Elder Cultivator
Chapter 1285

The first suspicious detail that Chidi noticed involved the large transport ships returning from the frontlines of the war. Obviously the Twin Soul Sect would be sending shipments of supplies or troops to occupy planets, but the way they moved he could tell they weren’t empty and ready to pick up more supplies. Unfortunately, he couldn’t extend his senses far enough and subtly enough to catch the first of them as they landed.

Rather than risk revealing himself, he positioned himself closer to certain starfields for future shipments. He’d been among the Twin Soul Sect for about a week after a stealth ship landed him in the wilderness. The ‘reclaimed’ planets weren’t fully equipped with every sort of protective formation yet, and that included limited planetary barriers. It was too much for them to sustain a full planetary barrier when not facing an assault.

That was why the Scarlet Alliance tended to use ones that only drained significant amounts of energy when taking damage. But Chidi wasn’t going to explain to them how that was accomplished.

After a few days of scoping out the area, Chidi was finally able to follow after one of the shipments of ‘cargo’. Chidi wasn’t actually terribly surprised at what it was, though it was a bit unusual to be taking slaves at the current stage of a war. That was why he pursued them instead of leaving them be.

Chidi wasn’t so callous that he would just leave slaves to their fate, but there were people far better suited to dealing with them. Generally, large numbers of people who were capable of taking over the planet or at the very least fighting large numbers of enemies as they extracted a group of people.

He could probably free one or two groups himself. It was too small scale compared to how his abilities might be used. In short, he would secure the lives of the most people possible, and someone else would save these people.

But he still needed to investigate the circumstances. And that meant walking along public roadways looking as normal as possible. His sword was perfectly mundane and unenchanted. Chidi didn’t feel like anything special. And he had eyes that… were there. Still, he could tell how much he was being watched, and it wasn’t an abnormal amount.

When he arrived at the facility, he made sure that nobody was watching on his approach. He was instantly convinced he had to go inside, because this wasn’t some sort of mine or labor camp. Cultivator slaves were harder to control, so there wasn’t all that much use in them- though that didn’t stop various groups from taking slaves far weaker than them. Regular cultivators could easily overpower those who didn’t cultivate and could use them for hard labor. Integration cultivators could handle a bunch of Essence Collection or Spirit Building cultivators.

Chidi wasn’t fully convinced it was more efficient than just having the top end work, but with enough fear they could handle a mass of people that was absolutely enough to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. Chidi wouldn’t mind arranging something like that if he didn’t get caught.

To get over the wall, he used his hands and the formation markings he’d carve into himself to manipulate the formations there. They were simple but he took his time, opening a small gap that allowed him to leap up to a handhold without being noticed, dragging himself over and through the momentary diversion in the formation before gently laying it back into its proper place.

This facility wasn’t meant to keep people in. Not really. More guards were watching the outside. Chidi still had to passively judge their gaze as he maneuvered through a courtyard, behind statues, low walls, and vehicles. Then he came to a door. The bane of all those who sought to infiltrate an area.

Just because he’d been trained by Velvet didn’t mean he was capable of the same feats. In some ways his skills had diminished with lesser energy, in others they grew. If he just waited for someone to open the door, he would almost inevitably be spotted by someone.

So the roof it was. Air vents weren’t strictly necessary with formations, but sometimes it was easier to just open up a hole than to add another formation… and this facility was packed with them. Defensive ones trying to stop people from moving around where they shouldn’t as well as some that Chidi couldn’t identify strictly via vibes. He’d have to get close enough to study them in some manner.

There was an opening for air. Not one large enough for Chidi to fit in, but he improvised. It didn’t have any relevant formations flowing through it, and neither did the roof around it. All it took was a quick slice relying more on insight than energy, and he was inside.

Someone would notice later, certainly. Chidi wouldn’t leave more hints, if he could help it. He carefully set aside the remains of the roof, glad that he was going into the back corner of a storage room and thus not somewhere people passed under repeatedly.

Corridors brought him to a large room that was helpfully entered via an open archway. A terrible place to keep slaves, if you were actually keeping slaves. But if you were chaining them down to formations, it really wasn’t that different. They would never get to the edge of the room if they were never able to move. Slaves had to have some freedom of movement to labor.

Anyway, this wasn’t that. This was…

Chidi stood behind a pillar. Big open rooms did need pillars for support, fortunately. Other than that, it was a lot of people chained down to formations. His first instinct was that they were being drained of cultivation or life force. That was the sort of thing evil cultivators liked to try, to various levels of efficacy.

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But nobody was particularly powerful or robust. Certainly not to a level that it would be worth transporting them from other planets for. A harsh assessment of their capabilities, but Chidi thought it was honest.

As for the other cultivators in the room… most were Life Transformation level cultivators. Good enough to be on the frontline. There were a couple Integration cultivators. So whatever was happening here was important enough for that level of participating.

Just being in the room made Chidi uneasy, and not from fear of being caught. He hadn’t been around spectral energy all that much, and he was worse at manipulating it. It made him realize his plans for Sudin might also be tougher than expected. Perhaps this was a good opportunity to learn.

Energy was… going into the chained individuals. What was the point of that? Chidi could speculate, but he happened to be there just in time to find out. One of the captives jerked, spasming for a few moments. Their aura changed. If that wasn’t enough to give it away, Chidi saw them looking around in confusion for a few moments.

“Hello, brother,” said one of the Integration cultivators, releasing one of the captives. Or not. Releasing corporeal form that had been chained down. Chidi wasn’t sure what happened to the person that had been there. Soul shunted out? Consumed? Sealed elsewhere?

This explained how the Twin Soul Sect was getting their numbers up so fast. They got to skip a good decade or two with each reincarnated individual by tossing them in a functioning body. Actually, now that Chidi looked closely… all of those picked were at least the peak of Body Tempering and generally no more than mid Spirit Building.

If only this were something that would be solved by cutting it apart. However, Chidi didn’t sense any particularly expensive components in these formations. He was willing to bet they could be built elsewhere. As for the cultivators making use of related techniques… if they were led by Augmentation cultivators he could believe they weren’t easily replaced. Ugh, what a pain.

Chidi was done. He adjusted the position of a tightly sealed bag. Aconite had said it was to be used only in a place where he was certain that ‘nobody should ever be alive again’. Fortunately, that shouldn’t include him. Aconite had put him through the rigorous path of mithridatism for anything she was planning to give him.

Was a whole bunch of poison randomly appearing in a facility less suspicious than a bunch of people having their heads cut off? No. Just differently suspicious. He hoped he could get several waves of people. Maybe an Augmentation investigator.

Now then, how was it supposed to be used? Chidi closed his eyelids, returning to his most comfortable state… except for the fake eyeballs in there. Right. For immediate use, slice in two and slap together. In short, get the powder in as many places as possible. For timed release, begin in a far corner and slowly release from a small hole. Particles would catch in the air, spreading around. They would cover an area no more than… eh, Chidi was pretty sure everyone on this planet was Twin Soul Sect or about to be soul transferred into being one of them. It didn’t matter how many meters or kilometers the bag covered.

The definition of a ‘room’ was pretty broad.

Chidi considered starting at the entrance, but he wasn’t guaranteed no side effects of the poison. Best to avoid passing back through the area, and the only other option was chopping open a wall. Some sort of assassin-spy getting into a facility? Quite believable, honestly. If there was too much extra perfectly sliced structure, they might catch on.

And Chidi wasn’t going to imperfectly slice things. Even if he did, probably nobody would notice. They’d just think cuts were related to the closest famous swordmaster. Chidi’s presence in Ratna’s territory was a secret, but he was the most famous left in the Scarlet Alliance. Half Oink wasn’t half bad, but she was enough centuries behind in her training and not really the subtle type. Obviously Chikere wasn’t around anymore and again not subtle.

Since Aconite hadn’t specified an exact number of grains he should let fall out of the sack per step, he made a small slice as he walked from one back corner across to the other, moving quickly between moments of people looking vaguely in the direction of the rear. He also was capable of avoiding peripheral vision well enough, so that wasn’t a concern. His steps were silent, too.

He walked the perimeter, and he still had half a bag full. With no way to guarantee anything else could safely hold the powder, he shook some into the corridor just outside the door then threw it down a hallway, slicing it open as he did so. Then he went the opposite direction back to his ‘entrance’.

As far as he was concerned, this was the most he could do to save these people. The captives would be the weakest, and thus experience the least pain. Hopefully they could at least properly end up in the cycle of reincarnation.

Chidi grimaced as he exfiltrated the facility. He needed to observe more use of spectral energy to be confident in his success against Sudin. He didn’t like coin flips, and his techniques required precision control. Any unexpected results could prevent Negation from activating, allowing his opponent to escape or potentially even strike him down.

He was several times more motivated to take out Sudin, now. He was going to be especially certain that he chopped the man’s soul into tiny, unusable pieces. Then he was going to seal them in a jar and take them to someone who could grind them up smaller.

That actually wasn’t a significant change in plan. He actually was going to capture Sudin’s damaged soul already. He would just do it more vigorously now. He really hoped that people’s souls were being forced out of their bodies, since that was the least foul alternative. That was why he wasn’t going to bet on that being the outcome.

One facility down. Chidi would familiarize himself with spectral energy, find Sudin, and then they could come scour the planets- and free anyone who hadn’t yet been slain. Or maybe someone could figure out how to expel a vast number of Twin Soul Sect members from bodies that weren’t theirs. That was unlikely, but the Scarlet Alliance had done some amazing things.