He’d broken free of the endless cycle of life and death that the enemy had forced him into, yet it wasn’t without cost. The enemy was essentially in control of his Spiritual Sea, and that was only a step away from controlling his mind. If that flame giant knew what it was doing, it could even lead to Sage’s body being possessed. He’d basically given up control to the invader and his consciousness had retreated into his body. It was like he’d just given up the bridge of ...
2020-06-16 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The Spiritual Sea was the embodiment of the mind. The control center his consciousness used to operate his body. While the soul was a separate entity without a body to contain it or a mind to drive it, it would discorporate and move on to the afterlife. Sage still found himself existing, but had no connection to the senses of his body. Given the attack that he had suffered, he could only hope that he wasn’t dead and this was merely a very powerful attack upon his mind. The mome...
2020-06-12 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Lying on his deathbed and reviewing the life he’d lived, Yang Fu had been filled with deep regrets. Always telling others what they wanted to hear had made things go smoothly for him most of the time, but it also made him into a pushover in their eyes. He’d been seen as a bootlicker or loyal dog and when his ‘master’ was in trouble, he was tossed to the wolves. Even if it was just the mask he wore for the world, it did nothing to change his lack of power. He’d had to sc...
2020-06-11 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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After some time, light returned. His vision was blurry. He was cold.
For some reason everything felt off. A sense of wrongness. Yet, he couldn’t tell just how or why he felt that way. He found himself looking up into a woman’s eyes and her soothing voice calmed his unease. He could barely move, and everything was just so weak. Am I an infant?
He soon found his only means of communication was to wail and cry out. An instinctive response that seemed t...
2020-06-10 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The huge flame was gone from the physical world, but Sage immediately felt a presence invade his mind. Inside his Spiritual Sea, the ball of flame rushed in from the grey misty borders of the Spiritual Sea and a wave of heat washed over the water and seared against the side of Sage’s mental fortress. The huge ball of flame started to float closer. As it moved, the flame’s silhouette began to change. Slowly twisting and rolling, reforming into the rough shape of a man. A giant...
2020-06-09 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Only an idiot wouldn’t realize at this point that the giant wasn’t actually the leader of the Flares that had been issuing commands earlier. Sage laid low, staying still as if he was still gravely injured and trying to conserve energy. Thankfully, he had a powerful healing ability. While it was no longer at the level where he could regrow his limbs and organs; cuts, bruises, shattered bones, and other sorts of injuries would only take him time and energy to recover from. The ...
2020-06-05 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The giant had already leapt over the perimeter trench and barreled into the ‘forest’. It flinched slightly when it first brushed up against the canopy of the banyan trees emitting pink gas. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be paralyzed and even if it was suffering from numbness, it didn’t seem to slow it’s advance. The silvery spike roll and the junk armored giant charged towards each other while ignoring everything else. Attacks came from the crowd of Flares, falling u...
2020-06-04 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Powered by the Divine Breath technique, a stream of almost neon green poison was shot out a few dozen yards, arcing through the air in a graceful curve and raining down upon a huge swath of the leather clad Flares. Sage’s huge cobra head swayed back and forth like the end of a garden hose, dousing the line of enemies with green liquid. Each of them getting touched by many droplets from above like a sudden spring shower. Only, this rain was not cool and refreshing.
A...
2020-06-03 20:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Moments ago.
With the insurmountable force around him, Sage could only face it with his strongest power. He immediately transformed and used his coiled body to hide the emergence of the Formation Machine, filling it completely with Million Scale Shell Formation Plates. Blocking that attack had cost him five thousand Spirit Stones as well as nearly a hundred Formation Plates.
“King me!”
Even in the dire situation, he couldn’t help but inte...
2020-06-02 20:00:03 +0000 UTC
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After his confrontational announcement, there was no response from the enemy. At least, none that he’d hoped for. After a moment of stunned silence, the enemies broke out into laughter. Or at least that’s what he thought it was. The distance separating them and the gas masks they were wearing distorted the sound and all he heard was a dull roar coming from every direction. He could only take it as laughter from the body language of the group, some of them slapping their thigh...
2020-05-29 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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This really isn’t off to a great start.
Sage was already cornered at the end of a cave deep into the ground. The tunnel had a few branching paths, but they all led to dead ends. If the enemy had already sealed the exit for the mine tunnel, there wasn’t anywhere he could go to escape. At least not without a lot of digging. Since they hadn’t already rushed into the chamber he was in, they either didn’t want to damage the Psionic Crystals, their powers would b...
2020-05-28 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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With the failure bubbling beneath his skin, Sage ran his Qi through his meridians and tried to clear or affect the change. Unfortunately, the strange energy percolating within him seemed to be completely transparent to his Qi. Starting to grow worried, he began to try everything he could think of to bring it under control. He felt a reaction of some sort when he drew upon the Poison Laws, but it was only a slight response and then nothing else afterwards. Finally, he found a path...
2020-05-27 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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He didn’t explain how he lured the Flare guards away, nor did they keep asking him. This single operation had earned ‘Acumen Asan’ a reputation for being mysterious. It took them a little less than an hour to skirt around a few more Flare patrols and link up with a sewer tunnel that led back to Hollow Phase. After entering the secret base they put their heads together and distributed the ‘spoils of war’. Sage and Spark were each given a Divine Amethyst from the others. ...
2020-05-26 20:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Turns out they had already prepared for their success as well as failure. Under their direction, they quickly cleared out a dozen guard teams. Clearing a path from the outer perimeter directly to the edge of the Quarry. At that point, Spark opened up his shell and took out a device that looked like a small drum the size of a bucket. He opened up the top of it and then sat down cross-legged in front of it. An arc of electricity formed between his fingers before he placed his hands...
2020-05-22 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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After they finished marvelling over the sight in front of them, Nova finally slapped Cloud on the back, “Enough fooling around. The Divine Egg is out of our league. Start setting up the gear.”
Cloud had an aggravated look on his face, one which he didn’t dare to keep when he turned around. Instead he took off his shell and started opening the top plate to pull out some complicated looking gadgets. He looked around and then remembered Spark wasn’t with them. Then he ...
2020-05-21 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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“Remember that time when Bass got her shirt ripped off? Treble was so mad! I swear his whole neck turned as red as a tomato.”
“Haha, that was awesome!”
Two men in leather jackets were sitting on a log inside a trench, laughing and flipping knives in their hands. Then one of them looked around and his voice got serious, “Keep your voice down, Switch. If any of Reverb’s goons hear us we’ll lose our heads.”
The other man didn’t respond...
2020-05-20 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Their base was located in what looked to be an old quarry. There were many descending levels with a long wide ramp leading down the sides of a massive hole in the ground. It was essentially an artificial canyon and at the bottom of it was what looked to be a scrapyard. There was a great fondness for chain link fence panels and rusty sheet metal in the base. The ruined city showed it had suffered from a complete collapse, an apocalyptic end to a once great society. On the other ha...
2020-05-19 20:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Sage found the group reasonably pleasant, but he couldn’t forget that he was an outsider and that he was only here to gather resources. That brought his thoughts to the Memory Seed and reminded him to check with Tao Ba to see if there was a method to alter what it had recorded. Having a recording of the Universe Ring was already very revealing and not something he’d want to share with strangers.
The banter among the group continued for a while before Sage was told...
2020-05-15 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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In the canteen area there were around twenty hexagonal tables of a very industrial design. They had stainless steel tops with three legs and six triangular stools tucked underneath. Sage took a look around at the place and saw four or five groups of people eating and talking. He suddenly felt very nostalgic and was reminded of a high school lunchroom. Oh great, does that make me the new kid? Which clique am I going to get invited into?
Laughing inwardly at the comp...
2020-05-14 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Back in the outside world, a few days had passed while Sage was crafting the Heart’s Tongue. The lights were turned up again, so that must mean it was daytime again. The underground facility had no windows and Sage couldn’t tell what they used for a clock around here, nor would he know how to read it. On the plus side, the blond attendant was here, pushing up his glasses and reading off his clipboard, “Aww, you’re just growing so very big, Suesie.”
Sage couldn’t...
2020-05-13 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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The demon in that chamber of Sage’s mental labyrinth was smashing its hands against the door, trying to break out and overwhelm him with the sharp pain. Sage was no stranger to the pain of losing a limb. Such injuries were so severe that the body basically shut down the sense of pain. Bottling up his sense of pain served a similar purpose. The loss of a major body part was more traumatic than it was life threatening for him. With his healing ability, he could recover from such ...
2020-05-12 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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While Sage didn’t want to be doing anything that Guan Zhenyan told him to do, he couldn’t help his curiosity. The man was making fun of him, but the tip might actually be helpful. All he’d lose is a little time sucking up to Tao Ba. After having the Hoplites prepare some food, he called upon the white haired boy and fawned over him for a while before posing the question.
“Great Sir. I am on a foreign world, as you no doubt remember. No one’s memory is ...
2020-05-08 20:01:01 +0000 UTC
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It was actually less of a cage and far more like the terrarium that people kept their lizards, turtles, frogs, and pet insects in. It was currently empty of any terrain or the other little decorations people used, but as Sage took a look around at his surroundings he saw that he wasn’t alone. Well, the Chameleon Mantis that is. Sage was hidden within it, and the six inch tall mantis was locked in a large clear walled cage. There also happened to be at least another dozen such c...
2020-05-07 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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The Chameleon Mantis carefully crawled along the top of a pipe that ran along the ceiling of a hallway. Sage observed the people that passed below and started to confirm certain details about them. They all wore similar blue jumpsuits that had raised hexagrams printed on them. The patterned areas were over their joints, perhaps for protection, and made of some sort of rubbery material. After a dozen or so people had passed by, Sage noticed a difference. One of them seemed to be t...
2020-05-06 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
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The Blacksilver Pawn held up its hands and then a pipe stabbed into the back of its neck. It stabbed through what would be a person’s throat, scraping against the Blue Icesilver spine as it poked out the front of its neck. It kept its hands up and didn’t seem to be injured by the attack. Then a dozen ratmen rifles flew over and opened fire, punching the black oily ‘flesh’ full of holes. The Blacksilver Pawn continued to stand there with its hands up while the pipe was slo...
2020-05-05 20:01:01 +0000 UTC
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The dilapidated storefront exploded with metal and tiny pebbles of tempered glass. Throwing out a huge wave of dust when the giant insects burst out into the open with no regard for damage. To set their ambush the cockroaches had entered in single file, carefully picking their way through the rubble to not leave an obvious trail. Now, they ignored all of that and skittered out in a wide line. Their front halves were plated with a silvery metal, similar to what the ratmen made the...
2020-05-01 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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As the symbols began to appear within his Mental Fortress, Sage realized the true power of the Psionic Crystals. Although they had given a power boost to the Fisher Punk, their true worth was far greater. Soon the crystal was completely gone and he was faced with a mysterious assortment of special symbols. He started to study them and realized that if he had enough time, those symbols weren’t just boosting his Spirit Power, but they contained a deep knowledge. If I can unde...
2020-04-30 20:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Sage had once tried to get a full list of the obtuse system that Guan Zhenyan used to categorize his services. He’d learned that getting access to the full list of rules and regulations would cost him a few million Spirit Stones and so he was forced to instead deal with a constant stream of unusual stipulations. With that prior experience, it was no wonder that he completely ignored Zhenyan’s mention of a type of service and instead just gestured for the man to get on with it...
2020-04-29 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Tao Ba was currently patting his bulging tummy and looking very pleased with himself. Sage’s plea seemed to make all the blood drain from his face. He looked around worriedly and there was a dark glimmer in his eyes, “I wish I could, but that man is troublesome. Even after he… It’s too dangerous for me to act against him.”
A chance!
Sage leaned in close and put his hand onto Tao Ba’s shoulder, whispering conspiratorially, “You won’t act agains...
2020-04-28 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Three years ago.
Sage’s body was convulsing with pain and scrambled neural signals. He had no control over it, voluntary or involuntary. His heart had forgotten how to keep pace and his lungs weren’t breathing properly. If he wasn’t such a high level cultivator he would be dead already. At Sage’s level, as long as his core and soul existed, he could continue to live on in some form or another. Repairing a destroyed body was difficult, but not impossible. Those at th...
2020-04-24 20:00:03 +0000 UTC
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