Molting the Mortal Coil

One of them was one of his backup plans.

The raw material for his Soul Spawn. An egg that could hatch into his own current body. If he died, his soul could escape and enter the egg to be reborn anew. He didn’t have many of these eggs. They took time and energy to create, and he’d have to make new ones every time he used Merge to transform into a new body. He kept one here, one in the Inner World, and another hidden in the wilderness.

What did Hei Bai want to do with it? Was she going to study his body and find his weaknesses? Did she have some way to put a different soul into it? That certainly wasn’t a good thought.

The other egg was even more important to him. He’d only recently acquired it and he’d wanted to merge with it immediately, but kept being interrupted by his duties. It was the egg which contained the essence of Elder Manjji, the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel. After coming back from that other planet and forging a bond with the giant eel, he’d used the Mutate technique to combine him with a Warp Worm egg. Sage was looking forward to what sorts of ancestral memories and techniques such a powerful species would have, but now that damned woman had stolen the egg.

Tujiu’s injuries were light in comparison to the other two, and so he was ready to fly again already. Sage would have liked to stay in hiding, but there was no telling what Hei Bai might be up to. They had to try and chase her down. The two of them left the Universe Ring and returned to the outside world. Sage closed his eyes and then opened them again, a field of stars had replaced his left pupil. Tujiu waited patiently.

It was too bad for Hei Bai, that the Timeless Eyes were the most powerful tracking tool there was. As long as enough time hadn’t passed yet, he could view the events of the past to follow someone’s trail. He rewound his view of time, but for some reason there was no sign of Hei Bai around. Confused, he started searching the area, moving time forward and back in his vision to look for where she’d appeared. After a half hour looking he went back into the Universe Ring and asked Tao Ba.

“Those who threaten the Universe Ring are not ejected directly from the ring. That would put the bearer at continued risk.”

Sage frowned, “Then where do they go? How can I track them down?”

“They are sent a hundred miles away in a random direction.”

“So, which direction did Hei Bai go?”

Tao Ba just shrugged and disappeared again.

Great.

He returned to the waiting Tujiu, “Seems she was sent a hundred miles in a random direction. We’re going to have to move to a hundred mile distance and fly a big circle around this peak.”

Tujiu returned to his true form and Sage hopped onto the giant vulture’s back. He had a rough idea of when Hei Bai had escaped so he kept his view of the past at about that time and constantly scanned the ground beneath them for signs of her once they’d started flying a circle around the mountain peak. He cursed inwardly. There was too much ground to cover. They had to fly along a 600 mile path and look for a single woman hiding among the vast expanse of empty wilderness. After doing three full laps, he finally caught a glimpse of her trail and they flew down to investigate further.

Sage finally found the place and time in the past where she appeared and the two of them followed her trail on foot. They were inside a very dense forest and they had only managed to catch a tiny glimpse of her from the air. Using Hindsight, Sage followed along her trail. The only problem was that she had a huge head start on them. The many hours spent circling in the sky had given her a large lead.

After an hour passing through a portion of heavy forest, they followed her into a dark cave. He stopped in place. Hei Bai had disappeared. He could only see into the past, he couldn’t affect it in any way. The necromancer hadn’t bothered to use any lights or flames to navigate, disappearing into the pitch black cave without any hesitation. Even as they activated a Spirit Torch to guide their way, there was still no trace of Hei Bai. Light now wouldn’t create light in the past. He stopped at the mouth of the cave and advanced his Hindsight all the way to catch up with the future to make sure she didn’t just double back. Unfortunately, she was completely gone and they could only head into the cave to look for her.

Luck was not with them. The cave split off into many different branches, with none of them showing a trace of evidence that Hei Bai had passed. Annoyed, he brought out hundreds of Dragoons and sent them into the cave to map out every possible direction the old witch could go. As time passed, their chances of finding her continued to drop, especially when the Dragoons informed him that the cave was actually part of an immense cave system. They’d already mapped out hundreds of branching tunnels.

Another hour later, they finally caught a lead. There was a scrap of clothing on the ground in front of an underground river passage. Sage hurried to investigate and he saw a strange sight. There was a sudden bright flash of light and he saw Hei Bai. He also saw an anglerfish-like monster leaping out of the river and snapping up Hei Bai between its jaws. Its pelvis fins, the ones at the front underneath it, pressed onto the ground like crude feet and pushed it back into the river water. The bright light on its head dimmed and disappeared just before it entered the water again.

Some of the Dragoons had already entered the underground river to try and track the anglerfish, but none of them had returned. Everyone who had entered the water was gone. They were quite weaker than he was so he had to dive into the water to continue the investigation on his own. He called back all the Dragoons, sending them back to the Inner World and sending Tujiu to check on Xiezi.

He dove into the dark water, using a Spirit Torch to light his way while looking for that anglerfish. Unfortunately, that thing had decided not to use its light anymore and so Sage could only flounder around for a while. He switched to his true body and swam around for quite some time, but other than being attacked by a few strange species of fish he found nothing. The river led into a huge underground lake with dozens of passages leading out of it. He checked each of them, but the trail went cold yet again. The Dragoons were not aquatic creatures and they wouldn’t last too long being sent down these passages, let alone being able to swim back upstream to him to report their findings. The same applied to his other insects, none of them were aquatic creatures.

After checking some of the tunnels on his own and finding nothing he eventually gave up. A few days of hunting had led to nothing. He carefully returned to the surface and went to meet with Xiezi. She was still quite injured and he had Tujiu start carrying the Universe Ring back to the Chong Clan while he spoke to her.

“I’m sorry about your Uncle. He was killed while we were in Plum Lantern City. I should have killed that evil woman while I had the chance. I thought you’d want to talk to her, or get revenge yourself. I never imagined that something would go wrong and she would escape. I owe you a debt.”