V13 Chapter 77 – Let Me Show You

Feeling confident that the generals could handle organizing the soldiers, Sen turned his attention to the formation and talisman masters. While none of them said anything to him about it, he could see the resentment in their eyes. We’ll see how long that lasts once the fighting truly starts, thought Sen. Most of these people weren’t there for the last battle like this. He supposed that was both an advantage and a disadvantage. It was an advantage in that they weren’t likely to lean too heavily on what had worked there. Given how little time they had, that was a good thing. A lot of the tricks Sen had used in that battle simply weren’t possible without a degree of preparation that was impossible here.

It was a disadvantage in that they didn’t truly understand what it was going to be like to face down tens of thousands of spirit beasts. Not that Sen could really say he understood it that well, either. He’d been unconscious for a lot of that battle, but he had talked to many of the people who had survived it. Most of them had been more than forthcoming, almost eager, to tell him what it had been like for them. That had struck him as odd at first. He’d thought they would be reticent to revisit those experiences. However, talking about it seemed to unburden them in some way. The most important thing he’d learned from them was about how despair seemed to grow as the battle wore on from one day to the next. How it felt to them like the fighting would never end. While some of that was probably unavoidable, it was something he’d need to guard against.

A swift, decisive victory over an army that size simply wasn’t feasible. There were just too many spirit beasts. Even if all the nascent soul cultivators acted in unison and delivered a crushing blow, they couldn’t kill all of the spirit beasts. Not without doing things that would also kill all of the mortals and most of the lower-stage cultivators. The sheer pressure from their massed killing intent alone would be enough. That was something that Sen had been aware of in the back of his mind for a long time. It was only after he’d started approaching peak core formation that he grasped the full scope of the problem. The more powerful a cultivator became, the less free they became to act. It was no wonder that battles between nascent soul cultivators almost always happened far away from both civilization and disciples.

It meant that he and the other nascent soul cultivators would have to act with a level of restraint that would hamper them in the battle. At least, it would if Sen intended to try to end this in one devastating encounter. Recognizing the folly in even attempting it, he’d come up with an alternative. One that had the cultivators who were trying to hide their glares from him working at a feverish pace for months. Now, though, he could show them what all that work was about.

“I’m sure all of you thought that I was either insane or cruel with the demands I was putting on you. Possibly both,” announced Sen. “In fairness, I can be cruel, but it wasn’t purposeless cruelty. I expect that most of you can feel the countless spirit beasts that are coming this way. They are the enemy I was having you prepare for. Now, we’re going to take all of that work you did and turn it against them.”

“Lord Lu,” said a talisman master by the name of Chen Zi Han. “Most of the talismans we made will only be of value outside the city walls. Even if we were to try to set a trap out there, what would be the point if the spirit beasts can see us?”

“That’s a fair point,” conceded Sen. “So you all don’t feel that I’m failing to do my part, let me show you the formation I’ve been working on these last few months.”

That announcement seemed to catch all of the gathered cultivators off guard, as Sen had suspected it would. He hadn’t been intentionally hiding his work. It had been more a matter of not being sure if it would work the way he intended. Even now, he wasn’t entirely confident that things would go according to plan. He had taken his inspiration for this formation from when he’d dragged those ruins up out of the ground. Of course, he’d made a point to consult with Uncle Kho about this formation before he’d even begun work on it. He’d also learned some very important lessons about what to do and what not to do from that nearly disastrous experiment. Fortunately, this was much more like making a galehouse than lifting a city from beneath the earth. Maybe not, he thought as he considered what the formation masters might think of this.

Setting aside any lingering uncertainties, Sen rose into the air on a qi platform. He chose the platform because it took no concentration for him to maintain it. As the city dropped away beneath him, he took a moment to look at what Master Feng was doing. Even Sen was a little startled as he watched flying spirit beasts try to flee, only to be cut apart by the dozens as the elder cultivator casually avoided attacks from the ground. Attacks he was only too happy to respond to with overwhelming force. It was a little humbling to watch Master Feng seemingly slap aside lightning with his bare hand. The humbling continued as Sen’s teacher then crushed the attacking spirit beast with a pillar of condensed air. Those were feats by themselves, but they were done while the man controlled dozens and dozens of other techniques that Sen could identify. It was a stark reminder that the peak of the mountain was very high indeed.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Sen wanted to simply watch and learn. Sadly, that wasn’t his purpose at the moment. Tearing his gaze away from the battle happening in the sky a few miles away, he began summoning flags from his storage ring. More and more of them appeared, circling around him like moths around a candle flame. Beast cores followed the flags. That had been one of his crucial mistakes when dragging the city to the surface. He had dramatically underestimated how much qi it would require, which had forced him into a desperate position. A position he wasn’t eager to find himself in again. An excess of beast cores would provide the energy this time. That would allow him to save his own qi for fine adjustments and the coming battle.

He briefly wondered what he looked like from the ground with all those flags and beast cores circling him. Sen suspected it was probably a somewhat silly sight, but that thought didn’t bother him. It would stop looking silly once the real work began. He carefully directed his spiritual sense so it didn’t crash down on the city like a hammer. Instead, it sank into the ground around the city. Information flooded his mind. While it took a little effort to sort out everything he was learning about the local qi flows, it was nothing like it had been in core formation. Now, the process was fast and smooth.

With an effort of will, he sent formation flags flying outward. There was no hesitation. No second-guessing. The flags sailed away on direct paths for their destinations. They planted themselves precisely where he meant for them to go, around half a mile from the city walls. Much like he’d expected, he was able to position them for optimal performance after taking a close look at the local terrain. With a second effort of will, he sent hundreds of beast cores flying after the flags. They arranged themselves neatly around the flags, ready to serve as the fuel for his idea. Once, he would have needed to attend to each flag, slowly readying the links between them that made the formation function. Now, he did it all at once. Part of him felt like it was too easy. That thought only survived until he remembered all the tribulations he’d been through. No, he’d paid a steep price for this moment of having the work be easy.

He still checked and rechecked the flags and their interconnections several times. It was a pointless effort, but there was a part of him that feared getting it wrong. He wasn’t worried about embarrassment. He worried that if all the qi involved in this formation went out of control, it would level the city. However, no flaws revealed themselves. That was almost enough to unnerve him. It was normal to find flaws after setting up a formation. Not finding them was usually a sign that you weren’t looking hard enough. In the end, though, overpreparation was the likely answer to why things were right the first time. With nothing left to fix and the enemy closing in, Sen once again pushed aside his apprehension and triggered the formation.

The process probably only took twenty minutes, but that was only a guess on Sen’s part. His attention was buried in the inner workings of the formation. Because qi density and qi flow were not uniform in the area, he still needed to smooth out the process. Even so, he felt a surge of pride when a ring of stone three feet thick slowly rose out of the ground and stretched toward the sky. Unlike the walls of the city, this wall wasn’t made from blocks. It was smooth and unbroken in any way. There were no gates or other obvious weak points. Granted, it was only stone. The spirit beasts would be able to put holes in it with enough effort. But it would do a few very important things.

The first and probably most important thing it would do was buy them a little more time. Getting through a wall like that wouldn’t be fast unless the spirit beasts sent out some of their most powerful fighters. Something that would expose those fighters and make them immediate targets. Sen was betting that the spirit beasts wouldn’t do that immediately. Second, they could post cultivators on that wall. Properly equipped, a fraction of the cultivators with the army would be sufficient to disrupt the spirit beasts. That would further slow them. Finally, the wall would obscure what they were doing behind it. With that in mind, Sen lowered himself back to the ground and looked at the formation and talisman masters. He pointed out to the land between the city and his new wall.

“That half mile is where you will set your traps. That is where we teach the spirit beasts to fear humanity again.”