Way of the Knights

---

Raven can be found inside his private room. 

He sat in the middle of it, cross-legged on top of a soft pillow. His hands were raised in front of him as he channeled his Cosmic Energy into an enormous crystal ball. 

The crystal ball was floating several inches up from the ground. It was releasing a faint curtain of light, forming several projections of what looks like people living in different environments. Some of them were mortals, majority of them were cultivators. 

As time went on, more and more projections appeared on the crystal ball. Raven watched every single projection closely, making sure to pay attention to where they were and what they're currently doing. That being said, there are way too many projections appearing on the crystal ball. Even with Raven's enhanced thought processing speed, he can't possibly watch every single one of them without missing a beat. 

So, to help him with this. Raven brought more of his Avatars on the mix. There are a total of five surrounding the floating crystal ball, they've been tasked by the original to pay close attention and place markings on those they find real suspicious. While the original gathered the collective reports from the Avatars to jot them down. 

"Good, nobody seems to have noticed the effects of the runes yet." Raven murmured as lowered his hands and released a long sigh of relief. "I've also located several potential areas where the opposing camps should be."

"The only thing left to do is continue like this. The runes will spread so long as people move around. So far, no one else could sense its existence just yet even after a week of being affected. That's a positive sign. The longer it goes on like this, the more stable the foundation will become and the network will reveal everything I need to know." 

It has been a month since the Meteorites were sent to seek out candidates. This batch had an additional purpose, courtesy of Raven, aside from their main task. 

Raven placed a memory rune on each meteorite that will form an invisible link to anyone who saw the meteorites. The more people saw them, the more links will be formed. Additionally, those who were linked by the memory rune becomes a carrier themselves, so whoever sees them, will be linked too and so on. 

This was Raven's elaborate plan to silently infiltrate the ranks of the Exiles. Spending six months of constant trial and error, Raven made sure that the memory rune was perfected. 

In a sense, the memory rune acts like a virus, however unlike a virus, the rune could spread even at a simple eye contact, it wouldn't really give any symptoms to the affected people. It will only penetrate their thoughts, allowing Raven to gain access to them without their knowledge. It could even show Raven where they currently are and what they're doing as of the moment. 

Anyone who discovers this plan of his would definitely applaud his efforts. This is a very heavy burden to carry alone. Even though just a week passed since he started actively monitoring things, the number of memory rune carriers he had to monitor easily surpassed billions already. Raven couldn't possibly monitor all of that alone so he needed to bring out a few avatars to do it for him - which is technically him still doing everything alone. 

Yes, he could've told the Sect Master of this plan and request some assistance but the memory rune is attuned to Cosmic Energy, making him the only person to be able to sense it's existence and use it to gather intel. 

This is the ultimate key to keep majority of Divine Realm's Citizens from finding out about the memory rune. And it's also thanks to this that Raven managed to widen their spy network without their enemies knowing about it so far.

During this week of constant monitoring, he managed to locate some locations that could potentially have some connections with the exiles. He had them marked already and aside from the ones they previously had, he marked 20 locations, making this a total of 26 branches. 

With how large Divine Realm is, this number won't really amount to anything. But for one sect to endure relentless waves of dangerous Devils and also prepare to deal with many heretical forces is simply way too much. 

Now, it is not yet guaranteed that everything that Raven marked were actually a part of the Exiles forces, but for them to appear suspicious to Raven was definitely saying something. 

"Okay, I'll leave you guys here to continue. Rest in rotation and alert me should you find anything big." 

"Sure." The Avatars replied as Raven stood up and exited the private room, sealing the entrance before he return to his own room to rest. 

As soon as Raven laid down on his bed, he immediately felt light-headed. A wry smile appeared on his face as he murmured: 

"Wow, I'm really giving it my all huh." A soft chuckle escaped from his lips as he closed his eyes for a brief moment to re-organize his senses. 

"I hope I could find them all soon." He said, releasing a long sigh. "The longer this search goes on, the longer my migraines will last. The sooner I locate their bases, the sooner I could ignore everything else, greatly minimizing the load of information I have to process every single day."

With that, Raven eventually felt very drained from his recent activities so he retired for the day and fell asleep rather quickly. 

---

Raven woke up the next day, feeling well rested but hungry. 

He got up from the bed and took a bath, after changing his robes, he went downstairs to find Kyrie preparing breakfast for him. They shared a meal together and so far, the day's looking like it's an ordinary one. 

Thanks to the Sect Master's consideration, the amount of paperwork he has to deal with had lessened. He only needed a single avatar to finish all of them and in almost no time too. Additionally, the Avatars could filter information so that the original could only get the real important ones. 

After finishing breakfast, Raven gave some instructions to Kyrie. Then he went towards the private room.

He unsealed the entrance and sealed it again once he entered. Once inside, he saw the Avatars still hard at work. Thankfully, unlike the original, the Avatars functions like a machine. They hardly needed any rest nor food. 

"We've got some great harvest, Boss." One of the Avatars said as soon as they saw the original coming inside the room. 

Raven was surprised so he asked: "Really? Hold on, let me see." 

He then sat on the pillow and began integrating with the intel that the Avatars received so far. Fifteen minutes later, Raven opened his eyes revealing a pleasantly surprised expression on his face. 

"Oh dear. This is a big harvest indeed." A feral smile appeared on Raven's face. 

The intel that the Avatars gave him, basically revealed the entire map of where all branches of the Exiles are located. 

Apparently, one of the Avatars saw a carrier looking at a strange diagram that had the insignia of the Exiles, it looked authentic so the avatar memorized the diagram. With a little bit of deduction, the Avatar managed to discover that it is a diagram that listed where every branch is located. 

Luckily for him, the memory rune was effective and carriers had been placed to every location listed on the diagram. 

"Alright, with these we could at least decrease the information load. We can focus on these areas more but monitor the overall situation from time to time at least. We can't afford to be careless, they might slip away at any moment's notice." 

"Agreed." The avatars nodded. 

"Additionally, this doesn't really end here. The main branch, presumably where that 'Allfather' resides, is no where to be seen in this diagram, which means that the dude doesn't trust his minions at all so he'll be more challenging to locate."

"Hold on to that thought, Boss. You gotta see this." One of the Avatars interrupted him. 

Raven gazed over and activated shared vision with that Avatar. Next he saw what the avatar was seeing and felt excited. 

"So, a secret realm huh? That would make a lot of sense." 

One of his Avatars spotted a carrier entering an rather unknown secret realm. From the moment the carrier stepped inside the secret realm, he immediately saw the same insignia of the Exiles, however it only appeared for a brief period of time.

Still, that was enough proof that this secret realm truly is connected to the Exiles. Once the carrier entered, he was approached by several shady individuals. They wasted no time and subdued the carrier, placing several restrictions on his body, taking away his freedom right away. Any form of disobedience will cause the carrier to die. 

It was quite fortunate that the carrier was a wimp and cared about his life so he didn't resist. Just like this, one of the carriers finally managed to infiltrate the branch deeply, and from the looks of it, they enemies didn't sense the memory rune at all. 

"Don't die too fast, little mole...."