Once the announcements for the factions that deserved the most honor for the naval tournament was released, the entire Chinese society was shocked. In the end, it seemed like this piece of news could only keep the people of the Chinese community satisfied for one day before the majority of them moved on to other discussions.
Similar to how the Sun Alliance and the other powerful Chinese factions would be able to even win against the vastly superior Bair fighters that essentially won the aerial tournament without doing much towards the end. Many speculations were had, discussions about statistics hopes and dreams of many to prove the might of the Chinese district. However, the might that the Bair fighters have shown was not something that many had hoped to beat, not to mention the way they were able to masterfully manipulate any situation.
There were only a few days before the final part of the 3 part tournament series that the Sun Alliance held, and rightfully so, it was one of the most anticipated competitions. It wasn't just the grandeur of having the most powerful of each faction duking it out with each other, it was more that land-based warfare was what humans have been warring together with each other for the longest period of time.
Land disputes were the oldest type of reason for fighting each other, and as such, humans have continuously evolved weapons to which to better kill one another. As sad as it appeared, wars had been the incentive for advancement that nothing else could compare to.
There were many rumors going around that there was a possibility that Sun Tzu would reveal himself and participate in the competition. Another rumor was that Wu Qi would finally come out of hiding to participate as well. However, these discussions always came around every time a tournament of this magnitude rolled around, and for the most part, were baseless and speculative at best.
The simple truth of the matter was that figures as influential as Sun Tzu and Wu Qi did not even need to enter into the competition to prove their prowess. When they do though, it's usually for a bit of entertainment. After all, with their position, they had more important matters to worry about, namely the Death Match tournament.
These types of tournaments were more for the entertainment value that they provided to the Chinese community. Even for the most bloodthirsty of generals, constant warring can wear anyone out. Watching others, potentially superior strategists, fight each other to the death spurs on growth and awe from the newer strategists that enter into planet 4 each year.
Now, there was a major problem that affected the Chinese community. It was that there were fewer and fewer people coming in. This wasn't exactly just their problem either, the other communities were facing such difficulties as well. It wasn't too bad for them as they did not see as much of a decline as many of the other communities such as the Greek and Roman communities, but this was still an issue none the less.
If there were less and less fresh blood coming in, then the power of any community will drastically decrease over time as well. The reason for this is that many of the strategists that had been here for a long while already had reached a sort of bottleneck in their training that prohibited them from getting any stronger. Whether it be new experiences, lack of powerful blueprints, or any other myriad of reasons. Interestingly enough, it seemed as if the Jordsand strategists were never short of strategists, perhaps they were a warrior race through and through and had not been impacted at all given the current peaceful times on Earth.
Many of the important figures of each community recognized this problem ever since it started appearing a few hundred years ago. However, what were they to do? Go back to Earth and inform others of what happens you actually die? There was no time period in the past nor future where anyone would take you seriously. The leaders were only able to shake their heads at their own bad luck and redirect their resources elsewhere.
The leaders of each community were decided upon by the people in a democratic way with each person being able to vote once for whoever they decided was best fit to lead them. More often than not, that person would be the most powerful person within their community. For the Chinese, this person would be Sun Tzu currently. This system actually worked great since to be powerful you had to be smart, cunning, and be able to plan many years into the future. Rarely would there be a leader who would be so nearsighted that they would squander the position that they were offered.
Not only that, it seemed as if the amount of people reaching bottlenecks recently has begun to surge, sure, most of them had learned a lot during their time here, but they could only advance now by studying others and obtaining more powerful blueprints. It was even difficult to know if someone was in a bottleneck as everyone experiences it differently.
In this context, a bottleneck referred to those who felt like they had nothing left to learn and had trouble mentally accepting the fact that they were not able to improve at all. All the while knowing that everyone around them was constantly improving. Even some of the leaders of the different communities often had some of these experiences a few times on their path to become one of the legendary figures that they were today.
However, those leaders were the best of the best, not everybody could say that. Some succumb to the mental barriers that their bottleneck causes them and end up losing all motivation to continue on their path to becoming great strategists. This is one of the big reasons that the Sun Alliance chooses to throw so much into their tournaments and to reward those who make it to the end exceptionally well.