Chapter 362 - Mobilization
Teng Wuying allowed a small smile to crease his face when he detected the qi burst from the direction of the square. The formation had been activated. The Trials Pagoda would soon be his. That annoying sect leader, Chao Su, would soon be dead.
Sixteen Nascent Soul cultivators had been assembled to ambush him. Sixteen. It had to be the strongest force of cultivators ever assembled on the continent. No matter what power or allies Chao Su possessed, it wouldn’t be enough to defeat so many.
Teng Wuying was quite pleased with himself. The logistics and maneuvering to gather that absurd number of Nascent Souls had been difficult. Only he could have pulled off such a feat.
Just the political wrangling to make available his sect’s two and the Swift Blizzard Sect’s four required him to call in every favor he’d secured over the years. Of course, Chao Su’s own actions, including his members’ performance in the tournament, helped. The older elders became, the more they were motivated by face. Teng Wuying wouldn’t have succeeded without leveraging that factor.
Regardless of how and why, more important was that he had.
After arranging for those six Nascent Souls, he went to work finding more. He’d first argued to his council of elders that supplying the same number as the Swift Blizzard Sect was of crucial importance. Jade Chameleon’s star was already falling fast. If they didn’t contribute equally, they’d be looked down upon by their ally as a charity case.
That reasoning worked well, getting him funding to pay for two mercenaries. Even better, after he’d manipulated Mao Biya to pay for two more, the elders had been forced to add another two as well.
That brought the total number of Nascent Souls to twelve, a force the likes of which even legendary sects would have to consider formidable, a force that probably would have been enough.
Teng Wuying didn’t want to take any chances, however. After Mao Biya’s blunder in revealing the square as the ambush site, he’d tried to get Lei Bohai to move his formation, but the price quoted to do so was ruinous, completely beyond any possibility.
So Teng Wuying was left with a terrible choice. He could proceed with the ambush at the planned location even though any astute opponent—and it was never a good idea to assume an opponent was stupid—would surely have noted the odd behavior of the Swift Blizzards, or he could proceed without the formation. Neither option appealed to him.
Gently over many weeks, he’d talked to the Order’s Formations Master, learning all his foibles. It turned out that the man wasn’t wholly unreasonable. In fact, he was highly motivated to help the ambush succeed in order to punish the charlatan. He simply valued his work quite highly.
Teng Wuying respected that position. When he turned the conversation to the subject of what assistance Lei Bohai could provide, results followed. It turned out that Nascent Souls often needed arrays constructed, and often, members of the Order wouldn’t deign to provide their expertise no matter the spirit coins or favors offered.