Ji Rong was the first one that she spotted, walking cockily out in front of the three other boys with him. Despite that he looked alert and ready for trouble, his aura felt charged, like the air before a thunderstorm. His companions were less disciplined, joking and bragging among themselves. None of the other three cought Ling Qi's eye, two mid yellows and a low, without any equipment or quirks to their qi which caught her eye. One of the two mid yellows was wind element though. SHe'd keep an eye on him to ensure that he didn't do something to help the others escape.
Ji Rong's intriguing -- his elements are primarily Heaven and Thunder, completely unlike Ling Qi's and Li Suyin's first-gen jumble. He has a coherent elemental suite like an established clan instead of the first-generation cultivator he is. Going by his personality, he almost certainly has an affinity for either Thunder or Heaven. Thus, leveling his arts should be as simple and quick for him as leveling Wind arts are for Ling Qi. With his Talent, that he still hasn't broken through is a testament to how badly his setbacks have deleteriously affected his cultivation rate.
The unnamed extras... The Guards were Early Silver, judging by Ji Rong's +2 autos against them, and the hanger-on raiders were 2 mid + 1 early. Against two basically-Green combatants, they were all almost entirely irrelevant.
Ma Jun activates Autumnal Chord
+2 to Musical arts and spiritual defenses, one free dispel attempt each turn for three turns
Ah, here's the sp.def music buff to the hypothesized sp.atk music buff we want. (The autumn to the vernal..?) The sp.atk version probably would have a boost to anti-dispel instead of free dispels, too.
As for the fight itself.
-The only reason the guards were relevant as they were was because Ji Rong consistently rolled awful on his rolls. With his autos, Ji Rong had dice superiority.
-After the debuffs and buffs and multi-attacks, Ji Rong's dice pools were reduced to mere parity with the guards. Gan Guangli would have needed way more extras to match Ling Qi's contribution.
-Ling Qi's buffs were critical -- without her, the guards would be languishing at dice parity with a completely debuffed Ji Rong and hit for piddly amounts of damage.
-Thus, by the time Gan Guangli entered the fight, it was already effectively over.
Sun Liling wouldn;t recover easily from this. Ji Rong and Kang Zihao were really her only major supporters, aside from Lu Feng.
So Sun Liling now only has Kang Zihao's badly mauled faction to her banner. As a wargame, she's badly losing and only survives because her opponents fear the intervention of outside observers.
I expect Cai Renxiang, as she regards this as a civ-building game, to allow Sun Liling to mount another attack once or twice more for a chance to break off Kang Zihao and overstretch her position. Cai probably would then move to bring her into alliance in the last month or two of the year, because she needs to establish complete dominance over her province-in-miniature. (And, Sun Liling can be mapped over as an Imperial clan representative or equivalent, who are too important for Cai to subjugate but nonetheless must be capable of bringing over to her side.)
Not quite sure how she'll do that -- perhaps using the last month to subjugate the last of the outer years in a Sun-Cai alliance for a technically-passing? -- especially with Meizhan's mutual enmity, but leaving her unneutralized goes against the Cai path of absolute perfection.
