Chương 182: Talking Shop

The cultivator meeting went the same way they always did, first everyone had to show off and act tough, then came all the political maneuvering and posturing between the different factions, and then finally if things went well there would be some actual planning done but sometimes you got stuck in the first two stages for a long time before anyone moved on. Liu Chang's decisive victory over Shen Xuanyu had at least gotten everyone cooperating.

It was remarkable how being thrown through a tavern wall improved a person's attitude toward teamwork.

"The beast wave will hit within twenty four hours," Liu Chang said, placing small spirit stones on the map that was spread out across the table to mark positions.

"Our scouts have been tracking it and it is moving steadily through this region toward the valley pass." I looked at the map and studied the terrain carefully. The mountains formed a shape that naturally pushed everything through specific narrow channels, and the village sat right at the point where the valley opened up into the plains beyond. Good for farming, bad for beast waves, because every beast in the region would be funneled straight toward us by the geography alone.

"How many beasts are we talking about," asked one of the Heavenly Jade cultivators, a woman named Ming Yue who had already proven herself to be considerably more sensible than the colleague who had recently made an unplanned exit through a wall.

"Between two and three thousand based on scout reports," Liu Chang said with a frown.

"Mostly lower stage beasts but there are at least a dozen at seventh stage or above." Some of the younger disciples looked nervous at that, which was understandable. A few dozen cultivators against thousands of spirit beasts sounds terrible on the surface but it is not as bad as it first appears because of how beast waves actually work.

The majority of any beast wave is made up of the weakest cultivating animals, Qi Condensation stages one through three, creatures that are a serious threat to ordinary mortals but for a trained cultivator they are not much more difficult to deal with than ordinary wild animals with a little extra spiritual energy in them. A single area technique can eliminate dozens at once and that is before you even consider what formations and barriers can add to the equation.

The genuinely dangerous beasts are those at stage seven and above and in any wave those beasts represent less than one percent of the total numbers. In a wave of five thousand you might face ten or twelve truly powerful beasts. Still frightening but nowhere near as overwhelming as the total numbers suggest. There is also the question of intelligence and tactics. Spirit beasts do not think, they react on instinct, and instinct makes them predictable in ways that human opponents are not.

They charge at whatever threatened or frightened them, they do not set ambushes or adjust their strategy mid battle or identify and exploit weaknesses in a defensive line. Formations and barriers take advantage of this perfectly because you can build channels and kill zones that funnel the beasts exactly where you want them to go. The high stage beasts were the variable that kept everyone worried though.

While the main defensive line handled the horde, a single seventh stage beast breaking through at the wrong moment in the wrong place could turn a manageable situation catastrophic.

"This is unusually large for this region," I said, thinking of both Ke Yin's memories and the sect records I had read.

"The last major wave through here was only a few hundred beasts."

"Yes," Liu Chang said nodding, "which is why we have already modified our original plan to account for the increased numbers." He rearranged the spirit stones on the map into new configurations.

"Three main groups. River Team takes the eastern defensive line using the waterway to establish natural barriers, Su Yue will lead fire attribute cultivators in maintaining a continuous steam barrier along that front." Su Yue smiled and a few sparks drifted between her fingers, "Finally somewhere I can use area techniques at full power without worrying about burning the wrong things."

The steam barrier was river water superheated by fire attribute qi channeled by multiple cultivators simultaneously, producing steam that was hot enough to destroy flesh and dense with hostile spiritual energy that would damage beast cores on contact. Low stage beasts attempting to cross would be destroyed outright while even higher stage beasts would be weakened by sustained exposure to the hostile qi filling the steam.

Wind technique cultivators could concentrate and direct the steam to create areas of extreme lethality.

"Mountain Team secures the western flank," Liu Chang continued, "preventing any beasts from circling around behind the main defensive line. The Yan Clan team has offered to take that position as it suits their capabilities." He did not elaborate on what those capabilities were.

"Valley Team anchors the main defensive line at the point where the pass starts to widen, creating a bottleneck that forces the beasts to engage in smaller numbers. Heavenly Jade disciples will hold this position." Shen Xuanyu, who I had been thinking of as Mr Classical Handsome, nodded stiffly. The hole he had made in the tavern wall was patched temporarily and Old Lu's youngest son kept carrying in supplies for proper repairs and every time a particularly loud hammering sound rang out Shen Xuanyu winced slightly.

"The rest of us form mobile response teams ready to reinforce wherever pressure becomes too heavy. Are there any questions?" Hands went up around the table but my attention had already gone to Chu Feng. He was staring at the map on the area near the shrine he had mentioned earlier, and the nervousness that had characterized him all day had disappeared and been replaced by anticipation. I needed to speak with Liu Chang about this privately.

Raising accusations in front of everyone with a beast wave hours away was not something I wanted to do. While the others began discussing specific tactical details I caught Liu Chang's eye and indicated the door with a slight movement. He understood and excused us both smoothly. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Outside in the cool evening air, Liu Chang looked at me.

"Something is bothering you."

"Chu Feng," I said, "his behavior doesn't add up. Earlier he was almost desperate to go investigate that shrine immediately and alone if possible, and his reaction to the Verdant Dreamwalker was strange like he recognised it. And his fighting is inconsistent, sometimes he struggles against beasts that should be no challenge for his level and other times he moves like a killer." I didn't say directly what I was thinking but Liu Chang understood anyway.

"You think he is working against us."

"I think something isn't adding up," I said carefully, "and with what we are about to face, I don't want to ignore that."

"I noticed the same thing," Liu Chang said after a moment.

"I'll keep him beside me as part of the mobile response team so I can watch him myself."

"The shrine should probably be checked before we finalize everything," I added.

"But as a group."

"Worried about your team leader?" He looked slightly amused.

"Worried about everyone," I said.

"We are about to fight thousands of spirit beasts and we don't need someone pursuing a separate agenda while that is happening." He nodded and told me to head out to meet my formation team who was already waiting. My team consisted of one person, a Yan Clan disciple named Yan Ziheng who had been assigned to assist with the defensive formation setup. Having a Yan Clan member taking direction from an outer disciple felt strange and I wasn't sure how to act about it.

He was waiting at the village gate and bowed when I approached.

"Senior Brother Ke. It's an honor to work with a Level 2 Expert." I hadn't expected that level of deference, Yan Clan members generally didn't show it to anyone outside the clan and certainly not to outer disciples, but apparently Formation Guild rankings operated outside of normal sect hierarchy in practice.

"The honor is mine," I said, and then we both stood there for a moment being extremely formal at each other while a beast wave was approaching, which I found ridiculous. We walked toward our assigned position and Yan Ziheng said "I will admit I was surprised when I heard your rank. You're younger than me and your cultivation is lower but you're already at Level 2."

"The guild values skill more than cultivation level," I said.

"Though having more qi available definitely helps when working with larger arrays."

"That's part of why I wanted to be assigned here," he said, sounding eager.

"I've been at Level 1 for years now. My formations are technically correct, but the guild keeps telling me there's no innovation, that I need to produce something original to advance."

"The original formation requirement," I said, remembering the process of creating the Symphony Shield.

"It's about understanding the underlying principles deeply enough that you can combine things to solve a problem that wasn't solved before." We reached the eastern edge of the village where the river curved around the farmland which made it an obvious anchor point for the first array.

"Let me show you what I mean," I said and pulled out my formation flags, beginning to attune the first anchor point to the local spiritual energy patterns in the ground and water nearby.

"When I designed the Symphony Shield, I didn't start by trying to make something nobody had made before, I started with a question about a specific problem, which was why barriers always either hold completely or break completely with nothing in between." Yan Ziheng watched what I was doing and his eyes widened when he started recognizing what the base pattern was doing.

"The spiral sensor array in there, it's more than just detecting incoming attacks, it's actually recording information about them."

"That's right," I said, glad to have someone who could follow the reasoning.

"And the curved channel design serves a function that isn't obvious from looking at it, the attack's own force gets redirected back into powering the defensive response, so a stronger attack actually makes the barrier harder to break rather than easier."

We kept working while I explained the thinking behind the Symphony Shield's core design principles, the formation taking shape around us as anchor points went in and the connections between them were established, creating a semicircle across the village's eastern approach. It wouldn't cover the entire village perimeter because I didn't have the qi reserves for something that large yet, but it would protect the most vulnerable section.

"What made it an original formation," I continued while adjusting one of the resonance chambers, "was recognizing that formations don't have to be purely static mechanical things that either work or don't. They can be designed to respond to changing conditions, to build up information over time, to become more effective the more they are used."

"The octagonal storage chambers," Yan Ziheng said, helping me position the next section, "they're doing something with the information the sensor array is collecting."

"Sort of, think of it like a cultivation technique that gets stronger the more you use it because it adapts to your specific qi patterns, the same concept can be applied to formation design, and that was a principle that existing formations weren't taking advantage of."

We worked steadily and the conversation made the time pass quickly, Yan Ziheng asked good questions, it was nice to talk about formation theory with someone who was actually following the technical details instead of waiting politely for me to stop talking.

"The approach to creating an original formation," I said as we finished the final connections between the last anchor points, "is to identify a real problem that existing designs don't solve well and then find the most clean solution to that problem." Yan Ziheng was quiet for a moment.

"So it's about seeing where the current approaches are incomplete and then filling that gap in the most straightforward way possible."

"Exactly, and this array we just set up is a good example, it's the Symphony Shield's principles applied to a different scale and purpose, nothing about the underlying logic changed, just the application." We stepped back and looked at the completed formation, it was nearly invisible to anyone who didn't know what to look for but I could feel the qi moving through the patterns smoothly.

"Thank you Senior Brother," Yan Ziheng said and bowed again.

"This has helped me understand what I've been missing. Can I ask you something personal though?"

"Sure."

"Why did you focus on formations specifically, most cultivators at our stage are putting everything into combat techniques because formations are usually something people study later when their cultivation base is already established." That was a question I couldn't answer since I couldn't explain that I had mysterious runes that seemed to connect naturally with formation principles.

So I thought about it for a moment and said, "combat techniques are limited directly by your cultivation level in a way that formation mastery isn't, once you understand the underlying principles of how formations work you can apply them in an enormous range of situations and the ceiling is much higher than what any single technique can achieve." He seemed to accept that answer though I noticed him giving me thoughtful looks on the walk back to the tavern.

The other teams were already gathered there when we arrived, comparing notes on how their preparations had gone.

"Steam barrier is ready on our end," Su Yue reported, "just needs power channeled through it when the wave actually arrives."

"Western flank is secured," said one of the other disciples, "we had to do some terrain modification to make it work properly, the farmer is not going to be happy about that field." The other teams gave similar reports and everything seemed to be in better shape than expected with time still remaining before the wave was projected to arrive.

"Since we have extra time," I said carefully, "we could go look at that shrine together now." Panic crossed Chu Feng's features before it was replaced quickly by his nervous energy.

"Oh, that," he said and his laugh wasn't quite natural.

"I probably overestimated what I sensed up there. Normal qi fluctuations most likely, not really worth everyone's time to investigate."

"You seemed quite certain earlier," I said.

"You said it couldn't wait and that whatever was there was growing stronger."

"Did I say that? No I don't think, I mean I was probably just nervous before the battle, you know how that is, makes you see things that aren't really..."

"A quick investigation now is better than an unknown variable during the fight," Liu Chang said and his tone closed the discussion. Chu Feng looked at the group around him and understood that he had no path out of this. Whatever was at that shrine, we were all about to see it.