“Have you got the books?”

Lin shivered as she and the overseer walked through Jiangshi toward the wall. Winter had recently started in earnest, and the sheer dress she was wearing was not at all suited to the cold.

Fortunately, she had a solution.

“I do,” she said, pulling her new fur scarf tighter around herself.

It was a gift. From the tannery. Entirely unprompted, of course. The suggestion that she would put in a good word for the family who gave it to her was entirely coincidental.

It was good to have the ear of the overseer.

That fact alone was likely the only reason she had managed to source the current contents of the large sack she now held. And even then, it had not been easy. Books were a coveted resource outside the cities. The Imperial printing presses could churn out thousands in a year, but that did not make them easy to acquire.

…Especially this kind of literature, she thought. And especially for us ‘mere’ mortals.

The contents of the sack she now held had been gathered by the women of Jiangshi - discretely - over generations. Mostly from passing traders.

So those books were in a very real way, irreplaceable.

Fortunately, her connection to the overseer granted her the kind of unofficial power one needed to pry those books away from both curious young women and neglected housewives alike.

Though, even then, it had not necessarily been easy. More than once she had been forced to imply that the reason she was gathering such large swathes of erotic literature was because she needed inspiration for her new master’s voracious appetites.

A little embarrassing perhaps, but it would not do for her to fail in the only task her newest benefactor had provided her. It was the least she could do for him given all he had entirely unintentionally done for her. Empress above, it wasn’t even like she’d had to do any of the things that would normally be expected of her if she were actually the man’s woman.

…Though I would not be averse, she couldn’t help but think, a hint of pink coming to her features as she glanced up at his powerful form.

“Good, keep them in the sack.” If the man even noticed the way she swayed by his side, or the niceness of her new dress, his featureless helm gave no indication.

She sighed, following after him as they strode towards the militia’s newly created ‘barracks’.

Though given that all of the men of the militia lived in the much nicer Apart Ment building nearby, she struggled to see the purpose of the massive brick building beyond its current function as a refuge for men hoping to escape a less than ideal homelife.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why is that you have me collecting romance novels from every housewife in Jiangshi?”

He snorted. “Believe me, if I had another option, I’d take it. That the only books this town seems to have are pornographic in nature is hardly my fault.”

Lin flushed a little at his words. Sure, she called them porn within the sanctity of her own mind, but never out loud. They were romance novels.

“Well, whatever you’re doing with them, I would have thought the last batch I lent you would have lasted longer.”

This was not the first time she had sourced him books. They had been what he had requested on their second meeting. At the time, she’d been relieved that was all that he wanted, even if she’d been perplexed by the request.

Nowadays, she was feeling mildly offended that he was apparently sourcing porn rather than taking advantage of the opportunity she presented.

…Or should she have been happy for his restraint?

She didn’t know. Which was a recurring for her when it came to her dealings with this man who claimed to be from another world.

“So it’s clear to me, you’re not reading them.” Lin said, jogging a little to keep up with his long strides. “Which begs the question, what are you doing with them?”

“The written word of the Empire is not phonetic.” The man responded. “It’s character based.

Lin cocked her head. She no idea what that word meant.

Phonetic.

Ignorant of her ignorance, the man continued. “A few weeks back I used those books you leant me to churn out a few training and technical manuals for my soldiers – and An. I took some of the books in my database, parsed them through a translator and printed them off. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.”

He frowned. “Recently I took the opportunity to glance through those books. As it turns out, the damn things are near illegible. I mean, the AI behind the auto translator program is usually pretty decent, but it gets better with more examples to pull from. Refines the writing process.”

Lin was barely following along with the explanation. Mostly because part of her was still struggling to wrap her head around the mechanics involved. A mechanism that could think was simply… an alien idea.

Still, she liked to think she’d picked up on the key details.

“So, once you’ve… processed these books, you plan to give your people an ‘updated’ version of those manuals?”

His helmeted head slowly turned towards her and she struggled not to fidget under the overseer’s featureless gaze. It seemed she’d surprised him, because for the first time since their conversation began, he actually seemed to be looking at her.

That happened every now and then. She’d make some small observation based on his plans, and he’d pause to stare at her.

It was both gratifying and irritating.

“Aye,” he finally said.

She grinned, feeling like she’d once more passed some invisible test.

“So what’s that?” she asked, changing the subject.

“You’ll see.” The overseer said, strange moment of introspection gone as he hefted his own rather large sack over his shoulder.

As the pair stepped into the barracks and out of the cold, men scrambled to their feet, obviously surprised by the sudden presence of the town’s lord in their little refuge.

“My lord.” The newly promoted Captain Kang said as he rushed to the fore, throwing out a crisp salute as he did.

The overseer simply stood in the doorway, a veritable mountain of a man, who easily towered over the guards present. His eyes roamed over all of them slowly, before he gave a considering nod.

“Kang, gather the troops. It’s time.”

-----------

It felt like almost the entirety of Jiangshi’s militia were lined up outside the walls. They weren’t. More than a few were still on the walls on watch duty or in town keeping the peace. Still, a little under four hundred men stood out in the cold was a significant number.

The instructors were on the warpath. The former guards and their recently promoted seconds were pacing up and down the line, searching for any mistakes that might make them look anything less than perfect in the eyes of the overseer. It was clear to everyone present that they wanted to prove their master’s investments in the militia were worth it.

Su Lei had surprised himself by finding that he wanted it too. Rural farm boy he might have been, but even he was not ignorant to the cost of the armor he now wore. Nor to the fact that with the wall and the tactics they were now practising, the militia could theoretically have gotten by without it.

Ideally, the animals they were up against would never get close enough to swipe at them.

Of course, as Su Lei had learned, ideal conditions were the exception in combat, not the rule. Mistakes happened. Surprises happened. And without the armor they now wore, men would have died every time a mistake occurred. Like that time a wolf got a little too close to the formation’s flanks. Or that time a massive goat managed to bull its way past the spear line. Or that time two bears managed to climb the walls in the dead of night - with none of the sentries any the wiser.

That had been a terrifying experience, and one that Su Lei knew he wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for the armor he now wore. One of the beasts had raked him right across the breast plate when the recently awakened members of the militia had finally managed to find and surround the corrupted animals.

He would have – should have - died right there and then. His intestines spilled across the new cobblestone streets.

Most cultivators would have had no problem with that, if they thought about it at all. One less guard would have been of no consequence. Peasants like him were plentiful after all.

The overseer wasn’t like that though. He cared. One needed only look at their new home to see that. Su Lei’s little brother no longer complained of the cold. His Ma no longer needed to make a backbreaking trip to the well for water each day. More to the point, they both ate well, despite the recent rationing that had been implemented.

The young man scowled at that.

Rationing, he thought bitterly.

Everyone knew that a food problem would be looming soon. The occasional influx of meat from wild animal attacks were useful, but those attacks were also the reason why so many of the town’s crops had been left unharvested and now withered in the fields as winter ravaged them.

That normally wouldn’t have been too great an issue. Jianshi had faced disaster before. Floods, diseases and droughts. They kept hefty stores of dried rice and salted meat for just those occasions. Enough to keep the town alive – if not well fed – through a rough year.

Normally, Su Lei thought.

Those plans did not account for the arrival of nearly a thousand extra mouths to feed – with more arriving every day.

He knew many of his fellow locals were unhappy about that. Though none of them dared to say so within earshot of An or the militia. Some had seemed surprised by the latter’s support of the new arrivals.

They shouldn’t have been.

Ignoring the fact that there were plenty of former refugees in the militia itself, Su Lei had fought, sweated and on more than one occasion bled alongside those men and women who hailed from out of town. He didn’t have a choice. As Captain Kang liked to say, the militia either succeeded together or failed alone.

The men and women of the militia had unanimously chosen the former.

So no, he wouldn’t hear some townie who’d never stood on the wall complain about the men – and occasional woman - he’d fought alongside ‘leaching’ from the town. The militia had become a tight knit community, helped along by the fact that all their families lived together in the Apart Ment.

“Hold still, you’ve got something,” a voice whispered to his right and Su Lei nodded as he felt something dab against his rear breastplate.

“Thanks,” he whispered back to the man.

The man nodded, returning to his position in the formation. He was the same man Su had shoved back into position all those weeks ago. Zeng Yong was a former refugee himself. A fisherman who’d been forced to flee his home as a result of the animal attacks.

The other man’s bald head and grim, thug-like, features hid… absolutely nothing about his character. He looked like a thug and acted like one. Empress above, were it not for the fact that the man had apparently shown up at the gates escorting a family of five, while also carrying a bloody fishing spear in one hand, Lei might have been tempted to say he was a former bandit.

…He was still tempted to say he was a former bandit.

Still, despite it all, they were tight friends.

And at that moment, Zeng wanted the same as him. He wanted to prove to the overseer that they were worth the luxuries he had piled upon them. So thuggish Zeng stood proud in his resplendent armor, shiny and spotless as a result of his frantic polishing.

And it was worth it all as both he and Su received a grudging nod from instructor Gao as the imposing man moved down the line - before lashing the man next to them for a speck of grime in one of the seams of his suit.

Nevermind that the rest of said suit was spotless. A spotless suit was the minimum expected of any of them. Su flinched, even as he made a mental note to speak to the guy afterwards and show him how to do it properly.

Circles, he thought. It’s all about the circles.

“Attention!” Captain Kang’s voice sounded loudly across the gathering grounds, forcing every man and woman present to straighten up into parade stance.

Then he was there. The overseer himself, with little Lin walking alongside him as he strode out of the gates. Though calling Lin little wasn’t strictly fair. She was actually quite tall for a woman, something that only added to her natural grace. But still, she looked tiny next to the overseer’s massive bulk. And if Lin looked small, Lady An looked positively diminutive as she followed after the pair, an almost imperceptible scowl on her elfin features.

Of their own volition, Su’s eyes moved to track the large sack the overseer had hefted over one of his shoulders and the strange metal tubes poking out the top.

His helmeted gaze turned to regard them all, and Su found himself standing all the taller as he did.

“Troop, at ease.”

Su’s body moved before his conscious mind caught up, a resounding thud bouncing off Jiangshi’s walls as the entire militia switched to a resting stance, their thick boots bouncing off the hard earth as they all moved as one.

Pride swelled in his chest as the overseer seemed honestly surprised by the impressive show of unity. Personally, Su didn’t know why. The instructors had spent the last two months running them all into the dirt. These days, Su knew he would gladly charge a raging bull before pissing off instructor Gao. Compared to that, standing at attention for a few minutes – or hours – was nothing.

“Sir.” Kang said, bowing to the overseer.

He stiffened though, as one of the overseer’s massive gauntlets came to rest on his shoulder.

“Good work, Kang. Very good work.”

Thus it was that the entirety of the militia were treated to an exceptionally rare sight.

Their instructors were smiling.

“The credit is not all mine.” Kang allowed, his voice swollen with emotion. “The militia has taken to the training well. I can safely say that I could match these soldiers against three times again their number in wild beasts and see them triumph, no matter how swollen with instinctive corruption those beasts might be.

The overseer nodded. “Good. Then hopefully they should adapt to these new weapons nicely.”

“New weapons?” Their was no missing the surprise in the captain’s voice.

All of them watched as the overseer dumped his sack on the ground, before pulling out one of the odd misshapen pipes.

It looks a little like a crossbow, Su thought, recognizing the trigger and the stock of the thing, if little else.

“Now you’ll see why I wasn’t too bothered about you teaching them sword techniques.” The overseer said. “Not when this will soon make those forms of combat a thing of the past.”

The militia were too well trained to mutter at his words, but Su could sense the temptation was there. This strange pipe was going to replace the spear, sword and mace? How?

Su could see the same trepidation he felt in Captain Kang’s eyes.

Still, the man’s only response was to bow. “We live to serve, Overseer. This lowly one can only wait to see the next generation of warfare with his own two eyes.”

------

A cow had been brought out. Old Yang was exactly as her namesake suggested; old. It was only recently though that she had stopped producing milk. Under normal circumstances, that would have meant she would swiftly have found herself on the dinner tables of the people of Jiangshi.

She still would, but prior to that, she had one last service to perform. A live demonstration of the effectiveness of the overseer’s new weapons.

An armored cow, Gao thought incredulously as he gazed upon the animal that was casually chewing grass as she stood roped to a stake in front of the gathered crowds of the militia.

Decked out in enough metal plating to be the envy of even the horses of the Imperial Lance Core, the aged cow made for a peculiar sight. All the moreso for the fact that said animal was dressed that way for the purposes of a demonstration.

Gao wasn’t stupid. If the cow was dressed in armor like that, it meant that the weapon he currently held in his hands was up to the task of piercing that armor.

…Though he could not begin to perceive how.

Similarities to a crossbow aside, he had no idea what material the stock was made of. Some manner of incredibly light metal. Enough that despite the relative mass of the gun being towards the rear, the weight of the weapon was almost perfectly balanced across the entire structure.

The overseer had walked through the process. How to load the ‘gonne’. First, one unlocked the latch at the top, which caused the weapon to split open upon a hinge. Then they pulled a ‘bullet’ – a bolt-like object about the size of his thumb - from the pouch they had been given. They slotted the bullet into the tube. Then they pulled the two parts of the weapon together once more, the latch clicking back into place of its own volition. Finally, they pulled back the cocking mechanism.

At that point, the weapon was supposedly ready to fire.

Gao didn’t necessarily know that – even if he had faith in the overseer’s instructions – because for the last five minutes, he and Kang had only been permitted to go through the motions. Only on this final attempt had they been allowed to load an actual bullet into the chamber.

Fortunately for them, their unwitting target for the demonstration was content to stand and chew grass while they learnt how to go about the process of ending her existence.

If only all our enemies were so polite, Gao lamented.

“Alright, now press the stock against your shoulder nice and tight while you line up the target.” The overseer instructed. “See those two raised bits in front of you? They should line up with the one at the end of the barrel.”

Gao saw what the cultivator meant and did as he asked – even if privately he still had no clue how this weapon was supposed to function. It had no string he could see, so how was it supposed to propel the bolt?

Perhaps some manner of ki technique? he wondered.

Though if that were the case, didn’t that mean he and Kang were holding some manner of mystical artefact? That couldn’t be. Free as their master was with armor and spears, even he could not have produced enough mystical artefacts to outfit an entire army!

“Now slowly squeeze the trigger.”

Gao did so – and was nearly knocked off his feet as something kicked him in the shoulder.

He heard the shouts of surprise in response, somewhat distantly, as he tried to overcome the ringing in his ears as a result of the loud explosion that had gone off near him. Glancing over, he could see that Captain Kang looked equally as surprised, holding his gonne at a distance, much as one might hold the tail of a snake.

Gao resisted the urge to imitate the man as he regarded the weapon in his hands. Yes, the bang had been loud and unexpected. Yes, the shove against his shoulder was a little painful. But it wasn’t that bad. More surprising than anything else.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by a low mournful moo.

Glancing over, he could see that old Yang was no longer chewing grass. Nor had she run away at the noise. She had made an attempt, certainly, pulling the stake that held her in place out of the ground as she sought to flee. She hadn’t made it far though. Barely a step before she’d clearly collapsed.

It wasn’t hard to see why. Even from a distance, Gao could see the hole that had punched clean through the reinforced plate she wore, which was only beginning to see a small dribble of blood issue forth.

The gathered militia stared in muted shock.

“An, if you would.” The only man who seemingly wasn’t surprised by just what had just happened spoke.

The female cultivator turned to stare at her master, before hesitantly striding over to the downed animal. With a single stab of her glaive, old Yang’s suffering was ended and silence once more returned to the clearing.

“Well, it looks like one of you missed. I imagine whoever it was got taken off guard by the recoil. But the other struck clean.” The overseer said casually, striding over to the downed animal. “Fortunate for me, I guess. Be a bit embarrassing if you’d both missed after I hyped my new toy up.”

Gao resisted the urge to spit blood. The weapon he held in his hands – at least, he hoped it was his weapon that hit – had just cleanly slaughtered an animal wrapped in nigh impervious forged steel… and he called it a toy!

“My lord,” Kang stuttered. “Such a weapon…”

“Handy, right?” The Overseer said, standing up from inspecting the wound. “Obviously, we’ll need to work on your accuracy a bit, but with a little time and practice, I think we’ll be safe enough from animal attacks for the foreseeable future. Especially once every man and woman in the militia has one of these in their hands.”

Gao could barely conceive of the idea. Four hundred men and women armed with a weapon like this?

It boggled the mind.

Jiangshi wouldn’t just be safe from corrupted animals, the militia would be able to kill spirits beasts.

The guard went still as another thought occurred to him.

…Or even challenge cultivators.

The thought was almost heretical. Yet, he found his grip on the gonne in his hand only growing tighter.

Ignorant of his underling’s musings, the overseer gestured towards the sack he was carrying.

“Alright lads, I’ve got a bunch more with me here, so get over here and grab one for yourself.”

-----

An watched with mixed feelings as the militia practised with their new gonnes. It was clear these loud cumbersome weapons would be deadly against beasts.

More than that, if her master could truly create them on masse, they could change the war in the North for the better. Even just a few distributed through an army might change the tide of a battle.

And my master intends to arm every guard under his command with one…

She shuddered to imagine what such a force might be capable of.

Primarily because they were clearly cultivator killing weapons.

Such tools weren’t unknown. Ignoring the fact that most sects had a vested interest in learning how to kill their fellow cultivators, mortals could be as cunning as they were numerous.

Bows and crossbows were the most typical example of anti-cultivator weaponry. Two dozen mortals wielding ranged weapons could pose a threat to a lower tier cultivator - if they were caught off guard. Because, while it was simple enough to dodge or deflect arrows at even the lowest tiers of cultivation, all it took was one mistake.

Which was why the forest tribes and the mortal criminals of the Jade Fang liked to use them so extensively.

Still, that is different, she thought.

Those weapons were more often considered inconveniences rather than true threats. Sure, they could be dangerous in the right circumstances but those circumstances required either an overwhelming number of bowmen or the element of surprise to achieve a result.

Often both.

This weapon held no such weaknesses. Or at least, diminished them greatly.

She had seen the ‘bullet’ move, but she could not claim with any confidence that she could have deflected or dodged it once it was in motion. Prior to that, certainly, but not once the bullet left the barrel.

That scared her.

I could have thrown off the aim of the shooter, she pointed out in her mind. Dodged around the mortal holding the weapon rather than attempt to dodge the weapon itself.

She paused.

Could I do that if there was more than one though? She thought. What if there were five? Ten gonnes?

She was less sure. And unlike a bow, such a large number of gonne wielders would not be hard to field. Even as she watched, the instructors were improving their aim. It was clear, much like a crossbow, this weapon did not require long to learn.

Even as she had the thought, she observed as Lin – after a few quiet words with her master – picked up one of the weapons and loaded it. In moments, she brought it up to her shoulder and put a hole clean through the armoured straw dummy they had brought out for target practice.

An had barely seen the bullet move. That it was fired by a dress wearing mortal girl was all the more galling.

Would the iron skin technique…

No, she shook her head.

She had seen what the round had done to the armored chest plate. Perhaps she might be safe at the later levels of the technique, where iron skin became the all-pervasive iron flesh, but that would take years of practice.

More to the point, it would require sacrificing her current foundation in the Moon Arc style.

“You, ok?”

An looked up at her master.

“I’m fine, Master Johansen.” She deliberately calmed her racing thoughts.

What was she even thinking? To let such a small thing unbalance her?

“Why did you make them?” The words were blurted out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Master Johansen looked at her, cocking his head slightly.

“Kind of a silly question, isn’t it? I would have thought that the hordes of ravenous beasts that seem determined to eat us would serve as a reasonable enough answer?”

AnLin just stared. That wasn’t the answer. If the issue were beast attacks, her master had already solved it. His militia had seemed strange at first, its way of fighting alien, but it was effective. Kang had not been lying when he said that his small force of four hundred would be a match for triple its number in beasts. Even more if the militia fought from the wall.

Somehow her master truly had made mortals useful.

The only thing they coulndt handle were spirit beast. And if the gonne were an answer to spirit beast attack… well, he had her for that. And while she might have begrudged babysitting the militia when they’d needed help against regular animals, she’d never complain about the opportunity to harvest powerful reagents from spirit beasts. Nor the experience she gained from clashing with them.

…Her master was remarkably reticent about offering her opportunities to spar with him. Which she sort of understood. She was so far below him in cultivation there was little he would gain from the experience. Still, that meant she needed to find other avenues to hone her skills.

So instead she just stared. In silence. Because while she would never dare demand answers from her master… she could wait patiently for them.

She used to use a similar technique against her elders in the sect – to varying degrees of success. Fortunately, it seemed this was one of those occasions where her ongoing silence worked in her favor.

Her master sighed. “Look, there’s more than one means to cultivate power. A means beyond the mystical mumbo jumbo.”

“I don’t understand.” Her response was instantaneous.

Her master scoffed, before he shook his head. “I think you do. You’re just being obtuse about it.”

Then he simply walked off. An watched him go in confusion.

A means beyond cultivation to… cultivate power?

It didn’t make sense.

Across the way, more shots rang out, perforating the armored dummy. An’s gaze flicked to it, before back to her master

He had made no show of martial skill. No explosion ki. Shown no new techniques. Yet why, in that moment, did she feel that her master seemed more powerful than before?

All he had done was arm a few mortals with tools beyond their ken.

“Great results may be achieved with small forces.”

She shook her head.

She needed to meditate – and read.