That's why I pointed out they fight spirits and beasts as well. The only ones who seriously threaten them would be flying types. Which means they must be familiar with tactics to counter strong close-range preferenced fliers.
You're misremembering or misunderstanding several details of the event and setting, again, but I give up.
Speculation:
I mean. No? Traditional setting and understanding would say that swords can't parry the concept of music, but here we are. Any spirit that they'd be fighting-in-force like this would be a serious threat regardless of flight. In fact, I would suggest that they would intentionally avoid combat with enemy air as much as possible since there's no reason to take risks unless necessary. It's the same reason Cats no longer specialize in fighting and killing Rats in New York. It's too much of a threat, they're too big and smart and the cat can go elsewhere. So they do. Cats aren't nature's ratcatchers anymore, which is why we tried to breed little terrier breeds to do it. Dogs have the connections and social bonds that would have them do the rat-killing work even at risk. Cats generally prefer the freedom to pick their own battles. I see no reason for a culture that doesn't even need permanent settlements to indulge in anti-air combat work outside of sport. If it's peer it's generally not worth the effort in a survivalist context, if it's strong you just run, and if it's weak you're not really practicing anti-air against peers-or-stronger you're probably just reusing Air-to-ground techniques to hit the weak lil wings for foods. I'd be surprised if they regularly hunted flying game of equal strength to both ourselves and the dying-harried noble as well as the "tying up many reds n yellows" town garrison. Even if we looked alone, their forces were not all available to attack us without additional setup time.
When your strengths are speed and maneuverability, you get to pick and choose your battles. If you pick and choose your battles and live in a survival-oriented nomadic culture you don't take pointless risks except for sport or ritual. Typical sustenance-runs should be against slow targets and non-flying targets, especially the non-stealth kind. No reason to stand and fight when there's no land to protect haha. Let specific individuals (the scout kites) deal with perception and communication, only need one person to spot something dangerous to alert the whole camp about it.
I'll take the critique about the power-creep tho. It's possible that YRS is intending a setting that's different than the one I'm seeing. But as far as I know the individual has supreme power and although numbers and peers are both good ways to counteract an individual there are ways to counter numbers (which we have) and Peers are determined by more than cultivation, such as quality of arts, synergy of arts, spirits, raw stat grind, rounded-ness, and rate of improvement. This is why our for-sure true peer is Ji-Rong and nobody else *quite* matches up but more or less is a peer~ sorta. The Ducals are on another level, but we haven't seen a Count (that's the rank below right?) of significance in a long while and certainly not anyone that improves as fast as we do. The friends we came in with that are also sprinting upwards are roughly peers but our ability to multi-tool, fly and outspeed everyone is nasty. There's a reason Number None gated flight behind end-game. It's a ridiculous combat boost and allows totally different conceptions of battlefield dynamics. 3d from 2d
what I'm saying is that if our build was grounded we'd be closer to Count and peer-to-friends than closer to Ducal Bullshit flying around earlier than supposed to be and absolutely smashing preconceptions of power due to "Flight OP". This is also part of why I feel that the Barbs have a society that is generally very pragmatic in terms of risk, and why our charge succeeded outside of "luck". Flight means you can pick and choose fights, and simply avoid challenges when inconvenient or too risky. Wind is free to do as it pleases, and if it isn't happy getting cut to pieces it can move on. No need to crack open a problem when you can go around or weave through.
We're a problem in the siege, a problem they can deal with and successfully mitigated the impact of. They could have dealt with us but a lot of their resources are being tied up killing the local noble green, and even if they succeed in wounding us we can retreat to Shen Hu hardpoint and that would be too tough to crack in a short timeframe (before expected sect help compromises everyone's safety). Honestly, it might have read like we were hugely heroic and successful but we didn't *succeed* so much as *help patch someone else's failure*. We weren't given a gold star or anything for our extra actions, just a verbal acknowledgement that we did well.
Those barbs 100% could have killed us, even with multiple factors tying up various parts of their assault. However, they'd already succeeded and the cost was higher for potentially 0 extra reward. No dice. Just leave
