It seemed that the enemies of the Scarlet Alliance had chosen to undertake alternative methods of warfare rather than open violence. The overall number of incidents that could be traced to outside influences had grown significantly after the Swirling Swarm disaster. They had been prepared for some trouble, of course, but it wasn’t all as they predicted. Traditionally, violence had been the favorite tool of the great powers. Then again, it had been shown to be ineffective in the past.

    The Scarlet Alliance actually had a number of methods to fight against their neighbors as well, but they couldn''t respond to emall/em of the tactics as they had certain moral grounds to keep. If they wanted to, they could unleash a pathogen within enemy territory and let it wipe out their lower ranking cultivators- the majority of their poption. They wouldn’t, though. That didn’t mean the Trigold Cluster or Exalted Quadrant wouldn’t try something like that, though.

    They were also quite willing to kill random civilians, as shown in the hivemind. No, they wanted to wipe out numerous systems at once. At least, that could have been the result if they were slightly more sessful with their attack.

    The Scarlet Alliance was fully willing to take down those in power, anyone who was ultimately responsible for their conflicts. It was possible their neighbors found that more distasteful than killing innocents, because it was emtheir/em necks on the line- but it was a perfectly moral choice. At least, if people had to die.

    The attempts at cyberwarfare on the Little Alliance told them that not everyone was working in the same manner. As far as that area went, the Alliance was quite willing to retaliate with great force. While they currently were keeping their efforts minimally visible in an attempt to figure out the ultimate goal of the current operations, they wouldn''t be against causing aplete copse of technology within their enemy’s borders. That came with the understanding that it would doubtless cause indirect harms to people- but most of the benefits were still to the ruling ss. Higher ranking cultivators got the best of everything, including the newer forms of pure and mixed tech.

    The Alliance had to admit that their own upper ranks were far above others in terms of privileges and resources avable to them, but it was nearly impossible to ovee that. If nothing else, the personal energy that a Domination cultivator held wasn’t something that they could just give up. And they fought for themon people, instead of letting them be sacrificed to protect emthemselves/em.

    Living longer did result in umting more wealth and political influence, but the difference in quality of life between their lowest and highest were a couple of orders of magnitude closer than was seen among other cultivators. The Alliance was still always doing their best for their people- perhaps that was why they were targeted. Along with it being easier.

    -----

    Velvet found herself following various threads that all seemed to lead back to one ce. It was fortunate that Bear Hug had encountered Aveksen- but perhaps not emcoincidence/em. Bear Hug naturally sought people out and seemed to have a knack for discerning trouble that even they didn’t fully understand. That was why they were being paid as an internal agent now that Bear Hug wasn’t needed formunications as much.

    The names she had were the Heartbound Pce and Rambert s. Finding that much had taken more than just interviewing the wannabe kings infiltrating the hivemind. It had required tracking them back to those who recruited them- which required some mental repair to get any useful information.

    Once she actually learned about the Heartbound Pce Velvet actually understood better. Mental maniption had been undertaken to make them not realize that they were going into a suicidal situation. Furthermore, it had been done with such delicacy that it could even be detected when they were only partially integrated into the hivemind. Long term connection would have revealed them, which was why they acted rapidly upon full integration. Even a few months was quick in cultivator terms.

    The Heartbound Pce was part of the Trigold Cluster, quite far from the Exalted Quadrant. It was a significant undertaking to try to sabotage the area, but they seemed uniquely suited. As for the reason, it emcould/em have been retaliation for the Swirling Swarm incident- certainly it had taken ce afterwards. Proof was a bitcking at the moment, however.

    Rambert s was their sect head. An Augmentation cultivator… perhaps. Some of the mental work that had been done on the infiltrators seemed to indicate a potential Domination cultivation. Then again, crafty Augmentation cultivators could be just as problematic.

    Infiltrating the ranks of the Heartbound Pce was fraught with peril. Any agent would have to act perfectly- they couldn’t afford to get caught. If they did, the consequences would be catastrophic. It wouldn’t even be possible to hide their secrets. At best, someone could be trained up that didn’t know emanything/em important, which would make them pretty ineffectual as an agent.

    Velvet couldn’t ask anyone to volunteer if she wasn’t confident in doing it herself, so at the moment a response was in limbo. A military operation was both a poor political idea and infeasible given their location. For the moment, they simply had to stay on alert.

    -----

    Half of the covert operations against the Scarlet Alliance were Everheart’s doing. Or at least half of the sessful ones. Mostly he was interested in information gathering. He wasn’t going to bother with killing civilians or their leadership, because provoking a response was the opposite of what he wanted. He wanted them to leave him alone.

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    He only asionally did anything himself. He had people for that, ones that he trusted to seed at their task or to properly off themselves if they were captured. Alternatively, they could be trained to deal with any interrogation techniques the Scarlet Alliance had.

    It was nice to see a great power so organized and… emconnected/em. It was far easier to get a wide variety of information. The variety of techniques they employed in one spot did make the tasks somewhat more difficult, but it was interesting.

    When he was spying on the others, he had to do it sect-by-sect. They didn’t share information, and they all had their own ways of protecting things. Burying vaults inside volcanoes was probably one of the more effective he had seen- digging in from the sides would be pretty obvious, so there was really only one good entrance. Obviously their formations could all be tricked, but he still thought it was above average. Underwater was no good. Secret was… sometimes best- but emsomeone/em had to know where the hidden vaults were.

    Plus, they still took up space. Everheart could pick out any concealment formations and scan entires at once. Things like that distortion beast site way outside of the gctic ne was a grand example of taking advantage of that. Most things didn’t go that far, but cing something at a little known point between systems worked well enough. People wouldn’t just stumble on it unless it was near a major trade route.

    Little by little, Everheart had been counting down the number of Domination cultivators he might have to deal with. It asionally increased, but even with the truly frantic pace that the Scarlet Alliance had been throwing them out- more than one per century- and the few others that had cropped up elsewhere, it was still on a downward trend. If he counted things like his triumph over the Tilki n, it was even more.

    He had recently expanded his vision further to either side of the great powers. The Chaotic Conglomeration wasparable to the current Exalted Quadrant but even emless/em organized. They might copse due to ack of mutual goals if the Exalted Quadrant did. On the other side, the loose cooperation of various systems- some of which had been devastated by the Swirling Swarm- was surprisingly stronger despite their generallycking cultivations. He doubted there were a handful of Domination cultivators within a thousand lightyears beyond the Trigold Cluster, but he emcould/em be wrong. The Chaotic Conglomeration didn’t seem to have any, though. Or they were too busy dealing with their other neighbors.

    Those further neighbors didn’t matter though. At least not for a long time. Everheart would either live long enough to care or not. He nned to live, obviously, but anything expanding through the Chaotic Conglomeration emand/em Exalted Quadrant would have to do so over the course of millennia. Either that, or they had to be so insanely dominant that he just needed to throw himself into hiding and nevere out.

    Not that Everheart was good at that. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what sorts of formations this theoretical group might have. His mouth salivated at their probably nonexistent resources.

    Everheart would settle with keeping his concerns to those he was aware of. That included the lower realms. In some ways, they were even more of a concern than the upper realms right now. Fewer top level cultivators, but they were surprisingly united.

    He had beenfortable fleeing there once in the past. It had made sense, because he was an Augmentation cultivator. Who could match him, even in the lower realms where he was weaker? Now that he was a Domination cultivator that would have been even more true… if they hadn’t continued developing post-Life Transformation alternatives to ascension.

    Still, if he wasn’t fleeing from the Scarlet Alliance specifically Anton would probably be willing to shelter him once more. The chances of an apocalypse level event wiping out the upper realms but not the lower realms wasn’t high, but it was something he had to consider. Maybe he should build up more bases in the lower realms… but he wouldn’t be able to monitor them. He might reveal too much with that.

    That was a puzzle that would take some time- the solution might be that it wasn’t worth it.

    Anton. A forerunner in Assimtion- though precisely the first, even among their people. He emwas/em the first to reach Enrichment, and Unity was even more specialized. From what Everheart heard through his various sources, Anton had been responsible for taking out a sizable portion of angry Swirling Swarm cultivators- some of which had been killed in the upper realms. That wasn’t emnew/em, but doing it emconsistently/em made Everheart a bit queasy.

    He was d he had a base all the way on the northern end of the upper realms. He should be safe  there for at least a couple thousand years. He almost regretted leaving tombs to build up Ceretos.

    Almost. Because he really didn’t like to consider the world where the Scarlet Alliance didn’t exist, even if they were a threat. They emalso/em had wonderful things like Second Gift. Everheart thought about paying it another visit to snag some resources. Did he need to? Not at all. The algae there had been very helpful with informing him how to rent another of his own. He was having quite a lot of sess with his own gardening endeavors. Of course, he used more formations to keep lower energy where it was supposed to be- and to keep out the upper energy.

    Doing it manually was… not something Everheart was up to the task for. Training both upper and lower energies at the same time made him queasy just to think about. Fleeting Youth had been an experiment that he thought was interesting- not something he thought was a good idea. Otherwise he would have used it himself. And yes, doing it ‘properly’ was probably safer. Unless you twisted them up in your dantian and annihted your soul, in which case it certainly wasn’t.

    He would leave that to concerningly friendly photosynthesizers. Everheart had many more things to do, like causing the copses of sects. To get petty revenge, for resources, and because he could. That was what Everheart had learned since young, and he continued to apply it- he had even done so against those very people who taught him. But there were always more people of the same sort.

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