Ma Rong shot through the air, keeping close enough to the ground that his soul sense could follow the tracks while his eyes searched the horizon for his targets. He had been flying for almost an hour, so they should soon be in his reach.

The forest had given way to mostly open grasslands a while ago, so visibility was good. That was, of course, a double-edged sword though, since it also meant that he was visible himself. His group was far away now, and Ma Rong was acutely aware of how exposed that made him. There weren't many situations in which cultivators of his level would feel this vulnerable, but a war like this bore risks unlike any others.

Suddenly, Ma Rong's eyes spotted something in the distance. It was nothing more than a spot, even to his enhanced eyesight, but it clearly stood out from its surroundings. Ma Rong dropped closer to the ground as he continued, now flying at no more than a meter high.

As he approached, Ma Rong could start to make out what he was looking at: it was an assemble of tents, no more than thirty, that stood on a small hill. And the tracks he was following lead right towards it.

Ma Rong had mixed feelings about this. He had found them, yes, but they had also made it back to their camp. That made things a little difficult.

Well, it was too late to turn around now. Ma Rong slowed his approach and flew even closer to the ground, his robes brushing against the tall grass. Once he was close enough to make out the silhouettes of people walking around between the tents, he started circling the camp until the rising sun was directly in his back.

On his way, he spotted a group of around twenty grazing horses near the camp. Their size and color dispelled any remaining doubts that this group belonged to the Roaring Thunder Sect.

Once he was east of the camp, Ma Rong reigned in his soul sense and did his best to suppress his presence. Then he dropped to the ground, into the grass. It was just about tall enough to hide him from a cursory glance, though not from much more. However, as luck would have it, his Dao of Nature could help out in that regard. He took control of the surrounding grass and made it sway in just the right way to cover his body without being so obvious as to betray his location. Then he slowly started crawling towards the camp.

It wasn't really a way to move befitting of a cultivator, nor was it really comfortable for an old man like him, but it couldn't be helped. Ma Rong wasn't trained in proper stealth, especially not in open areas like these.

When he was about twenty meters from the camp, Ma Rong stopped. If he got any closer, he was at risk of being detected via soul sense. Instead, he concentrated on the Dao of Nature.

Compared to the subjects of more common Daos like earth or wind, plants had the unique quirk of being alive. They didn't have much consciousness to speak of, but they did possess rudimentary senses, able to process touch, vibrations and even light, though all in a way wildly different from humans.

This allowed cultivators of the Dao of Nature to supplant their consciousness with their own, 'spreading out' into the surrounding plants and inheriting their senses. With a human brain and enough experience to interpret them, this made for a powerful tool, and it was one of the things besides alchemy that Ma Rong was uniquely good at.

As his senses spread out through the grass, he was suddenly aware of the entire surrounding area at once. Much of the grass around the camp had been trampled or removed, but there were enough patches of it left to give him a rather complete picture, at least outside of the tents.

With too much information to properly process assaulting his mind, he searched around, quickly finding what he was looking for. A woman with an imposing presence was talking to a small group of listeners. Ma Rong focused his entire attention on them, listening in on their conversation.

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"…need not elaborate on the implications this has if they are correct. The five of you will immediately move out to notify Elder Fan of this discovery."

"But Matriarch Zhai, if the Lunar Peaks Sect is out here… wouldn't it be better to move with the entire group?"

"What, and tell him that we left the newly found enemy unaccounted for? Listen here, our sect only survives by his and Patriarch Zhou's grace. This discovery is our chance to get on their good side, I'm not about to squander that."

"I understand, Matriarch. But we will be very vulnerable with just the five of us. Maybe we could…"

"If I hear you question my decision-making one more time, the Lunar Peaks Sect will be the least of your worries, understood?"

"Understood, Matriarch."

"Then get your damn horses and move out already."

"Yes, Matriarch!"

Ma Rong withdrew his senses to process what he had just heard. These scouts belonged to Song Fan, the second-in-command of the Roaring Thunder Sect, widely known and feared for his ruthless cunning. That was terrible news. They had no shot of defeating him and his army if it attacked them. He needed to stop this message!

That left him with two options: He could either attack them right here and now or wait for the messengers to distance themselves from the camp.

On paper, the second option seemed more secure. He was faster than the Roaring Thunder Sect's horses, so he could easily follow them, and he wouldn't have any difficulty subduing five cultivators below the Dao Contemplation Realm. The problem was that this still left a camp full of people in the know.

The camp was clearly built for a lot more people than were present here, so their scouts must still be spread all through the area. If one of them stumbled upon the site of battle, the camp would be informed that their messengers had failed, so he would need to let them get quite far away from here before intercepting them. That would mean distancing himself from his group even more.

But the most problematic thing was that this would only buy them an additional two to four days at most, depending on how far away the army was. These scouts here would expect to hear back from their messengers as soon as possible and since they wouldn't, they would be fast to draw the right conclusions. At that point, they would probably move towards the army with their entire group, which would put them back at square one.

Attacking directly on the other hand was risky. Ma Rong couldn't use his soul sense to check the Matriarch's cultivation level without being attacked and he didn't know whether there were more enemy elders in the camp, since he couldn't spy inside the tents. But it was also a straightforward solution that wouldn't leave too many open ends. He doubted that anyone with a truly high cultivation level would be out here, there were only a handful outside of the big sects who even came close to his strength. In the worst case, he could outrun them, no matter how outnumbered he was.

Ma Rong mentally went through the things he had stored in his spatial ring. It were mostly raw ingredients and finished healing pills – not particularly useful in the current situation.

It was moments like these that almost made him wish he were less stubborn in his ways. Alchemists had their own way of fighting, but most of that relied on poison and other harmful substances, which Ma Rong had never created in his life.

Alchemy was an art of life and creation, meant to serve humans on their endless journey of self-improvement. To use it to create something meant only to destroy, to kill fellow men instead of aiding them was, in his mind, a perversion of the practice that he refused to participate in.

This sentiment didn't make his life any easier; poison was a sought-after product and his refusal to create it or have anyone create it under his supervision meant that the Alchemy Hall was leaving a substantial niche in the market open for the taking. Filling that niche was one of the ways that his family had managed to stay afloat after losing control of the hall to him.

And it would, of course, be rather convenient to have access to poison right now – though just because that was off-limits, that didn't mean that Ma Rong had no tricks up his sleeve at all.

After a bit of deliberation, he settled on a small vial filled with green powder, which he took out of his ring. He added some acid from another vial and watched it sizzle as the powder dissolved. He sealed the vial with a cork and watched as barely visible plumes of gas started rising from the liquid. This would put anyone below the Dao Contemplation Realm to sleep for a couple of hours.

With a flex of his will, he had several strands of grass wrap around it and take it from his hands. While the vial was quickly transported towards the camp like this, he circled back around the camp until he was positioned roughly in the direction he had come from. Next, he rose a couple of meters into the air, released his soul sense and started flying towards the camp.

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