Qi Fei: Big Shot, Times Have Changed

By the time Qi Fei finished selecting people for the second city, those in the first city had been trained well enough that he no longer needed to keep an eye on them.

So he ordered them to relocate to the site of the twenty-first city, which had been planned earlier, and set up a military farm there.

Then Qi Fei led his people to the third city.

Next came the fourth, then the fifth...

The cycle continued until he had finished selecting people from all twenty cities.

By the time Qi Fei had finished with the twenty cities, the twenty-first city was almost complete.

Qi Fei settled in the twenty-first city and began drilling the soldiers.

Although production was underway in twenty cities, Qi Fei still sent ten thousand people to work the military farm.

After all, their opponent was the God of War. They had to be ready for a long fight that might force them to abandon production entirely and turn the whole population into soldiers.

Besides their daily Mental Talent training, the two hundred people suited to cultivating mental power also studied military strategy and helped Qi Fei handle government affairs.

Those with the best aptitude among them were also granted Sharing at the Mental Talent level.

That was right: Qi Fei was trying to deliberately cultivate people with Mental Talent.

This was another approach he hadn't had time to test yet, but now he was putting it to use right here.

In theory, it should work much like cultivating people capable of Internal Qi Separation, but practice was another matter.

Compared to Internal Qi, mental power was more elusive and more personal.

Moreover, Mental Talent emerged from the refinement of one's knowledge and experience.

It was only with the help of Shared Space that Qi Fei had been able to take this step.

But no matter how difficult it was, he had to give it a try.

Having someone with Mental Talent coordinate and control Cloud Qi would be a significant boost for Qi Fei, who was commanding a large army.

Besides, even if Mental Talent failed to develop, the mental power they cultivated wouldn't go to waste.

After discovering another aspect of his own Mental Talent, Qi Fei could use them as a reserve of mental power.

So the effort wouldn't be wasted.

Along with training troops and handling government affairs, Qi Fei was also responsible for building blast furnaces.

Farm tools for civilian use and armor and weapons for the military all depended on iron smelted in blast furnaces.

Qi Fei had no intention of facing the God of War in Leather Armor.

Even if the big shot on the other side would probably only have Leather Armor by then.

Besides developing his own forces, Qi Fei had also begun building an intelligence network to gather information about Sun Wu's side.

Just as he'd expected, the big shot was also pulling people from every city to train as soldiers.

And the big shot was training them at astonishing speed.

His army's talents were already gradually taking shape, and the soldiers could carry out commands smoothly.

"Mm. Just as I expected."

Qi Fei had set his expectations for the God of War extremely high.

Especially for someone like Sun Wu, who had no flashy effects at all and put every skill point into drawing out the soldiers' own strength and improving his command ability.

Wasn't this exactly what he should be able to do?

"Looks like if the war starts at the end of the year, I'd better be ready for the big shot to field at least ten thousand Dual Talent soldiers."

Qi Fei quietly raised the priority of mass production by another notch.

So he began using his talent to cultivate livestock with Internal Qi, helping to support development.

While both sides trained their troops in earnest, the season turned to autumn.

With new farm tools and livestock imbued with Internal Qi, Qi Fei's territory was able to open up far more farmland than usual.

As a result, this harvest finally solved the food shortage problem—from Qi Fei's perspective.

That meant the commoners responsible for production could cultivate Internal Qi while also receiving a certain amount of military training.

That would make it easy to turn them directly into soldiers in the future.

This situation continued until the end of autumn.

"We still have to fight a battle."

Qi Fei looked at the thirty thousand soldiers under his command.

After the autumn harvest, the Tuntian Soldiers had undergone an intensive training push, and most had stabilized at one talent.

The twenty thousand full-time soldiers, meanwhile, had already reached the limit for one talent.

A few soldiers had probably reached the Dual Talent level, but talents were the manifestation of collective will. One or two breakthroughs were of no use.

To advance any further, they needed real combat experience.

"I should've designed a bandit mechanic earlier. Then we wouldn't be stuck with nowhere to get combat experience."

Thinking of taking a group of complete rookies to fight the God of War, Qi Fei couldn't help regretting it a little.

He'd been so focused on competing with the big shot Sun Wu that he'd forgotten the dream's mechanics were still incomplete.

A serious blunder.

Still, a battle would be useful.

Although he'd kept receiving intelligence for the past six months, the God of War's true strength couldn't be determined on paper.

They needed to fight, establish the gap between them, and then come up with a targeted solution.

"Give the order. We march in three days."

At Qi Fei's command, all twenty-one cities under his control sprang into action.

Among Qi Fei's cities, the closest to Sun Wu's forces were Cities Three, Four, and Five. Behind them lay City Twenty-One, which served mainly as a military camp.

Thanks to the infrastructure they'd built earlier, provisions and supplies were quickly transported to those four cities.

Qi Fei led his thirty-thousand-strong army to the vicinity of City Four. After resting for two days, they set out toward Sun Wu's forces.

The commotion caused by thirty thousand approaching soldiers was impossible for Sun Wu to miss, no matter how tightly Qi Fei controlled his intelligence.

So not long after Qi Fei set out, Sun Wu received the news.

As he mobilized his own troops, he began arranging for scouts to investigate the details of Qi Fei's army.

However, just like the earlier reconnaissance teams, the scouts never returned.

"This boy has some skill."

Sun Wu couldn't help praising him.

So far, he hadn't obtained a single useful piece of intelligence. In the art of war, that was fatal.

"In that case, I'll switch to a more cautious approach."

As Sun Wu marched, he began adjusting his soldiers' talents.

He removed some of their offensive talents and replaced them with defensive ones.

As for the lost attack power, he could make up for it with Cloud Qi formations.

Meanwhile, Qi Fei was rewarding his scouts.

His scouts were divided into cavalry and infantry.

The cavalry consisted of three hundred elite soldiers with the Godspeed talent: the Gongsun White Horse.

Because of their unique method of attack, the Gongsun White Horse were terrifyingly lethal against incomplete formations without defensive fortifications.

They had a huge advantage in this kind of scout warfare.

Of course, not every terrain was suitable for the White Horse to race across.

That was when the infantry scouts came in.

Qi Fei's infantry scouts used a strategy from the original work: a fake Internal Qi Separation expert as their captain, accompanied by more than ten skilled fighters who had reached Qi Solidification.

On a battlefield without Cloud Qi, there was only one word to describe this setup.

Invincible.

Without Cloud Qi interference, the inhuman might of Internal Qi Separation could be unleashed to its fullest.

No ordinary soldier could stand against them.

On top of that, Qi Fei had developed the Light and Shadow Reconnaissance Secret Technique based on Floating Shadow Magic from the Coiling Dragon World, supplemented by the optical knowledge from his previous life.

His infantry scouts were practically running wild.

In a situation like this, of course he had to reward them and boost his own side's morale.

After the rewards were handed out, Qi Fei began studying the intelligence they'd gathered.

The big shot Sun Wu had brought thirty thousand men on this expedition.

Of those thirty thousand, only ten thousand were proper full-time soldiers. The remaining twenty thousand were laborers with some training.

It seemed the big shot, lacking intelligence, had misjudged the scale of the war.

His intelligence control was already showing results.

Of the ten thousand full-time soldiers, at least three thousand had an imposing presence that had surpassed the one-talent level. They were probably Dual Talent elites, or even the Imperial Guard.

That was slightly less than Qi Fei had anticipated.

But Qi Fei felt no relief.

If Han Xin could use laborers to kill one-talent soldiers, there was no reason the big shot Sun Wu couldn't do the same.

Count laborers as one-talent soldiers, treat one-talent soldiers as Dual Talent, and regard Dual Talent soldiers as the Imperial Guard.

That was the proper way to think about it.

As for Sun Wu's troop composition, he had a little over two hundred cavalry, fifty War Chariots, and the rest were infantry.

This didn't surprise Qi Fei.

When he'd seen that the big shot's forces were entirely configured for the plains, Qi Fei had known War Chariots could be used.

The big shot's memories probably hadn't fully returned, so he'd unconsciously chosen this kind of lineup.

During the Spring and Autumn period, War Chariots were indeed being replaced by cavalry, but the process wouldn't be complete until the Han dynasty.

Before then, even the Chu State had fielded a considerable number of War Chariots.

It was no surprise that the big shot had made this choice.

"But this time, it really works in my favor."

Qi Fei's lips curled into a slight smile.

When it came to War Chariots, sorry, but every beast in my stables has Internal Qi. What can you compete with that?

When the big shot deployed his War Chariot formation, Qi Fei would send his own chariots into a head-on clash, while his cavalry attacked from the flanks with crossbows.

As long as they could trade for the big shot's chariots, horses, armor... and other supplies, it would count as a success.

Fully aware of his own advantages, Qi Fei drew up countermeasures one by one.

As these preparations continued, Sun Wu's army finally arrived at a position twenty li from Qi Fei's forces.

After setting up camp and resting for a day, Sun Wu took the initiative and attacked.

Once Qi Fei spotted Sun Wu's movements, he immediately had the camp cooks prepare a meal. After the soldiers had eaten their fill, they went to meet Sun Wu in battle.

However, despite having the advantage in vision, Qi Fei didn't try any flashy surprise attacks.

For a creature like the God of War, the more options there were to manipulate on the battlefield, the greater the chance of victory.

So the right way to win was to advance with a standard formation of heavy infantry and force the enemy into a straightforward battle.

That was why Sun Wu was able to see the full extent of Qi Fei's army.

"...Has production technology really become this impressive?"

Watching Qi Fei's army from afar, Sun Wu couldn't help exclaiming.

He'd already noticed the current rate of armor coverage when observing the military camps from outside the dream.

Even so, Qi Fei's forces still shocked him.

On Sun Wu's side, only the one hundred and fifty soldiers on the War Chariots, the two hundred cavalrymen, and three hundred elite infantry had metal armor—and even that was merely ordinary Liangdang Armor.

The rest of the soldiers wore only Leather Armor, while the twenty thousand ordinary laborers had nothing but weapons and a wooden shield.

On the other side, all thirty thousand men wore iron armor.

And apart from the cavalry riding white horses, they wore high-grade armor that covered their entire bodies.

Even the other cavalry had thick iron armor covering their horses.

Whether they could move in all that armor was beside the point. Where had Qi Fei gotten so much iron?

If not for his concern for the dignity of the older generation of the Military School, Sun Wu would have wanted to raise his hand and surrender on the spot.

With a difference in national strength like this, what was the point of fighting?

Sun Wu took a deep breath.

He'd have to drag the war out. As long as he avoided a crushing defeat, that would count as a victory.

Sun Wu drastically lowered his expectations.

Following the method they'd practiced earlier, Sun Wu incorporated the twenty thousand laborers he'd brought along into the regular army.

He'd brought the laborers along to bolster his numbers and give them some experience of the battlefield.

If the opening battle went well, they could also replace the regular troops in pursuing the enemy, so the regular army wouldn't fall into the other side's traps.

But now there was no chance of that.

Using the elite soldiers as the backbone, Sun Wu rapidly brought all his troops together under his command.

Once the Cloud Qi in the sky had merged, he forcibly manifested a Muscle Defense Talent on the twenty thousand ordinary laborers.

In an instant, the army that had been little more than cannon fodder took on some of the appearance of an elite force.

"Impressive, impressive."

Qi Fei watched Sun Wu's actions through his Secret Art.

Forcibly raising ordinary laborers to the one-talent level was impressive, but it hadn't surprised him.

Sun Wu's formation, on the other hand, drew Qi Fei's attention even more.

"He's stationed over a hundred infantrymen around each war chariot. That's a lot of men to bring along at once."

Normally, there were only a few dozen soldiers supporting each war chariot. Having more than a hundred would make it harder for the chariots to coordinate with one another.

It seemed the big shot had abandoned the idea of charging with the war chariots and was simply using them as units to lead the way.

"In that case, let's start with a Ten Thousand Arrows Volley and see how it goes."

As the drums sounded, some of the Huangfu Personal Guards clad in plate armor picked up the small crossbows prepared nearby.

Shielded by their teammates' thick shields made of solid wood and steel composite, they slowly advanced toward Sun Wu's army.

In the God Three World, crossbows were originally used to defend cities.

However, the more than three hundred Huangfu Personal Guards Qi Fei had specifically selected, each weighing over two hundred pounds, could use them as personal equipment.

Furthermore, since all their talents were Self-Adaptation, they could also be mixed in with the Huangfu Personal Guards carrying shields.

There was no need to worry about their talents manifesting differently.

In the God Three World, archers also had special elite talents.

But because these special talents didn't enhance their physical abilities by much, archers couldn't wear armor as heavy as that of other troop types.

At the same time, due to the differences in their elite talents, archers could only fight alongside heavy infantry and couldn't be directly mixed into their ranks.

This made elite archers easy targets for the enemy's cannon fodder archers.

So Qi Fei hadn't planned to train archers from the start.

He'd just equip everyone with heavy crossbows.

What if they lacked the talent to make their shots powerful?

No problem. They could make up for it with sheer strength.

With bodies that had generally attained Internal Qi Condensation, and Strength Enhancement trained to the limit of a single talent, the small crossbows would be a bit troublesome to use, but the large, single-person heavy crossbows were no problem.

What about poor aim?

It was fine. Trading a hundred arrows for one of God of War's men was still worth it.

Even setting aside that man's productivity, just being under God of War's command meant he would achieve far more than one kill in the future.

Trading a hundred arrows for him was an incredible bargain.

Besides, their aim could always be improved with practice.

"Everyone, ready. Fire."

Once the Huangfu Personal Guards and heavy crossbowmen had brought Sun Wu's vanguard within range, Qi Fei gave the order to attack.

In the next instant, arrows of varying sizes, some enormous, shot from their hands and streaked toward Sun Wu's army.