Book 10: Chapter 43: City Defense Planning

It took a while for Sen to flatly deny the most obviously self-serving suggestions. He understood it, a little. Most of the cultivators had only ever thought about defense in terms of their own compounds, so that’s where their minds tended to go. He was also keenly aware that the cultivators largely didn’t care about the mortal population save as a source for food, some goods, and occasional cheap labor. Protecting them genuinely wasn’t a priority for the sects. Sen hadn’t tried it recently, but he was fairly confident he could go without eating for lengthy stretches of time. He wasn’t sure that Master Feng ever ate anything that someone didn’t hand him. The same was probably true for most of the leadership of the sects. They wouldn’t see the value in protecting farmers, laborers, or merchants. Not as a short-term goal, at any rate.

If they all managed to survive this, though, Sen understood that they were going to

need

those people. In fact, they were likely going to need every human being they could save if they wanted to salvage civilization after all of this. That applied to sects as well, even if they weren’t thinking about it. Disciples had to come from somewhere. Sen didn’t see an easy way to get that idea across without inviting a mountain of arguments he didn’t want to have to listen to. Instead, he turned his eyes toward Jing. The king and the rest of the mortals in the room had remained utterly silent so far, but they were the ones who would have spent their time thinking about how to defend the city itself.

“And do you have any thoughts about the defense of the city? How many troops do you have? Are they already equipped?”

“What can mortals possibly contribute to—” started a cultivator.

“You had your chance to be helpful,” said Sen, cutting the man off.

The cultivator, who had identified himself as Bey Peizhi, an elder of the Lunar Tiger Sect, shot a nasty look at Jing.

Well

, thought Sen,

I can’t be having any of that nonsense

. He would not put it past the sects to attack Jing directly or indirectly, at least if they thought they could get away with it. He held out a hand, palm up, and created a tiny example of the ball version of Heaven’s Rebuke. He’d been working with the technique for so long that it felt normal to him, but every cultivator in the room took a sharp breath. Sen supposed that the feeling the technique gave off would be unsettling. He stood from his seat and walked over to Bey Peizhi. The man’s eyes never left the crackling ball of doom in Sen’s hand.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” asked Sen as he held it in front of the Lunar Tiger elder. “Discovering this technique was one of those happy accidents that we cultivators occasionally enjoy. Of course, it’s the sort of thing that becomes very dangerous when it’s not contained properly. It’s a lot like pride that way, wouldn’t you agree?”

Bey Peizhi swallowed hard and said, “Yes. I agree.”

Sen moved the little sphere that was wreathed in tiny black lightning a little closer, forcing the sect elder to lean back.

“Now,” said Sen. “The kind of thing that might make me lose focus and improperly contain a technique like this would be if, for example, some overly prideful cultivator decided to take out their frustrations on some mortals. Such actions would be supremely childish and, I would think, beneath the dignity of cultivators.”

The ball hovering over Sen’s hand tripled in size, and the oppressive feeling it gave off was amplified. Bey Peizhi leaned even farther back. Sen honestly wasn’t sure how much damage the technique would do to those in the nascent soul realm, but experience suggested it would be quite a bit.

“I understand, Lord Lu,” said the cultivator in a desperate voice.

“Do you?” asked Sen in a voice devoid of warmth.

“I do!” the man almost screamed as the technique grew in size again.

Sen looked around the room and met the eyes of the very nervous cultivators to let them know that the message was for all of them. Satisfied that he’d made his point. He closed his hand around the technique. He made sure to dispel it as he went. Sen doubted he was any more immune to its destructive power than anyone else. It still caused a collective gasp. He wasn’t sure if it was relief or shock at his apparently mad willingness to close his hand around the small death threat. He supposed it didn’t matter. He walked back over to his chair, sat down, and looked to Jing again.

“So, you were saying?”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Jing looked like a spooked animal after that display, but his training shone through. After lifting a teacup and taking a sip, he began to speak.

“We have around forty thousand men who can fight. When we understood the threat the spirit beasts posed, we recalled as many troops as we could. Around twenty-five thousand of them are equipped. The other fifteen thousand are former soldiers and city guard members that we can call up for service. In terms of equipping them, though, we have limited stores. Honestly, we weren’t prepared for a situation like this. No one ever imagined we’d be forced to rely only on what we had on hand with no way to bring in additional supplies. We have spears, bows, and arrows to at least arm them. We don’t have enough armor for even an eighth of that number. Not that I’m sure our armor is any use against spirit beasts.”

Sen leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to think. He didn’t have any direct experience with this sort of battle, but he’d read a lot about them. He reminded himself again to thank Uncle Kho for forcing him to consume all those historical scrolls. All of that reading told that while forty thousand sounded like a lot, it wasn’t. Not for a city as big as the capital. Not against the kind of numbers the spirit beasts were about to throw at them. They wouldn’t even be able to concentrate their forces anywhere, since the spirit beasts could come at them from all directions at the same time if they chose to do so. They had to defend the entire wall, or the fight was over.

“And aside from the wall itself, what sort of defenses do you have in place or planned?”

Jing thought for a moment before he said, “The usual sorts of things. We have a supply of pitch that we can set alight and dump down onto enemies. We have units that are equipped with crossbows. We also have a limited number of ballista.”

Sen mulled that over and asked, “Anything else?”

Jing sighed and said, “We also have a few catapults, but those are questionably reliable at the best of times.”

“Where are your soldiers now?” asked Sen, gesturing at the map.

“Some of them have homes in the city,” said Jing, standing and moving closer to the map. “We also have garrisons in these locations.”

Jing started pointing to general locations on the map. The king looked on in horror when Sen summoned a stick of charcoal and began marking each location on the map with a small x. It was an understandable reaction. Maps were rare. Even vaguely accurate maps were rarer still. Marking one up was probably akin to heresy, but Sen didn’t want to have to remember where the soldiers were located.

“Are the extra weapons stored at those locations?”

“They are,” said Jing.

Sen put a little checkmark next to each x, an act which seemed to cause Jing actual physical pain based on his expression.

“And approximately where are the ballista and catapults located?”

Heaving a tremendous sigh that made it hard for Sen to keep from smiling, Jing started pointing at places along the outer edge of the city.

“We keep the ballista in these locations.”

“Are they stored inside somewhere or at least covered to protect them from the weather?”

“There are small storage areas built on top of the walls for them, as well as to serve as places for the guards to escape the weather.”

Sen thought back and couldn’t recall seeing anything like that, but he supposed he hadn’t really been looking for them either. He also had to acknowledge that it wouldn’t be smart to build something obvious. That would make them instant targets. Not that such obscurity would help much against the spirit beasts. The wild ones wouldn’t care, but the sapient ones would likely be able to identify those places with their spiritual senses. There was very little to be done about that this late in the game. Sen was starting to realize that there had been many things that could have been done in advance of this conflict that hadn’t occurred. He wasn’t blaming himself for that. It wasn’t his responsibility to prepare the world for the spirit beast uprising. It just would have been nice if someone had done it.

“And the catapults?”

“They’re stored in a warehouse. I honestly don’t know where, but I can find out.”

“I’d appreciate that,” murmured Sen. “And where are all of the sect compounds located?”

That took more time than Sen would have liked, but he eventually learned where most of the major and minor sects were in the city. Each of those got a small circle.

“I assume that there are warehouses for food,” said Sen.

Jing, who had backed off while the cultivators preened and pointed out their sect compounds on the map, returned and pointed to a few spots very close to the center of the city. Those got marked with little triangles. Sen deposited the stick of charcoal back in a storage ring and contemplated what he was seeing on the map. The garrisons were spread out pretty evenly across the city. That meant that someone had been thinking ahead when deciding where to locate them. The ballistae were also spread out along the wall at roughly equal distances. The sects were a different matter. Most of the larger sects were positioned near the center of the city and exerted control over a given area. The minor sects had filled in wherever they could find or take space that wasn’t already controlled.

There was one spot where there was an ongoing fight for supremacy between several sects. Sen knew the area well. It had been dominated by the criminal Inky Pigeon Toe Clan or something like that. It seemed that after he had killed their leader, a bunch of their rank-and-file members, and more or less threatened to execute the rest, the area had become available. That was just what he needed. A sect war in the middle of the real war. He’d have to do something about that and soon. Overall, it wasn’t as terrible as he’d imagined it might be. On the other hand, it wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been either.

Shaking his head a little, Sen said, “This is going to be a lot of work.”