Chapter 49- Survival is a Weapon All on it’s Own

The party of “adventurers” consisted of the juniors from Ancient Crane Monastery and an equal number of talented youths from the Five Elements Courtyard. The stated goal was to traverse the jungle, reach the Ancient Temple of War King Cho, kill the ten-leg horrors infesting it, and return safely. What it actually was, Elder Feng took pains to emphasise, was a chance to show off and for the Courtyard to regain some martial face.

The Elder’s current line of attack, diplomatically speaking, was that the Courtyard should focus on being the manufacturing hub for this part of the warfront. It was all they were good at. Therefore, they should send talismans and array masters in unstinting quantities to those actually capable of fighting – Ancient Crane Mountain and the Seven Stars School.

The obvious problems with that line of argument didn’t need elaboration, particularly since winning the argument could be as disastrous as losing it. At least, that was Tian’s take. It turned out that his imagination was limited by his low level.

The caravan the Courtyard had captured had so many array making supplies, a regional scale array was possible. The Courtyard were also the only ones capable of manufacturing all the components necessary to deploy such an array. Ancient Crane Monastery and the Seven Stars School could focus entirely on the attack, leaving defense to the array and the array masters.

The cost (which was beyond the comprehension of most Heavenly People, never mind juniors like Tian) was entirely justified. It was the kind of strategic move that could change the course of the entire war. It was just slightly tricky to persuade someone that their entire massive windfall should be invested in “the common good.”

“Elder, forgive me if this is an inappropriate question, but… even if we do convince them to spend their wealth, they will still have vastly more surviving cultivators after the war, will they not? And while we might be running rings around their juniors, I can’t imagine they took down a convoy of sky barges protected by Heavenly Person level experts if they didn’t have real experts of their own. So… how does this help the overall post-war situation?”

Sister Lin cupped her hands and bowed as she asked. Elder Feng nodded approvingly at the question.

“Do you know how many strategically important daoists there are in the whole Righteous Alliance? The ones who truly control the balance of power between the sects? Forty six. If we went mad and doubled that number with hidden experts or seniors who faked their own deaths to act as emergency Mountain Guardians, that is still less than a hundred people across eight kingdoms. Quadruple it, and you could still fit them all in a single banquet. They are that rare. Daoist Steelshimmer and I would not be included in that number, nor would Elder Rui. In fact, you can safely assume that any senior daoist you meet with a regular job beyond teaching their disciples is not considered a strategic level power. Only sect master level figures are sometimes an exception to this rule.”

Tian nodded. Same old story. The Daoist Masters didn’t care about the masses. They just needed the few elites. “They just want to make sure their resource gathering base is sufficiently large, so they can train the next generation of experts while their next crop of servants grows up.”

Elder Feng sighed. He could see pain and exhaustion in her tightening eyes and slack cheeks. She had changed over the course of the trip. Still elegant, but…

“It has been an educational journey for me too, Junior Tian. A useful reminder that one can ‘know’ something without really ‘knowing’ it. The Daoist Masters are better than you give them credit for being. They truly do believe in the supreme daoist virtues, and strive to follow as many human virtues as they can as well. They genuinely do want the best for all the members of the Mountain, and for the Broad Sky Kingdom as well.”

Tian nodded. He believed her. He just didn’t care. The Daoist Masters could believe in whatever they liked. His brothers were still dying out on the red sands because the Masters didn’t want to mind the mortals. Elder Feng sighed again and waved away the tangent.

“What the adventure is for is a chance for both sides to show off their methods and demonstrate who has the best future experts. Who is most likely to produce the next one or two people who can change everything. You aren’t the pinnacle of the sect’s junior generation, but you are right up there, and the closest to hand. Go. Demonstrate to them that your future is limitless, and theirs is not.”

That night, Tian meditated in the courtyard. The cool yin qi of the moon helped calm the irritation within him. Being played with was bad enough, and it was pretty bad. What was almost worse was that he was enjoying beating up the bullies. It didn’t take much introspection to figure out. He was finally in a place where, when confronted with rock throwers, he could throw rocks back. And he could throw a whole lot harder.

What a cheap thing to be proud of. Cultivating the Dao, learning the true mechanisms of the universe, all to be a better rock thrower.

His breath flowed in and out. Not really cultivating, just watching the thoughts fly past. Seeing how the pieces fit together, and what gaps remained.

The Courtyard would lead them into a situation where arrays, and only arrays were useful. Arrays let a weaker cultivator use magics far beyond what they could manage with just their own Vital Energy. They could harness nature to do so, but they still needed all kinds of tools to make it work. It took a whole setup.

The Temple would be a trap, then. Maybe not one explicitly designed to kill them, but designed to beat them one way or another. So the Courtyard’s adventurers would have to be crushed before then.

Ten-leg horrors, raised in immense numbers in the jungle. Sounded like insects. Sounded like insect swarms. He could remember fighting enough of those in the wasteland. Another thing arrays excelled at dealing with. Create an impenetrable wall, then simply kill at leisure.

It was their home field. Everything was prepared to give them all practical advantages. It wasn’t a contest. It was an execution. A truly unforgettable lesson on who was the servant and who was the master.

What to do, then? Disrupt their rhythm. Force them to move at a time and place they don’t want to. Force them to confront problems they are unprepared for. But there was no way to plan for such a thing. Not with the gap in information and equipment. What did they have that the Courtyard definitely did not?

Tian watched the leaves fly in the night breeze. Thinking about the desert, thinking about too many things. From the airy chaos, a very cold idea crystallized. Don’t be the rock thrower. Let the rock throwers stone themselves. His Sect-Siblings could do that. There was one thing that every single person from the Ancient Crane Monastery had over the Five Elements Courtyard. They were all survivors.

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“I’ll have to convince the others. Compassion is a dreadful thing, sometimes. But my compassion doesn’t reach far enough to warm the Courtyard too. My brothers and sisters still need all my care.”

The adventurers assembled next to a path leading into the dense cloud forest, on the edges of the more civilized part of the Five Elements Courtyard. You could see the line separating the two quite clearly- all the illusions stopped dead at the forest’s edge. The forests were subtly different than the ones Tian knew. Cooler, for one thing, though no less damp. All the trees and plants seemed familiar, but different enough to make him doubt his identification. The calls in the trees were different too- strange birds and the cries of unknown beasts.

The Snow Grace Crane seemed unimpressed. Tian was just happy she was keeping up. Her walk remained rather ungainly looking, especially while she was out of the water. Nevertheless, she was strong enough to keep up. Every so often, she would flap her broad wings and launch into the air, scouting around for something interesting to eat. Judging by the grumpy feelings Tian was picking up, there wasn’t anything good.

The five daoists from the Courtyard were an interesting bunch. Daoist Mei had somehow finagled her way onto the expedition with two other women. The two men who came along were none other than the Fried Dough Daoists. The filthy looks they gave Tian suggested that his nickname for them had gotten around.

He didn’t care. Oily still gave him an itchy feeling, and Doughy reeked of the same kind of pretension Daoist Ho had, way back at the Bamboo Medicine Hut. He wondered if Doughy wanted to exchange pointers. It still felt like bullying, but there was a better than decent chance the stout fellow actually knew a little something.