Chapter 1071: Investigation
Sam's team placed the missions, some of them placed the missions at the same time and some of them placed with a decent gap like half a day at least.
They took three days to place all the missions. By the time the last mission was placed, the sect members already contacted Kiran who placed the first mission. It was about the wyvern blood mission and since the transaction amount is a bit large, they decided to check it properly.
So, the sect members arranged a meeting with Kiran in a restaurant that is being operated by the sect itself.
When they met, the sect sent three people. One of them is the person who took the details and advances for the mission from Kiran, the second one is one of the elders of the external branch and finally, the third one is the one Kiran is currently focused on.
He is not part of the information that the shadow mice brought, there is a high probability that he part of the main branch of the sect and it is more than likely to happen because at a middle stage Transcendent stage cultivator is needed to deal with the wyvern and successfully get its blood and since the head of the main branch is only of late stage, it would make no sense for the outer branch to have some middle stage transcendent cultivator of Astral plane to exist. If it really happened, then they would have to reevaluate the sect's actual strength.
They talked for a while about the details of the mission and after the sect members probed lightly about the promised financial sum and Kiran confirmed that he has the sum, the sect members left.
But from within the shadows, the shadow mouse followed the sect members to see if they can manage to find any information through their conversations.
The shadow mice are not exactly a great pick to follow the people in ice plains, because everything is white and the shadows are not dark enough for the mice to hide, they would be too eye-catching even in their hidden state.
But luckily the tower made the city a fair place for shadow mice to snoop around increasing Sam's information network.
The shadow mice followed the trio and its main focus was on the person they suspected to be from the main branch, after they returned to the external branch, the target went to meet another attendant and the elder before going to meet another person in a bar run by the sect. This meeting is with Saber Monarch, he asked for a three thousand year frost essence which is possible to be obtained in the river flowing beside the city.
It seems like the two missions would be taken by the same guy.
For the next two days, three more new faces appeared and met with the rest of the team and four shadow mice followed them and tried to gather as much information as they could within the city.
There was information that confirmed the two of them are definitely from the main branch, even though the remaining two might be from the main branch as well, but it was better to have a direct confirmation before Sam decided to act.
After they went to the missions they took upon, Sam chose one of them and followed them out.
This is a mission placed by Agar and Argan together and it is to collect the skin of a type of beast that is abundant in the forests around this place.
It is not extremely dangerous, but tracking, catching, killing, and skinning the beasts take up a lot of effort and from the sheer amount that was needed, the number of people required would also be too many.
So, an Initial stage transcendent cultivator of the astral plane was sent from the main branch and he would be leading a bunch of people from the external branch to the hunt and finish the mission.
Out of all the missions placed by the team, this one is the easiest but also most time-consuming one of all and this is also easiest to tail.
Sam took off on his hoverboard.
The higher he traveled in the realms, the less attention this hoverboard is gaining and the fewer and fewer people are being surprised and from the looks of it, it would only be a matter of time before he found people floating on different things.
Sam followed the team from afar and he was as discreet as he could be, but still, they noticed his movements.
But his cultivation level is not enough for them to make a move on.
After some time, Sam changed the direction and took a different path, the team ignored him, but what they don't know is Sam found a way to take a parallel path and he is using the telescope and his enhanced vision to take a look at them while traveling.
After a while, the team started battling. Sam saw the way they used ice golems and he used the energy vision to clearly observe how their fighting style is.
The ice golems are really well made. It was as if they are carefully sculpted and the shapes of the ice golems are varying in a large spectrum.
There are some beast-type ice golems, some humanoid, some bird type, and some that even resembled the user.
When he activated energy vision from afar, even though Sam couldn't clearly see what is happening, he could see the faint concentrated energy deposits within the ice golems. They seemed to be the golem cores.
After gaining a faint understanding of the whole scenario, Sam carefully followed them to get a proper opportunity, he needs to find a way to send leaving something on the leader to track him down to their sect location.
He followed them for quite a while and finally, he found an opportunity.
The golems are not invulnerable, so they are damaged here and there. So, after they traveled far and finished more than half of the mission, the leader let them repair their golems.
Everyone took out some bunch of items, frost essences, age-old ices, special liquids, and such, Sam used this opportunity to his advantage and created a distraction, he diverted a bunch of beasts from within the forest to attack the group and when they are doing that, he took out one of the special puppets.
He never got the opportunity to actually use it as the applications are limited and it has a one-time use.
This puppet's job is only one thing, the user can record a spell within it and once you lock a target the puppet will find a means to go near the target and tag it with the spell before dying down.
It only uses four spirit stones and the distance range is not that just much, barely thirty to forty meters.
After creating the distraction, Sam let this puppet out and took out a small disc which is inscribed with the spell for Sam's spiritual imprint.
This disc method is what Sam made. He can choose any disc he wants and place it inside the puppet before sending it away.
The puppet which is shaped like a spider stealthily crawled towards the golem of the leader of the team. It crawled onto its leg and it imprinted the spell before dropping down and dying down.
Then a golem that was passing by smashed into some small metal clump making it completely unnoticeable.
Sam followed them from afar as he observed them, but he returned before the mission is completed, after the initial hunt which almost finished half of their mission, the beasts became a bit scarce and they had to search high and low to get the rest of them.
Sam didn't want to follow them and waste his time, he returned to the city waiting for them to return.
Meanwhile, Five elemental King is carrying out the investigation from a different side.
His mission is for a guide who has experience in exploring a very special region.
The region is called the ice volcano.
It is actually a mountain that is flooded with frost essence, occasionally when the frost elemental energy increases it will explode just like a volcano, but instead of laying everything to waste by melting and burning, this will lay waste to everything by freezing.
This frost essence is too crude and polluted which makes it impossible for the cultivators to improve their cultivation, but it can be a good raw ingredient for some ice golems and a repairing material and there are many mutated ice elemental plants that could be found.
Five elemental kings acted as an attendant of a high-level potion master and he is here in search of these mutated herbs.
Five elemental King kept on trying to see if he would get any information from the guide he hired. Even if there is a small hint. In fact, his questions are nothing about the location or the direction, not even the population and the residents. Rather, his questions were mixed in small talk making him seem completely normal and devoid of suspicions.