The army of Fu Clan Cultivators arrived to bolster the defenses of the eight small fortresses. Most of them ran into the armored pagodas and the barrier around the city immediately strengthened. The many arrow slits all over the pagoda were soon filled with the glint of bits of metal. The Branch Clans recognized what was happening and quickly reordered their lines. The Jie had huge beetles that used their bodies as a shield. The sea of ants climbed on top of each other and formed into big balls around the Yi Clan cultivators. The Ci and Min weren’t able to use their companions as defenses in the same way. The Ci retreated out of usual attack range, leaving their swarms of stinging insects to keep assaulting the barrier, but from a higher altitude. The Min on the other hand brought out more commonly seen magical devices from the cultivator world. They used barrier creating treasures, Formation Plates, defensive talismans, and even big shields, bells and bowls that could be enlarged to protect them.

Arrows and bolts were released from the defensive pagodas in massive waves. These projectiles rained down upon the Branch Clans, but most of them were stopped by the various means of defense. The Fu Clan inflicted casualties upon the Branch Clans, slowly wearing down the attacking forces just as these attackers were wearing down their defensive arrays. At this point it had turned into a battle of attrition. Unfortunately for the Fu Clan, a few minutes into the battle it became apparent that the barrier would fall far before they could injure enough of their attackers to force a retreat.

This disparity spurred the Fu Clan to show off more of its capabilities and large siege weapons were brought into play. The armored walls of the pagoda protected the teams operating these large weapons so the attackers were unable to stop them from firing. They fired bolts that were the size of spears and glittered with silver light. These spears punctured defensive treasures and instantly slayed the insects being used for protection. The glittering points continued onwards and punched clean through the bodies of some of the Branch Clan cultivators. Unperturbed, the Branch Clans felt their success was near and even faced with such vicious weapons they pushed forward. More of them died, but they continued to bombard the defensive pagodas. Huge spinning blades and long twirling chains were also launched from these siege weapons, striking large swathes of the Branch Clan cultivators, but with a bit less power than the spears.

The Fu Clan didn’t give up, but the continuous pressure seemed to have an effect. The barrier shielding the Fu Clan slowly shrunk, moving the defensive line closer to the pagodas. The range of several hundred yards was quickly shrunk to only a dozen. With its smaller area, the barrier glowed brighter, seeming to be strengthened by this change. The Branch Clans pushed forward, not wanting to let the increased range weaken their attacks, but that also meant the siege weaponry hidden inside the pagoda’s struck with greater lethality. The casualty count continued to climb and the leaders of the four Branch Clans had twisted faces. Sending their people to their deaths made none of them happy, but they rarely had to act on behalf of the Chong Clan so they didn’t dare to give voice to any thoughts of retreat let alone rebellion.

None of the Branch Clan leaders were willing to be the one that spoke out first and begged the main factions to assist them or allow them to take a breather. Even for a Clan with such an intricate set of rules, there was no telling if one of the main factions would decide to treat the branches ruthlessly and use some loophole to deal with them. The Branches had already agreed to the plan in advance and if they didn’t uphold their responsibilities they would be in big trouble. Unless the Chong Clan called for a retreat, they had to give it their all.

Unlike the other branches, the Lang Clan had only committed Dragoons to this assault. The actual Lang Clan members were far from the battlefield directing the attack from the rear. They were standing around a sand table that was actually a magical device that showed the current situation on the battlefield. This sand table was a device that was quite common for large sects or clans to use, but it was usually paired with special Messaging Jades that tracked the position of allied forces. Then the unit leaders would use the Messaging Jades to relay information about enemy movements and troop counts. On the Inner World, the Lang Clan, with Sage’s input, had modified the sand table to link up with other sand tables using a simple technique to convert numbers into sounds.

Sage didn’t really understand how the Formation Arrays in Messaging Jades worked, but he did know how the telephone worked. Specifically, the touch tone phone. In the early days of telephony, a person had to tell an operator who they wished to call and that operator would physically move some plugs around to connect them to the corresponding phone line. Then came the rotary phone where electricity was pulsed a number of times corresponding to the digit attempting to be dialed. Three quick pulses for a three, four pulses for a four, and ten for the number zero. The touch tone phone came next, with each number denoted by a tone rather than a number of pulses. Since these sounds were in the audible range it made it simpler to do automated switching.

Sage was merely running on what little bit he’d learned back on Earth to come to this conclusion as he was not a history buff or a trivia expert. What was important was using sounds to convey information. The Messaging Jade already transferred voice communication, so he merely gave the researchers a little push in the right direction and let them figure out all the small details. What they ended up with was a specific sound connecting to each of the grid areas on the sand table. Then a second sound was paired with the first to convey information, mainly the size of a group and their current status. These networked sand tables cut out a step in the logistical chain, allowing battlefield observers to directly enter information into the table and have it appear at the command center without any intervening steps. It could also be used in reverse to draw arrows and convey orders from the command center to the remote sand tables.

With these changes, they named the new command center table as the ‘War Table’ and the smaller remote tables as ‘War Tablet’. Sage suggested the names as something of a joke, but Stone Tablets were a type of information storage on this world so they immediately accepted the names without realizing he alluded to something else. Verbal commands no longer had to be relayed to an intermediary to give orders or interpret troops movements which cut down on the response time and allowed the Lang Clan troop leaders to command from the rear. In addition, the Lang Clan also put in a set of forward observation posts. Airships equipped with simple ‘stealth’ systems, Illusionary Formation Arrays, were floating up above the battlefield using telescopes to track enemy movements and enter them into War Tablets.