoskeleton, but his bones did.

Sage’s body rippled back and forth in mid-air, using his Treespring Stance to reduce the damage he suffered but also causing him to be blasted backwards. The force of the arrow was terrifying, hurling him a mile into the woods before his momentum was finally arrested by his sideways drifting. He didn’t dare to forcibly stop himself and focused completely on maneuvering to avoid the trees. Worse yet, he could feel a powerful vibration energy from the arrow and he focused the Treespring Stance on trying to absorb the rippling power spreading into him.

When he finally slowed down, a silvery hulk appeared in front of him, shielding him in one direction while also reaching out to grab the arrow and yanking it out of Sage’s arm. There was a loud crash when the Blacksilver Knight was struck on the back, the arrow had been aimed perfectly at where Sage’s heart would be if the knight had not been in the way. Sage felt the huge amount of damage the Blacksilver Knight had received from this second arrow and he immediately called forth his Golden Mantis Body and closed his eyes to activate Foresight. The Blacksilver Knight’s back split apart and the vibrating arrow started to liquefy the oily black mass that it used as flesh and muscle. The outer layer of Blue Icesilver, its armored exoskeleton had already been compromised on the back and the Blacksilver Knight had time to turn around to take the third arrow upon its chest. There was a similar bang and terrifying damage, and Sage chose decisively not to supply Qi to the Blacksilver Knight to regenerate itself. The damage was just too severe for him to keep up.

After being sent flying for a mile, Sage realized the archer that had ambushed him was still very far away. The enemy likely shot from a long distance and when he was sent back so far the enemy didn’t have time to catch up. From such a long way, it was hard for the enemy to move far enough to the side to get an angle around where the Blacksilver Knight was standing. Instead of healing the knight, Sage hid behind a tree and ducked down. He created a glowing seed and many vines sprung out to entwine around the tree trunk beside him. The crippled Blacksilver Knight moved in front of the tree and took a few more arrows before it crumbled apart.

It bought just enough time for the Sacred Banyan to take root and completely entwine the tree trunk with its vines. Those vines wove together into a lattice around the tree and then started extending aerial roots to start forming more trees. The puddle that was the remainder of the Blacksilver Knight slowly crept along the ground until it was close enough to Sage to send to the Inner World again. The tree in front of him took a violent strike and there was a loud cracking sound as it wanted to topple, but the Sacred Banyan around it held it up.

Uh oh.