After Benton debriefed his sect members on the operation of the defensive formation, he turned his mind toward what he should accomplish next.
A council meeting seemed superfluous. The team had set goals and tasks a week prior and nothing substantial had changed. As far as he could tell, everyone was on the right track.
He also felt a lot better about the village’s defense. As long as the formation was fed spirit coins and was protected from disruption from the inside, it would keep beasts outside of the wall and, therefore, the villagers and his sect members safe.
The only remaining task he had on that front was obviously creating more coins, but he’d make those during stolen moments. A handful here and there would add up.
No, he needed to figure out the biggest weakness he could address and tackle the job of correcting that need. What was the sect’s biggest vulnerability regarding the beast tide?
Well, if not defense, the answer obviously had to be offense, especially for attacks on beasts at rank four and above. Which made sense. Though the sect had over two hundred Qi Gathering cultivators to handle low ranked spirit beasts, they had a grand total of four people in the entire village who could even deal damage to higher ones, and Benton was the only cultivator who could fight a beast more advanced than rank six.
They needed more firepower.
His first thought was what he considered to be the obvious solution—a grand offensive formation to mirror the grand defensive one he just installed. Perhaps, he could construct a tower in the middle of the town that topped the walls by enough height to give a great view of the surroundings.
That might work.
The formations he’d learned in mastering his techniques were all much simpler than what a grand formation would require. It was possible, of course, for him to create such a thing from scratch, but doing so would take both time and experimentation. Considering that he didn’t know how long he had, it would be better to simply buy a custom design from the System that would be fed by spirit coins and automatically target any rank six or higher that came near.
Upon thinking about the issue for a few more minutes, though, he soured on it. The problem, again, was time. Inscribing a simple formation to provide a burst of qi was relatively easy, but having it accurately target beasts added much complexity. Complexity meant taking longer to carve the channels. His best guess was that such a grand formation would take a minimum of four to five days to complete.
He honestly didn’t know if he had a day, much less close to a week.
Benton wished he had come up with the idea to create formations sooner. No use crying over spilt milk, though. He could only move forward.
Honestly, he didn’t have time for anything complicated. He needed to think of a simple solution. The complexity arose mainly from targeting, though.
So, an area attack?
That would be nice. Adding a manual trigger and assigning a sect member to that task would make the formation simple, and it would destroy a great number of beasts with each activation. With no way to target high ranks, though, a lot of the qi expended would be wasted on creatures that could be killed with mundane arrows.
Meaning that the formation would need lots and lots of spirit coins each time it was triggered. He felt he could probably create enough coins to feed the barrier, but adding a lot more for an area attack might not be doable.
Maybe something like a gun that a sect member could use to manually target beasts?
What he envisioned would be pretty awesome, something like the gunner’s station on a B2 Flying Fortress, but again, it was complex. He didn’t have time for complex.
Okay. Root problem analysis. What did he actually need?
In simplest terms, a way to damage higher ranked spirit beasts. Which, in concept, was easy. His skills gave him access to any number of simple formations that converted qi to the equivalent of an explosive charge.
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The issue was targeting.
Benton slapped his forehead. He was being an idiot. The method for delivering the qi already existed—the arrows his sect members would be loosing.
He grabbed one from a nearby barrel. Five minutes allowed him to inscribe a simple, mid profound formation on the arrowhead and imbue it with almost a hundred units of fire qi.
Benton tossed it up to Yang Xiu, who waited on the allure.
“Shoot this at a tree or something. I want to see what happens.” Benton leaped up next to her.
Without questioning him, she complied with his command, smoothly loosing the arrow.
The world was pretty darn flexible when it came to Concepts. As long as a cultivator could reasonably imagine qi of a certain type acting in a particular manner, that action could be locked into a Concept, which would supercharge the qi. Benton’s Concept of fire qi was more akin to his conceptualization of an explosion than it was the chemical reaction of combustion.
Which, okay, was kind of limiting considering all the other things he could have done with fire, but at the time, he’d developed Concepts for a bunch of elements at once. And he liked explosions.
That appreciation was good because an explosion was exactly what he got when the arrow impacted the tree Yang Xiu chose. The mundane wood burst into fiery chunks, and a couple of the guards had to rush out to extinguish all the small flames before the entire area flared up.
More important than almost catching the forest surrounding the village on fire was that his experiment was a resounding success. Any one of his sect members, or even a mortal villager, could wield the power he channeled into a formation.
By the end of the first hour or work, he was able to create a mid heaven grade formation on an arrowhead in seven minutes. By the end of the second hour, he’d gotten that down to six minutes. He maxed out at about five minutes thirty seconds.
Over the next two days, he created a thousand earth qi aspected spirit coins for the barrier and five hundred arrowheads. Using the inscription tool, it was a trivial manner to also mark each arrow with the symbol for the qi aspect that imbued it.
Benton called the previous small group, less Jin LiJuan, together and explained what he’d done.
“The important thing is to not waste these arrows, as I don’t know how many more I’ll be able to produce before the tide. Save them for the truly problematic beasts,” he said in conclusion. “I’ve made seventy-five of each of the five primary elements and one hundred twenty-five void arrows. Each one should contain more than enough power to destroy any creature below rank seven. If you hit a beast with one of these arrows and it isn’t instantly killed, you’ve got a problem. You’ll need Kang Lin, Yang Ru, or Yang Xiu to identify the beast’s qi aspect and, if possible, use an opposing aspect.”
Of course, with only using Void and the five primary elements, they would not have the opposing qi aspect for every spirit beast that attacked.
“If the beast withstands even the opposing qi aspect or you don’t have access to that opposing aspect, you’ll need to hit it twice in quick succession in the same spot. The first hit will hopefully overwhelm the qi shield and a follow up with Void should kill it. Any questions?”
“No, Master,” the group said.
The tide was getting close, and Benton had done everything he could. He’d finish up by consolidating his power and creating as many more coins and arrows as he could in the time remaining.
He just hoped his efforts would be enough. If anyone died in the attack, he didn’t know how he would react.
----------------------------------------
Ye Zan didn’t grow up wanting to be a soldier or a mercenary. He’d simply wanted to survive. But as he’d gotten more and more experience, he’d come to embrace the life.
Huang Yimun thrust with his spear, and Ye Zan blocked before using the haft of his own weapon to sweep at the other guard’s leg.
Back and forth they went, neither able to gain an advantage, until eventually agreeing to a rest break.
“How close are you to breaking through to Large Success?” Huang Yimun said.
Ye Zan grinned. “Very. Hard to say exactly, but maybe a week?”
“That’s what you said a week ago.”
“What can I say? I’m an optimist.”
“Well, at least our group spars are going well,” Huang Yimun said. “With all the time the guards have spent working together, we can keep high level beast busy until Senior Brother or one of the Senior Sisters can kill it.”
Ye Zan nodded. Each and every one of the guards was a diligent and hard worker. He couldn’t have chosen a better group. Even the former cart drivers had advanced beyond his expectations.
Of course, his original expectations hadn’t included the use of top heaven grade techniques, which might have a little something to do with the success all of them were having.
Regardless, things were going great. Cultivating. Training. Comradery. The excitement of a big battle approaching.
“You know,” Ye Zan said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am right now.”
“Really?” Huang Yimun said. “We might all end up inside the bellies of various beasts sometime in the immediate future and you’ve never been happier?”
Ye Zan shrugged. “I’m valued. My viewpoint is listened to. I respect the people I work with and those I’m protecting. My life now is so much better than I ever expected it to be.”
The other guard shook his head. “Should you really be talking about how good you have things right before a fight? Why tempt fate.”
Ye Zan tilted his head to the side. “Weren’t you the one who called me superstitious for digging my feet into the earth? Hypocrite! Tempting fate? What nonsense.”
“I’m just saying. All the old soldiers used to say—”
“I know what they said.” Ye Zan rolled his eyes. “Even if your silly superstition is true, I couldn’t think of a better way to go out than protecting people who like and respect me.”
“I really wish you would stop tempting fate.”
“I’m sure I’ll be just fine,” Ye Zan said.
“If you say so…”