To reach our destination, our group had to travel through the portal network to East Empire. From there, we entered Peach Blossom Kingdom and took the portal to Golden Water City. As mercenaries contracted by Golden Water, our task was to raid the neighboring West Brook City and destroy as many of its defensive formations as possible.


    However, as both cities were under the control of the Peach Blossom Kingdom, we needed to cause as little collateral damage as possible. Also, we were not supposed to pilfer any ‘souvenirs’ during the mission as the rights of looting and pillaging West Brook rested solely in the hands of the city lord of Golden Water.


    In truth, I was conflicted about this kind of mission. I didn’t like the idea of being a mercenary hired to destroy a city’s defenses only for it to be ransacked. While this attack might only represent the loss of a bit of karmic energy to the Rulers in charge, the results could be devastating for the mortals living there.


    I looked to the philosophies I had been studying for guidance, but the books I had purchased from the System were impossible to reconcile with this world. The ideas of Mohism preached universal love and abhorred violence between states, but it also had a utilitarian side that might see these ‘games’ between cities as necessary and justifiable in the context of this world and the need for karmic energy.


    Reinforcing that utilitarian view, none of the philosophies I had read and integrated from this world condemned this form of pragmatic warfare. Most of them agreed and supported the need for such actions since they would strengthen the Rulers and help them defend against outside threats.


    My only source of comfort was the set of rules that everyone involved was expected to abide by. Masters could only fight other Masters, and Grandmasters could only fight other Grandmasters. Once a victor was decided between the Masters, they could move to assist the Grandmasters, but they were not allowed to swoop down on the Disciples.


    The only exceptions to these rules were the Lords. If one Lord defeated the other, they could then begin neutralizing the lower-tier cultivators. However, they were not supposed to kill them during this process.


    In this world, war was a game to train cultivators and generate karmic energy. People would die, but that wasn’t the objective. The goal was for the Lords to gain karmic energy and the low-level cultivators to gain combat experience.


    None of that changed the fact that by taking down a city’s defenses, we would be a party to everything that would happen afterward. I didn’t like the position I was in, but I was willing to do what I needed to do. If I had to attack the city’s populace directly, it would be a different story, but I could destroy a few formations.


    After arriving in Golden Water City, my classmates and I slipped out the southern gate and swung around in a wide arc, eventually heading in the direction of West Brook.


    Yan had managed to put together a rough map of the area, and it let us stealthily traverse the dense forest that bordered both cities. Our hope was that this would give us sufficient cover during our approach and escape.


    As a wood-element demon deer, LuLu was right at home in this forest. We had planned to have YuLong and JiaQi screen our approach so that we didn’t get surprised by any demon beasts hiding in the underbrush, but it was entirely unnecessary. LuLu easily chased them away and claimed their territory as her own.


    While the others seemed to be having great fun during our excursion into the wilderness, LiTing looked troubled. She was putting on a brave face, but I could feel a deep sadness within her.


    “Are you alright?”


    She jumped at my sudden question. “I… Yes…”


    What was I supposed to say here?


    “If something is bothering you, you can tell us.”


    “It’s… I just… I wish we didn’t have to do this. I don’t like the idea of attacking innocents. I know we aren’t, not really. And I know that this is what we’re supposed to do… I just… I wish we didn’t have to.”


    Her words struck a chord with me. Even though I had suppressed my unease with this mission by relying on various philosophies, my doubts hadn’t completely vanished. Were we in the wrong?


    I looked at the others. They were all committed to this task. YuLong was even enjoying himself as he tromped through the underbrush. No one else had any reservations about what we were doing.


    “I’ll… After this, I’ll make sure we only do defensive missions. They might be more difficult, but that’s fine. They’ll give us more practice in real combat. This mission is focused too much on stealth. We just… We need to finish this first.”


    She nodded resignedly. “I know.”


    I tried to put this conversation behind me, but I resolved to not take down all of the city’s defenses as I had been considering. We would do the minimum job and get out of there. No reason to add on any extra complications or moral dilemmas.


    <hr>


    After making our way through the dense forest for over two hours, the trees opened up, and we were able to see the first signs of the fields that lay below the walls of West Brook City.


    Remaining behind the tree line, we did our best to scout out what we would be up against. The city was surrounded by thick dull red walls, and using energy vision, I could barely see any of the normal fluctuations that would be caused by a defensive formation. This made my heart drop in my chest.


    I looked at my classmates.


    “I need a better vantage point. I need a place where I can look down on the city from higher up.”


    We circled to the west for a few miles until the forest gave way to rocky foothills. From the top of one of these hills, I got a better look at the challenge ahead of us.


    I reached into my storage bag, pulled out a piece of paper, and drew a map to help my classmates better understand the situation.


    “Can any of you see the energy flows of the city’s formations from here?”


    They all shook their heads.


    I sighed. “The walls are made of rhyolite. It might not be the hardest stone around here, but it’s got rather high qi resistance. It’s what’s blocking your view of the formation energy. You will need to get close to the wall to see the nodes clearly.”


    I drew a quick diagram to explain.


    “The formation nodes aren’t within the city. The city walls are made of a thick layer of earth sandwiched between two layers of rhyolite. The nodes are trapped within the inner layer of earth. This is sending energy through the rhyolite, making it nearly impossible for a Grandmaster-level cultivator to affect the walls with qi directly.”


    I rubbed my hands together in thought.


    “The good news is that if we can punch through the wall, we won’t have to enter the city to destroy the nodes. The bad news is that we will need a way to punch through a thick, reinforced layer of rhyolite.


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    I showed them my sketch of the city and marked the rough locations of each formation node.


    “These are the locations we need to target.”


    Yan looked at the map and thought carefully about our options.


    “Who do you think has the ability to destroy these nodes?”


    Unfortunately, with the rhyolite being empowered by the formation, we didn’t have many good options.


    “If we had as much time as we needed, any of us could eventually break through the wall and destroy a node, but it’s unlikely the city’s defenders will give us that time. Ideally, we would have people with wood-element attacks for this. With my spirit fire, I’ll be able to burn through the wall in less than a minute, but I don’t know if anyone else will be able to do much.”


    I looked from LuLu to JiaQi. “Do you think Lulu could do it? She’s a wood-element demon beast, so she should be powerful enough.”


    JiaQi shook her head. “LuLu is strong, but she doesn’t have any good way to attack a wall. She can probably break through it faster than I could, but her speed won’t exactly be impressive.”


    We needed another option. We would be in far too much danger if I were the only one working on destroying the nodes. While a wood-based spirit fire was best for this task, I did have another option that was nearly as good.


    I turned to LiTing. “What is your spirit fire?”


    She showed it to me. It was a basic Yellow-Rank metal-based flame.


    I reached into my storage space and brought out the Profound-Rank metal spirit fire I had bought in South Gate City a few lives back.


    “Replace it with this. It’s Profound-Rank, so it should give you enough strength to burn through the rhyolite. It won’t be as fast as a wood fire, but it’ll be good enough.”


    “Fang…” LiTing was shocked, and her emotions became turbulent. “That’s too valuable. I can’t take it.”


    I forced the jade box containing the fire into her hands. “Take it. Consider it a gift. The cost isn’t important. You’ll be earning more than enough to pay for something like this in the future.”


    LiTing looked like she was going to cry. “Thanks.”


    I patted her on the shoulder but didn’t know what else to say, so I looked at Yan.


    “LiTing and I should both be able to handle knocking out the formations.”


    Yan nodded and picked up my map of the city. He numbered the formation node closest to us ‘1’ and then followed the wall counterclockwise, numbering the nodes from 1 to 8.


    “This is what we’re going to do. YuLong and Fang, circle round to the left. Attack node 6, skip the nearest nodes, and then attack node 8. LiTing, JiaQi, LuLu, and I will circle to the right and hit node 4 then 2.”


    He drew lines on the map to sketch out the plan.


    “They shouldn’t be expecting our first attack, and if we’re quick enough, we can destroy four of the nodes before anyone has a chance to respond. That will disable more than 40% of the formation and is enough to complete our mission. No need to do any more than that. Once these four nodes are destroyed, head back to where we first exited the forest. We’ll meet up there and leave immediately. Our employers can take care of the rest.”


    <hr>


    YuLong and I followed the plan and headed out. Since there was nothing to provide cover near the city walls, we expected to be spotted as soon as we approached. So, we focused on speed instead of stealth and used our movement techniques to get us in range of the city as quickly as possible.


    After circling a good distance around the city, we found node 6 and immediately attacked. While the impending war meant that the city was on alert, they were not fully prepared for our assault, and we were able to reach the walls before anyone could sound the alarm. I placed my palm on the wall and shot a thin needle of my spirit fire directly into the formation node, destroying it easily.


    The sudden loss of the formation’s protection immediately forced all the city’s defenders into action, but we were already gone.


    When we arrived at node 8, the city’s defenders were starting to get organized, but they weren’t fast enough. I ran up to the wall, slapped my hand on it, and shot the needle of spirit fire at the formation node. While I could see some benefits in the design and placement of the city’s formation, without a strong observation and monitoring system in place, it was easy to take down by someone with the right tools.


    With our part of the plan successfully complete, YuLong and I hurried back to the cover of the forest to meet up with our classmates.


    Not long after we entered the woods, YuLong grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a halt.


    “Something''s wrong.”


    He yanked me to the side as a burst of qi struck the ground where I had just been standing.


    Five men walked out of the forest and surrounded the two of us. The man directly in front of us gave me a mocking look.


    “You put on a good show. Makes me even happier that the Lord of West Brook pulled back his guards like we told him to. You sure do live up to the title of Formation Grandmaster. It’s too bad that you had to go and insult Lord Hao.”


    I looked at the man and blinked in surprise. “Who?”


    “The future Chosen you recklessly decided to slander. You hid away well enough that we didn’t have a good opportunity to strike until now, but we’ve been tracking you ever since we first heard about the commotion you caused when you first entered the sect. You were politely asked to join Lord Hao’s faction, and your response was insulting the Lord and attacking one of his servants? Did you think there would be no repercussions for that?”


    The man clenched the shaft of his spear to show his anger, but through this facade, I could see that he knew everything he said was nonsense. He wasn’t angry. The emotion I sensed from him was greed.


    “You newbies have gotten way too arrogant. In the past, people like you wouldn’t have been allowed to enter the sect, but now, not a year goes by where we aren’t sent to teach proper respect to the new recruits. We’re here to send a message to all you new sect members. There are some people you can’t afford to offend.”


    I used energy vision to quickly assess my foes. They were all Peak Grandmasters, and they were all wearing refined armor and holding refined weapons. Fortunately, four of them only had Rank 1 items, and the leader only had Rank 2 items. They would still be difficult to deal with, but their equipment didn’t have the overwhelming lethality of LiTing’s weapons.


    As I examined my enemies, I noticed that the woods around us were starting to grow dark.


    I looked at YuLong. He nodded.


    We leaped backward at the same time and twisted around mid-flight. We needed to take the two people standing behind us by surprise.


    I charged at my target and pulled back my fist like I was getting ready to punch him.


    With his higher cultivation level and refined equipment, I knew I would have an incredibly tough time doing any damage like this. He must’ve felt the same way since he didn’t bother to defend himself. He only prepared to strike me down after my attack failed.


    I swung my right arm wide with a large sweeping blow. Halfway through my swing, I pulled my crescent moon spade into my hand directly from my storage space.


    Using the sharpened crescent moon end of the staff like a double-bladed ax, I swung at my opponent with all my strength.


    When he saw the weapon appear in my hands, my opponent’s eyes widened in shock, but it was too late. The edge of the crescent moon easily sliced through his armor and cleanly severed his body in half.


    As I retracted the staff, I saw that the crescent moon had been mangled beyond recognition. As promised, LiTing’s weapon was deadly, but it lacked any form of durability.


    The swift death of my opponent caught his companions off guard, and YuLong exploited his opponent''s momentary shock. He whipped his hammer out of his storage bag and struck his enemy with bone-breaking force. His hammer shattered on impact, but his enemy was no more.


    Seeing this sudden change in the situation, the other three didn’t wait for us to catch our breath. They charged forward.


    With his exceptional fighting ability, YuLong was able to hold off two of them, but he wouldn’t last long. He was the better fighter, but his opponents were simply too powerful.


    I needed to help him.


    In an attempt to quickly take out the third enemy, I swung the shovel blade end of my staff at his head.


    He dodged the strike and punched the flat of the blade, shattering it, exploiting the weapon’s brittle construction.


    I flipped the staff back around and tried to use the mangled crescent blade as an impromptu spear. Combining the weapon with blasts of spirit fire, I was able to stay alive, but I was entirely on the defensive.


    With a solid strike, my opponent shattered the remains of my staff.


    Unarmed and in a deadly, fast-paced situation, I relied solely on the fighting methods I had learned from Lord Gong. I wasn’t worried about efficiency. I needed to take out my enemies.


    As we fought, the forest around us kept getting darker. Because of my reliance on energy vision, I didn’t have any trouble fighting in the deepening gloom, but my opponent wasn’t so lucky. With the beneficial low-light situation and by relying on Lord Gong’s methods, I was able to keep my fight at a standstill and even throw out an occasional burst of fire to support YuLong, but I was quickly exhausting my energy.


    Once YuLong and I were both on the verge of collapse, our three opponents backed off and put some space between us.


    Their leader sneered at me, and I could feel the anger radiating from him.


    “You know, at first, we were planning on taking you back to Lord Hao to be a favored slave. You would have lived a nice, long, luxurious life while making formations for him. Now, you’re going to have to die for what you did to my brothers.”


    He started channeling a large quantity of qi into some form of deadly attack, but just as he was about to complete his technique, the large blade of a guandao appeared from the shadows and took off his head.


    Only a moment later, the man to his left fell with two daggers sticking out of his back, and the man to his right was sent to the ground by the hoof of an angry deer. After he was knocked prone, Lulu stomped on his chest and ripped out his throat, ending our final opponent.


    I looked at the others who had just arrived and was about to thank them, but Yan shook his head.


    “We need to get out of here.”