Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

We really do live on the flipper of a giant turtle Part 2
I hummed as I worked. Comparing the position of the sun by measuring it from many different places. I would find out just how far away the sun is. Who knows maybe it is close enough to grab? But really just learning is satisfying.

"Why are you bothering with this?" Me and elder twin Georgy jr. haven't had all that much to do with each other after we both started cultivation. With my past life advantages I have been racing ahead of him in cultivation and then I started focusing on recreating the technology of home. Now I am trying to figure out this world's weird cosmology. It's just one thing after another, a huge world, of things.

"What does it matter exactly how far away the sun is? All that matters is that it is too far away to reach. It doesn't matter for anything that might possibly affect us."

I point at a paper I am reading "There was a drought 30 years ago in Wilcon. 3 million mortals died."

"Ya, so it's just what I was saying to focus on things closer to home."

"The drought started with an unusually hot summer."

"I get what you are saying, but even if you knew how far away the sun is you can't do anything to it. If something could be done about then it would have been done millennia ago by smarter people of a higher cultivation than you."

I point at him. "That! That right there is why I am doing this. Everyone acts like cultivation is the be all and end all. No, discovery is made by a dispassionate analysis of the data well working hard to minimize bias. It isn't a matter of power or will!"

I point at the end of my equations "See! That is the distance to the sun! 10,000 Li"

"Bah it doesn't matter" He says before walking off.
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Despite my earlier insistence, I of course double-checked my equations later. Really getting exactly 10,000 Li with no decimals? That just screamed that I likely made a mistake. Turns out I had made a mistake. Just not the one I thought. No matter what time of day or where I measured the distance from the results were always 10,000 Li. How can an object be the same distance from you no matter where you are? Also there was a hidden confounding factor that I had not noticed when I observed that everywhere has the same time with no time zones. If it's noon in Biu di then it's noon in Jan sa. I would have expected at least slight variation to account for perspective, but no when it comes to the position of the sun everyone agrees on it as a universal truth at least relative to the observer. If multiple observers compare results you quickly realize something is fishy.

Reading the clan history I find a legend. It was in the old section and is obviously a retelling of a retelling with the original version lost. At least lost to the sections of the archive I have access to.

"And so Kaia Mutou grabbed the sun out of the sky and split it into a thousand thousand pieces so that we could all share in it and yet deny it to our enemies."

The next few chapters detailed how all our enemies suffered without the sun and many of them turned away from the heavens to share in our light and warmth. But then a new sun came into the sky. How long it took is unclear, but well legend.

"But try as she might Kaia Mutou could not touch the new sun for no matter how she extended her arms the sun was always out of her reach. She could no more grasp the sun, then the moon's reflection in a pool."

Ah, so the new sun is an illusion. Like a rainbow. I am glad I made the observations before reading the legend or I might have thought it was a hologram. Or more likely have just dismissed the legend out of hand.

Also nice to get confirmation that this is an artificially constructed world. I had suspected before, but this was clear proof. Also interesting how it was constructed. If I were to make a sun simply for lighting a world during the day then I would just have it hang in the sky where it would turn on during the day and turn off at night. And yet despite making the sun an illusion the heavens apparently went to the extra trouble of including sunrises and sunsets. Why? The most obvious answer would be to mimic some other world. But that might just be my bias talking. There is no real way to test that theory.

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@Alectai, @TehChron, @ReaderOfFate

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

Humble pie
"So after spending a dozen contribution points on board messages and I don't know how much time you could have spent training what have you learned?" My mother smiled sweetly.

I look down. "That Zacharias Paulides is in fact a knowledgeable person and that if I had just taken her at her word I could have saved everyone quite a bit of trouble."

"That's right and I expect you to make amends to Zacharias and show her that you do in fact respect her superior knowledge."

The fact that the sun always appears to be 10,000 Li away is well known. The fact that there are no decimals is based on the fact that a Li is not some arbitrary unit of measurement, it is actually built into the nature of the world. It's like the world is one of those 8 bit games with a snap on grid. You can avoid snapping on, but it makes things less efficient and gives a feeling of dread. Even mortals when building a city will snap on naturally without having to take any measurements.

Also the exact mechanics of the spatial anomaly of the sun was fully mapped 3 thousand years ago. It is a shame that we no longer have cultivators on the level of Kaia Mutou because if we did then the sun could be ripped out of the sky once again easily. Which just goes to show that knowledge without power is impotent and power without knowledge is blind.

I kowtowed before Zacharias and asked her to teach me once again. I had always been a little dismissive of the idea of face, but man humbling myself and admitting I had been wrong really burned.

Once I started listening to Zacharias even when what she said seemed like nonsense I learned quite a bit. There are two types of stars in the sky. First the stationary stars that are rips and gaps in the celestial machine. Then there are the star spirit beasts. Not much is known about them besides they don't come down much.

The moon emits light. I asked what the purpose of the moon having phases was, but for once Zacharias didn't have an answer. Honestly this impressed me almost as much as how much knowledge she did have. It's easy to get stuck on the idea of cultivators being really arrogant.
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A new Omake. A life saving treasure please. @Alectai, @TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

Mortal population mechanics
Qi is really a double edged sword in this world. In one sense it is the most awesome thing ever. You can literally do anything with it. Or at least I can't find anything definitely impossible. There are even stories of time travel. Qi is like oil, coal, uranium and gold all rolled into one. The one stop solution to all problems. Have a problem then apply qi. If that doesn't solve it then more qi does the trick. Yes I am oversimplifying there are other elements like will and dao, but mostly those seem to just help apply more Qi. You don't see anyone Dao or Will their problems away without using Qi.

On the other hand just as Qi is the ultimate solution to all problems it is also the cause of loads of them. In this world the usual key limiter of mortal population is number of cultivators. Any population center from village to city without cultivators is living on borrowed time until a spirit beast shows up. It isn't like back in the old world where dangerous predators can be hunted to extinction. Any animal in a Qi filled environment can just one day awaken becoming a spirit beast and decide to kill everything in its path. Attack of the killer rabbit is not a funny joke around here, it is deadly serious.

By this logic the Golden Desert should be the most mortal dense population on the whole flipper. We actually have a great lack of spirit beasts to the point that many cultivators wish there were more. Just about all the ones we have seem to stick to and be attracted to the scorpion road.

However, the Golden desert has another limiting factor on mortal populations. That it is in fact a desert. There is a lack of water. And with a lack of available qi there means there is also a lack of solutions to the problem. I would like to say at this point that I can come up with some Qiless solution to the problem, but well. I'm at a lose. There were deserts back home, but they were not even a faction of the size. The Golden Desert is twice the surface area of my old Earth. Aqueducts come on, don't be silly. The project would make the great wall of china look like a beach house. Not to mention being impossible to defend. Without any real return on investment for the clan. For right now the problem just hangs at the back of my mind taunting me with it's lack of solvability.

Bronze mirror tribulation!
The trials are coming and as much as I hate the idea of turning the fruits of my invention to murder if I don't survive I don't do anything else. I could just focus more on marshal training, but I am just another second Heavenstage. The clan isn't going to have me fighting hand to hand if they can help it. I don't like the idea of just hiding away while others fight. My hand cannon is a step in the right direction. A ranged attack that can blow apart people above my stage. But it is currently a slow reload. Takes me about 15 seconds to reload assuming I can focus on it.

Well if I am harnessing the power of the sun might as well lean into it. Didn't Archimedes make a burning mirror that could burn boats? The historicity of that is challenged, but I have seen rocks melted using sun power on youtube. Also the first mirrors were made from bronze rather than glass. So I go out and search for the most reflective bronze alloy.

I should have guessed. The most reflective alloy of bronze is known as celestial bronze. I proceed to make a mirror array. Well I say I, but really I pawn off most of the work to mortals of various professions. Money is a superpower in it's own right. Shockingly, hiring all these mortals is actually cheaper than my combat instructor's time was.

I have my glass lens makers working full time. Mostly I am just building up a supply of as many mirrors and magnifying glasses as I can carry. I expect to be deployed to a fort somewhere and I want to be able to set up a burning laser to help me kill 5th sea invaders in the way they should be killed from a distance and at no risk to myself.

With my qi in the lens and mirrors I can instinctively calculate the angles. Quickly doing all of the slight adjustments to accurately target anything on this side of the horizon which on a flat world is very far away indeed. I have a terrible urge to call it something pretentious like "Bronze mirror tribulation!" or something equally silly. When I practice with it I feel invincible.

During the day anyway. But I am part of a clan. My job is to do the best I am and depend on others when I fall short. The greatest advantage of the Golden Devil clan is that we actually cooperate well and I have my slow reloading hand cannon for night. Still I have some plans on improving the hand cannon as well.

Another 2 omakes. @Alectai, @TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

GraveBronze on fire
After 20 different test models I am finally ready for the final model of my hand cannon. It is going to be a thing of beauty. The smooth breech loader at the back works like a dream. It, combined with my premade ammo and powder packs, allows me to reload in less than second even on the run. It has a rifled bronze barrel to allow for sure aim even at great distance and the grips on the outside to allow for easy aiming even in trying situations. It felt odd to include a scope on a hand cannon, but on a flattish world the horizon can be a long way away. It is a bit of a shame that I will have to abandon this weapon eventually if I continue my cultivation progress. A weapon like this is going to be amazing at the lower heavenstages, but once I get to double digits I might as well use my hands.

Still, no use getting gloomy about the future, even if my cultivation goes very well. The 9th Heavenstage is likely to take me 40 years, or more likely, many more years away. An entire mortal generation. All sorts of things can happen in the meantime. On that topic cultivation is amazing. I am 30 years old. Most Isekai heroes have already finished their adventures at my age, but I have not even begun really. I don't look or feel a day over 20. A knock at my workshop door. Odd I don't think I have anything scheduled?

"Come in." Not working with anything explosive right now.

My mother IulIa comes in. Looking around my workshop. "I see that I have arrived in time. I heard that you are just about ready to start on your final model of this 'HandCannon'". The way she says it reminds me of older people talking about Pokémon in the last world.

I don't question how she knows I have taken it for granted for a long time that she just knows everything, somehow. "Yes this will be the perfected model. All the ones before were just prototypes."

Mom holds out a few ingots of bronze. "I want you to have this. It was once your great uncle Theras before he died."

Theras had some bronze ingots? Wait no she said 'was once' not 'they were once'. Grave Bronze. Really she is giving my Grave Bronze for this project? I mean, I know my family has been understanding of my oddities, but this seems to be several steps beyond that.

I take the proffered ingots with the gravity they deserve. She explains. "Theras was a skilled smith whose blood of bronze made him even more resistant to fire then the average. He was killed by the 5th sea invaders." Her head peeking over my shoulder to look at the parts on my workbench.

Not sure how Grave Bronze is really supposed to help the design, but the show of support gives me a warm feeling.

"Forge it with care."

"Ah, I don't actually forge these myself. I just put together the design and have mortal blacksmiths do the actual forging."

"A mortal blacksmith? On Grave Bronze. Don't be absurd. It seems like you will need to learn. Besides, it is only right that you should be able to make and maintain your own equipment especially if it is non-standard."

And so my blacksmithing lesions started.
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Blacksmithing actually wasn't nearly as hard as I expected. I am a cultivator far stronger and tougher than a mortal blacksmith and the blood of bronze only enhances the effect. I can actually mold warm bronze in my hand to a certain extent. It only takes me a 2 week crash course to become a skilled blacksmith by mortal standards. I had already known most of the mental bits.

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I have never been quite clear on how exactly Grave Bronze is superior to other bronze. It's a touchy subject. All anyone seems to say is that is better. But that doesn't really tell me anything. For all I know the difference is all in the mind. I know that working with the product of my great uncle's legacy is making me focus extra hard on forging this hand cannon right the first time.

After the forging comes both the easy and the hard part. Adding the sun ignition array allowing me to fire this reliably for no qi cost so long as long as it is day time. At night I need to use my own qi, but still a discount is a discount. I tried to make a qiless method, but no purely mechanical design I tried worked out as I had hoped. Either it would ignite sometimes when I didn't want it to. Or it would not always ignite when I wanted it to. I remember that there was a method that worked. I even remember thinking that it was a clever idea, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Maybe it will come to me at higher cultivation. I hear that higher cultivation can improve memory. I might even figure out what is going on with this past life stuff. In the end I was forced to swallow my pride and use a qi array.

Enough wool gathering. Time to etch out the array. I have done this array a few hundred times. At this point I know it inside and out, but one annoying thing about qi is that you can't use it absentmindedly. You have to will it to work with your full intention and with a clear idea of what you are doing. I don't think assembly line arrays making is likely to work. Well maybe they could work for an hour.

Idea later. Array time now. With every line I think about the connection to the sun and the intention to ignite the gunpowder when I want it to and only then. There is a reaction within the Grave Bronze. Drat this has never happened before did I mess up?

"Who disturbs my slumber?" My cannon vibrated out the words softly.

"Theras?" Was my great uncle's ghost hunting the metal? I feel this should have been mentioned if it was a possibility.

"I remember that name, but it is not my name". The voice is stronger now.

"I am Theras' grand nephew"

"Ah one of the bronze born. And so the pact continues. You will feed me and shelter me and I will lend you my power."

And that is how my prized hand cannon was possessed by a fire spirit.

--------------------------------
Cinder (the name of the fire spirit I learn) did improve my hand cannon in many ways. Now the bullets are molten hot when shot and as long as I keep Cinder well fed I don't need to use any qi to fire my hand cannon even at night. Don't need to reload any powder charges either just ammo which has cut down on the reload time so much as to not be a factor. Now the far bigger problem is how much ammo I can carry. I can shoot out a whole backpack worth in less than 10 seconds. Although completely destroying a stone house in those 10 seconds was gratifying, it is no good to run out so quickly. Yes, of course the building was condemned.

Cinder seems to eat anything that burns, but s/he (There is a word for it here) treats gunpowder like sugar. S/he can't get enough of the stuff.

When I asked Cinder how it was that s/her ended up bound to my clan s/he said "I don't remember. My memory has never been good. Or at least I don't remember it ever being good. Doesn't really matter."
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Out of character: Cinder is one of the thousand thousand shards of the old sun bound to the Golden Devils for so long that everyone including Cinder has forgotten about it.

Omake for the throne: @TehChron @ReaderOfFate @Kaboomatic

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

Defending a fort with sunlight

This is a might have been. It never actually happened.

Despite the fact that my Bronze Mirror Tribution literally attacks at the speed of light the 5th sea invaders are amazing at dodging. They start dodging before I even start to aim at them. Must be the sensing killing intent thing. I heard about it, but I have never personally experienced it. I am what is called a "Hot house flower". No personal experience of life and death battles until now. I had hoped that since my Bronze Mirror Tribution attacks with pure sunlight and none of my Qi in it that the intent couldn't be felt. But either the attack does in fact have some Qi in it or sensing killing intent is physic mind reading that can work over a distance of 10 miles. Frustrating.

Well I have a back up. I get out my telescope and prepare to aim at much smaller targets. If I aim at the token the 5th sea invaders don't sense the attack coming. Zap invader gone without even knowing what hit them. Best part is all the tokens are equally fragile no matter the wearer's level of cultivation. Not that I can tell their level of cultivation at this distance. Unfortunately they generally don't stay still. Aiming to hit a moving target the size of my fist through a Telescope is hard. I only manage it a few times and that is only because there are so many targets.

I do learn something interesting though. If I am aiming at the token and honestly miss I can hit a cultivator without setting off killing intent. I try being careless to purposely 'miss'. But that doesn't work. I have to honestly miss. I can't game it. I feel like there should be some way to take advantage of this, but I can't think of it right now.

Things get significantly harder when I sense killing intent for the first time and fall to the ground barely dodging an arrow that zips above me. I guess someone noticed me sniping. And then more arrows punch though every one of my carefully prepared bronze mirrors. I must have really annoyed someone. I think I am going to stay down for a bit longer. I am not going to be able to help much more with this fight today. Someone actually shot multiple precise arrows over more than 10 miles? I don't think that was a Qi Condensation. I gather that the rules against punching down don't include equipment. Makes sense given they don't seem to include forts either lots of the time.

I crawl over to my legion commander. "All of my prepared mirrors have been destroyed. Anything else useful that you can have me do?"

@TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate Not much, but it was a cool omake idea that I wanted to write.

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus
Zeno Angelus​

Family Talk
"Hey Zeno. I want to show you something!" Abel tugs on Zeno's arm.

Zeno turns around and finally stops looking at the paperwork arrayed like a mountain on his work desk. "Oh, our young array engineer finally shows himself at home! Good to see you!

Abel makes a face at array engineer. Yes he does them, but only when his mundane craft isn't good enough and he has to patch over the holes.

"Oh, don´t give me such a face. You know that your legate won't name you anything else, because whatever you do is easier to file for under array stuff than anything else."

"Well what I am going to show has just about no array work at all! And it is awesome!"

"I am sure it will be, but I need to know how much space you need to show it to me. WE just cleared out the sparring room of the rubble caused by your mother sparring with Xia and I don't feel like lugging marble for many li again."

Abel answers, "Well it can work at short range. But the really impressive part is using it over more than 10 li. I have it set up on the wall."

"Our courtyard wall?" Zeno asks.

"No the city wall. Of course they aren't going to let me set up long range weapon tests in the middle of the city. "

"Oh, that makes much more sense. Though, I want to know how you got that through the local town office." Zeno starts walking.

Abel leads him through and towards the city gate. "I just bribed the gate guard. They are really bored. And since I am a Golden Devil they figured it was fine."

"Congratulations legionnaire, I may not be your legate, but you just earned yourself latrine duty for the next month!" Zeno exclaims with too much cheer.

"But they are allowed to bring up guests for any reason! There aren't even any rules broken."

"Sure there is, You were supposed to ask the official channels first, instead of doing it without asking. You could have upset the local Feng Shui, if you weren't careful! Now show it to me so you and your newly bribed friends can start cleaning the latrines earlier."

Abel huffs, but is still excited to show off. Jumping up the stairs. Zeno follows him with a single easy jump up the wall.

Abel points at his construction on the top of the wall. Bronze mirrors catch the sunlight redirecting it into glass magnifying glasses. All of the concentrated beams are currently just pointing at a rocks giving them slight burns.

"The mirrors catch the sunlight. Then it concentrates the sunlight." Zeno observes carefully behind him.

Abel takes out some far more sturdy look mirrors and carefully puts each under the lens pointing them outside of the city wall. There is a mechanism that clips onto these all the new mirrors."
Abel hands Zeno a hand telescope. "Not sure if you need it, but 10 li that way is a rock painted red that I am using as my target." Abel points to the south of the city.

"First, good idea, but you need a better telescope that can look beyond a dune for future missions. It works for now, but not for campaigning. Got it?" Zeno gets his own telescope out of robes

"Noo, look beyond a dune?" Zenos telescope parts then shift into one tower with a lense on top.

"Do you see the difference? Yours is just a straight line of sight. Mine allows me to look, while I am in cover." Zeno holds it closer to Abel so he can observe it more closely.

"Useful. Is it some sort of dimensional bag to hold that in?"

"Funny that you ask, but no. I just walk with it everywhere and people start to think I possess such a treasure. I`ll show you how to do that later."

Abel continues, "I look forward to it. Well anyway you see that red rock?"

Zeno looks through your telescope. "Yeah, the painting is slowly burning off."

Abel makes some adjustments to the mirrors. Now the paint is no longer slowly burning off. The rock is actually melting a bit.

"Ah, it can melt normal rock sediments. What are the uses you had intended for it? Surely not mining?"

Abel thinks about that. "Well I have been using it to melt sand to get more glass, but no I don't think it's really up to mining."

"No, I just wanted a way to be able to apply way more power than my meager qi reserves would allow me especially at a distance. Thought it might be useful during the trials. Those tokens are fragile and this is a literal light speed attack."

"In theory yes, but not practically I am afraid. If we made so many of our brothers and sisters lug this huge amount of mirrors around they wouldn't be very mobile and that's not even entertaining how much easier it would make them to locate once they find out that our juniors are using them en masse."

"I don't need to be near the mirror to adjust them" Abel holds up the rods he is using. "This can be as long as needed." He looks a little embarrassed "By putting a little qi into the mirrors I can calculate the angles near instantly. For quick adjustment"

"Your rod can reach mirrors in a 10 li radius, or if you stretch it 100 li? Our clan holdings are thousands of li apart. It would take the average mortal years to go from one part to another."

"I was thinking more about fortress defense. For the second stage of the trials. The longer rods are just so I am not easy to aim at"

"Ok, that makes them slightly more viable, but the core problem remains. Your construction is fragile. Once the besieging enemy notices the glare, and they will, they will shut it down with sheer mass of enemies or any other method. Even you can bend normal bronze. What do you think the geniuses from heaven can do easily?"

"I can't bend bronze at 10 Li."

"They don´t need to. Any proper sieging army has many Foundation and Core experts to ruin the walls with and distance is just a number for cultivators anyway. Unless you can somehow mount it on your back and run with it, you will have to content yourself with knowing these mirrors will only be a minor nuisance. Though you could use it behind enemy lines as a way to distract the enemy should you ever go undercover." Zeno pats Abel on the shoulder.

@Alectai, @TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate A collaboration with Juugo -Zeno. Also if you could indicate that Abel Angelus 11 is non-canon in the threadmark that would be nice.

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

"Congratulations legionnaire, I may not be your legate, but you just earned yourself latrine duty for the next month!" Zeno exclaims with too much cheer.

Click to shrink...

latrine duty
I actually don't mind latrine duty. Of course I will make sure to complain about it somewhere Zeno can hear, but what a lot of legate including Zeno it seems don't realize is that latrine duty can cover a very wide range of tasks. And no sanitation master worth his bronze is going to waste someone that can craft disease purification arrays on shoveling shit.

I dislike most arrays. Generally when I use them I feel like I am failing, falling short of the standard the platonic ideal of perfect craftsmanship. Disease purification arrays are an exception though. There is something about their pure efficiency that speaks to me at a deep level. You see Disease purification arrays at least the sort used in latrines are modified life stealer arrays. They power themselves by stealing the life out of all the microorganisms in the shit. The downside being that they will burn themselves out if they don't get a steady supply of new shit, but who would bother making a Disease purification array if they didn't already have a surplus of shit readily available?.

@Alectai, @TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate The plot bunnies' have gotten me please send help. (Send no help)

 

[fictionfan]

Differences in discipline. A heretical document.

We often talk about how the demonic path is inherently less able to cooperate then us of the righteous path. However this is not quite correct. In many cases the control that a leader of a blood sect can exercise over their disciples is in fact stronger than can be done by us of the righteous path. Often in the righteous path we are forced to choose between discipline and practicality. For example, consider the case where Lan Jew raided the Divine Tunist sect against the Elder Lan Mein wishes. Lan Jew was amazingly successful in his raid and stole enough resources to raise his cultivation all the way to the core realm. Now by the rules laid down by our beloved founder Elder Lan Mein should have killed Lan Jew for his gross violation of both treaty, order and propriety. However that would have denied the sect a core level cultivator when we desperately needed every one that we could possibly get our hands on and so instead Lan Jew merely received a slap on the wrist and continued to serve the sect.

If the same thing had happened in a demonic sect Lan Jew would have been immediately killed and consumed. Both as a matter of punishment and practicality. A blood sect would not have had to worry about the loss of strength this would cause for Lan Jew's strength would remain part of that hypothetical demonic sect.

It seems something of a shame that our own righteous sect would fall lower in our standard then a demonic one.
-Written by Kan Geu who was shortly killed thereafter for completely unrelated reasons.

Just an Omake idea I had. Does it still go in the Abel section? It has nothing to do with him.

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

Trials tactics.
Tactics and strategy is an available course for all legionnaires. Mostly we are focusing on the trials. For obvious reasons. Now the trials are not a typical invasion so I am not quite sure how generalizable the lessons are, but I apply myself. After all, it will soon be very relevant to me. The first thing that is hammered into us is that moral is way more important in repealing the 5th sea invaders then it would be in a normal invasion. In a normal invasion the invaders are somewhat stuck here and can not retreat easily. However every 5th sea invader is able to smash their token and leave at any time. Some 5th sea invaders have been known to retreat just because they didn't like roughing it or found our desert uncomfortably hot. No matter how much stronger they might be we are always going to be more motivated in this war. We are fighting to survive and help our clan survive; they are just fighting to kill.

The clan has all sorts of ways to make the visitors from the 5th sea uncomfortably. The first is propaganda. We have very carefully made sure that all of our subjects know just how much we hate the 5th sea invaders. There are all sorts of plays and other media detailing just how terrible they are. Some invaders have left just from a hurt ego. My instructor went on a long rant about how upset he is that plans to have constant 24 hours plays of how awful the 5th sea invaders are projected onto the sky keep getting shelved.

The next is small injuries. The golden desert is short on qi which makes healing both more difficult and expensive. Doing even small injuries to 5th sea invaders often causes them to leave on their own accord within a week or so. This is generally most common during the siege and hiding stage.

The last is the fear of death. This is very hard for us to inflect and generally not practical either. Our lives are always more important than the 5th sea invaders deaths and in about all cases it is easier to destroy their token then to kill them. However, sometimes we get lucky or circumstances line up such that 5th sea invaders die. When they do we make sure that their fellows know about it. We put their heads up on stakes. We hang their rotting corpses from our walls really anything to make them feel the fear of death. The most common cause of 5th sea invaders death is poison which often makes their bodies useless anyway.

There were a lot more details but that was the broad strokes. Kind of makes me wish I was a poison master. I can see now why poison masters are so well respected in the clan despite being reviled elsewhere. They are the only way we can actually make the 5th sea invaders hurt. Make them pay at least a tiny tithe of the suffering that they cause us. I wish I knew the formula for deadly toxics back home. But with my luck cultivators are just plain immune to non-qi poison.

@Alectai, @TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate another Omake for the Abel survives the trials without dying, being wounded or using up a life saving treasure fund.

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus​

Computer science part 1
After paying many contribution points, a lot of testing to make sure that I am in fact competent with arrays and a little begging. I am finally allowed to access to the inner workings of the clan Contribution board.

And it is amazing. It is obviously the work of a genius. Unfortunately I say that with a tone of horror. It is a bit like looking at coding for DNA. Ok not that bad at least everything is obviously useful without loads of space filling junk. Still every bit is interdependent on every other bit. There is no hardware software divide like you would see in a computer. No, the contribution board was designed from the ground up for the purpose of being a contribution board. This is not a computer with a contribution board software loaded into it or a computer running timekeeping software. It's like an analog grandfather clock.

It is obvious that whoever made this was a master artificer of such intellect that I can scarcely comprehend it. It is also clear that it was the work of a single artificer working alone that had never even heard of the idea of object orientated design. Who also felt no need to include comments or explanations.

There is no way I can make any effective modifications to this. It would be easier to design a whole new contribution board from the ground up. I might be able to make some extensions if I treat the contribution board as a black box with some known inputs and outputs however. For example I might be able to create a mobile handheld contribution board, but it would just be an extension of the stationary contribution board requiring the use of it the entire time the handheld is being used. Not very efficient at all. Also there is absolutely no way I can run doom on this.

Well that was a total waste of time and contribution points. The most annoying bit is how everyone acts like the reason I can't get any insight is because the contribution board is so far beyond me rather than the fact the person who made the contribution board made an extra complicated clock rather than the flexible multiple uses hardware that I had been hoping for. Well the contribution board is flexible, but only for all the use cases that the creator envisioned which is a lot more than are currently being used, but he obviously never had any plans for anyone else to build on his work.

In many ways it is funny. Back in the old world it was taken as a point of fact that no one can do a large computer project on their own from the ground up. Everyone, no matter how smart, has to use a programming language designed by someone else that was usually designed by someone else using a different programming language. And even if you ignore that a 'full stack developer' was generally thought of as a sort of myth. No one can be a master of every layer of integration from databases to servers to browsers to every used API and more. The contribution board would be a completely impossible project for any single person and a team could/would never have done it in the way that it was.

But that commonly held knowledge just isn't true here. Here you can in fact have omnicompetent individuals. Yes there is still a degree of specialization, but that mostly comes down to preference rather than ability. Also something to do with Dao I guess.

@TehChron, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate More omake for the throne.