Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

//For all those confused, this is a new set of characters, but a familiar location//

A knocking sound sounded within the small carriage. 

"Come in," a middle-aged man sitting inside ordered without taking his eyes off the document scroll in his hands. 

"Sir, we have arrived," a young man in casual clothes opened up the doors to the carriage before reporting. 

"So quickly?" the man inside asked while raising his eyebrow a little before putting up a wide smile on his face. "That's great. Anything strikes your fancy already?" he asked while scrolling up the document back into a simple roll. He then put it into one of the many shelves made just for this purpose before standing up and moving outside of the cart. 

"Make sure to ditch and burn it all," he ordered the same young soldier before turning his face to the group of slightly older people. "Are you ready, guys?" he asked. 

"All for the..." the leader of the group attempted to respond, only to be silenced by the man's quick wave of a hand.

"Keep the damned formalities to the minimum," he ordered as his smile took a slightly unsavory note. "Out here, I'm just Jacob, not your boss," he added while still keeping his smile up, although it lost all of its warmth.

"Sigh..." the leader of the group shook his head. "Jacob, we are ready. But are you?" he then asked in a casual tone. 

"Yeah, let's go," Jacob nodded his head before heading forward, straight for the massive gate of the militarized camp at the border with the desert. 

While someone could still recognize specific members of the group during their approach to the city, once they reached the massive flow of adventurers and mercenaries going in and out of the camp, even this little chance of them getting compromised no longer existed. 

As they were traveling under the guise, Jacob couldn't use any of his means to get past the queue. Even if some of them didn't draw too much attention, the guards would be sure to remember his appearance. 

And as the most creative bunch of rumor-makers, they would be sure to announce his arrival in the city far and wide. 

"Your documents, sir," one of the guards at the gate asked as soon as the group reached the most important and congested crossing point in the entire camp. 

"Here you go, sir," Jacob replied with a lenient smile. 'It is nice to see that the guards are actually doing their duty,' he thought, looking around as he passed a small token that served as the identification in one of the guilds in the outskirts of the civilization. 

"Woah, sir, to come here from so far..." the guard muttered as he ran all the checks necessary.

"Life can get unpredictable, doesn't it?" Jacob asked with a small smile, refusing to elaborate either on the point he brought or on the details of the guard's question. 'It's better just to let people have whatever guesses they have rather than feeding them any real details. The more false information you spread, the easier it will be to catch you on a lie,' he recalled one of the teachings of his master and the current overlord of information. 

"Here you go, sir," the guard smiled as he passed the crystal token back to Jacob's hand. "I wish you a pleasant stay in the camp!" he added before moving both his eyes and the entire attention to the next guy in line. 

The group managed to assemble within the city in the predetermined rallying point roughly two hours after they entered the massive river of people at the gate.

While this kind of time didn't sound too efficient given their status, this was a misconception only an amateur could have. 'We could save roughly one and half hours by sneaking in, but the risk wasn't worth the effort,' Jacob thought as he watched more and more of his people assemble in the dining hall of a random inn. 

"Jacob, do you wanna drink anything?" one of his men approached the man before hitting him with this seemingly natural question. 

"Yeah. Could you get me two cups of vodka?" Jacob asked, openly passing his orders in a way that no random listener could properly understand. 

A minute later, way earlier than any of his drinks could arrive, Jacob stood up and left the place. And right at its doors, two of the men from the main group already waited for him. 

"So I'm going with you guys?" Jacob asked before a smirk took over his lips. "Well, let's get going then," he ordered before turning on his heel and moving deeper into the city. 

For the next three hours, the group of three simply wasted their time. They continued to walk around the place as if in search of something while keeping the appearance of just randomly strolling around. 

"That's strange," Giern muttered after some time. "Shouldn't we notice something by now?" he asked while turning his face to his leader. 

"What's the first rule in our line of work?" Jacob asked with a small smile, exactly the same he would wear whenever talking with some stranger. Noticing this, Giern quickly looked up at the man's eyes. 

'Thank the Gods,' he thought, noticing that his boss eyes have yet to get cold. "It's patience," he responded after a short moment of making sure that he didn't miss any of the hundreds of other rules Jacob enforced them to follow at all times. 

"Exactly," Jacob nodded his head before his eyes suddenly glued to small detail in the distance. "If you don't want to alert the people you are watching; you need to be patient. And if you are patient, your patience will be eventually rewarded," he said as he finally picked up the pace, approaching the direction where he saw something. 

And soon enough, the group stood in front of yet another Inn of the city.

"This place has to serve really good drinks for so many people to gather here," Jacob said, once again using the cryptic language developed just for this mission. 

"I would love to have a drink or two myself," Severn commented, finally breaking the curse of silence he pretended to cope with ever since their small group has formed. 

"That's quite... daring of you," Jacob smiled to the point of revealing the whites of his teeth. Strange fires exploded in his eyes as he stepped forward, moving out of the corner that hid them from the view of the crowd gathered at the Inn's doorstep.  "But I can't say I don't like your enthusiasm!" 

'As much as I would want to just arrest and then interrogate everyone here, we cannot cause such ruckus,' Jacob thought while making sure to keep walking at a perfectly natural pace. 'Not unless we want to scare our prey out,' he added in his thoughts before finally locating the person he was looking for.

'There you are,' Jacob thought when he saw a man moving out of the Inn with the clear intention to address the crowd at its doors. 

"Everyone, the next batch of ten can enter!" The handsome, middle-aged man said with an apologetic smile. He then moved aside and pressed his back against the wall of the building. 

'Huh?' Jacob stood in place, right at the very end of the massive queue, surprised by the strange movements of the man. 'If he wanted to just invite a few people in, why doesn't he walk inside himself?' he questioned himself, puzzled by this unorthodox behavior. 

But the answer came soon enough. 

As soon as the man stood to the side, the entire crowd rushed forward. If observed from above, it would surely look like some kind of stampede. 

In such a disorganized crowd, there were no rules. By the time the people started to climb the stairs, Jacob already understood what kind of precaution the man had taken and why. 

"STOP!" His powerful voice soon sounded, instantly rooting everyone in their place. 

'Huh?' Jacob froze in his spot, just like the entirety of the crowd. 'Was this some kind of technique?' he thought as he fought to regain the freedom of his movements, something he achieved quite quickly, yet with a surprising amount of effort necessary. 

"Boss..." Giern said before his face turned white. "I mean, Jacob," he corrected himself before Jacob's disapproving eyes could reach him. 

"Yes?" Jacob decided not to pursue the topic, too immersed in analyzing the strange force contained within the man's shout to bother with his subordinate's mistake.

"What should we do?" Grin elaborated on his question. "There is no way we will enter the Inn just by following the crowd! It would take too long!" he protested, unhappy with the content of their mission. 

"Didn't I say it already?" Jacob asked, annoyed by his underling's whining. "Patience is the key to everything," he started before his angered lips formed a curve, turning into a devious smirk. "But there are some times when one has to bend the rules to achieve the objective," he added as his smile deepened. 

He then stepped away and closed his eyes. Yet, as if he was the clumsiest person in the entire world, he somehow tripped on his feet while standing, falling on his knee. But as soon as his body was hidden within the massive crowd, he executed a shout on his own. 

"FIRE! EVERYONE, THERE IS A FIRE!" He shouted, executing his own technique at the same time. 

There was no fire whatsoever. The architecture of the camp and the materials used to build it made it impossible for any fire to last longer than just a few minutes. With most of the buildings in place made with stone and other unburnable materials, it couldn't spread to the neighboring buildings either, limiting the scope of potential damage to just a single, unlucky location. 

But with the power of Jacob's illusion now spreading through the majority of the crowd, those people wouldn't be given a chance to think about it. 

After all, when they see themselves surrounded by the sky-high walls of flames with only a single direction still free from the danger, rarely would anyone bother to calmly analyze the situation!

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