Remove ads

Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Reader mode
Neshuakadal said:
It's not a loss of face for being a sore loser. It's regaining face from an upstart. If a commoner beat a ducal scion in a 1v1 duel and the commoner had a cultivation disadvantage that would such a massive lost of face as to be near death. Almost as if some one had torn off Sun Shao's physically face. I certainly don't want to be the one to do that to the Butcher King. Some fights you can't afford to win. Winning the fight against Sun Liling is far more expensive then losing the fight. Besides I still don't know where this idea that we can win is coming from. Putting up a good fight is great but even thinking we can win?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh, I don't think we have better than a snowball's chance in hell of beating her (I'm probably less confident of beating Ji Rong than most people in the thread), I'm just pushing back against that winning would be bad. It's all academic I guess.

The Sun would lose face from their heir losing to a commoner (though they could spin it as a commoner with the backing of the Cai clan and Elder Jiao, even if the latter is stretching the truth), but further reprisals are not only risking open conflict with Cai Shenhua, but also tossing further face down the drain.

The best way for her to regain face would be to prove it was a fluke by outperforming Ling Qi in the Inner Sect.
 
archangis said:
There is literally no one else that is directly descended from Sun Shao.

Sun Lilling is never going to stop being the heir so long gramps draw breath.

I think she won't be petty enough to put a hit on us, as she consider the whole sect thing a game, as her confident lu feng does. But I wouldn't bet my hand on her not being a complete hypocrite.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
don't mistake "only two members " Cai clan with the Sun clan.
 
Ayashi said:
don't mistake "only two members " Cai clan with the Sun clan.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We know he has other options, but we also know she's his best option and the eldest granddaughter. I also wouldn't expect that his sister in Heavenly Peaks, who married into another family, is willing to move to the Western Territories. And tbh, he needs at least a prism level cultivator, of which he apparently has none.
 
Since the only way Ling Qi could beat Sun Liling would be by incredible luck, maybe we're over-thinking this.

What I mean is, there are an awful lot of witnesses to this fight. If Sun Liling trips over a pebble and then Ling Qi hits her while she's trying to avoid accidentally stabbing her familiar, or whatever contrived set of circumstances yrsillar wrote to explain that streak of incredibly unlikely dice rolls, then everyone will see exactly how it went down. They'll see that actually, Sun Liling was clearly the better fighter and just had the worse day of her life because sometimes even a flea can defeat an elephant, etc., etc. So instead of a massive embarrassment that Ling Qi is "the better fighter" it would in fact be obvious that she isn't, and this is just an object lesson in you needing a really wide Cultivation/skill gap before declaring any fight a sure thing.
 
Ayashi said:
I think we shouldn't take classic Xia/Wuxia setups as likely scenarios. They are stories, or more accurately self-wishfulfilment for teenagers or young adults that just faced their first unfair setback(s) in the wider society. It's the things you dream up when your boss is being a daft cunt and you wish you could just punch him in the face.

In any reasonable universe this kind of reaction would have your clan destroyed in a couple of years, at most. Afterall with this kind of "logic" you literally never can lose a fight, ever. You can literally never have any peers. Or you'll start a freiking war.
And the funny thing with wars with peers, or close inferiors, is that generally even wining it will cost you a significant portion of your overall strength. With makes the next one that much harder to win survive.

A more likely result of Ling Qi beating Sun Liling would be for Sun Liling to lose her position of Heir to someone else. Hence reducing the rep face loss from "beat the Sun Clan's Heir" down to "beat a Sun Clan Member".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Again I cannot stress this enough.

Xianxia is the teenaged derivative with the power fantasies and revenge spirals being good.

Wuxia stories are set in reasonable universes where people have to act like reasonable adults with their power. And those that don't are either villains idiots or people who need a lot of maturing.
 
angelofwhim said:
She is gonna follow through right? Just .....not now.....right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Meizhen would not be allowed to kill Kang Zihao during the tournament as the stage prevents lethal damage from being inflicted. Elder Jiao is in control of that much at least. Furthermore, Meizhen probably won't be allowed to kill Kang Zihao while they are both in the inner sect, as I would imagine that the same rule of "not killing each other" would still apply.
 
angelofwhim said:
She is gonna follow through right? Just .....not now.....right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Pretty much. She cant kill him in the sect without repercussion and as we learned from 'A cask if Amontillado', revenge is spoiled if you suffer along with your target.

On the other hand our snek girl is no quitter and as soon as she us able to do so Im sure she will take her shot.

Edit: Im sure though that she will use her match to get a taste though. First trap his pride to make it impossible for him to surrender, then break out the poisons, acids and the torture kit her thoughtful aunt might have snuck into her ring ( Bai family standard issue equiptment).

I expect kz to be a sobbing mess covered in his bodily fluids and the match ending only when rhe pain kz suffers will exceed her ability to keep him concious.

Wounds can be healed but it would be uncourtous to not leave memories that will last a lifetime.
 
Last edited:
TehChron said:
And to let it go would make the Sun appear to be irrevocably weak.

They'd have to retaliate, or else prepare for the rest of the empire to start sharpening their knives for after Sun Shao passes away which is his worst case scenario.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Losing once in this little school tournament would make the Sun appear irrevocably weak? I think you overstate.

More to the point... the Cai are not telling us to be sure to lose the fight. They won't have considered it likely, but I can pretty much guarantee that if Shenhua thinks that it's important that we not win this one, they'll let us know. If they don't tell us, then that means she'd like us to win... and I trust the political judgement of Cai Shenhua enough to believe that she'd know if it was good for her or not. As far as effects on us personally? Cai Shenhua has demonstrated some pretty clear attitudes and character traits. If we go above and beyond what she expected of us in achieving her broader objectives, I'm quite certain she'll see to it that we benefit from having done so.

Ah! and I figured out how they react to the situation if we do take out Sun Liling. First, Bai and Cai go all out on each other - pull out all the stops, don't keep any abilities hidden, make it quite clear that it's a hard-fought battle. Maybe the victor is predecided. Maybe it is not. Then, whichever one advances to the finals takes us out with... significantly less effort. "It wasn't trivial, but the answer was never in doubt" level. Possibly flavor it with us giving a touch of (entirely honest) acknowledgement of their superiority in the pre-fight banter. Basically, make it clear that either of the two of them could have beaten us, and the real question was over which one of them won... which puts all three of us clearly ahead of Sun Liling in the implied power rankings.

Kian said:
Ambush and his subordinate mocking her mom's execution.

She made an oath to kill him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oooh. Yeah. Explains why he's still throwing in with the Sun, anyway.

I expect he got a bit concerned when the Bai/Cai alliance went public.
 
Last edited:
Alratan said:
For example, say that a Ji Rong level talent showed up in a Ducal clan. They'd be crazy to send him to a sect rather than educate him at home during the peak Cultivation years. To be honest though, this should apply to all nobles. They should be coming to the sect in their twenties as Cyans
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

As a counterargument, I'd like to point out that Argent Soul is good enough that Meizhen slowed down her breakthrough to Green to switch to it and master it for that sick reroll 1s, +50% site bonus, and +5% Breakthrough chance.

We were never told that mastering Argent Soul was mandatory for advancement, she did it because it was better than any suplementary cultivation art the Bai have access to besides their main one.
 
Yeangst said:
Oh, I don't think we have better than a snowball's chance in hell of beating her (I'm probably less confident of beating Ji Rong than most people in the thread), I'm just pushing back against that winning would be bad. It's all academic I guess.

The Sun would lose face from their heir losing to a commoner (though they could spin it as a commoner with the backing of the Cai clan and Elder Jiao, even if the latter is stretching the truth), but further reprisals are not only risking open conflict with Cai Shenhua, but also tossing further face down the drain.

The best way for her to regain face would be to prove it was a fluke by outperforming Ling Qi in the Inner Sect.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The following info dump is to set my stance about this issue. I hope you don't take this as an aggressive response to try and change your mind. This is so everyone can better understand my thoughts and position on this academic issue.

Right now our grudge is with Sun Liling. If we beat her then our grudge becomes one with the Sun. They are a ducal clan and can exert massive pressure. The pressure does not need to be physical. They can just pressure every single clan that deals with us. This cuts off an entire province for potential trade and information and the special drugs that province makes. It cuts off any company that even works in that province. It will cut off any clan that wants to curry favor with the Sun. A single act is dropping a stone to create uncountable ripples. Dealing with a ducal clan is dropping a boulder. The amount of people who won't deal with us or even actively try and screw us goes through the roof. The Sun clan doesn't even have to do anything. Since they are a ducal clan they can just sit there and any party that wants to deal with them will know how to get easy bonus points.

The effects of winning are so terrible as to be an extinction class event for our small clan. As long as the Sun exist someone could challenge us for a duel and "accidentally" cripple or kill us just because they want to curry favor with the Sun. Sure the Cai would retaliate but that wouldn't matter if you are hiding behind the butcher kings borders. Planning for people to be reasonable about this is crazy. People rapidly start losing reasonableness when they start seeing paths to get rich quick, especially if those people were not reasonable to begin with. Having a ducal clan happy with you is about as get rich quick as it gets. That fact after all is something Ling Qi is quickly learning.

While this may seem overly bleak and pessimistic to some these are my honest thoughts about this academic issue. When we, hopefully, fight against Sun Liling I will be praying that we fight well. That we fight long. That Ling Qi goes out in a blaze of glory that dazzles people watching and shows them, yah this girl really can fight. I don't want Ling Qi to go down with a whisper. I do want Ling Qi to lose.
 
Facing assassins after beating Sun Liling is extremely unlikely. Discarding the likelihood of victory in and of itself, in order for any assailants to overcome us reliably after however long it takes them to come from the Blood Jungle to Emerald Seas, would take several mid to late Greens or one or two Cyan+ cultivators. That's not a small force, and given Sun Shao's situation, it is hard to argue that he could justify pulling a squad or two away from his army's Jungle suppressing front lines for more than a year. Especially since he could just wait a year then send or hire a few dozen yellow "bandits" to set up in our fief and wreck shit.
 
This whole conversation is moot because we can't beat Liling.

Our "win" condition is to make her show every capstone she got since the truce, make her show her second spirit, then bloody her for face and make her pop a megalixer so she can't use it in the finals.

If we have a long enough string of "10 8 8 8 7 10 10" to actually beat her, then it would be a good thing for us, both because of getting the second place reward from the sect instead of the fourth, and because of rewards from the Cai.

Will the Sun be our enemy, sure. They're going to be that anyway, because of our allies. We have the Cai to protect us, and we live on the other side of the continent.
 
Neshuakadal said:
The following info dump is to set my stance about this issue. I hope you don't take this as an aggressive response to try and change your mind. This is so everyone can better understand my thoughts and position on this academic issue.

Right now our grudge is with Sun Liling. If we beat her then our grudge becomes one with the Sun. They are a ducal clan and can exert massive pressure. The pressure does not need to be physical. They can just pressure every single clan that deals with us. This cuts off an entire province for potential trade and information and the special drugs that province makes. It cuts off any company that even works in that province. It will cut off any clan that wants to curry favor with the Sun. A single act is dropping a stone to create uncountable ripples. Dealing with a ducal clan is dropping a boulder. The amount of people who won't deal with us or even actively try and screw us goes through the roof. The Sun clan doesn't even have to do anything. Since they are a ducal clan they can just sit there and any party that wants to deal with them will know how to get easy bonus points.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You are describing what would happen if we killed Sun Liling somehow and escaped legal consequences. Beating her in a schoolyard fight? No.

Also note that every bit of soft power the Sun can bring to bear can be matched by the Cai. And that, by the way, the Sun power base is way out on the other side of the Empire while the Cai are the local tyrant. The far off dragon can't suppress the local snake, let alone the local dragon.
 
Everybody hyping up ji rong but dissing my boy shen hu. If jr has a chance against us, shen hu has a chance against sl.

Probably the same low, but not 0 percent chance.
 
Ah, right. Had forgotten the ambush.

More importantly, I didn't realize it was Meizahn's mother he was talking about. Does anyone remember where we were told that?

Anyway, yeah, I really can't blame her for the murderous intent. Do you think it would be a bonding experience to kill him together?
 
jacobk said:
You are describing what would happen if we killed Sun Liling somehow and escaped legal consequences. Beating her in a schoolyard fight? No.

Also note that every bit of soft power the Sun can bring to bear can be matched by the Cai. And that, by the way, the Sun power base is way out on the other side of the Empire while the Cai are the local tyrant. The far off dragon can't suppress the local snake, let alone the local dragon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Perhaps if we are dealing with reasonable people you would be right. However I am becoming further convinced that the Suns are not reasonable and that Cai couldn't care less what would happen to some. The far off dragon can suppress the local snake if a local honey badger wants something the far off dragon has and the local dragon doesn't care.
 
Kian said:
Everybody hyping up ji rong but dissing my boy shen hu. If jr has a chance against us, shen hu has a chance against sl.

Probably the same low, but not 0 percent chance.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean, Sun could probably use the same tactics we did.

She's faster and has more sustain, and she can use her sunflowers here.

That's probably her backup plan, but she'll just stab him to death.

I actually give him better odds than I give us, but that just makes it slim instead of none.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top