Snake 18, Year 8693 of the Grand Wulin Era, Hou Minzgzhou

We had interrogated the other patrollers, and they'd corroborated her story, adding that at this time all the hunting teams and such had returned to barracks, so all that we'd have to face before getting to the barracks were the bandits stationed on street corners. Thankfully, it wasn't a big town, so there were a total of about 15 6th Layer Mist Seas and 5 7th Layer Mist Seas spread through the town. No Mages or Warmages should be among the sixth layers, but all but one of the 7th layers that'd be with them would be Mages. We figured each of us could take one team of a 7th layer and 3 6th layers at a time, so we split up while Ted and Kellan went ahead to watch the barracks the Black Iron Gang had built for any signs of anyone catching on to our shenanigans.

We'd all changed out of our sect robes into clothing fit for the roles we'd decided to play in our plans to trick the bandits. I wore dirty cotton clothes with no shoes, and was in my human form, so I looked like a 12 year old farmgirl from the Azure Dragon Continent, which made sense, since I was a Gemborn Ape, and the Ancestor of the Gemborn Apes, Sun Wukong, who had a lot of titles, like Victorious FIghting Buddha or Great Sage Equal to Heaven , had been born from a special gem created by a goddess on Fruit-Flower mountain, in a place that was pretty similar to the Azure Dragon Continent, so him and most of the rest of my people resembled the tannish-brown skinned, brown eyed, humans of the southeastern part of the Azure Dragon Continent when we took on human forms.My human form in particular had blond hair, though most people from Azure Dragon Continent had black hair, and other colors were usually a sign of Magic Beast ancestry there. People from all 5 continents would often show up on the others due to various reasons, and it wasn't uncommon for someone from say, Vermillion Bird to settle in Azure Dragon or Earth Dragon or vice versa, so I wouldn't really seem out of place.

I figured I should play up the cute factor, draw a few bandits together and then ambush them, and Iknew for sure Alex and Avarius had their own plans, as we'd discussed them while interrogating the night patrol. I drew the mana aura I unconciously emitted into my body, so anyone who wasn't doing a pretty thourough Divine Sense scan and wasn't stronger than me would have no idea I was even a Cultivator.

I wandered up to the nearest bandit, a 6th Layer dressed in the military gear of the Sol Magna Empire. He was a pale guy with rough features and beady brown eyes. I couldn't see his hair due to his helmet, so I figured he had it pretty short. I started tugging on his sleeve and crying.

"What do you want, kid?" He said, annoyed that this random mortal kid was bothering him.

"Mister soldier, my momma went out to the fields and she hasn't come back even though its dark. I think she might've gotten attacked by one of those wolf Demonic Beasts that you guys have been fighting!"

The bandit's expression softened, and I almost felt bad for tricking him. "Sure, kid, let me grab a couple other guys so we can bring her home safe. The boss did say we should try to protect you mortals unless you did something stupid, after all."

The man turned his back and spoke into a small shell that looked like some kind of communicator, and within a minute, three bandits ran over. Two were 6th Layer Mist Sea Warriors like him, and the last was a 7th Layer Mist Sea Mage.They all looked a bit annoyed, but they seemed about as eager to help as the first guy had. They didn’t speak, just nodded at the first bandit and looked at me with a mixture of pity and curiosity.

None of these bandits so far had really seemed like that bad of people, and they all wore the military uniform of one of the strongest empires of the Earth Dragon Continent, the Sol Magna Empire. That and the fact that most of them seemed very disciplined and soldierly made me think something weird was going on here, and that the Black Iron Gang might not be bandits after all. Maybe that was related to why we’d been given the option to capture rather than kill, and the real reason they hadn’t sent serious firepower out to mop the floor with them? Either way, I had to capture them, so I decided to keep up my act and swallow the doubts that I was grappling with. I hated doubt. It made me feel like I might not be doing the right thing, and since I was the type to follow my instincts, conflicting feelings were a pain in my simian ass.

“Follow me! She went to the western fields!” I led them to the nearest set of gates, out of them, and a little down the road. As soon as we were far enough from the village that the sounds and mana aurae of a fight wouldn’t attract attention, I flared my aura, revealing my cultivation as a 9th Layer Mist Sea Warrior.

The Mage turned to the others and spoke, seeming more amused than anything. A small fireball appeared in his hands as he said “Damn, this kid’s even more powerful than me. I don’t think her mom’s in any danger at all, do you?”

The first guy spoke. “No, but I think we might be.” He drew a two-handed sword from a sheath at his waist, and the other two almost instantly prepared their standard sword-and-shield setups.

I smirked, shifting back to my true form. My mid length, blonde human hair was replaced by metallic-looking golden fur and the texture and tone of my skin changed as my facial bones, along with a few others, rapidly changed their shapes. A simple wooden quarterstaff appeared in my hands, and as I infused Mana into it, it shimmered and turned the same metallic golden shade as my fur.

“Sorry about this, boys, but orders are orders, and I have to bring you to justice.” I sighed as jumped into the air and leapt toward the Mage, my staff raised overhead so as to bring it down hard on his. I controlled my strength perfectly, and when the staff hit his head, the fireballs in his hands dissipated and he hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He was just unconscious, so he'd be fine. Blocking the greatsword of guy number 1 with my staff, I jumped into the air again and kicked him hard in the side of his helmet, knocking him out. The other two were even more pathetic, they didn't even get an attack in before I tripled my body size, grabbed them by the torsos, and knocked their heads together with just the perfect amount of force to knock the two unconscious. I tied them up, then placed a Walnut Prison on the chest of each of them, activating it with mana. Each rapidly grew into a walnut little taller and wider that the person it would contain, then opened, encapsulated them, and enclosed. Don't worry, the nut had enough pores in it that they could breathe just fine, and it even had comfortable padding! They just wouldn't be able get out unless they had Mana Sea cultivation or outside help with that same strength.

I repeated the same process with the other bandit squad I had to handle, right down to the trick. It was almost too smooth. Are these people that dumb, or is something like this just that common outside the sect to the point my honestly pathetic lie wouldn't even be questioned? I didn't want to think about that at the moment, so I rushed to meet Alex and Avarius. They'd been working together, so they'd managed to take out 3 squads in the time it took me to handle two. We met up in front of the Black Iron Gang's Barracks, where Ted and Kellan were waiting.

Kellan looked at us, seemingly uninjured, if a little shaken, and said. "Are y'all ready for this?"

The three of us looked at each other, then at the two Magic Beasts in human shape in front of us.

We spoke in unision, right down to the same vaguely smug smirk covering up internal conflict. "We were born ready."

Ted shifted into a panther and slammed into the door, and a solid, reliable Ironoak door snapped like weak balsa,revealing a bunch of stunned bandits. For a moment, everything seemed frozen, and every detail was crystal clear. The sleepy faces of some bandits, the food scattered around, a few bundles of blankets that had been moving and moaning, the hands halfway to weapons and some people halfway through dressing or undressing. After that brief, timeless instant, all hell broke loose.