Book 12: Chapter 20: Analyze
After Chan Yu Ming left, Sen was finally able to turn his attention to what the cultivators and soldiers were doing. The results were interesting, if not entirely successful. When dealing with weaker spirit beasts, one cultivator working with a small group of mortals worked fairly well. The mortals could stall the spirit beast, giving the cultivator time to deliver one decisive strike. With stronger spirit beasts, though, that approach failed. Something that Sen and, in all likelihood, most of the other cultivators had expected. The mortals simply lacked the raw physical power to do more than slow those spirit beasts for a moment or two, and only at the cost of pointless injuries.
That had reaffirmed Sen’s notion that cultivators would have to do the bulk of the hardest fighting in the work. At least, it did at first. He watched with interest as one of the cultivators called her team in and spoke to them with an intense look. She had the time, since Sen had been herding spirit beasts toward the soldiers and cultivators in small waves, a bit like miniature beast tides. There were between those tides. He frowned as the soldiers seemed to arrange themselves as they had before. Three in front with shields, with the cultivator and two spearmen positioned behind. There had to be more happening there than he understood.
Curious to see what the cultivator thought would work, he used a combination of techniques and killing intent to drive the next wave out of the trees. He lifted an eyebrow as a layer of stone sprang out of the ground to encase the shields and anchor them to the earth below. Well, that could work to slow the more powerful spirit beasts without leaving the soldiers entirely vulnerable, he thought. A spirit beast that resembled a boar with tusks made of fire charged the now literal shield wall.
There was a resounding crack as the boar tried to drive its tusks through the stone. Some of the stone fragmented and shot away, but the shields held. The spearmen leapt forward, driving their weapons over the stone-covered shields and harrying the boar. They didn’t do much damage, but Sen suspected that wasn’t their job. What they did accomplish was keeping the boar focused on them. The spirit beast battered the stone shields with its tusks, sending more and more pieces flying. If keeping the boar occupied was the extent of the plan, it would have failed, but the cultivator hadn’t wasted the time the soldiers bought her. A sharpened lance of stone sprang out of the ground and impaled the boar. It didn’t die instantly, but it also wasn’t a threat to the soldiers anymore.
Sen decided to hide so he wouldn’t distract anyone before their fight was finished. Then, he dropped down to where that team was slowly finishing the spirit beast off. It was only when the boar winked out of his spiritual sense that he revealed his presence. The cultivator whirled toward him, her qi bubbling up before recognition took hold. She offered him a hasty bow.
“Lord Lu.”
Sen glanced at the sect insignia.
“Calamitous Fist Sect?”
“Yes, Lord Lu,” she said, straightening up from the bow.
“What you did with the shields was clever.”“Thank you, Lord Lu.”
“I’d like you to—” Sen started to say before he remembered that not everyone was doing as well as this group.
Concentrating for a moment, a hail of wind blades and compressed fireballs fell from above, while metal-infused shadow spears shot up from the ground by the score. One moment, there was intense fighting as humans and spirit beasts bellowed their primal rage. The next moment, there was silence. The Calamitous Fist Sect disciple stared at him with her mouth hanging open. With a thought, he dismissed his techniques.
“There, now we can talk,” he said. “As I said, that trick with the shields was clever. Now, I’d like you to analyze how effective it was. What was good? What was bad? What could be better?”
Sen had plenty of his own thoughts on the matter, but his own training had shown him the value of letting someone work their own way through a problem. The Calamitous Fist Sect cultivator looked decidedly uncomfortable at being asked to assess her own performance. Being asked to do so in front of mortals probably contributed to that discomfort, but Sen just patiently waited for her to come up with an answer.
“It was effective in that it let the soldiers delay the spirit beast, while also offering them more protection,” hazarded the cultivator.
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“Agreed,” said Sen.
That acknowledgment appeared to bolster the woman’s confidence a bit when she continued.
“It was also more efficient for me.”
“In what way?” asked Sen.
“The initial technique covering the shields cost more qi, as did the stone lance, but those were the only techniques I needed to use. If I’d fought the boar alone, I would have likely been able to kill it. Maybe even a little faster, but it would have taken more techniques. On balance, this approach came at a lower cost. If we need to fight more than one spirit beast or for more than a few minutes at a time, conserving qi will be vital.”
Sen had been doing his passive cultivation for so long that he’d started to forget about it. It had been brought to his attention again after he’d become a nascent soul cultivator. He had considered that the technique might not work after that. Instead, it had seemed to become more potent. He still wasn’t going to be able to fight indefinitely if he was tossing off techniques constantly, but he would be able to fight for much longer. The comment about needing to conserve qi made him once again question the wisdom of keeping knowledge of passive cultivation to himself.
In a fight for survival, it only made sense to use every tool. But he couldn’t only consider the fight. He had to think about what might come after. Did he want to hand something that powerful over to people he didn’t trust completely? It only took a moment of thought to answer that question. No. He did not want to empower people he didn’t trust completely that much. He realized that the cultivator was waiting for him to respond in some way, so he nodded.
“That’s very true. Any way you can conserve qi without sacrificing effectiveness is a good thing. So, what’s the bad?”
The cultivator, who had been looking proud of herself, grimaced at that question.
“It’s inflexible,” she admitted. “Once I lock the shields in place, they can’t move. That was fine against the boar because they tend to charge directly at their enemies. Against something nimbler, this tactic would have failed. The spirit beast would have just gone around the shields, and the mortals wouldn’t have been able to move them. In a large-scale fight, where the battle shifts, this would be a dangerous gamble as likely to fail as succeed.”
“All valid points,” said Sen. “Although, no tactic or technique is appropriate for every situation. This worked here because you understood what you were fighting. If you’d been up against some other spirit beast, I doubt you would have been so quick to try this. You also used the available resources, the shields, well. Having the spearmen harry the beast was also smart.”
The woman hesitated for a moment before she said, “That was their idea.”
Sen thought it cost her something to say that, but she had said it. His estimation of her rose slightly.
“Now, how could this have been better?” asked Sen, before he added something. “That’s a question for all of you.”
The mortal soldiers all traded wary glances. It was clear that they had some ideas, but that they didn’t want to offend the cultivator they might be forced to fight with again someday. The woman grit her teeth for a moment before she sighed.
“Oh, by the thousand hells, just speak,” she snapped at them.
There was one more round of glances traded before one of the soldiers stepped forward.
“Lord Lu. Lady Cultivator. It might have worked better if there had been a few small holes through the stone. Nothing too large. Just enough for us to thrust spears or swords through. We could have still harried the spirit beast, but done so from better cover.”
Sen blinked at the man. He hadn’t thought of that. From the startled expression on the woman’s face, she hadn’t thought of it either. Then again, the fact that she hadn’t done it already told him that. She closed her eyes and shook her head a little before Sen heard her whisper.
“So obvious.”
“That’s a good suggestion,” said Sen.
It wasn’t a perfect suggestion. Sen could think of ways to exploit something like that, but it was a solid, practical idea that would have been useful. Grandmother Lu would surely have approved.
“Anything else?” asked Sen.
“I could have added stone spikes to the front of the shields as an impediment,” said the Calamitous Fist Sect member, although she sounded more like she was thinking out loud.
Sen looked to the mortal soldiers, but they appeared to think they’d done all the contributing they could. Or, they think they got away with it once and don’t want to take any more chances, he thought. Not that he blamed them for that fear. It was probably justified.
“Another cultivator,” said the woman.
“What about another cultivator?” asked Sen.
“If we had cultivators work in pairs with small groups of soldiers for things like this, it would add flexibility. Pair someone like me up with a wind cultivator or fire cultivator, and you get someone who can offer strong defense and someone who can react fast to sudden changes in the fight. We’re less likely to get bogged down because I can’t undo and remake my techniques in a few seconds.”
“That sounds like something worth testing out. Okay, let’s explain it to everyone else,” said Sen, gesturing toward the crowd that had slowly formed a ring around them at a respectful distance.
The cultivator and soldiers all shrank back a little at that much focused attention, but Sen just nudged them through their explanation of what they had done, the analysis of it, and their conclusions. It took a while for the cultivators and soldiers to reorganize along those suggested lines, but they managed to do it. Sen took the air and started driving spirit beasts again. Part of him chafed at how this training and innovation slowed their pace, but he didn’t see a better way to handle it. It was this, or throw them at much smarter and more organized spirit beasts with no preparation. And that was nothing but a good way to kill people for no benefit.