I hadn’t seen any multi-tailed foxes after Baohu’s fox was openly showing three tails. I had begun to suspect that his Fox only really had three tails. With the arrival of this two-tailed fox, I would not be surprised if his fox had five, if not six, tails. But that’s in the past, now I need to worry about the present, and I don’t have even the smallest clue what additional tails change on a fox for combat prowess. While pondering what changes may happen, the two tailed fox attacked. From well outside the range of most of our close-range Techniques, the fox hunched down, it’s tails coming up and forming a circle, a beam of light shot out from the space between the tails. Right before I could even attempt a protective formation, Qiang jumped in front of me, a blueish tinted force field over two feet thick appearing. The beam of light smashing into the field, with not a single ounce of movement appearing on the force field. No cracks, no buckling, not even a ripple of waves across it, nothing. If you had looked away for a couple seconds, it would’ve seemed reasonable that no attack was even made. After the shock of the attack, and the the ease at which it was dealt with, passed, I began administering commands to my guards, having them split up to divert the weaker tailed foxes away from the main threat.

Once the battle was separated into three groups, the weak foxes on our left and right flanks, with the two tailed fox facing me head on, the fight truly began. I doubted I could take the fox on alone, or at least “protected”, with my bodyguards tanking it’s attacks, allowing me to attack it mercilessly, when there was the potential to get blindsided by the weaker foxes. Instead, I had Duanlu, essentially kite it, sending the occasional threatening attack at it while he avoided its return attacks, but still keeping it out of my face. From here, I used various simple formations against the weaker foxes. While my attacks weren’t super strong, the right fireball explosion could disrupt a rush, allowing for the guards to regroup and take advantage. What was most important from my formations, since these were still weak creatures, only having any threat due to numbers at such low ranks, were my shield formations. I was channeling one almost as soon the previous one finished, as the weaker foxes were taking hints from the main fox. They would gather in groups of five, stay back while the larger attack ensued, and send off a beam of their own. While their attack was a shadow of the two tailed fox, nonetheless, it was still dangerous. My own shield formations were strong enough to tank one beam each, large cracks forming on the formation when it landed.

After a few minutes of this fighting, I was starting to flag a little, a minute passing between any attack against the foxes. Luckily, I was no longer needed for support against the fox horde, as most of the foxes had been either killed or fought off, only a dozen or so still fighting. I used this brief lull to take a breather and take in as much Qi as a could. Once I felt like I wasn’t drained anymore, with at least enough spare Qi for a handful of shields, I moved to assist the main threat.

Once I got to the Fox kiting session, Duanlu nodded to me, indicating that he will let me shield him, with the idea that even if the attack landed on him, it wouldn’t seriously hurt him, much less weakened by the shield. Deciding to play it safe, I messed with how the shields would be angled, placing the shield formation such that the beams would hit the shield and glance off mostly. This still resulted in serious cracks to the formation, but not as bad as they were when I had ranked a beam head on, much less if it let these beams hit it. After a couple shield deflections, Duanlu decided things were enough, as the fox had become so angered at him, the fox no longer even tried to go after anyone else but him. Duanlu quickly blitzed forward, ducking under a last second paw slash, and used his sword to behead the creature.

The next hour or so was spent patching soldiers up, and as night was close to arriving, we quickly buried the fox corpses, slowly made our way up to a hill a little way away, and made camp for the day. That nights sleep was very productive, as it netted me a couple ranks in formations, as well as in Young Master, along with a passive Technique. .

[Path of Formations Rank 3]

[Path of the Young Master Rank 8]

[Technique: Commanding Presence obtained]

My last day on the way to Gungzhou was horrible. Initially it was suspected we would arrive at Gungzhou around midday, and then the extra challenges associated with improving the guards general abilities to take on the higher rank threats, as well as some formations improvement for me, would’ve delayed it to late afternoon. We still planned on arriving before dinner time so we could begin settling down, but now that’s ruined, I doubt we will arrive until late in the night. Half the day was spent between dealing with similar encounters as yesterday, another Fox horde as well as a small wolf pack.

The fox horde this time while not as dangerous, was much more of a hassle, as the two tailed fox in this horde was a plant-based fox, rather than the normal light based one. It would send our dozens of plant root tendrils to tie up troops, even if a fireball formation dealt with it easy enough. So, despite Duanlu still largely dealing with it, it still provided a few hiccups to the battle against the larger fox horde.

The wolf pack was only dangerous because each wolf was much more dangerous than any single fox, despite being half as weak as a two tailed fox. This resulted in a lot of “juggling” of the foxes, as each wolf would be dealt with by a few guards at a time, with my shields and other formation attacks would shift from each group of guards to help when things got bad. The wolf pack still managed to be killed with no deaths, but definitely had more cuts on the guards than in previous fights.

By the afternoon, the fights started to slow down, pretty sure because we had killed most of the sorority beasts in the area, but also because we had gotten back to dealing with smaller threats. We made fast progress through the afternoon, only having a small meal on horseback, deciding to hurry through the night in order to arrive at the city gates after 8pm.

It was a lot of bureaucracy and nonsense to get into the city at night, but due to the Zhou Clan in this city being one of the overlords, getting in at all was a miracle. We had managed to get word off to our Clan earlier in the day of roughly when we would arrive, so when we found out way to the Clan gates, we were ushered in, quickly finding rooms to put us in for the night, with the idea of an early morning full of meetings and greetings. With everything for the immediate future handled, I went to sleep in the new room I would be staying in for a couple months.