Anabanana said:
In fact, I'm mildly surprised that the Sword Saint is still carrying a sword at all.
He fought Zhang before, and I think you do not want to run into Zhang with only an imaginary sword for a weapon. There is alway someone stronger than you, so a bit of caution never harms anybody.
Anyway, I think it is time to analyze the situation and the possible ramifications of the choices given the rundown
treave provided.
What is the most probable outcome if we don't intervene?
Guo Fu will hold the ones trying to break through. Vahista will finally overcome Bai Jiutian (he probably won't be able to kill him, though), make a run for Yunzi, grab her, and dash past Guo Fu. The rest of the cultists will either try to follow them, or cover their retreat as they did at Wufushan. I imagine there will be heavy casualties. The young cultist will get slaughtered.
Now, my goals are to stop the fighting between the sides. Not everyone shares them.
I take it that Yunzi either can't disengage from the Twin Flowers, or she is waiting for her people to open a pass so that everyone could leave. In any case, she is not going anywhere by herself, which is why it takes Vahista to move her. If it is the first, you can probably be useful to her if you go with A, if it is the second, then C sounds like a good idea.
If we go with B, we will interfere with Bai Jiutian's fight. Vahista will try to use it to his advantage and break off from the fight to get to Yunzi, which , if successful, leaves us face-to-face with angry Jiutian and a hundred or so hostile pugilists - not exactly an ideal situation to find yourself in. If we are going to prevent Vahista from leaving, not only this adds an additional objective for us to keep track of, making an already hard mission practically impossible, but we also risk leaving Yunzi to the mercy of orthodox pugilists:
treave said:
Thanks to their numerical superiority and Guo Fu appearing to have enough endurance to tie down fifty men at a go, the orthodox side has the advantage in leveraging their numbers: as the battle wears on, it becomes more likely that they suppress the fighting cultists and become able to gang up on either Vahista or Yunzi, or both.
To end the battle, we only need the orthodoxes to back off. If you are going to strike at the head to stop the fight, you only need to incapacitate Bai Jiutian to succeed. Assaulting Vahista as well does not really bring you closer to this goal.
The Sword Saint is a wild card, and it is hard to predict where and how he would help. Still, without him, B looks quite bleak.
Helping the cultists in D and covering their retreat lets Yunzi and Vahista leave as per the initial plan, and the rest of the cultists to follow them safely. I am unsure what to do, personally, but the gut instict tells me that you can't go wrong by trying to protect a bunch of kids.
You are just attributing your reasoning to him. He does not presume anything of a sort.
)
