An was doing something she normally hated.

Reading.

E = mc².

The words on the page before her stood out, for it was a line that was as profound as any meditations on the nature of existence as any she had ever read. Yet it was surprisingly grounded.

Preceding that line were pages upon pages of mathematical formulae and observations of the world. An could freely admit that much of it went over her head.

But that line stuck with her.

E = mc².

Her brain had seized upon it – once she had realized the barest implications of what it suggested.

Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

That her master somehow knew the speed of light was irrelevant compared to the great knowledge held within. Mass and energy were one and the same - and thus, held within the very flesh of her smallest finger was supposedly enough energy to devastate an entire city a dozen times over were it to be unleashed.

Or at least, that is what this disciple believes, she thought as she scrunched her nose, peering down at the incredibly verbose text.

That was what it was saying, right?

Maybe? She frowned. Possibly?

The cultivator shook her head, as her temples began to pound from too long deliberating the overly verbose scripture beneath her.

Sighing, she looked up towards the cloudy skies above - her view unimpeded by her position atop the great wall surrounding Jiangshi.

Is this a boon or not? she wondered.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been too surprised that her master was a student of natural philosophy rather than the more… violent practices. Nor the more esoteric. For while his constructions were fantastical to look upon, for everything she had seen there had been an underlying logic behind it.

What logic that was, she could not even begin to guess, but it was impossible to gaze upon those works and not see the patterns. A lifetime poring through the dusty techniques and cultivation methods of ancient masters allowed her to garner that much. Which was also why she could see that her master worked with the world rather than raging against it. He sought out the rules of existence and then exploited them.

…As evidenced by the painstaking observations below her. No one but a natural philosopher would bother to jot down such elaborate notes otherwise.

She huffed.

Natural philosophy was a known, if uncommon – and oft considered outdated - form of cultivation. After all, for all that cultivation was about the act of imposing one’s own Dao upon the world, some earlier scholars had suggested that an understanding of said world could serve to accelerate the process of learning to change it.

Modern consensus was that this was a flawed approach, one that weakened one's Dao by preemptively admitted weakness.

Yet…

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Another inspired teaching, from the other book her master had provided. One on methods of making war, and something she found much more palatable to her sensibilities.

She was a warrior first and foremost after all.

She ran her fingers across the perfectly smooth writing. No doubt another product of her master’s mystic machines.

Yes. Her teacher was not a warrior by nature. He was a crafter. This town his latest project.

Some might have derided such a path as foolish. She would call them fools in turn. Not all legends of the Empire were warriors. For every Scarlet Blade, their was an Ully the Craftsmen. So long as one followed one's Dao, there was no shame in the path they took. All roads lead to divinity to long as they were followed seriously.

And so long as she attempted to learn, she would improve her own Dao by being in the presence of a master.

…Though she would admit, that she might have been a little more leery of doing so if said master were not a rather attractive man.

Ignoring the heat that stained her cheeks, her thoughts ran unbidden to the village girl. She’d returned to her master’s home a few times since that first meeting. Each time she had left unruffled, with no signs of carnal relations.

Her master claimed he enjoyed her company.

He was a strange man. What possible amusement could he derive from the uneducated ramblings of a rural peasant?

“…If he required conversation, This Guo An would be happy to provide it,” she muttered.

Alas, he kept her at arm's length, their relationship strictly master and student. And even then, sometimes she felt more like a subordinate than a student.

He had only provided the books she currently held upon request.

What books they are though, she thought, running her fingers across the leather covers.

She shook her head. Such profound wisdom only reinforced her decision to follow him.

“Troop, pivot right!”

The sudden call had her glancing out towards the clearing outside the wall. The mortal militia was practicing as usual. Ostensibly, she was watching over them as they did.

The mortals had improved a lot in the last few weeks. Now, when the sergeants called out, the formation moved as one. Like some manner of massive hedgehog. In moments, the entire group had shifted about, presenting a veritable forest of spear points in a new direction.

It was a queer way to fight. One she could scarcely fathom tolerating. The mortals were pressed so tightly together that one would be unable to swing a sword or even dodge if the needed to. The tight press of bodies were as much a prison as they were a shield.

It was like nothing she’d ever seen. Not even the relatively "elite" mortal guards of the city’s fought as her master’s new militia did. Oh certainly, the city guard could march in formation if needed. It was for show though. A display of discipline and power on the part of the sects that bankrolled them.

They certainly didn’t fight like that. Doing so would only serve to make them a more tempting target for a cultivator.

At least she was not the only one who found this new form of warfare strange. On more than one occasion she had glimpsed the former guards of Ten-Huo reading late into the night from books that possessed a remarkable similarity to her own gifted tomes.

“Forward!” Gao’s unmistakable voice carried across the dew laden ground.

Not a single one of the troops moved. They’d long since learned the importance of ignoring any order that was not preceded by ‘troop’.

Grinning, Gao was just about to shout again when a great ringing came from one of wall bells. One that was just a little close for An’s liking as her ears peeled back against her head at the rising cacophony.

Shaking off her discomfort, her gaze turned towards the nearby forest in search of what had spooked the wall watchman.

With her enhanced senses, it took but a moment for her to catch sight of the trio of mountain goats and two deer prowling around the forest edge. An frowned. After the initial attack on Jiangshi, the beasts had started arriving as individuals or pairs instead of a massive horde. That had changed recently though. Now they were arriving in clumps ranging anywhere from three to ten beasts.

More to the point, they had changed.

One of the goats she was staring at was far bigger than it had any right to be. Its form bulged with powerful muscles. Likewise, its horns had taken on a distinctly more ominous shape. Thicker, sharper and more angular, the thick growths now looked more than up to the task of goring a man to death.

Yet it wasn’t a spirit beast. Even from here, An could sense that.

…But it’s close, she thought.

She made no move to intervene as the group of corrupted animals broke from the treeline to charge at the mass of mortals.

Whatever the Great Enemy were doing to the animals of the Empire, it was new.

She watched with subdued interest as the massive creatures rushed at the mortal formation – and were swiftly impaled on innumerable spikes.

That’s fine. She smiled. We have new tricks too.

That smile only grew as the bell nearby rang again. She didn’t need it though. She’d immediately sensed the arrival of the newcomer.

A spirit beast.

Her smile grew ever more feral as she stood up, grabbing her glaive as she did.

Learning was all well and good, but she was a woman of action. She lived for the thrill of battle. More to the point, she’d nearly processed the spirit core of the wolf. Her Ki had grown by leaps and bounds. Already she could feel herself pushing into the very precipice of stage three of the Initiate realm.

She just needed a little more to push over the edge.

And the great hawk that darted across the skies around Jiangshi would do nicely.

Swollen to nearly the size of a horse, the massive bird was focused on the militia. It was trying to figure out how to get around the sea of spikes toward the men inside the formation.

It was struggling though.

An couldn’t help but feel some pride at that. The men below her would have all cut and run once when faced with a spirit beast. And she wouldn’t have blamed them for doing so. By fleeing, the majority would have escaped while the beast fed on the unlucky few who didn’t.

Such was the cold calculus of frontier life.

With her master’s training though it was actually safer within the formation. And the mortals knew it. Which was why not a one broke formation as the hawk swooped down at them repeatedly, searching for a gap in their ranks.

One that the militia were determined not to provide. For good reason.

It was actually a rather impressive display. Even An herself might have needed to think hard about attempting to surge past their united front.

For a time at least. Eventually she’d get in.

Still, as she leapt from the wall and into the fray, An could only concede that her master really was a genius.

He’d somehow managed to make even mortals useful!

Great results can be achieved with small forces, she thought, thinking back to an earlier quote from this mysterious scholar ‘Sun Tzu’.

-------------

Kang slumped his head against the table – though he was careful to make sure the book was well out of the way when he did. Even if a good chunk of the contents of the tome were beyond him.

Much to his frustration.

Oh, how he wished he’d never laid eyes on his copy of Medieval Pike Tactics.

What was frustrating, was that the stuff he didn’t understand worked. Empress above, how it worked. He’d thought they were going to lose half the training group when that great bastard of a hawk swooped down on them.

It was all he could do to keep bellowing commands rather than soil himself in terror.

No one had died though. The militia had somehow managed to hold a spirit beast at bay.

He could still scarcely believe it.

Which was why it made it all the more frustrating that a number of the concepts being raised by the book in front of him went beyond his own limited understanding of this new way of fighting. Something he knew was echoed in the mind of his fellow ‘officers’.

Some days he could only thank the Empress that the recruits were so terrified of him and his fellows that they didn’t realize that sometimes they were being given contradictory instructions.

…Or they think we’re messing with them, Kang supposed.

Still, they were making progress in figuring out this new form of warfare. Whatever else Kang was, he wasn’t an idiot. He’d been soldiering his entire life. He was accustomed to commanding men in battle and in peace. If anyone could turn the words on these pages into a working stratagem, it was him.

He owed the hidden master that much.

Surreptitiously, he glanced around the barracks – though it was really just a recently vacated home – and knew that all of the others felt the same.

“Anyone know what a ‘shot’ is?” Gao asked suddenly.

“What?” Another man prompted.

Gao raised his book. “Here, it mentions the stuff we’re doing now eventually being replaced by ‘pike and shot’. I know what a pike is, so what the fuck’s a shot?”

Replaced? Kang couldn’t help but ponder.

He shook his head. It didn’t matter. The books the master had provided often mentioned strange names, places and events. It was clear it came from far away. Either some distant part of the Empire, or perhaps even an entirely different continent?

It wasn’t his concern. His focus was on implementing what was directly in front of him.

“It might be some kind of sling? Or bow?” Kang suggested.

“What’s a sling?” Gao asked.

Kang sighed.

City boys, he thought.

---------

Guns were hard. Almost as hard as cultivation.

Jack had asked An about it. Sure, he’d had to hide the fact that he was learning about it by pretending he was asking about her own process, but it had worked. An had been all too happy to talk. At length.

Turned out, becoming a punch wizard was hard. Real hard. Time consuming too. To him, it seemed that cultivation was less a vocation and more a lifestyle. Before you were anything else, you were a cultivator. Because cultivation required daily meditation. Hours of practice. The equivalent of a small fortune in performance in enhancing drugs.

Sure, An had called them reagents, but he knew what mystical doping was when he heard it.

So yeah, whatever thoughts he might have entertained of becoming a cultivator himself had promptly fled after that conversation. To be frank, even if he had the willpower to essentially live the lifestyle of an Olympic athlete, it was an inefficient use of his limited time. Instead, he’d be better served leveraging his unique advantages to build up a high-tech army, rather than let himself become another strictly average – or even subpar - wizard.

It was a shame, but he’d just have to make do with his gene-forged body and technology so advanced it might as well have been magic.

Poor me, he lamented sarcastically.

…Were that guns weren’t also like magic.

Poor me, he lamented legitimately.

Oh sure, they were simple in theory. While he’d never actually seen an old slug-thrower outside of old movies, he knew of the concept. Unlike the masers he was more familiar with, slug-throwers functioned by using a small explosive charge to propel an equally small chunk of metal – or lead, if those movies were to be believed – down a long tube at high speed.

It sounded simple enough. More to the point, it was well within his means. He had tubes. He had small chunks of metal. He had explosive powders.

“Fuck,” he hissed as another gun exploded in his hands.

He couldn’t help flinching every time it happened. Sure, his suit protected him from any damage, but the tactile feedback system in his hands gave him a small jolt to inform him that something had exploded in his hands.

He tossed the vaguely flower shaped chunk of metal away in disgust.

“Test batch twenty eight. Failure.” He spat.

He glanced over at the growing pile of exploded tubes sitting in the corner. Ok, that was an exaggeration. Not all of them had exploded. Hell, most hadn’t. Only recently had things escalated to explosions.

Or cracks, he thought, running a hand along a seam in one of them.

It was to be expected, even if it was frustrating. He was still trying to figure out the best ratios if he was going get as much bang for his buck as possible without compromising the barrel of the gun.

Overkill? Perhaps.

Still, he was dealing with magic animals and iron skinned punch wizards. An average musket ball would probably only annoy a lot of them. In that situation, he figured it was better to err on the side of overkill rather than have his people watch their shots literally bounce off of whatever – or whoever – they were shooting at.

To that end, he needed something with lots of stopping power.

Hence, my growing pile of exploded gun barrels, he thought as he picked up the next untested barrel. And even once I get this figured out, I need to figure out a decent firing mechanism…

That would be a pain. A pain involving lots of small clicky parts.

This was not his area of expertise, predominantly because he didn’t have one. Sure, he used an advanced mining rig, but it wasn’t like they were complex to operate. They were simple by design: all the better to supply to the kind of dumb morons who were stupid enough to sign up with the Canary Corp.

Which was why he’d already decided he was going for a break action design. He had neither the time nor inclination to figure out magazines.

Perhaps that might change later, but for now, his focus was on just getting guns out there.

At least, his people seemed disciplined enough now that he was unduly worried about them blowing their own toes off when he finally supplied the ‘real’ weapons to them.

Though I’ll probably need to figure out proper bullets too, he thought glancing at the nearby barrel of smokeless powder.

He was less than inclined towards having his people lug around large barrels of gun powder for every battle. Not where people with actual magic were concerned. An had said that the leader of the nearby city could apparently chuck lightning around, and if she could do that Jack was sure there’d be someone else who could summon fire out there too.

It was just that kind of world.

So… bullets. He decided. Which I think use… flint. Somehow.

He slumped. It seemed he’d need to rewatch the same forty odd seconds of an old documentary on repeat another dozen times, because those forty odd seconds involved a very handy animated graphic of a gun’s inner workings.

Until then though, he thought, dumping more powder into the tube in his hands. I’ve got to blow up more perfectly serviceable gun barrels.