Chương 167: Beast Wave Defense - 'My' Home

I kept staring at the mission tablet in my hands for what felt like the hundredth time, reading through all the requirements over and over again hoping that somehow they would change but they never did, they just sat there looking the same as they had the first time I read them.

Mission: Beast Wave Defense - Floating Reed Village and Surrounding Areas Rank: Dangerous Cultivation Requirement: Qi Condensation Stage 6 or higher Additional Requirements: Minimum group size of 3 members Reward: 2000 contribution points per participant Time: Departure in one hour"Master," Azure said, sounding worried, "your heart rate is still elevated."

"I'm fine," I said back, even though we both knew that wasn't true at all. My home was in danger. Well, technically it was the original Ke Yin's home not mine, but whatever part of my brain was responsible for things like panic and attachment didn't seem to care very much about that distinction, because my chest was doing something it really shouldn't have been doing and breathing felt harder than normal. I forced myself to slow down and take proper breaths.

Panicking wasn't going to help anyone and I knew that, I needed to actually sit down and think about the situation and not just stand there feeling like the walls were closing in, so that's what I did, I started thinking. The good news was that my cultivation level was technically enough to qualify for the mission, Stage 6 Qi Condensation wasn't something that made people in the sect look at you with respect or anything like that, but it did clear the minimum bar which was what mattered right now.

The bad news was basically everything else. The first being that I needed teammates who were actually going to be useful and who weren't going to stab me in the back the moment things got difficult and chaotic. Trust was maybe too strong a word to be throwing around in a place like this.

Picking Wei Lin and Lin Mei came to mind but I pushed that idea away pretty quickly, Wei Lin hadn't even reached Stage 6 yet and Lin Mei's skillset was built around herbs and cultivation knowledge rather than actually fighting things. And even if they had been strong enough, I still didn't think I could live with myself if something happened to them just because I was feeling sentimental about a village that I hadn't even actually grown up in.

I walked toward the section of the mission hall where the stronger disciples tended to spend their time, you could always spot them because they were the ones who looked relaxed and unbothered regardless of what missions they were considering.

"That one is planning to leave their weakest teammate behind when things get dangerous," Azure commented quietly as I scanned the room, "and those three are already fighting about contribution point distribution."

"You know," I muttered without moving my lips much, "that ability of yours is impressive and also depressing at the same time."

"I am simply reading facial expressions and body language and vocal patterns in order to…" I tuned out the rest of the explanation because I had spotted three disciples standing together in front of the same mission board I had just walked away from.

"... the terrain channels most of the beasts through the valley pass so we could intercept the bulk of them before they even reach the village," the tallest one was saying, he had the face and posture of someone that belonged on a recruitment banner, "that's where we should set up the primary defensive line."

"That only works if they follow the expected routes," the woman standing next to him said, she was shorter than him with short hair and there were burn marks on her sleeves which told you something about how she fought, "beast waves don't always do what you expect them to do. Remember what happened at Green Lake?"

"Please don't bring up Green Lake," the third one said, and he was lean and wiry and had a jittery energy to him that made him seem like he couldn't quite keep still, "I still have dreams about those mosquitos. Giant fire-breathing mosquitos. Who even decides that's allowed to exist." Green Lake. Fire breathing mosquitos. So they had actual beast wave experience which was already putting them ahead of most of my other options.

I walked over and cleared my throat and three pairs of eyes turned to look at me with varying levels of interest and curiosity.

"Yes?" the tall one said. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I heard you talking about the beast wave mission," I said, "Do you have space for a fourth member?"

"An outer disciple?" the jittery one actually laughed.

"Look, we're not talking about picking flowers here. This is going to be real combat against real spiritual beasts." I didn't let that bother me, instead, I checked their cultivation levels. The tall one was at Stage 9 of Qi Condensation which was pretty impressive, the woman was at Stage 8, and the jittery one was at Stage 7, which maybe explained why he was the most eager to point out that I wasn't good enough.

"I understand that," I replied, and then I held up my formation guild token so the verification patterns on it were visible, "I'm also a certified Level Two formation expert." That changed things quickly. The woman's eyes went a little wider and the tall one leaned forward to look at the token more carefully.

"Level Two?" the Stage 7 one said, eyebrows raised, "at your cultivation stage? At your age?"

"Chu Feng," the tall one said, and there was a clear warning in how he said it, "let's be respectful to our junior brother." He turned to me with a smile, "I'm Liu Chang. These are Su Yue and Chu Feng." I gave a proper formal bow, "This junior brother Ke Yin greets Senior Liu Chang."

"Senior Brother," Chu Feng said immediately, "we don't need someone who's going to slow us down. His cultivation is barely…"

"High enough to qualify for the mission," Su Yue said, cutting him off as she looked at me with an evaluating expression, "and formation skills are exactly what this mission needs. The beasts are going to be coming from multiple directions and having someone who can set up defensive arrays properly could make a very significant difference in how the whole thing goes." From their interactions, I was quickly getting an idea on their team dynamic.

Liu Chang was the leader, probably the charismatic type that led by respect rather brute force. Su Yue was the strategist, the practical one who didn't make decisions based on emotions. Chu Feng was the skeptical one, and every team had one of those, and they were usually the ones you ended up proving yourself to whether you wanted to or not.

"What's your experience in actual combat situations?" Liu Chang asked me.

"I can handle Stage 6 beasts on my own," I said, "my formation work leans more toward defense and support, but they can be offensive if they need to."

"Formation theory isn't the same as being in the middle of an actual fight," Chu Feng muttered, it sounded less like a genuine argument and more like he felt like he needed to keep pushing for the sake of it.

"That's true," I agreed with him, because there was no point in arguing with something that was partially accurate anyway, "but beast waves aren't the same as regular combat either. You need defensive arrays to keep civilians alive, you need mobile response to deal with unexpected threats, and you need actual coordination between different cultivation styles working together or the whole thing falls apart."

"You've clearly done some thinking about this," Liu Chang nodded.

"What made you pick this specific mission though?" This was the moment where I had to decide whether to create a cover story or just tell the truth.

"Floating Reed Village is where I'm from," I said, choosing to tell the truth, "I have family there." Su Yue's expression shifted slightly, Liu Chang's face went a little softer, and even Chu Feng's scowl backed off by a few degrees.

"I think we give him a chance," Liu Chang said, looking between the other two, "any objections?"

"Multiple," Chu Feng said, but he didn't actually list any of them. Su Yue just nodded once like it was a done deal, "More hands are better anyway. And honestly," she grinned at Chu Feng, "it'll be nice to have someone who can explain what they're doing before doing it instead of just screaming warnings and throwing fire around."

"That happened once," Chu Feng said, his voice going immediately defensive.

"Once," Su Yue agreed pleasantly, "and it did work on the beast. It also worked on my best sword and a significant portion of my hair." While they were going back and forth Liu Chang was already steering us toward the mission registration desk, the process there was straightforward enough, everyone pressed their identification tokens to the tablet and it recorded everything, and a small bell chimed for each successful registration.

I made sure to register for the Moonlit Dew Flower mission as well while I was there.

"Good," Liu Chang said once it was all done and official, "we leave from the south gate in one hour. Everyone get what they need. Chu Feng, I want to be very clear this time, no experimental techniques. I am serious." Chu Feng said something back that was quiet enough that I couldn't catch every word but from the tone it wasn't exactly a formal agreement.

Once we split up to go prepare I had exactly one hour to get ready for what was probably going to be the most dangerous thing I had done since arriving in this world.

"Master," Azure said after a moment, "I've completed my initial analysis of your new teammates."

"What did you get?"

"Liu Chang's cultivation is the most stable and consistent of the three, his core energy flows are unusually smooth for someone at the ninth stage. Su Yue is running a specialized fire cultivation technique, most likely a flame heart method based on the energy residue I'm detecting. Chu Feng is the more interesting case."

"Unstable energy to match the personality?"

"Actually no. His core cultivation is quite solid and grounded. The nervousness and jitteriness appears to be an act." That was something worth paying attention to later. Someone choosing to appear less stable and capable than they actually were was either doing it for very practical tactical reasons or there was something more complicated happening, and I didn't know which yet. But that was a problem for the walk to the south gate.

Right now I needed supplies and formations and whatever else an hour gave me time to pull together for a beast wave defense. A beast wave threatening a village was objectively a straightforward type of mission, sects handled stuff like that on a fairly regular basis and that had procedures and approaches for it.

But I knew from my webnovel reading experience that straightforward missions had a way of not staying that way once you were actually in the middle of them, and the more something looked simple at the start, the more suspicious I tended to get about what I wasn't seeing yet. Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe we would go out there, set up formations, fight off a predictable number of predictable beasts, and come back to the sect with contribution points and nothing else to show for it. But I doubted that.

Usually, when something decided to go wrong, it went wrong in the most dramatic and complicated way possible, and my personal luck in that regard had not historically been good, so yeah, ancient ruins, sealed things that should have stayed sealed, someone's dramatic cultivation breakthrough happening at the worst possible moment — those were all real possibilities that I had to at least consider. I really hoped I was just being paranoid.