26th February, Shanluo City, Golden Crow
Lei finally obtained the Spatial Order. However, the connection between the Spatial Order and Li Gang had been cut off, and as a result, he couldn't locate him anymore.
He had already expected this and sent his Warriors to search the surrounding area.
A Rank 4 Warrior was standing near him. He asked slowly, "Senior, can we contact their location now?"
Lei shook his head. "No. Although I expected this to happen, this also proves that they couldn't have gone far. It is very likely that, in order to avoid the search, he would escape towards Dongning City. However, we can't be sure. Search all the cities that share a boundary with Shanluo City. It is highly likely that, in order to deceive us, he escaped to another city!"
Psychologically, if you know that someone escaped but, due to being injured, couldn't move too far, you would search all over the same city. But escaping to another city wouldn't come to your mind, since it's a different place altogether, even though the physical distance may be the same. However, this kind of tactic can only improve one's chances and delay time, since any smart person can see through it.
In fact, Huang used this very idea when he decided on Nanyu City. This city shares a very small boundary with Shanluo City and is very inconspicuous.
Dongning City first comes to mind when you are escaping because it has a lot of political intrigue that can be exploited easily. It's not that Lei didn't think of Nanyu at first, but he believed that using such an inconspicuous place wasn't something someone as smart as Huang would do, since it offers the least chance of being found. But once someone searches the city, its social landscape makes it a lot more convenient. There aren't a lot of societies here. Any smart person would definitely check two places—the most conspicuous and the least conspicuous.
Lei wouldn't ignore Nanyu just because it couldn't be easily noticed. However, he would pay more attention to Dongning City. At the same time, Huang knew that Lei didn't have enough manpower to do a thorough search quickly. It would take him at least a month and a half to search every single place, and that would be more than enough time to take control of Li Gang's body.
It's true, whether it's Huang or Lei, after the massacre, they mostly planned everything alone. Only after coming here and understanding that a situation might arise where they needed to rely on external help did they build up a force. But even then, it wasn't large. They only wanted to bring trustworthy, loyal, and talented individuals under them.
As he instructed everyone to move, he decided to take one day of rest to allow Shi Tian to come out, because he still had to go to Beihua Prefecture. Lei was planning to use some of their forces to help with the search.
It should be noted that, while parasitizing a body, you can only take control of it for one day before allowing the original host to come out the next day. However, at the beginning of the parasitizing phase, you can do so for up to two days, and forcefully increase that duration to five days if your soul is strong enough.
Can you exploit this loophole by coming out for one second, then letting the main soul come out for one second, and repeating the cycle to gain pseudo-perfect control over the body?
This is where the problem occurs. It's not your body, and as a result, it takes a short time before you can fully take over and gain control of it. At the same time, once you take over, your connection with the body is unstable. Until this connection stabilizes, you can't come out again, or it may cause further injuries to the soul. The optimal time is one day.
However, as a parasite, you can certainly do one thing: not take over the body. This would strengthen your control over the body and reduce the time required to completely take it over. However, the drawback is that you would have no way of knowing whether the situation outside was under control or not.
This was the exact tactic Huang was using right now. He had completely cut off his connection with Li Gang's body, strengthening his takeover of it. In this way, even if Li Gang had any schemes up his sleeve, it would be useless. He wouldn't commit suicide anyway, since that would simply be seeking death. And even if there was some leverage or scheme against Huang—which was nearly impossible from his perspective—once he took over Li Gang's body, he would gain Li Gang's memories as well. He could counter those schemes without much effort. After all, after completely taking over the body, there was still a one-day gap before establishing perfect control, which would ultimately lead to Li Gang's death.
Based on the information Huang possessed, this scheme was perfect. What he lacked was the knowledge that Li Gang already knew the rules behind parasitizing a body.
At the same time, in the Wu Dynasty,
Guo Chen had deployed his Marine Warriors to attack the northern shoreline of the Golden Crow Dynasty while increasing the tension at the borders to distract his opponents.
However, this action had multiple purposes. Under normal circumstances, he would have intensified the attacks on the Wu-Golden Crow border. But this time, he also increased the tension along the Shu Dynasty border, as if he were attempting to take control of the lands occupied by the Golden Crow Dynasty that originally belonged to the Shu Dynasty.
This was an action that Lei had requested of Guo Chen.
After receiving Lei's letter and seeing his demands, Guo Chen was surprised. But he quickly figured out the ins and outs of the matter.
Back when Lei explored the Forbidden Land, as an array master, he discovered that it also had the ability to enhance a Warrior's battle strength at the expense of their Spiritual Imprint.
Lei wasn't the only one who discovered this. Huang did too; it's just that Huang's attainment wasn't high enough to exploit it. Lei passed the method to Guo Chen with an agreement that he could use those Warriors at any time, as long as it wasn't against the Wu Dynasty.
By now, Guo Chen had obtained thirty Rank 4 Warriors.
In the Northern Continent, this was already a massive force, since Rank 4 Warriors were extremely limited in number.
With this attack, the Wu Dynasty was certain to take control of the lands occupied by the Golden Crow Dynasty. Guo Chen also understood the deeper reason behind Lei's actions.
It was to cut off every possible escape route. This action was causing a consistent war at all the borders of the southern Golden Crow Dynasty, while all the other borders were shorelines. As long as Lei controlled the ports and blocked the borders, no one could leave the Golden Crow Dynasty.
He understood that both Huang and Lei were in the Golden Crow Dynasty. Because of Lei's and Huang's agreement with Guo Chen not to allow the use of Spiritual Beasts, Guo Chen had already understood that Lei and Huang would eventually turn against each other.
Now, there was another benefit behind this attack.
If the Wu Dynasty managed to take control of the Golden Crow Dynasty's occupied lands that originally belonged to the Shu Dynasty, they would be able to control the north, west, and south of the Shu Dynasty. If a sudden eastern attack from the Golden Crow Dynasty by sea—which should have already been ordered and couldn't be stopped at this point—came, they could let the Shu Dynasty and the Golden Crow Dynasty fight each other before striking from behind when both sides had suffered losses.
This would allow the Wu Dynasty to completely conquer the Shu Dynasty. With the Wei Dynasty supporting them and the internal strife created by Lei in the Golden Crow Dynasty, the balance of power would shift entirely in the Wu Dynasty's favor. They stood to benefit the most from this.
Thinking of this, Guo Chen sent out two orders. The first was to follow Lei's instructions. The second was to Wei Han, asking him to prepare his army and station it in hiding near the Shu Dynasty's border.
The Demonic Faction in the Wei Dynasty had been captured and taken to the underground prison of the Wei Royal Palace, with only Wu Meng escaping successfully. However, he was being searched for throughout the entire dynasty.
Wu Meng disguised himself and stayed at one of the seaports in the Wei Dynasty. Long ago, when Li Gang took control of the Wei Dynasty, Wu Meng had been instructed to quietly replace the workers at the port with his own Demonic subordinates—people he could trust—and take control of all the southern ports. Right after Li Gang left for the battle against the Shu Dynasty, Wu Meng escaped and hid at the southern seaport to carry out those instructions. Soon afterward, he was informed that the Demonic Faction leader, Mo Tiancheng, had been captured along with many of his followers.
The Wei Dynasty didn't have much manpower, since it had also sent part of its forces to assist the Wu Dynasty. As a result, it had to rely on local Warriors to help with the search. However, all the major local leaders near the seaports were Warriors under Wu Meng. Wei Han didn't know this, and as a result, he couldn't use bribes or threats to discover Wu Meng's location.
28th February, Morning
Lei finally woke up. After escaping Jin Long's surveillance, he no longer trusted Shi Tian. Even before that, he hadn't trusted him, but he had to use him to avoid arousing Jin Long's suspicions.
Before going to sleep, he trapped himself inside a formation to avoid any possibility of Shi Tian doing anything that would harm his interests. Lei's attainment in formations was extremely high, and this was something he could accomplish easily.
He suddenly had a thought.
'Why didn't Huang send a letter to Jin Long to make him suspicious of me? Or expose my location to him? Could it be that he did send one, but Jin Long received it before I could intercept it?'
However, he had no way of verifying it. Even when he was in Jinyang, he had wondered whether he had already been exposed.
As a Rank 8 Warrior, one always prepares for the worst-case scenario.
Lei had thought at that time that, in such a situation, Jin Long would monitor him constantly. At the same time, he would never allow him to leave his control. Therefore, if he could leave Jin Long's control so easily, it meant he wasn't being monitored.
Lei had no way of verifying whether his letters were being intercepted before they were sent. Even if he encrypted them, Jin Long was a Rank 7 Warrior. There was no way to create an encryption that a Rank 4 Warrior could decipher but a Rank 7 Warrior couldn't, without revealing that he was trying to test it. The only possibility would be to write the letter using knowledge unique to one of his Rank 4 subordinates that no one else knew. Unfortunately, he didn't know any of his own subordinates deeply enough to make use of such a method.
As a result, he could only send instructions to them before having any interaction with Jin Long, right after getting control over Shi Tian's body. Even if Jin Long got suspicious later and monitored him, he would find nothing. Lei would have already gained leverage over Shi Tian by then.