Although the crew had manipulated the sails to delay their passage downriver for as long as possible to give everyone on board time to prepare, eventually they approached the tortoise group.

Most of the tortoises were frolicking in the shallow water on either side of the river, they had taken up residence here because it was a narrower segment of the river, allowing the tortoises to easily cross and forage for food on both sides, but this also meant that the river here flowed faster than in other places.

Each adult tortoise was the height of a large dog and as wide as a wagon. They lived a semi-aquatic lifestyle and were much more agile swimmers than walkers. On land they were slow lumbering fortresses, in the water they were swift and deadly predators, snatching up fish or small woodland creatures who came to the river to drink.

As the boat approached the tortoise group, members of the group took notice and they all reacted aggressively. This was the territory of the fire tongue tortoises, they would never allow a competitor free access or passage unless they had no other choice.

Fire tongue tortoises weren’t mindless, but they didn’t possess noteworthy intelligence either, so they mistook the large wooden boat for a single large beast.

One by one, tortoises left the shallows and swam out into the middle of the river to intercept the boat. At first there were only a few, but as the first ones left the shallows more tortoises noticed the commotion caused by the boat and followed.

Soon the boat was being approached from every direction but the back by large numbers of tortoises.

“Everyone with spears, man the sides! Don’t let any of the tortoises get close enough to latch on.” The captain organized his crew’s defense.

A portion of the crew were assigned to defend the boat, another portion would work with the vats of water they had drawn to fight fires, all the rest would handle the adjustments of the sails as necessary. Those assigned to defense were equipped with very long poles that had metal spikes on the end. These poles filled different purposes on the boat in different situations, when the current and wind was slow they would act as barge poles, in situations like this they could also be used as makeshift spears.

No group of humans traveled the wilderness without methods of defending themselves from beasts, for this boat that method was arming the crew with these poles and fending off any beasts for as long as it took to pass through their territory.

“Put on all sail! Full speed ahead! We need to pass through this group as quickly as possible. Stand ready to fend them off!” The captain continued coordinating the defense and shouting orders from the wheel.

As the first tortoises got close enough, they began breathing gouts of fire toward the ship. The tortoises' fires weren’t particularly potent, they were just firing thin columns of mundane flame at the boat.

Because the crew had soaked every part of the ship in water, the first few shots from the individual tortoises had little effect. The riverboat quickly passed those first tortoises, leaving them behind and moving deeper into the tortoise group’s encirclement.

Only now did the true danger begin. An individual tortoise couldn’t do much other than singe the wet wood, sails, and ropes. But once they were fully surrounded, the individual shots joined together into a near continuous bombardment. All of the water quickly evaporated off of the above-water portion of the ship, the crew were unable to show themselves above the railings and the air was on the way towards being superheated.

If the air was superheated and began to burn their lungs when they breathed, all of the people aboard would die.

Steam and smoke had mixed together to create a nigh impenetrable fog bank, lit from every side by lines of fire twenty steps long, lancing towards the boat and some arcing over it towards the rigging and sails. The boat was still steaming through the center of the tortoise group at full speed despite the fire when all of a sudden, it seemed like the boat dove underwater.

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At this moment Lu Wu finally acted, unleashing the water wall spell just before the sail and the rigging would have caught fire wholesale. There were many small fires dotting the boat as it was.

From inside the boat, it looked like they had sunk the height of two men into the river, but the water was still being split by the boat’s prow, forming two waves facing out from both sides of the boat, blocking their sight to the front, the left and the right. To an observer on the riverbank however it was clear that the boat didn’t sink, but rather the water rose up around it, blocking all of the tortoise group’s fire.

The back of the boat was unguarded by the water wall, but because the boat was moving faster than the tortoises could swim they were mostly safe for the moment. A few lines of fire scorched patterns into the planks of the stern and harassed the captain at the wheel, but there wasn’t enough concentrated fire to set the entire ship alight or kill any of the crew.

For ten breaths of time the tortoises were unable to harm the boat, and in fact any tortoises in front of the boat’s path were pushed to either side, clearing the way for the boat to move forward. The air cooled, the steam was drawn into the water walls, and for a perfect moment the crew were able to hastily put out the many small fires that had begun burning.

All too soon, the four cultivators who had been contributing the entirety of their strength to this spell collapsed, all of their qi having been expended.

In the final moment, Lu Wu brought a large portion of the water crashing onto the boat rather than away from it, effectively wetting the boat once again, refreshing the defense the crew had set up from the beginning. Although this washed away the spell diagram the cultivators had set up for the water wall, it didn’t matter anymore, they couldn’t reactivate it in their current states anyways.

Luckily, the boat had almost escaped the encirclement by the time the spell ended. Only a couple dozen tortoises were still in range, and soon the boat had escaped down river, leaving the tortoise group’s territory far behind.

Ji Kang, Lu Wu, Yu Shuren, and Jin Xun all lay panting on the deck. They had maintained the wall for as long as possible and were completely exhausted. All around them the crew were frantically putting out any remaining fires as well as splashing buckets of water anywhere it looked like there might be slumbering embers waiting for a chance to burn.

Laying on his back, staring up at the bright and clear sky, Ji Kang was relieved. They had navigated this unexpected crisis without any casualties. Although the situation had been dangerous for a moment, they had handled it by using their limited abilities to the utmost effect.

That seemed to be a theme of fights at his level. Both sides had limitations and the degree to which they could bring their abilities to bear despite those limitations largely determined the result of the conflict.

Against the bandits, his well timed landmine had disrupted their momentum and allowed the cultivators room to breathe. They had then seized that opportunity and used it to escape the close pursuit of the bandits and reach the boat with enough time to embark uninterrupted.

Against the tortoises, they had realized from the beginning that they needed to use their limited qi for things that would truly make a difference. They could have attacked the tortoises, but there were far too many to kill all or even very many of them, so all offensive spells would have been squandering their precious qi reserves.

Only in such a perfect environment could they have cast the water wall spell at all. The presence of so much available water greatly lowered the threshold to cast it. If they had tried a wind wall spell for instance, they wouldn’t have even been able to activate the spell, much less hold it for ten breaths of time.

A defense that only lasts for ten breaths, exhausts your entire group, and that doesn’t allow you to counterattack through it usually wouldn’t be a useful spell, but it just so happens that it worked for this specific set of circumstances.

Ji Kang was gaining a better understanding of the thinking behind the book of spells and techniques Shen Lan had given him. When he was first learning them he thought almost all of them were useless or too niche to be practical.

Now with these experiences he was realizing that out in the real world, as long as you weren’t bloodthirsty and your goal in a conflict was to escape it, there would be niche situations created naturally. They had no way of killing enough tortoises to ‘win’ that fight, but they achieved their goal of escaping.

Ji Kang resolved to read through his book of spells and techniques again and memorize all of the abilities within. They might not be very powerful, but they were a diverse set of tools he could use to turn around losing situations.