Lin Mu felt like finding the weaknesses of the Invader was a very important part and now that he knew that it was weak to fire, he would want to try and improve his control over fire spirit Qi more.
'Plus, since it is killing its hosts eventually, its end goal should be different. Going between the world and the void should probably cost it a lot of energy. Perhaps it uses the cultivation base and nutrients from them to accomplish that?' Lin Mu thought.
"Hmmm… since it's weakness is fire, we will have disciples learn fire attribute techniques… at least for the ones that can." Patriarch Shandian spoke.
"For those that can't, we can give them spirit weapons and spirit tools that can utilize fire. Some alchemical pills that can be used as weapons might as well be given to everyone." Patriarch Mingliang chimed in.
Hearing the suggestion of these two, Lin Mu nodded and felt that they were reasonable.
"Oh and there is another thing we should keep in mind. It's also a weakness, but not of the invader but Gu Yao." Lin Mu suddenly spoke.
"What is it?" everyone asked.
"The human controlling blood curse that Gu Yao uses. It doesn't work on humans that have assimilated other bloodlines. Beast bloodlines or any others should work." Lin Mu Replied.
"Really?!" Patriarch Shandian asked.
"Yes. I've seen someone being able to break the curse first hand." Lin Mu replied.
Hearing this Patriarch Shandian smiled.
"I reckon your sect has some disciples like this?" Lin Mu questioned.
"We pursue power so we will try multiple methods. Of course we have them. Around thirty percent of our disciples all have assimilated bloodlines." Patriarch Shandian said proudly.
Lin Mu looked towards the other two patriarchs, wondering if they had such disciples too.
"We do have some disciples with beast bloodline." Patriarch You Yi replied.
"Same for my Light harmony sect." Patriarch Mingliang stated.
"Good. The ones that have assimilated beast bloodlines should be the ones fighting when near Gu Yao or the ones being controlled by Gu Yao. That way, they will have no chance of being controlled. They will also be the ones investigating things for the very same reason." Lin Mu suggested.
"We shall do this then, it seems the right option." The Patriarchs accepted.
"Any news on who exactly brought the Horse Manticore to the Hong Lin Kingdom? They are missing too aren't they?" Lin Mu asked after remembering it.
"About that… Like we guessed before, it was indeed someone from the Mountain Brush Sect, an elder." High elder Sunsen spoke.
"Oh? Do we have an identity?" Lin Mu questioned.
"We do. It is none other than the Supreme elder of the Mountain Brush Sect. According to the official information given to the sect disciples, he is simply in seclusion. But once we investigated a few of the claims by providing them some resources they had asked for a long time ago, we managed to learn that he is actually not in the sect at all.
They have kept up this ruse for a while, but the Pressure elder left with the Horse Manticore secretly… or so we think. But we still don't know where he might have gone." High Elder Sunsen answered.
Lin Mu looked back to the corpse of the Horse Manticore as a thought came to his mind.
"What was the cultivation base of the Supreme elder?" Lin Mu asked.
"From what was last reported, Adolescent Soul Stage of the Nascent soul realm." High Elder Sunsen replied.
~Sigh~
Hearing this, Lin Mu shook his head.
"The Supreme elder of the Mountain Brush Sect is dead… no wonder this horse Manticore was this strong. It had actually consumed the supreme elder." Lin Mu stated.
~gasp~
Multiple people took a breath of air upon hearing this and couldn't help but feel a chilly breeze on their body even if it was not there.
"But how's that possible? He was still far stronger than the Horse Manticore." Some of the elders asked.
"Its simple, the way it can infect the others. We already have an example of the tragedy last month. The elder had to lose a hand to the beast." Lin Mu replied.
"But even if that is true, the supreme elder would have still been able to run away, wouldn't he?" someone else asked.
"He should have been able to. But I don't think he chose to run away at all. If he was controlled by Gu Yao, or had a drive to complete his mission, he might not have had the option to run away at all.
He possibly tried to fight the Horse Manticore and get it in control, since he couldn't kill it either. The fight ended up with him getting injured enough that he was eventually killed by the Horse Manticore." Lin Mu hypothesized.
Hearing this theory, the Patriarchs couldn't help but feel that it was rather plausible. They thought over it and eventually nodded their heads in approval.
"Looks like that is quite likely. But what are we to do now?" Patriarch You Yi asked.
"For now, simply keeping an eye on the Mountain Brush Sect should suffice. I don't think they would be able to keep still with their supreme elder missing and Gu Yao wouldn't like his things going missing either.
There will be bound to be some reaction from their end, and that is what we need to watch out for. It can be the clue that leads us to Gu Yao's location." Lin Mu replied.
"We shall do this then." Patriarch You Yi agreed.
With this done, Lin Mu and the Patriarchs discussed several more matters until the very next night. Many important decisions were made and the plans were finally set to play. With the Oath ceremony complete as well, they were now free to do a lot of things, and Lin Mu didn't need to worry as much either.
Since he will be delegating a large number of tasks to the sects, it will be a bit easier for them.
