Zhiwen Shao had brought his horse to a stop and stared down what was his scouts had described to him as an 'empty field in a wide area around the sect'. Well, they hadn't been entirely wrong: except for the small hill that the sect was located on, the area was indeed rather flat… shame it wasn't empty anymore.

The area had clearly been prepared for battle and the enemy knew what they were doing. Wooden barriers had been erected, complete with steel-tipped spears pointed at would-be approaching horses. On top of that, pits and moats had been dug in irregular patterns across the area. Zhiwen Shao could see to the bottom of the closest ones; they were filled with sharpened wooden stakes.

These things would make charging forward with their horses pretty much impossible. Their entire mobility advantage was pretty much null and void.

Zhiwen Shao groaned. They had ridden through the night, tiring out their soldiers and horses, specifically in hopes of surprising the school. With their horses being the fastest ones on the peninsula, the thought had been that any enemy scout would have difficulty returning before the army arrived.

He had hoped that they would face an unprepared enemy that would either surrender on their own or be easily trampled. He was behind schedule: Song Fan's army was capturing sects at a much greater pace than his own and he refused to be outdone once again.

The strategist had already garnered the Patriarchs favor with the stunning success of his strategy for the war. He was undeniably the sect's number two now. If the Shao family wanted to keep itself from drifting into obscurity within the new, enlarged Roaring Thunder Sect, they needed to show some results.

Well, if the well-prepared battlefield wasn't enough, the combat-ready army on its other end certainly was. Well, at least a field battle was a lot less time consuming than a siege would have been. Zhiwen Shao signaled the army to advance, though at a slow pace.

For a while, progress was steady. Having to maneuver around the pits was annoying, but the horses were well-trained and closely followed their riders' instructions. Then, suddenly, an unassuming stretch of snow collapsed under one of the frontmost horse's weight, throwing it into a hidden pit filled with a viscous brown substance. These bastards had set traps!

Yellow flames shot upwards, engulfing the animal within fractions of a second. The rider's reaction was just fast enough. He managed to jump backwards off of his horse's back, only his right leg grazing the flames for a short moment. Beyond burning off any cloth it caught, this seemed to cause him little harm. His mount was less fortunate: The biting stench of whatever substance had caused the fire mixed with the putrid aroma of burnt meat.

The horses could take a lot, but this was a little too much even for them. Several of the closest ones to the trap reared their heads and stumbled backwards, bumping into each other. One of them was almost shoved into one of the pits, the rider tearing at its reins to get it to move back.

Zhiwen Shao ground his teeth, but he could see the writing on the wall. He raised his hand and signaled to turn around. They'd get the horses out of here and then march through this damn field without them.

…

Liu Wei watched as the earth and stone before him made way under the Patriarch's will, soundlessly shuffling along the wall and ceiling to close up the space behind them. They had been tunneling for a good while now, yet it still amazed him how smooth it was. No tremor escaped Long Zhao's manipulation, the loudest thing around were their muffled steps as they casually walked along a path that didn't exist.

Suppressing the presence of his soul to the best of his abilities and consequently unable to spread out his soul sense, Liu Wei could only estimate them to be around fifteen to twenty meters underground. Deep enough that they would mostly fall out of a low-level Dao Contemplation Cultivator's passive range of perception, should they happen to pass under one. Not that these guys would be paying particularly close attention to what was happening under their feet when they were about to march into a battle.

They were following the army, the patriarch following its movement by sensing the impact of their steps. Yue Zhong would send them a signal once it was time for them to make their move.

After a long stretch of walking in silence, Long Zhao spoke up.

"They have abandoned their horses. They are continuing by foot now."

"Abandoned?", Sun Liang asked. "Why would they do that?"

"An obstructed battlefield, I suppose. The school must have used the time they had left to build traps and erect barriers.", Liu Wei answered. "It's what I would have done, at least."

"You are right. There are recently dug pits throughout the area."

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"I see. Well, it's a neat trick. I wouldn't want to fight them mounted either, if it was my army."

"It's rather convenient for us as well. Retreating will be a lot harder for them when they are missing their source of mobility."

The conversation died down again, the three cultivators returning to their thoughts.

…

Arrows rained from over their heads as the Roaring Thunder Sect's forces pushed forward. Returning fire while on the move was difficult, so they were instead opting for simply hiding behind their large round shields.

Zhiwen Shao didn't need to use such trivial matters, as he floated above his troops. The few arrows that reached him simply turned into ash as they were hit by small lightning strikes. He didn't even need to concentrate on them for that. Instead, he was pondering on whether he should pelt those pesky insects with a couple of proper lightning bolts, just so they could learn what a real ranged attack was supposed to look like…

He dismissed the idea. It would be a waste of power – if the enemy army knew what they were doing, they'd have Dao Attunement warriors lined up at the front line, equipped with defensive artifacts that they could readily deploy to neutralize such attacks. That would of course tire them out a lot more than him, but his strength was also a lot more important for the outcome of this battle.

He glared at the enemy army's leader, Grandmaster Gong, who stood some way behind the frontline on a small platform – was he too inept to just fly? – and gave commands. That was who he was saving his power for: as soon as the armies were engaged, he'd take on the old man and obliterate him. That would put an early end to this whole thing. A Dao Contemplation cultivator without an army was vulnerable, but an army without a Dao Contemplation cultivator was toothless.

To the satisfaction of his increasingly impatient temperament, his vanguard was closing in on the enemy. The latter responded by loosening a last salvo of arrows before switching out their bows for melee weapons and moving into a combat formation, waiting for their challengers behind one last barrier that stretched out along the entirety of their formation and was reinforced with a moat.

Not that that could stop Zhiwen Shao's army anymore. The time for pesky mortal battle tactics had passed, now they would finally start fighting the cultivator way. He raised his hand and let loose a lightning bolt that crashed into the barrier, shredding several meters of it.

"Charge!"

And they did. His frontline, consisting of heavily armored Dao Attunement cultivators fell into a jog, then a sprint. And then, they jumped the moat. Where the barrier hadn't been blown away by Zhiwen Shao's lightning, they simply crashed into it, breaking through it by sheer force. Their armors were thick and enchanted, normal spears couldn't even scratch them.

As soon as they were on the other side, they met the enemy frontline. In unison, they threw forward bolts and streams of lightning. The enemy met them with a barrage of different elements, but they couldn't match the power of the greatest of Daos! Within moments, they were forced to give ground to the Roaring Thunder Sect's might.

With the vanguard's attack having created space behind them, more and more soldiers crossed the moat, joining into battle. Everything was going as planned. In fact, the enemy seemed almost too easy to push back… Incompetent weaklings. That was the result of always trying to negotiate any disagreement away!

Satisfied with how his army was doing, Zhiwen Shao focused his attention back on Fang Gong. The old geezer still stood on his pitiful platform, seemingly unsure of what to do. Well, Zhiwen Shao would take that worry off him. Drawing his sword, he flooded its blade with lightning Qi and then swung it, sending out an arc of lightning towards his chosen opponent before shooting forward towards him himself.

Fang Gong didn't seem too perturbed by this development. He formed a fist, air starting to swirl around it, and punched back against the arc. Annoyingly, it worked, dispensing the lightning in all directions. Zhiwen Shao had expected this though, long having prepared his next attack. The next arc of lightning flew and was disbanded in the same way, but this time he was directly behind it, already poised to strike the exposed Fang Gong.

As he was in the midst of the movement, his senses suddenly started screaming at him to defend. In the same moment, Fang Gong's shadow suddenly moved, something striking out at him. He managed to twist his body and block the striking dagger with the flat of his blade just barely.

He didn't have time to recover before the shadowy figure that had just materialized struck at him again, only missing his face by a hair's width as he jumped backwards and retreated several dozens of meters into the air. The shadow pursued him.

Some of the other elders of his army had noticed the situation and came rushing over when Fang Gong finally moved. A long quarterstaff with metal ends materialized in his hand before he moved to intercept the incoming support.

Zhiwen Shao couldn't pay any further attention to what was happening over there, his focus glued to the shadowy figure – a black-haired woman, as he was now able to make out –, who was already striking at him again with an unnatural speed and precision.

…

The talisman in Sun Liang's hand shattered, unleashing a pulse of the strange shadow attuned Qi that the Zhong Family used.

"That's the signal."

The Patriarch only nodded, arching the tunnel upwards and drastically increasing his speed. Only a few moments later, he stopped.

"We're about two meters deep now and there is a group of enemies directly above us. Are you both ready?"

Liu Wei checked his armor one last time before nodding. Sun Liang did the same.

"Then, Elder Wei, if you would…"

"Of course."

Liu Wei stepped to the front, raising a hand to the ceiling and beginning to gather fire Qi in it. A small flame appeared in his palm, its intense heat immediately beginning to melt the rocky above. Long Zhao's control over the stone prevented it from dripping down on them, which would have been inconvenient, as Liu Wei continued gathering Qi from the surroundings and converting it into more power.

He could have done this much, much faster, would have if the situation called for it, but doing it like this allowed him to unleash considerably strong blasts of flame while barely costing him any strength. They had a battle to fight after this, and he wasn't about to waste any Qi.

"We'll proceed as planned. Good luck on the battlefield.", he said, more out of courtesy than out of concern.

Then he unleashed a blast white flame.

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