Depends on how the tournament arena's setup. Massive pocket-dimension formations were used just for Zhou's basic physical exam. A relatively small, blank arena space (Final Destination if you will) with nothing for the combatants to get creative with would probably be tremendously boring by Cultivator standards. The possibilities of what kind of environments/scenarios the Sect can play with for the tournament are essentially limitless.
Rather depends on the tournament grounds. Like someone said earlier, if this is like Naruto Chunin Exams with a decently sized arena including maybe a copse of trees, perhaps even a pond and a small hill, sneaking and kiting would be completely doable. If it's just a circle in the dirt, then obviously facepunchers rule.
We do know there is a mission to clean up the tournament area. So it has some physicality that stays over from year to year. That probably means it is not a pocket dimension they could just collapse to save energy on.
We do know there is a mission to clean up the tournament area. So it has some physicality that stays over from year to year. That probably means it is not a pocket dimension they could just collapse to save energy on.
Or its both. Formations can stretch space and also allows actual watching of stealth contestants from an organizer PoV without interfering with the match.
Though the Arena has to be pretty huge considering how fast even Yellows can move
We have, against Fake Renshu. Apart from that, we would have done so against the wolves/etc too, though not to the same degree.
Not to say I think it goes particularly better with stealth than, say, melee (a backstab art would go much better) but FSS currently can reliably oneshot someone like Ji Rong if using it from backstab: Bow (FSS): Dex 6 + Archery 6 + Passives 8 (FZ 4, FSA 4) + Equip 4 (Bow 2, Pin 2)+ FSS 10 (tech 7, dot 3) +OwS 5 + First Strike 5 + Unaware 3 = 47 dice (DV10, AP7, +5 damage) with a flare arrow, as the penalty from melee with archery only applies if the opponent is not unaware.
Considering that FSS turn all damage semiperfect, and that the opponent would have the 'surprise tag' (-2? -3?) and be unable to have anything but their basic instant response tech, someone like Ji Rong (after rework) should have defence 30-2 or something, and less than 8 armour (so irrelevant).
On average, that is 12-13 semi perfect lethal damage they'd take on their first round, so their most likely way to survive is for their TRD-equivalent tech to be instant response (or that it's passive) or have enough healthbox to 'tank' the first hit.
For reference, this is what we did against Fake Renshu, except we used a Net Arrow (so, better). Of course, this was before the rework.
We have not had a fight since the mechanics rework. Since some passives stack now that didn't before and some techs changed firing a falling star shot sneak attack has something like 40+ dice and insane semi-perfect damage.
We do know there is a mission to clean up the tournament area. So it has some physicality that stays over from year to year. That probably means it is not a pocket dimension they could just collapse to save energy on.
Not to mention that the bonus on an enemy detecting Li Quing hidden with OWS applies only if she is hidden in THEIR shadow.
Any other shadow is much harder to detect, and gives the same bonuses to suprise attacks.
If we went the Mobile Fortress route, we would have many human-sized shadows available to hide in. Zhebgui himself provides a very usable shadow, even if it is only a single one.
I mean ok I guess but it doesn't really seem out of keeping with the setting to be able to oneshot a peer if you manage to completely ambush them with arts focused on getting the max out of first strike (OWS) and using two very costly techs.
Like Sun Liling seems capable of doing the same or better to her peers with a good roll without the first strike bonus.
I mean ok I guess but it doesn't really seem out of keeping with the setting to be able to oneshot a peer if you manage to completely ambush them with arts focused on getting the max out of first strike (OWS) and using two very costly techs.
Like Sun Liling seems capable of doing the same or better to her peers with a good roll without the first strike bonus.
Thanks for responding. Still I'm not so certain about Sun Liling unless Cai and Bai have a lot more health than us(bearing in mind I can't see the Char sheets). Going by the dice log from week 32 pt 2 if she used Flower Goddesses Dance and won each clash by 2 successes she could easily deal 12 damage in a turn. If she got lucky and her opponents got unlucky it seems like she could potentially oneshot even Cai or Bai.
Subterfuge Test for cover story and alibi
Manip 6+Subter 3+Fu Xiang 5. 16 dice +7 auto
5 5 8 7 7 3 9 3 4 6 1 2 8 5 10 5. 6 successes. 13 total
Ling Qi sighed as she crouched in the shadow of a rooftop display. Cries of alarm were just beginning to rise up from the homes of those she had struck at. Here in the dead of night, she was nearly invisible, a shadow among shadows. The favor Fu Xiang had asked of her was done, and though she had slipped into the three workshops with nearly trivial ease, only the last of them having a security array that offered her even slight trouble, Ling Qi could not say that she felt particularly successful.
A beautifully crafted and half finished sword, months worth of work put into its formation enhancements was effaced, a few scribbled lines sending the incomplete work into cascading failure. A potent elixir in the midst of its long straining period was poisoned, ruining the ingredients. The third person was probably the worst off, for all that she hadn't touched their project, she had planted subtle evidence, provided by Fu Xiang, of their hand in the destruction of their rivals works.
The brush that had effaced the sword, and the remaining poison sprinkled in the elixir were now firmly planted in hidden drawers within his work tables for Fu Xiang to 'discover' later, when Cai inevitably set him to investigate.
She didn't like this. She had chosen her targets from among Fu Xiang's list, skipping over Su Ling's portly friend and a few other common born in favor of noble aspirants. They would have other opportunities at least, something to fall back on.
Or so she told herself.
Ling Qi slipped away from the shadows, leaving the sounds in the market behind. She had a meeting with Fu Xiang to get too. If anyone looked into her presence, she had been at the boys little cottage, discussing intelligence matters for the evening. The potent anti-clairvoyance charm hanging from her wrist would ensure the story held up.
However much she might not like having done this, ruining people who had done her no harm… It was done now. She shook her head as she vanished into the treeline, the notes of a sad, thoughtful composition forming in her thoughts. She had to put her own interests and those of her friends first.
By the following morning, news of the sabotage had spread, and Ling Qi spent most of the day indoors, toying with her moon gifted puzzlebox and thinking.
Working on the puzzle box was a bit of a meditative exercise in itself, such was its complexity, with dozens of moving parts once she had set off the music, that she could afford little attention to the thoughts still troubling her. Four times she reached the end of the timer, concentration and determination growing each time the slowly expanding box snapped back into its starting cube shape.
Her hands blurred with the speed at which she moved the pieces, sliding, twisting, and repositioning them into the patterns that had proven successful before even as her thoughts raced ahead to discover the next move before she wasted precious seconds of the aggravating cheerful tinkling tune that rose from it.
Finally though, she found success, with a snap, the last piece unfolded under her eyes, and the tune reached its finish. What had once been a puzzle box was now a thin sheet of solid silver, wide enough to cover most of the dining room table. As she watched, symbols and lines swam across its surface, the patterns she had been using to solve the puzzle reconfiguring themselves.
When it finally grew solid, what lay before her was an incredibly detailed map of the region around the outer sect. Hills were bumps under her fingers and mountains rose sharply from the silver surface,as color bled into it, staining the vast forests a deep emerald green.
Deep within those forests, several kilometers from the village at the base of the mountain, and close to the edge of the limits the Sect set upon its disciple, a lonely, half crumbled tower rose, glowing with a cheerful pink light.
...It seemed that she wasn't quite done yet. Xin seemed to like making her work for her rewards.
For now though, she would just have to store her new map away… and remember to look into a few other interesting looking locations she had spotted glancing over it.
She had a lesson with Zeqing to attend after all.
"What do you mean?" LIng Qi asked with a frown. They stood at the entrance to the small ravine which held the black pool, ready to head in and begin their lessons, or so she had thought.
"I mean exactly what I said,' The spirit floating beside her said calmly, her black gown billowing in the breeze. "I will not teach you the next steps to the Melody of the Forgotten Vale yet."
"Why not?" Ling Qi asked, trying not to sound petulant as the spirit drifted ahead of her. "I've reviewed the jade slip. I can understand the next section now, if only a little. I'm sure I can learn it with your instruction."
"Perhaps," Zeqing replied, turning to face her on an icy breeze. "But it would be a lacking mastery. In your incomplete state, you cannot advance it properly."
Ling Qi crossed her arms, looking on her teacher with frustration. "How so? Forgotten Vale Melody isn't a physical technique at all."
Zeqing considered her for a moment, blank white eyes searching her face, as she slowly drifted backward to hover over the frozen pool. "I am told that you humans treat the third realm as an important benchmark and rite of passage. Have you truly never been instructed as to why?"
"I was a mortal a year ago, so no," Ling Qi replied, her expression softening. "Is this another one of those things everyone assumes that I know?"
"Perhaps," Zeqing repeated, the spirits red lips quirking downward in a frown. "Have you felt it, since your partial ascendance? The feeling of incompleteness?"
Ling Qi shook her head, thinking back to the last day or two, trying to recall something that would match Zeqing's words. "No, I haven't," she admitted. "I only broke through a short time before coming to visit you."
Snow swirled around zeqing as a hand of clear ice formed from the emptiness of her sleeve to cup her chin thoughtfully. "I see, perhaps our presences overwhelmed it?" She mused aloud. "I shall withdraw.When I do, focus your qi outward, as you do when forming the mist."
Narrowing her eyes, Ling Qi nodded, she wasn't certain what the problem was, but she would trust the spirit on this. She flicked her wrist, withdrawing her flute from her ring and waited patiently for Zeqing to leave.
Surprisingly though, the spirit did not move an inch, but all the same, Ling Qi felt something change. A feeling in the air, perhaps, it did not get colder or warmer, despite the snow now drifting quietly down from the sky, it was just different… empty in a way the upper peaks of the mountain had never felt.
It set her nerves on edge. All the same, Zeqing was floating there, watching her, and so she raised her flute to her lips, not to summon mist, but just as a focus for the exercise. She began to play something light and simple, using the melody to focus the cycling of her qi as she pushed it out through her channels. A breeze kicked up around her, sending the hem of her gown billowing, even as faint sparkles of silvery light flew from the holes in her flute.
Ling Qi focused herself outward, as she did when trying to sense distant qi, and continued to push her qi outward, wincing at the way she felt her reserves draining.
For a moment though, something happened, she felt a strange… awareness of her surroundings, of every snowflake within a meter, of every current of air, for just a moment, she was the stone under her feet, the snowflakes melting on her skin and crusting her hair, and even the air carrying the mundane notes of her music. She felt a strain then, as if she were wearing a dress three sizes too small, squeezing down and stealing her breath.
She was forced to stop, a splitting headache shattering what little remained of her concentration as she doubled over clutching her head. She shuddered in relief as the feeling that had been missing flooded back into the environment, cleansing the last of the sudden cold feeling that she was missing something. "What was that?" She asked in a gasp, the sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
"Your incomplete domain," Zeqing responded, and Ling Qi felt an icy hand press down on her back, a brief comfort in the instant before it was withdrawn. "Humans must struggle so, to attain that which is natural."
"I don't understand," Ling Qi said, straightening up to look her teacher in the eyes. She was glad she had left Zhengui at home, at this distance he would not have felt her discomfort.
"Do you imagine that this is my body?" Zeqing asked patiently, gesturing down at herself. At Ling Qi's uncomprehending look, she continued. "A mortal would not even see this form, did you ever see a spirit before coming here?"
Ling Qi shook her head, she had heard the voices in the wind, and heard the things that skittered in dark places, whispering of spilled blood and vice, but she could truthfully say that she had never seen a spirit as a mortal. "Where is your body then? Is it at your house with Hanyi? I thought her… Father was taking care of her."
"You are standing within it," Zeqing replied, as if that made sense. "Have the snows ever ceased in your time on the peak?" She asked pointedly. "Though my ability to apply a human level of attention may be limited to a single manifestation, I am all around you, from the mountain's peak to the lowest point the snow touches."
Ling Qi's face scrunched up in confusion. "I don't really understand how that works. Is… are all higher realm cultivators… like that?" She asked, thinking of the elders she had seen.
Zeqing dissolved in a flurry of snowflakes, simply reappearing at the stone bench where they practiced, as if to make a point. "No. Humans have a myriad paths available to them. Some, like beasts focus themselves inward, their domains and their physical forms becoming one inviolate whole. Some walk the path of the spirit and abandon physical shape almost entirely," the spirit regarded her patiently. "In the end though, the mark of truly advanced cultivation is an absolute command of one's domain and the concepts it follows, and it is the third realm which allows humans to touch upon the power of a domain."
It sounded as if truly powerful cultivators and spirits were… almost a world unto themselves. Ling Qi remembered Elder Ying's story of the great spirits. It made sense in a way. The idea still unsettled her. She thought of Elder Jiao and the eye studded shadows that flickered into existence with his will. If those weren't simply an art, but part of him…
"What does any of that have to do with the Melody?" Ling Qi asked, determined to stay on target.
"In the end, like many potent techniques, it is merely the simplification of an aspect of the domain that man formed for himself," Zeqing replied with a slight nod. "While you could learn it as you are, it will be more potent and refined if practiced in tandem with the formation of your own domain and greater self."
It was annoying to delay her development, Ling Qi thought as she moved to sit down on the icy seat beside Zeqing, fingering her flute thoughtfully. "So what do you want to do today then?" Ling Qi asked. "Will we just play normally?"
Zeqing hummed, a playful smile forming on the spirits lips. "I had thought we might begin some other lessons. It does not do for a musician to have but a single song in their repertoire…"
Zeqing is willing to teach you a new musical art
[] Lonely Winter Maiden
Water/Dark
Requires two heart meridian and one leg meridian
Six levels
The song of lonely spirits which haunt the depths of winter, forever seeking the warmth of companionship. The maidens enchanting voice draws in those who hear, no matter how cold the wind, or how deep the snow. Few can resist joining their dance in the frozen fields of winter, forever and ever.
[] Frozen Soul Serenade
Water/Dark
Requires two lung meridians and one arm meridian
Six Levels
Winter's Muse sings from its heart, the place of true cold, where even fire freezes and light dies. The truth of cold is the absolution of endings, and in this melody lies some small part of that truth. Its notes freeze blood and qi alike, its notes often the last thing its listeners hear in this world.
[] Ask to continue working on Forgotten Vale Melody, you need not master it yet, but you can begin.
We honestly have plenty of ways to deal damage, despite them not including our music. Argent Current alone is superb at this and can be used while we play. What we don't have is superlative crowd control. It's also likely to synergize (as in passives that boost) FVM better than the striking music art.
[X] Lonely Winter Maiden
Water/Dark
Requires two heart meridian and one leg meridian
Six levels
The song of lonely spirits which haunt the depths of winter, forever seeking the warmth of companionship. The maidens enchanting voice draws in those who hear, no matter how cold the wind, or how deep the snow. Few can resist joining their dance in the frozen fields of winter, forever and ever.
A nice treasure map - makes sense - some nice fluff on cultivation, and more of Ling Qi's developing conscience.
And squeee. Zeqing is best not!mum.
Inclined to go with frozen soul serenade here. I can see the other having a lot of strategic utility for things like drawing people into traps, but that probably isn't as useful this year.
