In Cloudfall village, it was currently night, approx. Nine o'clock. Three figures wrapped in black clothes from top to bottom with only their eyes exposed, stood behind a big tree as they looked at the manor in front.
The three figures were Kair, Kail, and Bao, who had decided to steal the Dao comprehension leaves tonight. The town chief had left the town yesterday on his trip to the city, taking half of Level 0 peak 'Body Building Stage' guards to show his power and intimidate other towns. In case others have bad intentions toward Cloudfall, which left only ten or so peak stage guards to protect the manor.
In Cloudfall town, only the town chief was a Level 1 Dao Resonance Stage expert, so chances of meeting any other Level 1 expert while stealing were negligible, which was why these three even thought about stealing.
Level 1 Dao Resonance Stage in the name was a low-level cultivator, but they can easily crush any Level 0 Body Building Stage cultivator who had only gained and learned a little bit of magic. Level 1 Soul Aura alone was enough to suppress any Level 0 weak cultivator.
"We will be acting around 1'o clock midnight when all the manor people fall asleep," Kail's serious voice sounded in Kair and Bao's ears, who nodded back. It was better to be late than sorry that was their thought too. If the city lord was gone on a trip, how could he not leave any trap behind when he had all his belonging and family in the house?
"Let's move out and observe for now"
Kair, Kail, and Bao moved from their position and separated in three different directions. Kair climbed high on another big tree and observed the white manor from the top. At night if one did not focus his eyes on the tree, they would not be able to spot Kair. To achieve this effect, he wore full black robes and a black smoke talisman, which generated, as the name suggests, black smoke in a small area at small intervals.
Kair looked in front of the manor. Four guards were patrolling outside with spears in their hands. Four of them had peak body-building powers with no hope of breaking through Level 1.
The chief Manor was English country style; it had a square wall boundary surrounding it with one entrance in the front. Inside the boundary was a big garden filled with bamboo trees and a fishpond, and at the center stood a three-story manor. There were laughing and chuckling noises coming from inside the house that belonged to the town chief family.
At this time, Kair located the fifth and sixth guards who guarded the manor's front door.
Soon four hours passed, and it was 1'o clock already. Kail, Kair, and Bao again met down the same tree to discuss the final strategy.
"Everything is ready now" Kail took charge of the situation and spoke firmly.
"Chief Family has fallen asleep, and guards are also not much active now" Kail removed three thin and 10-inch-long hollow pipes and three small wooden boxes from his bag pack. He handed two pipes and wooden boxes to Kair and Bao. The wooden box contained three thin needles, which were used for firing.
"I stole the paralyzing poison from my old man sack and applied it on these needles. The poison on these needles is enough to paralyze any Level 1 for three-four hours," Kail explained with a serious expression.
Kail was a smart man, he knew his chances of progressing with the 5th-grade root were low, but this did not stop him from having a dream. Kail always had enough understanding of situations where to use a knife and where to use a needle.
Kail's plan was simple: three of them would wait until the family fell asleep and then use poison needles to paralyze the house guards. After that, to enter the house, they will wait for Kail's spy or a good friend who was a guard patrolling inside the house, he will open the manor door from inside without alerting anyone, and they will move toward the tressure room to steal the leaf.
Kair listened to Kail's plan. He did not raise any questions or concerns. Being friends with him from childhood, he understood what kind of quick-witted person Kail was and how thought-through he was in making plans.
Everyone had their specialties Kair clearly understood that part. Some people were born rich, and being rich was their specialty. Some were intelligent, and some were extremely lucky. These specialties made them who they are and what they will become. Kair's specialty was patience; he had much of it, like Buddhist monks who sat on stones in meditations for years.
"Let's separate now and meet at the front door. There are a total of four guards outside. You guys take care of them, and I'll take care of the two at the door," Kail ordered the two to move.
When Kail was left alone in his position, he took a deep breath, and his lungs swelled like a balloon. His eyes narrowed and focused on the guard standing outside the front door with a spear in his hand. Because of extreme concentration, Kail's pupils dilated, and adrenaline rushed into his bloodstream. Suddenly all the noises in surrounded became quiet; he lifted the pipe, placing it in his mouth. His head moved to the precise location where the guard's neck was.
*zzzip* The needle from the thin pipe burst out with greater force, slicing the air surrounding it and directly piercing through the guard's skin. Half of the needle went inside the guard's neck, and the other half was out, but Kail did not have time to celebrate his victory. His hand moved extremely fast. He loaded another already-out needle into the pipe.
He aimed the pipe toward the second guard, who was shocked as to why his subordinate suddenly fell on the floor. With a *zzip* sound needle burst out of the pipe again, the second guard did not even have time to react, and he felt a mosquito bite him on the neck, and he fell to the floor unconscious. The same scene followed in the other two places.
After successfully paralyzing the guards, Kair, Kail, and Bao moved to the guard, removed the needles from their bodies, and placed them inside the small box to avoid leaving any evidence behind. Three gathered near the front main door, waiting for Kail's friend to open the door. After five minutes, the door swung open from the inside, and a middle-aged man walked out of it.
"Let's go inside. I mixed the sleeping potion in food today. No one should be able to wake up" he looked around at the surroundings and spoke quietly. Three of them walked in. Kair noticed the five guards knocked out on the side of the walls. No, they looked like they were sleeping peacefully.
"Grandpa, you are good as always," Kail praised, and his eyes sparkled with reverence as he looked at the middle-aged man from behind.
'So that's where he learned all the stuff from,' Kair and Bao also noticed.
"No talking, let's go; we are going to break the lock" The four of them made their way inside the manor. More Kair, Kail, and Bao looked around more they found the town lord was truly extravagant. He spent money like water, expensive tables, art on walls, white marble floor, and the list goes on. Entering some secret tunnel with Grandpa at the front, they had made their way to the treasure room.
Four stood in front of the room with a big metal door. Except for a few designs engraved on it, the door did not have any lock opening mechanism. It looked completely blank. They started to think of ways to open it. At this time, not wasting any more moments, Kail's Grandpa suddenly removed a silver paper talisman from his robe and plastered it on the door.
The talisman glowed with bright silvery light, something unexpected at that time, *crack! Crack! Crack! * Starting from the center of the door, a straight crack appeared on the door, and the door split opened from the middle. Kair and Bao exclaimed in admiration. They had seen and used a few low-level talismans, but the silver grade one never. Pushing the door open silently, four of them walked inside.
The room was dim in light. A total of three wooden selves stood in the room at the sides. The right-hand shelf had plants, a few rare pill bottles, and three wooden boxes. The left-hand side shelf contained several bottles filled with pills. The room's corners were filled with hundred or so gold and silver coins. But three of them did not care about them. They all looked at the front wall shelf, which had a red wooden box with a sealing talisman. Seeing the box, their eyes glittered.
'The whole operation is going too easy,' Kair thought he had a promotion that something was leading them to trap.
"Except for the leaf, you two can only take one piece of treasure. Make your choice fast," pointing at Kair and Bao; Grandpa reminded them not to be greedy and moved to put everything important in a leather bag. He already had agreed to give them one Dao comprehension grass with them doing nothing, and if they asked for more, Grandpa had many ways to settle them.
Kair and Bao were smart and did not raise any questions. They quickly moved toward the side shelves to make their choice. Kair moved toward the left self, which had pill bottles. The bottles were mostly useless to him, but his eyes landed on a small hand size wooden box that had a sealing talisman of some kind. He picked up the box and placed it in a pocket inside the robe, as this was not the right time to inspect.
On the other side, Kail's Grandpa had a big leather bag in his hands where he threw everything. He saw him throwing from medicinal plants to tressures like swords, daggers, and blades, not caring about any damage. When everything was gone inside the room, four looked at each other and made their way out of the room.
Somewhere outside in the town. Four people stood opposite each other in a room. Kail's Grandpa held a red wooden box in his hand with two sealing talismans. Grandpa slowly peeled off the sealing talismans from the box and slowly opened the box revealing the content inside.
The wooden box held a small tree branch inside it, with five leaves on it. Even after breaking from the tree, the small branch still looked green, and the leaves still had a golden luster. Grandpa broke the two leaves off the branch and handed one each to Bao and Kair, keeping the rest for himself.
The Dao comprehension leaves only work on people who recently broke through the peak Body Building Stage. They did not affect a person who had stayed at the peak for more than six months.
Kair and Bao placed the leaves into their boxes and departed from the room.
"Why did we have to give them any leaves, Grandpa? They did not even do anything," Kail asked when both Bao and Kair were gone. Grandpa looked at Kail, who was standing not far from him.
"Do you think it's easy to steal from town chief? I started planning for this last year, and what do you think? The chief doesn't have any means to find the people who robbed his manor. Your two friends will become our scapegoats when the chief divines the thief's whereabouts. Dao Comprehension leaves are not easy to come by. If not for you, do you think I would have taken this risk" Grandpa explained. Teaching his grandchild how things worked in the cultivation world.
"You still have a lot to learn; go sleep now. I still have some work to finish," Grandpa sighed and walked back toward the town lord house again.
'It was all too easy, and it all went too well, but why do I still feel uneasy in my heart' Kair kept feeling something was wrong from the start. He felt that after tonight his life would change completely.
---
On a moonless night in the forest, a black owl sat on a tree with his golden eyes shining. Suddenly above the same branch, the space started to twist and wrap at this time. The wrapped space transformed into hundreds of one-inch invisible black worms, which dropped on the tree branch. The worms started to twist and wriggle as they slowly moved toward each other converging to form a shape, the shape somewhat resembled a cat.
The cat was transparent black with stars shining inside her body, her ears were unusually big with two white dots, and her two eyes were deep blue. The cat had many tentacles coming out of her neck; they wriggled in the air around her neck. The cat's black paws held onto a tree branch tightly as she tried to stabilize herself.
After a few minutes, one more entity showed signs of appearing on the tree branch. Same as before, the space twisted and wrapped around itself, and thousands of light dots, which shone with golden light, started to come out of the bent space. All the light dots converged into forming a hand size light ball, which floated beside the cat.
"Big Sister," The cat opened her small mouth and said happily, and the tentacles on her neck started to stretch, moving towards the light ball, trying to touch it.
"Moon, how are you" the white ball flickered, and a gentle voice came out of it. The voice contained boundless love and care.
"I'm fine, but I miss you and brother," The Cat spoke, but her voice died down on the last word. Her tentacles trying to catch the ball of light, suddenly went limp, passing through the light ball straight.
The ball of light ignored the cat's sadness and looked at the Owl before flickering. "Uncle," a voice came out of it again.
"is the uniqueness ready" The Owl spoke.
"Yes, it wasn't easy to kill the seven emotions, true Gods. If not for the first uncle making a move and killing half of them, it would have taken us a long time" the light ball flickered, and seven faces appeared in the air that twisted and wriggled like worms. Each one of the faces showed different expressions, from happiness to anger to confusion.
The Owl also produced an artifact, which hovered mid-air. The artifact resembled a round white pearl. When the pearl appeared, it attracted the seven emotion uniqueness towards it. The faces moved in the air and started to revolve around the pearl. In a few seconds, the seven faces shrunk, turning into seven color dots before entering the pearl. When seven emotions entered the pearl, the pearl's surface changed. It now had seven rings of emotion appearing on its surface.
"Will it work" the cat looked at pearl anxiously and asked?
"Chances are low, but it should be able to affect 'Him' somewhat in his current situation," the Owl spoke emotionlessly, but his eyes showed some emotions.
The pearl hovered in the air for a few seconds before disappearing into Owl's body. The Owl did not want to look at it for long, the pearl was unstable, and there were high chances of corruption by emotions trapped in it. Even on his level, he felt somewhat afraid of the artifact. To be able to use it, he would first have to help emotions merge in pearl properly before the artifact could be used.
When everything was done, three of them disappeared from the tree. The cat worm separated and merged into space, the light dotes slowly scattered in the night, and the Owl flew before disappearing into the darkness.