There was still most of two days until the stair checkpoint opened. I didn't know if others with similar power would fight against or be allowed to join the group already at the stair, but I proceeded under the assumption that enough of a proportion would join that their numbers would increase rather than reduce by attrition.
In other words, I set out to apply some attrition myself. I only went after those at or near the strength of the strongest three already at the stair, and I wasn't able to be in enough places at once to reach all of them, but my Arrow of Truth was pretty hard even for cultivators at that level to handle. Most of my targets weren't just one-shotted by it, but none of them were able to counter or escape a normal bombardment very effectively after being weakened by it.
