An Elder's Revolution - The Art of Sect Politics

"Okay everyone, let's get to it!", Qingge exclaimed as she approached the members of her group, who were sitting around chatting with each other. "Get your equipment and start warming up."

As they did what had become routine to all of them by now, she headed over towards Yang who was already decked out in full armor.

"Lady Qingge. How was your break?"

"Good, aside from the fact that Daiyu beat me at chess again. Hope I didn't make you wait?"

He handed her the first pieces of her armor, which he'd been holding on to.

"No, we just arrived here as well."

"Anything happen I should be aware off?", Qingge asked, as she started putting on her armor. What she had once struggled with when Elder Wei had first gifted it to her was almost second nature by now.

"Yes actually. Or rather, something is going to happen. We're getting pretty close to our destination and the Elders are getting together for a strategy meeting this evening."

"I see. Suppose we should make sure not to sleep in tomorrow morning then."

"I've never seen you sleep in."

"Well, no, but somebody", Qingge glanced over to one of the women on her team, Xuan, "could use a reminder."

"Your call.", Yang said, handing her her helmet.

It was. Yang may be the more experienced between them by a wide margin, but she'd been assigned captain. Truthfully, she would have been a lot more comfortable if it were the other way around, but Elder Shi had personally arranged for it like this, so she hadn't gotten a say in it.

"Alright…" Having donned her armor Qingge stretched to make sure everything was properly in place, before turning to her team. Counting herself, they were a group of ten, eight of them in the Soul Realization Realm while the other two, Yang and Xuan, were in the low Dao Attunement Realm.

That made them a comparatively weak team, measured against the fact that almost half of the sect's members were those who had achieved Soul Realization. They were assigned as skirmishers, starting in the rear guard and then supporting the main force in opportune places, so they wouldn't need to face the charge of the enemy forces head on.

From a cursory glance, everyone seemed to be ready. Qingge breathed in, then raised her voice.

"Attention! We'll start with coordination. Get into column formation!"

One of the first things Yang had told her when she had asked him for advice on leading a combat force was that she should be ten times brasher than she was. On the battlefield, orders needed to be followed swiftly and without hesitation and that required the commander to have a certain kind of authority, which Qingge didn't seem to naturally exude.

The leadership she was used to – directing people as a manager and working with them to solve problems – was entirely different from what was required here, and she'd been putting in effort to grow into that role.

"Column forward!"

They didn't have too much space for this, as they were still in the belly of a ship with dozens of other teams training around them, but that just meant they had to maneuver more deftly.

"Turn, then fall into line formation!"

The line formed up swiftly, Qingge at the center, Yang and Xuan on the wings.

"Javelins ready! Hold… Shoot!"

They didn't actually throw the javelins they had drawn, instead mocking a throw before letting them fall on the ground. They weren't trying to decimate their own army after all.

Stolen story; please report.

"Combat formation!"

Half of them fell back into a second line, drawing their spears from their backs while the frontline, including Qingge, pulled closer together and raised their shields. This was how they would meet a charging enemy. Yang and Xuan remained at the wings, from where they would act more independently.

"Horses!"

They fanned out to make space for charging horses to pass by them. They had explicitly trained this maneuver because they were likely to encounter it against the Roaring Thunder Sect.

…"Good! Charge!"…

…"Retreat!"…

…"Regroup, then march!"…

After going through their routine a couple of times and mixing it up as they went along, Qingge was satisfied with their coordination training. They had spent almost the entire first week of their training exclusively figuring this out, as several of them had never fought in a war before. Now though, they were pretty adapt at it and there was more room for improvement elsewhere, so they just did it to keep it fresh.

"Good job, everyone. Three minutes rest, then we'll move on to sparring."

Qingge grabbed a bottle of water and took a large swig from it. She had turned off the formation on her armor that regulated her temperature for training, since she didn't want to rely on it too much, but she still wasn't sweating much, it was more a force of habit.

It still felt strange how little an hour of running around in full armor tired her out. Well to be fair, a lot of that was the armor itself helping her out. Even just its strengthening effect made a whole world of a difference. Without it, she was probably the weakest member of her team. With it, she was the strongest behind Yang and Xuan, though there was of course a huge gap to those two.

Still, she didn't want to overexert herself, so she sat down to rest for a while. When the three minutes were up, she returned to her team and kicked up her shield from where she had left it on the ground.

She had only recently realized that fighting with one felt a lot better than just a using her sword. Unlike the armor, she'd purchased this one herself. It wasn't anything special, just a sturdy but relatively light metal shield from the open market. It had fit her the best from what was available, and it had since grown onto her.

"Okay, sparring. We'll start with combat against Dao Attunement enemies. You five will fight Yang and attempt to disarm him. Yang, you'll only defend yourself, not attack. The rest will fight against Xuan. We'll only defend, not attack. We'll switch around in fifteen minutes, go!"

As soon as Qingge had finished speaking, a yet of water shot in her direction. It was too late to raise her shield, but she had already anticipated this happening. A shield of energy flickered into existence, blocking the attack before disappearing again after a moment.

Xuan grinned.

"Good reflex."

…

With a loud gasp, Lan Shi's eyes flew open. Pearls of sweat stood on her forehead and her fists were clenched as wrestled back control over the wild storm ravaging through her body. When she was done, she sacked and did nothing but breathe for a long while.

Another failure.

She slowly steadied her breathing and began examining her body for damages. The uncontrolled outburst of Qi from her soul had ruptured a couple of veins, but luckily nothing too serious. She grabbed a healing pill from her spatial ring and swallowed it. That should fix her right up.

The disappointment weighed heavier, far heavier, than her physical wounds. She had once again failed to ascend to the next stage.

She'd been dancing on the edge of a breakthrough for a good while now, almost two months. With Ma Rong's generous assistance and Liu Wei's advice, she had been pushing forward faster than anyone, including herself, would have expected from her, reaching this point years if not decades earlier than she would have guessed.

Yet, as many times as she tried to take the next step, she failed. She'd attempted it three times in the past two weeks alone, meaning to achieve the stage before combat with the Roaring Thunder Sect started.

This attempt had been the last chance she'd get for that, and she had prepared zealously… but to no avail. She had been close, so close she could already feel the fifth stage in her grasp, but it had slipped away once more.

She needed a push, just one final push to make it over the edge, but she simply wasn't able to muster it. Her many struggles building her cultivation up from no talent and little outside help, the uncountable number of wounds she had sustained to body and soul, the compromises she had made to push herself to where she was today… all of those things weighed her down just as much as they made her who she was.

In the past, she had always prevailed through sheer willpower. Her stubbornness, her refusal to yield, that had always been her strongest weapon and greatest ally. Why, just why was it failing her now of all times?

Lan Shi exhaled, trying to push away her frustration. It was fine. There would be another time, after this war was over. She'd have plenty of opportunities to consult with Ma Rong, Liu Wei and her other allies, if she continued to struggle. Or perhaps she would have reached a point where she could break through without that by then, after all she'd been getting closer and closer with each attempt.

Right now, she couldn't give in to her dejection. There were other things to do, important things, if maybe not just as important as a breakthrough would have been. A glimpse out the window on the setting sun confirmed that.

Lan Shi stood up and straightened her robes. She didn't want to be late to the elders' meeting.