I watched as several attacks flew past his wings, some by meters and others by mere centimeters. The attacks ranged from the middle of level one to the late level two in strength. I heard two other people enter the carriage, but didn’t open my eyes. “So far he’s seen nineteen level level ones and one level two.” I said. “They occasionally break their cover to fire at him.”
“Good.” said Ji Bo. “How long do you think he can hold up?”
“At least half an hour.” I responded. “He hasn’t even needed to use his qi yet to dodge. They aren’t good enough at aiming. If you wait long enough, though, they’ll eventually get lucky. He’s a little kid, so even at level two I doubt his attention will hold out much more than thirty minutes. He’ll get bored, then hit.”
“Good to know we won’t be losing our eye in the sky.” he said. “Figure out how many we’ll be dealing with and their levels. How far ahead did you say this was?”
“About two li.”
“Then we have about four minutes to figure out a plan.”
I nodded, still keeping my eyes closed and counting the men. “I could take a small team out. We would hit them hard, move the tree out of the road, and the rest of you could just ride past. I’d need to cut the tree into a few pieces, even using my qi to enhance my strength, I’m not sure I can move it without doing so. So I’ll at least need to cut down the sides of the road and move the middle section to the side. With my level three sword, though, unless it’s a level three or four tree I shouldn’t have any trouble.” Level four spirit plants were rare, requiring around a thousand years of growth on average, but most perennials, including trees, could theoretically reach that point eventually. I wasn’t sure the woods in this area had any such plants, though. Level threes, on the other hand, only required around one hundred years on average. This is why plants were sometimes referred to as year, decade, century, or millennium plants instead of by their levels. At this size the trees were likely around late level two, but if the conditions were poor and their growth was stunted, they might be low to middle level three.
“That’s a bit risky.” Ji Bo responded. “It would mean increased risk for the team that was attacking, but might buy the safety of the rest of us.”
“Protecting my employer is my goal, and this means he and most of the people in our group avoid the battle entirely. At most the bandits might take a few shots as the wagons roll by. We could even have the horses and goats run to get through it faster.”
“Why can’t we just stop here and send in a group to attack them?” asked Ji Wan. “It would mean that we can send in half our forces. If they only have twenty something people we can just beat them.”
“So far,” I said, giving them an updated count, “I’ve counted sixty seven level ones, over a hundred mortals, and seven level twos, and I’m pretty sure that they have more. We could win if that’s all of them, especially if we use the talismans, but…” Just then Xiao suddenly Lightning Dashed forward and an arrow covered in Earth qi flew close enough that his tail feathers were grazed, but he avoided a hit. “He was just shot at by an early level three Earth arrow.” I ordered Xiao to fall back outside this guy’s likely range. “While it doesn’t guarantee that they have a level three fighter, I doubt they would risk using such expensive arrows on a hunting attempt. That means that they know he isn’t friendly. I’m pulling him back now.” After ordering Xiao to return I opened my eyes and cut the sharing of our senses. “Final count, one hundred and twenty seven mortals, eighty nine level one, nineteen level two, and possibly one level three, though they might just be using loot from a victim or stuff they found.” Most people’s equipment matched their level due to cost, but rich people might buy items one level higher. There was also nothing preventing bandits from killing or stealing to get higher ranked equipment.
Ji Bo nodded. “Then their numbers are too high to risk a proper fight. Even without the mortals they outnumber us. We’ll need to thin their numbers then, break through.” He thought for a few seconds. “Ok, here’s what we’ll do. Kev can lead a strike team to hit them at the tree. A minute later I will arrive with another twenty fighters. My team will push them away from the ambush point. If we hit them hard we should be able to force them into cover if not retreat, giving Kev the time to move the tree off of the road. Wan can lead the team to run the blockade, and the Ambassador, if he’s willing, can lead the rest of the fighters in taking care of anyone that tries to attack them as they pass.”
As we didn’t have much time left to plan, we all agreed and I went to the door, drawing my sword. It was about thirty percent full, about twenty percent higher than when I put it away. That meant that it would take around ten hours to fully recharge. For an object without a gathering formation or other forced recharge method that was a pretty good rate. For comparison, a spirit stone had between a one hundred fifty and two hundred hour recharge time, or about a week to fully recharge. Even the best items with pumped qi circuits usually took over four hours, due to the low absorption rate of inorganic materials. Organic materials did much better at an hour and a half for a full recharge, but the best material on Earth, spirit wood, was only middle level two, as it was from twenty three year old trees, and couldn’t hold much qi. Fast recharge was the one advantage chemical batteries had, though their extremely low storage capacity usually meant that people used qi based replacements in vintage equipment and just made them much larger than needed. Of course, the recharge rate of my sword was aided by the much higher qi levels in this world, so on Earth it would take around five days to refill from empty.
I threw my sword out the door, making it float in front of the door, then jumped onto it. Ji Bo followed, and quickly ordered five other late to peak level two fighters to follow me. As soon as they were ready we flew at the enemy. Half a li away from the tree the bandits noticed us and I ordered everyone to activate their barriers, as I activated my seal plate. I didn’t even bother slowing down as I got there, flying into one of the men that was running at me and jumping off the sword. The man flew backwards ten meters, the sword not passing through him due to the cross guard, and was pinned to the tree behind him, his feet half a meter off the ground.
The other men fanned out and attacked the bandits near the ends of the tree, leaving the middle for me. Three went to the base, where there were more and slightly higher ranked bandits, and two went to the top. Now that I no longer had a sword I had to use martial arts to deal with the nearby bandits. I wasn’t the best, but I did manage to defeat a few of them. Still, this was taking too long, so I released a burst of my qi to suppress them and started spamming fire bolts. Several of them were forced to concentrate on resisting, and all but a few of the mortals instantly collapsed, as they lacked the ability to resist. Some of them appeared to have spirit roots, though I had no idea why they hadn’t trained, and were able to resist well enough to run at me.
I ran towards my sword and jumped up, grabbing the handle and placing a foot on either side of the pinned corpse to pull it out. About half of the sword was stuck in the tree, so I took several ranged attacks from the bandits before pulling it out. I got it free and pushed off of the tree, doing a flip and landing behind the closest attacker. With a quick swing his top and bottom halves separated.
Several more ran at me, and I kept swinging, boosting my strength with my qi. Many of them blocked with their weapons, and a few with shields, but they did little more than deflect my aim. After around two dozen had died to my sword the remaining people refused to come close. They tried to use ranged attacks, but I ran at them. While I couldn’t do a proper lightning dash like Xiao, essentially the lightning version of the lion’s Light Dash, I could use it to boost my speed. With the ability to run at over one hundred kilometers per hour I quickly closed the distance and decapitated the nearest fighter, then ran at the next one, never stopping and losing momentum. While many attacks hit me during this time, against my level four barrier the level two attacks were meaningless.
As the last of the men started to run away, I considered chasing them but remembered the mission. I ran back towards the tree, to the side of the road, and swung down. Enhanced by my metal qi, the blade passed cleanly through it. The late level two tree was wider than my sword was long, so I had to cut a wedge out of it so that I could cut deeper. Several slices later the tree fell to the ground and I ran to the other side of the road. I was about to cut it the same way, but an arrow hit my shield from the front. This one actually hit hard enough for the barrier to need to exert itself. While it didn’t come close to penetrating, continuous attacks might eventually weaken it enough to let an attack through. Only a level three attack could work like that.
I ignored it long enough to let the tree drop to the ground, then cut two hand-holds in the trunk. I sheathed my sword and grabbed the handholds, then boosted my strength to its maximum and lifted. I was unable to lift its other end due to being so far off balance, though. Essentially, by body wasn’t enough of a counterweight, nor was I anchored well enough to use myself as a pivot point.
The arrows had stopped coming in, as I could see the archer running at me on the other side of the tree. I ran to the middle of the tree then ran at it, slamming my shoulder into it. While the my shoulder hurt a bit from the action, the tree started rolling towards the man and he was forced to run out of the way. He barely made it to left side of the road, the one he was closest to, before the tree got to him.
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Just as the tree got to him, I ran at the man. He brought up his bow to block me and my sword slid off of it. This man actually had a level three weapon, so, while it took a bit of damage, being made of horn and only early level three, I wasn’t able to cut through it with a single swing like I had with the level one and two weapons of the others. I shifted my swing to another angle and swung again, but he blocked a second time. Beating this guy might actually prove to be a challenge.
I then noticed that another group was flying at us, Ji Bo and his men. I traded blows with the bandit several more times, then Ji Bo landed beside me. He grabbed the shaft of his flying spear and stabbed and the man was force to parry him as well. While he was better than either one of us with a weapon, not even needing a proper blade to fight us, with both of us attacking he was being pushed back. Eventually we managed to create an opening and I hit the side of his leg with a low slash. It sliced into his calf, causing him to stumble and drop his guard, and Ji Bo took the opportunity to thrust forward. The barrier around the man broke and the spear entered his shoulder and causing him to drop his bow, but due to the barrier absorbing most of the attack he survived.
“Surrender.” I said. “You can live through this.”
“Not an option.” he said, then drew an arrow from his quiver and lunged at me. I gave myself a burst of speed and ducked to the side, grabbing his wrist. I placed my other hand on the side of his head and fired a level three stun bolt. His head snapped to the side and he collapsed on the ground with seizures. I released his arm and let him fall. When he was done spasming I noticed he was unconscious, so I shoved him into my beast bag. If he woke up he would be able to easily break out, so I would need to move him into the bulk bags quickly. I just needed to secure him for now so that I could get the tree out of the road.
Ji Bo and I ran to the bottom of the hill and I went to the side with the hand holds. Each of us lifted an end and we quickly carried it off of the road, dropping it about one meter from the road, laying beside it. Maybe someone would see it and decide to take it with them. Now that the mission was finished, I ran back to the root section and Ji Bo ran to the top section. While he found two men that were still fighting, I found two dead Ji family members and one badly injured one. All three had arrows in them, so I knew what had delayed the archer from attacking me. Still, the caravan would be here in less than a minute, so I needed to finish with the enemies before helping the injured man.
Several level two and two dozen level one cultivators ran at me. I saw that there were over a dozen dead bandits in the area, so the men had taken several of them down, but most of them remained. Now that I had remembered to take prisoners, I decided to try to follow that idea. I started firing of stun bolts and chaos erupted from the enemies. Once some of them were hit, falling to the ground and convulsing, many of the others dove for cover. Some tried to counterattack, only to see my barrier block them before taking a stun bolt to the chest.
This seemed to anger them, and they attacked with even more ferocity, but no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t do anything to me. Eventually the smart ones ran away and, while I did shoot a few of them in the back as they were running, some managed to escape.
With all of the enemies in this area either dead, fleeing, or unconscious, I ran over to the wounded man. He had an arrow in his left lung and lower right side, but was still conscious and alive. I pulled out my level one kit and gave him a blood pill before reaching up and grabbing the arrow. Once he had swallowed the pill, coughing up blood before he did so, I pulled it out. The wound started to pour blood, likely meaning that the arrow had hit a vein or artery, but I placed my hand over the wound to stop the blood from leaking out. Ten seconds later I removed my hand. The bleeding had mostly stopped, so I took his pulse. I suspected that the one in his side didn’t put him in imminent danger, so I checked the damage. One lung had a hole in it, as did his liver. Those could be fixed with organ pills, though. I gave him one, as well as a muscle, skin, and tendon pill, as those were all damaged as well.
Once he swallowed them I removed the arrow from his side. He grunted from the pain, and bled significantly from the aggravated injury, but he remain conscious. A few seconds later the wound stopped bleeding and the hole in the liver started to disappear. “It will take about an hour for the wound to close completely.” I said. “At least two to fully heal. I don’t know if you’ll get a scar, but you’ll live.” He nodded weakly and I ran to the rest of our men that were injured. With all of the bandits defeated or fleeing, the caravan had stopped nearby. Jiang was also administering pills, and the Ambassador was stitching wounds closed, so five minutes later we were finished with the caravan people and starting on the bandits. The ones I fought were mostly dead, but we still ended up collecting eleven prisoners, not including the eighteen I managed to stun before they fled.
I was setting the leg of a bandit who was hit with a club due to a wild swing from his ally when I felt a strong fluctuation from the beast bag. A doll sized man jumped out of it and, in a matter of seconds, grew back to normal size. “What in the hells?” he screamed. “Who shoves a man in a beast bag?” I lifted my hand and fired a late level two stun bolt at him. He was knocked off of his feet and twitched a bit before standing up. “Seriously? Why would you?” I fired another one, knocking him down again.
The Ambassador came over to me. “Who is that and why do you keep shooting him?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.
“Bandit Leader.” I said. “He killed at least two of our people, so do you mind tying him up?”
The Ambassador shrugged and pulled a short rope out of his storage bag. The man started to stand up again when both of us focused on him and flared our qi. The combined force weakened and distracted him enough for the Ambassador to pull both of his arms behind his back. I grabbed the rope and tied his wrists together. We then hauled him over to where the other bandits were and tied him to the line of prisoners. I finished with the broken leg and tied it to a board to hold it in place before giving him a late level one bone pill, as the break was a compound fracture. It had pushed through the skin of his shin, so I gave him a skin pill as well. With the brace he was able to hobble around and cooperated when I took him over to the line of prisoners and tied him to it.
Now that all of the living bandits were patched up and all but two of them taken prisoner, those two being unconscious but tied up, Ji Bo and Ji Wan came over to where the Ambassador and I were. “We lost six people in that assault.” Ji Bo said, a bit of sadness in his voice. “Three from your group, three from mine. Acceptable losses given the odds against us, but I still don’t like losing people, especially members of my family.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss. I probably should have went for the level three myself, but I didn’t, and he got two of them because of that.”
“Looks like you were overwhelmed in the middle, so you pulled about half of them away from the two ends. I’m not sure if they would have survived that, so you might have done the right thing anyway.” The Ambassador said.
I nodded and Ji Bo spoke again. “I just realized that we are going to have to haul these men with us for the next four and a half days. I’m not sure if we can control them for that long. Thirty one prisoners is too many to easily control.”
“Actually,” said Ji Wan, “I might have a way. Slaves can’t disobey us. If they were slaves we wouldn’t have to worry about betrayal.”
“Sure,” said Ji Bo, “but I don’t know that spell.”
I sighed and raised my hand. “I know the spirit beast version of it, but I’ve only seen the slave version from the master side. I’m not sure it will work. I do know that it won’t work on beasts stronger than you unless they consent to it, though. And the bandit leader is Early level three, while I’m initial level three.”
“So we need to get him to consent?” Ji Bo asked.
“Yeah, and if it’s coerced he might still resist subconsciously. So we can’t just beat him until he gives up.”
The Ambassador spoke up. “I’m peak level three, and I learned the beast contract spell, though I don’t have much practice. I might fail.”
We decided to try anyway. It took me ten minutes to use the spell on the twenty three level one and seven level two prisoners. As they were all at least a level lower than me and already had their will broken by losing a battle and being taken prisoner I didn’t have to exert much will to force them to accept it. Using it on an intelligent being was a bit different than using it on a spirit beast, though. The first thing that was different was that they were able to resist much better. While it wasn’t conscious, I had to use far more effort and qi to make the bond fully stabilize. The second was that they placed more stress on my mind. I could only hold four or five of them at once, so I was forced to hand them over to the other people in the caravan as I contracted with them. I assumed that this was a matter of their intelligence and not their cultivation level, as they each placed a bit more stress on my mind than Xiao did, even though he was on par with the best of them in cultivation, but slightly less intelligent. I had previously had two adults and seven children as slaves and hadn’t even faced a quarter as much strength, so I assumed that the human version of the contract was optimized better to limit the mental strain it placed on a master.
The Ambassador had to try multiple times to form a contract with the bandit leader. He refused to submit, and even getting punched in the face just made him resist even more. Ji Bo started debating whether we should just execute him or risk him escaping, given that he would likely sell for at least one hundred stones to the mines. Apparently criminal slaves weren’t worth anything close to what debt slaves were due to the fact that they couldn’t be trusted to not plot against you and try to find loopholes in your orders, making them a major security risk. The prospect of being killed didn’t seem to phase him. I didn’t want to kill him, though, so I decided to try something. “Do you really want to die?” I asked, kneeling beside him.
“Better than being worked to death in the mines.” he responded.
“Aren’t you a cultivator?” I asked, and he looked confused. “What I mean is, most cultivators value their life. At level three, judging by your apparent age, you have around three hundred years left. It’s unlikely you’ll work the mines for more than a few decades, and will be released once the guards think you can function as part of society. Do you really want to throw away three hundred years so that you don’t have to spend thirty in hard labor for your crimes?”
He looked at me like he thought I was an idiot. “Do you really think that I’ll give up just because you said a few words?” he asked.
“Well, I can do this the hard way, I guess. I still have a bit of qi left. I can probably stun you another ten times. After that I’ll shove you back in the beast bag. Sure, you can break out, but once I have a bit of qi I can just stun you again and shove you back in. You’ll eventually give up.” The guy looked scared at the idea. Apparently he really didn’t like being stunned and was afraid of the beast bag. From what I gathered from him begging not to be put back in there, he was afraid of the dark and at least a bit claustrophobic. I guessed that it stemmed from some sort of traumatic childhood event. As soon as I created a stun bolt, though, he surrendered and the Ambassador succeeded.
