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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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dycouza said:
'Lord Scribbler' sounds like he'll be an interesting antagonist, a writing-based spymaster of the Hui that we can't just defeat but who uses other characters and intrigue against us. Ling Qi and Xia Lin travels around investigating where CRX and Meng Dan points them, Ling Qi steals documents that they may match their own administrative skills against. All the while Gan Guangli plays defense by inspiring loyalty in our own institutions.
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Well, If we aren't gonna fight him right now when searching the compound. Sounds like he is here

Hoping he is no more than high third realm. Hoping strongly
 
So what we learned is this outpost was cut off, being a relay one I think, the spiders being Hui loyalist and still being ones while their room hidden off by illusions, they seem to have no contact with outside world and that we learned that some Hui joined Cloud tribe probally. It seems that their might be 1 or more survivng Hui members here and potentially other valuables so if both are case we will get something good out of this.
 
ExoKai said:
Okay, so, like, we all kinda assumed we would win against the spooders if it came to a fight in any choice, but good God.


They just evaporated. They just got the "You are already dead" treatment. It wasn't even punching down, this was just cleaning up.
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Honestly, aside from realms, there is an invisible stat I would like to name "quality" in all Xianxia. Like all Xianxia tropes, Yrs has made it more reasonable, realistic and interesting than it usually is (if it was as unreasonable as in most Xianxia, we would be trouncing ducal cyans -_-) but there is still a quality hierarchy in place.

In this case, many factors measure in quality (including matchup ie how well you counter your opponent), but generally, spirit beasts and spirits tend to be of the lowest quality (when not bound by humans in order to evolve, or being legendary quality like dragons or xuanwu or kin to spirit ancestors, point is, this is rule of thumb nothing without exceptions). Meanwhile, thanks to our luck, talent, math cabal strategizing and workaholism, we have probably managed to get a quality level nearing that of a ducal. That means we can hit quite a bit above our weight class in low-quality enemies, even if they are 1 or 2 green steps above us.

This is not obvious within the sect, because unlike most xianxia our quality is high but not inhuman, and the sect selects for quality, meaning that a lot of our peers, while of lower quality, are not that much lower on the quality spectrum as to get beaten when holding a higher green level, and we even have several peers who match or may even slightly surpass our quality (every single Ducal and Ji Rong, for starters).

But every single time we fight non elite troops, the way we scythe through them shows that the reality of the inner sect, where the elite gather, is not the reality of people of our level. Remember how we trashed the bandit army, and how we assassinated barbarian greens until their high-quality bardbarian came? That is the difference in quality between us and the actual, not skewed upwards by sect rankings, average green. And the average spirit is considered weaker than that (exceptions apply).

So yeah, it could only be a curbstomp when they challenged her in her arena.
 
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yrsillar said:
Above, Ling Qi finally tracked down the other two spiders which she knew to be hidden, they were of a size with the one she spoke too, and they were directly above,
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yrsillar said:
Behind her, radiance washed out, lightning the expansive cave as Xia Lin erupted from the sagging cocoon of
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lighting


Well. That went exactly as I expected. Well done Ling Qi.

Now we have the place cleared for Loot, and the Illusion above seem to have its core bit here. I wonder if we can get anything from the corpse of that massive spider?
 
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storryeater said:
So yeah, it could only be a curbstomp when they challenged her in her arena.
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While I agree in general, it's worth pointing out that as yrs said, the spiders were uniquely screwed by multiple parts of their "trap, poison, defeat" strategy being hard-countered by both our respective build's defense choices and our Domain-backed immunities. A similar matchup of LQ+ally vs 1:2 ratio enemy spirit beasts of similar cultivation would basically never be as clean as this fight against dream-illusionist/trapper spiders.
 
storryeater said:
Eh, my impression was that we merely hard counter him, rather than being objectively stronger.
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Hard feels like an overstatement, but we're definitely not what he's built to deal with (he's built to wreck other duelists) and he lost a lot of cultivation time early, so he's not even ahead of us in cultivation the way he could have been given the same resources.
 
yrsillar said:
Her Singing Blade shot toward the second with the melancholy wail of a lost child, and Zhen's fangs pierced the third. Behind her, song became silence, drowning the sounds of battle. Ling Qi instead played the song of an advancing glacier as she bore down on the matriarch, and the force of her Qi punched the beast through the gray and sagging webbing, weakened by flame and radiance.
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I would like to point out that our blade, for once, damaged an enemy! You read that correctly! Our blade did not get swatted aside by the enemy weapon, get crushed, or bring in a not-visible effect in the battle. It spewed disorienting mist and pierced an enemy! I know that this happened a few times now, but I am happy, because the blade seems to consistenly appear in the battlenarrative. That consistency in writing makes me always happy. :grin:
 
storryeater said:
Meanwhile, thanks to our luck, talent, math cabal strategizing and workaholism, we have probably managed to get a quality level nearing that of a ducal.
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From what I can tell from our occasional spars, both CRX and Meizhen would still trounce Linq Qi in a real fight; I assume the same holds for Princess Sun, and facing Wang Chao for realsies would probably not go very well for us, and not just because of the realm difference. Maybe we'd have a better shot against Brother Xuan, but his build is closer to a crafter than a serious frontline terror like the previous four. We're better than I'd expect from a baronial family, but not by that much, and even then an old family probably would have a few tricks up their sleeve that might make facing them a dicey proposition.
 
NullVoid said:
From what I can tell from our occasional spars, both CRX and Meizhen would still trounce Linq Qi in a real fight; I assume the same holds for Princess Sun, and facing Wang Chao for realsies would probably not go very well for us, and not just because of the realm difference. Maybe we'd have a better shot against Brother Xuan, but his build is closer to a crafter than a serious frontline terror like the previous four. We're better than I'd expect from a baronial family, but not by that much, and even then an old family probably would have a few tricks up their sleeve that might make facing them a dicey proposition.
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(Vergil and math canal Voices in Ling qi Head I NEED MORE POWER )
 
NullVoid said:
From what I can tell from our occasional spars, both CRX and Meizhen would still trounce Linq Qi in a real fight; I assume the same holds for Princess Sun, and facing Wang Chao for realsies would probably not go very well for us, and not just because of the realm difference. Maybe we'd have a better shot against Brother Xuan, but his build is closer to a crafter than a serious frontline terror like the previous four. We're better than I'd expect from a baronial family, but not by that much, and even then an old family probably would have a few tricks up their sleeve that might make facing them a dicey proposition.
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I mostly agree with you but I would consider us more count quality than high baronial. Maybe viscount quality. I do think that if we had equal cultivation we could at least put up a hell of a fight with Wang. He seems incredibly impressed by our defensive arts and we are still behind him in cultivation.
 
Yeah, i'm confident we picked the right choice here, as much as there is a right choice to pick.
I seriously doubt giving a "obey or die" threat would have been useful, instead we now got some nice bits of information before the seemingly inevitable fight scene.
Also it's always entertaining to no sell an ambush.
 
Candesce said:
Hard feels like an overstatement, but we're definitely not what he's built to deal with (he's built to wreck other duelists) and he lost a lot of cultivation time early, so he's not even ahead of us in cultivation the way he could have been given the same resources.
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I believe he was given about the same resources. We had a bit of lucky finds, but generally our resources weren't very high until we became Renxiang subordinate late in Forge, around the point Ji got the same from Liling
 
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