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Chapter 232 – Why So Defensive?
🕑 Added 2025-04-02 12:51:25 +0000 UTCBenton was just about ready to install the turrets on his two towers, but there was a problem. His plan was to have four separate weapon arrays located in four groups dispersed equally around the circumference, the idea being that when one set was damaged or destroyed, the turret would rotate the next set to engage the target.
Three of the four weapon arrays were simple affairs, each blasting an enemy with a burst of pure elemental qi. Honestly, they weren’t all that impressive unless the enemies were Foundation Establishment and below. A Golden Core’s shield would shrug off the attacks as nothing more dangerous that a mosquito bite.
The fourth array was supposed to make up for the lack by providing a weapon that might be considered strong enough to at least make a Nascent Soul hesitate. Maybe. If they didn’t have enough defensive techniques to deflect a purely mortal slug of metal hurtling toward them at supersonic speeds.
Hey, it could happen.
Basically, Benton was trying to build a railgun, but he had little to no idea how to do it. And the System was no help when it came to technology. The Shop wouldn’t let him purchase any weapon not common to the medieval level of development that was characteristic of his new world, and neither could he buy the direct knowledge of how to build a railgun or laser or any other type of modern weaponry.
In the case of transplanting technology from Earth, the System helped he who helped himself. From vague recollections from scifi novels, Benton knew that a railgun used electricity to create magnets or something, and those magnets somehow accelerated a munition to really high speeds. Which wasn’t exactly all he needed to know to build one.
His memory, however, did give him all the clues he needed to make the System provide him with knowledge he required.
First, the System absolutely would not provide him with any information about electricity, but since Lightning was a natural occurring type of electricity and a secondary qi element, it had no qualms about selling him Mastery of knowledge of that element for four Sect Points. The technique didn’t tell him how to create a motor or anything like that, but that lack was okay. He didn’t need a turbine or whatever was used to create electricity on Earth. A Lightning spirit coin provided the exact source he needed. Neither did he need copper wire as his inscribed channels performed that function.
Magnetism was even easier. Since it was also a natural phenomenon and, it turned out, also a secondary qi element, the System easily let him buy knowledge of it and, once he’d studied determined exactly what he needed, a Concept as well.
It turned out the device was actually pretty simply, though he had to scrap the hollow metal tube he’d had Xun Wu make since iron wasn’t nearly as conductive as he needed it to be. Instead, Benton used two ingots of one of the metals the kids had brought back from Sixth Flawless Flowing City to construct two rails and another tube, all five feet long. Importantly, he placed the two conductive strips parallel but opposite each other such that the positive end of one corresponded to the placement of the negative end of the other. The tube went between the two strips. A projectile, a large chunk of a different, more dense, conductive metal, was positioned at the start inside the tube.
The Lightning qi ran up one strip, through the tube, and back down the other strip, creating a circuit. The Lightning running through the metal created a magnetic field which created a force that pushed the projectile. More qi meant a faster and, thus, more powerful attack.
When Benton tested it, there was a loud crack of lightning, followed by a boom as the projectile broke the speed of sound. All in all, the display was pretty darn impressive. If a spy were watching, that spy might reasonably believe that Benton expected his railgun to be able to hurt a Nascent Soul cultivator.
The spy would, of course, be wrong, but he couldn’t be blamed for believing Benton’s deliberate campaign of false information.
With the decoy main weapon figured out, Benton finished up the two turrets and installed them on the top of their respective towers. By the time he was done, it was mid-morning, and he was fairly satisfied with his progress. The wall would be ready for installation the next day, giving him well over twenty hours to complete his construction of a trap and the actual main weapon.
Honestly, the railgun was the best attack that Benton could come up with on his own. If he was very fortunate, a Nascent Soul who was caught off guard might be hit once by a projectile, but it definitely wouldn’t cause enough damage to kill one of them. Which wasn’t nearly good enough. Benton needed something that was guaranteed to kill one.
Luckily, he was a cheating cheater who cheats. He purchased a template for a very powerful variable qi element beam that the System assured him would blow through a Nascent Soul like a BB through a paper target.
The problem was the eye-watering cost. The two schematics, one for a trap and one for the weapon, cost a combined two hundred fifty Shop Points. He only had three hundred sixty total, and the sole reason the number he had was that high was because he behaved like a miser, buying only what was absolutely necessary.
Needs must, though. The formation was crucial for defending his sect members, and they were more important than an infinite number of Shop Points. Grimacing while he did it, he pulled the trigger on the purchase, bringing him down to one hundred ten points.
As he had expected, the Primary Array Weapon was quite complex and required a lot of qi, over five million per shot. That meant a single shot required a minimum of five hundred greater spirit coins, which took him around two had a half hours’ worth of work to create. Again, that was for a single shot. One.
He prayed to the heavens that he never missed because that enormous expenditure for nothing would probably make him cry.
Luckily, he’d been prepared to deliver that much qi or even more, and he’d left a spot near the top of the tower to install the formation. Unlike the very visible and inviting target that was the turret, the PAW was hidden, the area where it was installed looking exactly like the stones that surrounded it in every way because it was actually underneath several of the stones.
Of course, the concealment had to be ejected out of the way simultaneously with the activation of the PAW, meaning the weapon would become a target after the first time it was fired. And it wasn’t mobile, either. The PAW on each tower was aimed to hit one place, exactly where the hidden trap was to hold the target stationary.
For his plan to work, the Nascent Soul would have to be forced in the vicinity of the trap, fall victim to it, and the PAWs be triggered in the very brief moment of time before the cultivator broke out of the hold.
Benton had confidence that he could handle a single Nascent Soul cultivator in a one-on-one fight. A scenario involving multiple enemies in that realm grew trickier. He figured, though, that he’d be able to manage all the necessary conditions to set up the PAW to kill at least one of them.
The first part would be the most difficult—getting one of the enemy cultivators to the spot where the trap would activate. Either trickery or force would be required. After that step, the rest should be easy. He could remotely trigger the trap, which would be connected to the PAWs so that the activation of both was simultaneous.
Basically, slam the Nascent Soul with an attack to force them to the correct location and activate a remote device that triggered both the trap and both PAWs simultaneously. A big beam that essentially ignored aura would lance out and disintegrate most of the target’s body.
Perfect.
If Benton was absent from the sect, however, and one the sect members was forced to use the towers for defense against a Nascent Soul… Well, there was some chance they could manage that first critical step. A tiny, miniscule, almost infinitesimal chance, but a chance. And that was better than nothing.
Inscribing the PAWs and the trap took the rest of the day and into the night, but once finished, he was left with only one task—installing and concealing the power sources. Wanting to start with as many spirit coins as possible, he used his Time Manipulation for several hours, creating a lot more of them.
When done, he tunneled underneath the towers using his excavation technique, installed the source, surrounded it with concealment arrays to hide the massive amount of buried qi, and filled the tunnels back up with dirt. No one but him would be able to replenish the source when it ran out, but that was okay. The extra security made the inconvenience worth it.
Finally, the towers were complete, making him feel a lot better about the defense of his sect. By that time, the wall pieces were ready, so he began the long process of digging footings, installing the prebuild sections, and connecting them together.
His superhuman strength, speed, and endurance combined with techniques that would have been the equivalent of magic on Earth allowed him to enclose the entire five acres of the sect in under a day. Even with that major accomplishment done, he didn’t let up. He had no way of knowing if an attack was imminent, so he would not let himself rest until the sect’s Grand Defensive Formation was complete as well.
Unlike the construction of the wall, the GDF was not simple. First, there were nearly two thousand linear feet of surface that had to be covered, and unlike with the one he did for the village, he was not inscribing a simple array to keep out one type of threat. No, the GDF was a complex interwoven set of formations that was both more versatile and more powerful than the one he’d used for the beast tide.
By the time he’d finished, a whopping ten days had passed, but with the combination of the two towers and the GDF, he felt he actually had a chance of defending his sect from an attack by multiple Nascent Soul enemies.
He hoped, anyway.
Comments
Keldra
I think we're getting too far into the details here on weapons are constructed and away from the actual story or plot... Hopefully, the story picks up again soon.
Jack Trowell
I would be very funny if when nascent souls finally attack the sect the decoy rail gun actually one shorted one of them and made them flee
RedFaux
An easier way to get qi sources is really needed. Because powering everything with spirit coins is simply untenable
Will Iam
The railgun is incorrect, if you put the positive above and negative below then the projectile will veer offcenter and probably ruin the barrel. The magnetic charges on the barrel should start from the back of the projectile only pushing so if the metal is negatively charged then the barrel should send a negativ magnetic field to repel by pushing forward, as the projectile advances the other magnets in line will start always leaving the front empty of charges so it wont stop the projectile while pushing from the back. Most important thing is using the same charge and to sync each points, a formation could be a good way to handwave that but its the most technicallt challenging step in real railguns.
