Yang Ru watched as Kang Lin fingered her contingency ring, ready to call Master at the slightest sign of his and Yang Xiu's lives being put in danger. Good. There was nothing the three of them could do against a Golden Core cultivator. If the man moved to intervene, Master would be the only one who could help.
It occurred to Yang Ru that several months ago it would have bothered him to need such assistance. He would have seen it as his duty to protect his sister and his maybe future fiancé. To call Master in would have seemed shameful somehow.
Instead, Yang Ru had grown to better understand his role. He was the sect's protector but only for those dangers he was equipped to guard against. There was no shame in admitting he was outclassed, and a cultivator at least a major realm above him outclassed him overwhelmingly.
It was an honor to die protecting the sect and its members and his family. But it wasn't a good thing.
Yang Ru honored Ye Zan for saving Yang Xiu, but it would have been better if he had never had to make that sacrifice. His death was honorable. But not good.
Today, Yang Ru would do his duty, and he might die. But he would not court death. Protect Yang Xiu. Protect Kang Lin. Protect himself.
From the moment the flying cultivators had appeared, he'd been shifting his feet back and forth, trying to be unobtrusive but at the same time building Momentum. And he felt it working. The amount he created wasn't much. But it was some. And it was increasing with each fidget.
He listened as his sister exchanged insults with the enemy cultivator, shifting his feet the entire time. Yang Xiu sure seemed to be enjoying herself. That girl loved to talk. Of course, he was sure that wasn't her only goal.
Their conversation allowed Yang Ru to keep building Momentum. He appreciated that thoughtfulness on her part. They always did work well together. It was perhaps the primary advantage of being twins.
Eventually, though, she could stall no more. The Golden Core cultivator ordered his juniors to attack. The battle was about to start.
The juniors landed in formation—two, two, and one.
Yang Ru pulled his spear from his ring and readied it. Simultaneously, he began stomping, greatly accelerating his accumulation of Momentum. How much to build was more art than science, at least at his current level of experience with his techniques. He needed to blow through the two pairs in front and have enough power left to deliver an immense blow to the one in back.
Too little, and his strike wouldn't penetrate the boy's qi shield. Too much, and he chanced the enemies advancing and not leaving him enough distance for a charge.
Ten seconds. He'd build Momentum for ten seconds, trusting Yang Xiu to hold them back for that long.
His sister was nothing if not deadly accurate with her bow. And fast. Every second was another arrow. All he had to do was count her shots to time how long he was taking.
Smooth. Fast. Accurate. Powerful. Each arrow Yang Xiu shot hit its target, keeping the enemies frozen in place.
And after the tenth one, he charged.
She knew his prey as well as he did—the one in back. While Yang Ru sprinted toward the group, she kept them occupied, eventually disabling two of them by penetrating their qi shields and sinking arrows into their skin. As expected.
With the four of them distracted, none put up much of a fight—or even seemed to notice—as he charged straight through the middle of their formation. The boy at the end of the formation was the only one to react, readying his sword to strike.
Not that it did him any good.
Yang Ru had defeated a beast at the equivalent of peak Foundation Establishment when he'd barely reached Small Success with his two techniques. For the current fight, he was at Large Success with both, and his opponents were only at his level or slightly higher. One on one against him, none of them stood a chance.
With five against two, he didn't know.
As Yang Ru drew just outside of an arm's length, he converted a bit of the Momentum to give him speed, ducking past the sword swing that had become way too slow to hit him. In perfect synchronization with his body's movements, he thrust with his spear and transferred the rest of the Momentum to power his strike just as it connected with the boy's qi shield.
The shield shattered, and the spear kept going, penetrating the boy's stomach with a wet squelch. He was sent flying from the transferred force and crashed into the wall a dozen feet behind him.
If not for having an enhanced body due to his cultivation, the boy would have died instantly. Instead, the Golden Core cultivator darted to the injured boy and fed him a healing pill.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The senior cultivator's actions were to the good. Yang Ru and Yang Xiu were allowed to defend themselves, but Master didn't want them causing the war to start. Instantly killing one of the Foundation Establishment cultivators would have been an escalation.
There were rules to the situation, however. The senior could heal the junior, but if the junior returned to the fight, it would become perfectly acceptable for the twins to use deadly force on the next one.
It would be interesting to see which choice the Jade Chameleons made.
Amazed, Kang Lin watched the twins fight. She knew they were powerful. After all, she sparred with them often. But they hadn't dominated her like they were doing to the five Jade Chameleon cultivators.
She beat Yang Xiu at least one time in four, maybe even one in three. And she came close to splitting her fights with Yang Ru.
Then again, Yang Ru was most effective when he had room to charge, and Yang Xiu was at her best when she had someone to engage in melee while she attacked from range. The two really did complement each other perfectly.
Regardless, they appeared to be adults playing with children for how effective the five gray-robed cultivators were. Yang Ru could have easily killed the one he attacked by simply targeting the head instead of the stomach. Even a Major Healing Pill wouldn't have helped if he'd done that.
Kang Lin silently cheered his restraint. If one of the Jade Chameleons happened to die so be it. But demonstrating that any killing wasn't the intent was important. There were two factions still waiting to determine which way to jump. Being strong was good. Being bloodthirsty wasn't.
As overpowering as Yang Ru's single move was, Yang Xiu's constant barrage of arrows kept the entire enemy group on a reactionary footing. They couldn't break free to get close enough to attack her, and without someone disrupting her, she could control the entire fight.
Less than twenty seconds in, one of their opponents was completely out of the fight and would have perished had the Golden Core cultivator not administered a pill. Two more were injured so much that they were paying more attention to the arrows sticking out of them than to anything happening around them.
That left only two cultivators still fighting.
Granted, the Jade Chameleon Sect in Sixth Flawless Flowing City was in shambles with a lot of members going back to the main branch and few higher realmed members being dispatched to take control. The five Foundation Establishment cultivators fighting did not look like the best that sect had to offer.
Still, one had to have a certain level of talent to be accepted into a sect and even more talent to reach their realm at their obvious youthful ages. They were not the dregs of their sect by any measure. Five of them should have been sufficient to deal with even two very talented members of a big three sect.
That the twins defeated the five so easily meant the twins were more than talented. They were elite, on par with the top several disciples in their realm in the Poison Claw Sect.
Which wasn't a huge surprise. Kang Lin knew they had A rank talent and had been given top heaven grade cultivation methods and techniques. The weird thing to her was that, if they were elite and she held her own when sparring with them, what did that say about her? What did it say about the techniques Master distributed?
Yang Xiu continued to pepper the two uninjured Jade Chameleon cultivators in front with arrows while her brother launched the last one into the wall hard enough to damage several stones.
The remaining two rushed forward, a move she approved of. After all, just standing there taking hit after hit from her wasn't accomplishing anything for them, especially since they were down to a four-on-two from a five-on-two and half their remaining squad seemed uninterested in continuing the fight. She liked winning, of course, but it was more fun to win against a competent opponent than one behaving like an idiot.
Of course, the fact that two Foundation Establishment cultivators were sprinting toward her did present something of a problem. One on one, she could perform well against either Kang Lin or her brother. When both of them teamed up against her, though, Yang Xiu performed much worse than either of the others did in a one versus two fight.
Recently though, something had changed that significantly improved her chances against multiple opponents who reached melee range—her shield had reached Mastery. Advancing to such a level of expertise with the skill held a lot of advantages, of course. For one, the skill became more powerful. For another, it became easier to use and easier to modify based on her wishes. It also became much more efficient in terms of qi usage.
The main impact of that particular technique reaching Mastery, however, was that her shield reached its true potential, becoming like Master's in that it automatically reacted to opponent's strikes and shielded only the smallest area necessary. Instead of a thin layer of qi protecting her entire body, the shield transformed into thick armor defending a small portion. All told, the shield took less of her concentration, required less qi to operate, and withstood much more powerful strikes.
What was not to like?
She hadn't had much time to practice with it, but the small bit she'd done before leaving for the city had given her confidence that nothing her Foundation Establishment cultivator enemies did were going to pierce it.
In the short time Yang Xiu had before her opponents reached her, she had a choice to make—try to hold off both of them with a barrage of strikes to each of them or focus on one to take him out of the fight. Were she not so assured of the strength of the shield Master had provided her, she might have gone with the first option. Since she, however, completely trusted it and him to keep her safe, her choice was obvious.
She calmly watched both enemies run toward her while she lined up her shots, calculating angles and speeds. When the time was right, she deflected one arrow off a tree and immediately shot another at the cultivator on the right. As planned, the deflected arrow hit first, disrupting the qi shield just long enough for the second arrow to penetrate it.
That time, she decided against targeting a hand or a leg.
Thunk!
The arrow buried itself in his chest, and the boy looked down at it with wide eyes.
"Be thankful that I'm not trying to kill you," Yang Xiu said. "A fraction of an inch to the right, and that would have punctured your heart."
While her target had stopped, his companion hadn't. He swung his sword, hard, aiming at her neck. A kill shot.
The blade glowed with pearl-white light. Wind. Her Ice qi, like Water, was weak against Wind.
She had no time to do anything. Not to dodge. Not to get an arrow or her bow between the sword and her skin. Nothing.
The only thing she had time to do was to fervently hope she hadn't misplaced her faith in Master and her shield.
Yang Xiu didn't even have time to flinch. After burying an arrow in the chest of one of the two Jade Chameleon Foundation Establishment cultivators charging her, the other swung a sword at her neck.
The blade glowed with white light, signifying that it was imbued with Wind qi. That element was strong against her Ice element, meaning it would hit with up to twice the force of a neutral qi aspect.
As the radiant metal sliced through the air toward her, she was at peace. Unworried. Either the qi shield technique that Master had given her would protect her, or she'd be decapitated. She was betting everything on the fact that Master would not let her down.
Swish!
Thunk!
The blade hit. Qi flashed as Wind-infused metal met a small patch of thick shield made of pure Ice. The sword bounced back.
Yang Xiu was fine. Not even bruised, much less cut. She hadn't even felt the blow. Her qi reserves barely even moved.
Her brother was already on his way, building Momentum as he ran toward the lone uninjured enemy combatant. The swordman could swing away at her all he wanted. There was no way he was breaching her shield before Yang Ru sent him crashing into the side of the auction house.
"Enough!" the leader of the Jade Chameleon squad, a cultivator in the Golden Core realm, shouted. "Regroup."
Yang Xiu glanced at Kang Lin, who was still fingering her contingency ring. The other girl shrugged as if to say, "Let's see where he's going with this."
As the Jade Chameleons heeded the call of their leader by jogging toward the wall to regroup, Yang Ru finished his sprint and stood next to his sister. The trio waited to see what would happen next.
Kang Lin wasn't surprised that the Golden Core cultivator had called for a retreat. Of his five juniors, two had almost been killed and the other two still had arrows sticking out of various appendages. Only one was unscathed, and none of them had so much put a scratch on either of the twins.
Of course, he called for a retreat.
At least, that was what she had thought he was doing. But he'd specifically said "regroup," not retreat. And as he was distributing healing pills, he didn't appear to be making any move to leave.
Was it possible that he planned to heal up his juniors and have them try again? If so, that was a horrible idea for a couple of reasons. One, the most likely outcome of another round was exactly what happened in the first, only the twins would not take such care to avoid killing. Two, it would be a horrendous loss of face for the Jade Chameleon Sect.
From his actions, though, it appeared that ordering another attack was exactly his plan.
"What do you hope to accomplish?" Kang Lin said.
"You do not show me proper respect, either, Poison Claw Sect whelp?" the Golden Core cultivator said.
Technically, he was right. It was one thing for Yang Xiu, a combatant, to blatantly ignore calling him by title, but Kang Lin was officially a neutral party. She should have referred to him as "Esteemed" at the very least.
At that point, though, she really had no choice but to forge ahead.
"Do you deserve my respect or are you planning on having your juniors attack again?" Kang Lin said.
"Who are you, little girl, to decide if a cultivator more than a major realm and a half above you is worthy?"
"No member of a righteous sect can respect someone who would be so craven as to interfere in a matter between juniors like you appear to be preparing to do," Kang Lin said. "If I am wrong about your intentions, I will gladly kowtow before you for my insolence."
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The man scoffed. "You will kowtow before me regardless, or you will not be leaving this courtyard alive."
Kang Lin was more than a little taken aback to have someone who could crush her like a bug threaten her death, but she strove not to show it. She didn't so much as blink. "You seek the enmity of the Poison Claw Sect as well as the Rising Tide Sect? Have your elders sanctioned your actions?"
She was almost positive that the man had to have been given strict orders not to take things too far. Besides, if worst came to worst, she had the ring.
"My orders are none of your business, little girl. Kowtow or else."
Decision time. Truthfully, she had no business talking to the man that way. Regardless of the way he was acting, he was her senior, and her sect was not on a war footing with his.
She opened her mouth, unsure of exactly what she would say.
Yang Xiu had never been so proud of her hopefully future sister. Talking back to a Golden Core cultivator like that! Who would have thought she had it in her?
But she was clearly in trouble. To kowtow to the man would destroy all the confidence she was building, but if she didn't, the man might strike too fast for help to arrive.
Yang Xiu had to distract him. Fortunately, she didn't think the task would be too difficult.
"Can we get on with the fighting?" she said. "My brother and I already beat your trash sect once. I can't wait to do it again and without holding back this time."
The man looked at her and practically snarled. "I will end you myself."
He pulled a sword from his spatial ring and raised it into ready position.
Yang Xiu grimaced and prepared to trigger her ring. Bringing Master to the city to kill another Jade Chameleon cultivator would only make things worse, perhaps antagonizing the City Lord. Again. But he'd ordered them to sound the alert if their lives were on the line.
With a Golden Core cultivator about to attack, Yang Xiu saw no choice but to send the signal but held her finger for the last possible instant.
Kang Lin was almost positive she would have ended up capitulating to the Golden Core cultivator. She'd been raised to be respectful and cautious, completely the opposite of Sect Master Chao Su and his disciples.
It wasn't that they were discourteous. No one in the sect would go out of their way to be rude to anyone, not even a peasant. But they were not encouraged to follow the etiquette that was ingrained into the very being of most sect members.
So, yes, she would have given in. Kowtowed. It would have felt terrible, but she would have done it.
Yang Xiu, however, was having none of it, inserting herself into the conversation. She was nothing if not brave. Almost brash. But her heart was in the right place.
If the situation hadn't been so serious, Kang Lin would have snorted at the look on the man's face. Such a bold insult, calling not just the juniors trash but the entire sect. She would have never had the gall to say such a thing.
The comment had done its work, though. The man's attention was fully on Yang Xiu. But it had backfired. Rather than sending his juniors back into the fight, the man decided to end it himself.
They were either all about to die or to have to call Master. Kang Lin couldn't let either of those things happen without trying to turn things around.
"With all the people at the auction house watching?" she said.
The man's hands clenched tightly around the hilt of his sword. His pride and anger were clearly warring with prudence. The auction house, while not strong enough to be called a faction in its own right, was not weak. They had Golden Core cultivators of their own. They had to just to keep order during auctions.
The man dared not, and maybe could not, destroy all the witnesses. If he personally defeated three Foundation Establishment cultivators when his juniors couldn't, the loss of face would be catastrophic. Kang Lin hoped for all their sakes that he possessed enough wisdom to reign in his arrogance.
He glanced back at his juniors. The one who Yang Ru had launched into a wall was fully healed. That one and the unhurt one were helping the others remove the arrows that were imbedded in their flesh.
All in all, they made a sorry sight, definitely not a group that would inspire either confidence in their allies or fear in their enemies. The main emotions Kang Lin felt toward them were disdain and pity.
The entire group, including the Golden Core cultivator, had brought more scorn upon their sect, and nothing that could possibly occur in that courtyard from that point on would change that. Nor improve it. Further actions were likely only to bring about an even greater loss of face.
From the man's expression, he finally came to realize that fact.
"Do not let me see any of the three of you ever again," he said. "If I do, things will end quite differently."
He practically threw his juniors onto the sled and flew away.
"Hmm," Yang Xiu said, probably before he was even out of earshot. "I think that went well."
Kang Lin at first, naturally, thought the other girl was being facetious. No one in their right mind would think that barely surviving being killed by a cultivator so much higher realmed than them was a good thing. From the expression on Yang Xiu's face, though, she seemed to genuinely have meant what she said.
Incredulous, Kang Lin looked to Yang Ru for help. He just shrugged.
There was nothing for her to do but shake her head.
Kang Lin and the others visited Ma An at the Heavenly Transit Mercantile Association the afternoon after the fight with the Jade Chameleons. The trader, obviously desirous of keeping good relations with the supplier of the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, was quite polite and promised to keep a lookout for any of the materials they desired, but he didn't have any immediate leads.
With the danger of a second attack being non-trivial, the trio had headed back to the sect for the evening and set up an appointment with Grandfather for the following morning. The rest of the evening and night was uneventful, and after breakfasting, they all gathered in the elder's study.
"You three acquitted yourselves, well," Grandfather said before turning to the twins. "I was impressed at how easily you two beat those juniors. They weren't exactly the elite of the sect, but they weren't trash, either. You two made them look like it, though."
The twins each cupped their hands. "Gratitude, Elder."
"Nonsense, you earned the praise." Grandfather eyed Kang Lin. "You did well, too. Though not exactly employing an orthodox strategy, your words caused Fang Changming to retreat without involving himself. And don't think I didn't notice how you, Yang Xiu, backed up my granddaughter." He cupped his hands. "Gratitude."
Yang Xiu shrugged. "She's my sister." She grinned. "Well, almost."
"The Esteemed Elder knows a lot of details about the fight," Yang Ru said. "It almost sounds like you witnessed it."
Kang Lin found the comment to be shocking, not the least of which because of who it came from. Her maybe future intended didn't talk much, but she'd come to learn that his silence hid a quick mind. She just wished he wasn't using it to challenge a man who was not only her grandfather but was also a Golden Core cultivator and an elder of their allied sect.
She never would have dared challenge a senior, much less an elder, in a similar situation. Hopefully, those habits didn't end up getting her talented friends killed.
Her grandfather could have chosen to rebuke Yang Ru or even have him banned from the sect grounds for such an insult, but when Grandfather spoke, he was instead gracious.
"My granddaughter's life was at stake. Do you think I wasn't watching?"
Kang Lin hadn't thought that he was at all. She'd been taught from an early age that sect members learned on their own and lived and died on their own. The best they could expect was, if they perished at the hands of someone outside the sect, for them to be avenged.
That her grandfather had been watching and apparently willing to step in either meant that what she thought she knew was completely wrong or her grandfather cared about her a lot more than she believed he did.
Maybe he and her sect were much more like the Rising Tide Sect than she had believed.
Yang Ru, unbelievably, simply grunted. Kang Lin wanted to rub her glabella and only held off because she didn't what to show a visible sign of her frustration in front of Grandfather.
"Regardless," Grandfather said, "I think the three of you have done all you can for the moment to acquire the materials Chao Su requires. It's probably best if you head back to the Rising Tide Sect."
Kang Lin wasn't really surprised by being included in the direction to return to the village. She was, after all, in charge of the juniors still there. More importantly, she was gaining so much from her master that it would be silly for her to be anywhere else.
The only caveat to that was the possibility of an attack from the Jade Chameleon Sect. If that happened, the destruction would be indiscriminate if the attackers got past the sect leader, meaning her life and the lives of the juniors were in danger just from being there.
She and her grandfather hadn't discussed the matter, but he must have decided that the gains outweighed the risks.
"You all are, of course, welcome to stay here at the sect for as long as you like," Grandfather said, "but the risks of being out in the city are too high. Fang Changming is surely incensed, and you're fair game if he catches you out again. You might be highly talented for your realm, but a large enough number of Foundation Establishment cultivators would overwhelm even you, especially since he'll be sure to include ranged fighters next time."
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"We'll leave, Esteemed Elder," Yang Xiu said.
Kang Lin nodded her agreement. There was no reason to stay any longer. "What is the safest method for us to leave the city?"
"In this case, speed equals safety," Grandfather said. "I've arranged special dispensation from the City Lord for the three of you to fly inside the walls this one time despite the fact that you're still in the Foundation Establishment realm. He was most impressed that you managed the combat with little damage to the surroundings. The auction house didn't even complain about the minor repairs to the wall and trees that they had to effect."
The trio cupped their hands in gratitude one last time, followed by the twins leaving the room to give the two relatives privacy to say their goodbyes.
"Gratitude for all your assistance, Grandfather, and for looking out for me."
"It was my pleasure, Granddaughter. This old man is proud of you. There is danger that comes with your association with Chao Su, but your progress is astounding. If I were you, I would latch yourself to him for as long as he'll have you and hold on tight."
"Of course, Grandfather."
"My belief is not universally held, but I believe that our sect will come out much stronger for our association with him. In my mind, your actions benefit the entire sect, not just yourself."
It was good to hear him say that.
His tone lightened. "I couldn't help but observe that you feel some affection for the young man. If not, he wouldn't have exasperated you so."
Kang Lin felt heat rise to her face.
"I am not your father to arrange a match for you, but he listens to me. My inclination is to advise him to write to Sect Leader Chao Su with haste before someone else places a claim on his star pupils." Grandfather sighed. "But then again, your father is a cautious man. Maybe too cautious. He will probably wait to see how the situation with the Jade Chameleon Sect plays out before being willing to make a move."
Kang Lin agreed with her grandfather about her father's temperament, and she was very glad of that thoughtful nature. While she was somewhat fond of Yang Ru and understood it was her duty to both her family and her sect to find a good match, she couldn't help but be reluctant to take that final step. The longer the situation with the Jade Chameleons took to resolve, the better.
"Understood, Grandfather."
"Take care, little one, or, I guess, not so little one anymore. Seize those opportunities but try to be safe."
It genuinely touched her that Grandfather was showing so much concern. She'd always known she had his favor but not to the extent he showed today.
"I will, Grandfather. If it helps, I truly believe that Master is more protective of his disciples than any cultivator I've seen, especially his favorites. And I appear to be one of his favorites."
"It would help more this old man worry less if one of his favorites hadn't already been killed, but yes, it does ease my concern an iota to know that someone else is looking out for you."
With him expressing those sentiments, there wasn't much more to say, and Kang Lin soon took her leave, joining the twins outside. The three walked to the very edge of the sect branch grounds.
"Ready?" Kang Lin said.
"Ready," Yang Xiu said, speaking, as usual, for both the twins.
"Let's go."
The three pulled their gliders from their respective spatial rings, hopped on, and quickly accelerated to top speed toward the Rising Tide Sect. Their devices were obviously not as fast as a flying sword, but that limitation was why they'd done their best to minimize the time an enemy cultivator would have to prepare for their departure.
Either the surprise factor worked, or the Jade Chameleon Sect wasn't prepared to fight them again because they encountered no resistance in the little less than three and a half hours it took them to reach their destination.
When they arrived, they thought they would need to go to the Administration Hall to report to Master. Instead, they found him working in the area he'd reserved for the main gate. There were all manner of materials strown about—huge piles of small rocks, even bigger piles of large stones, two eighty-foot-long logs, and several big piles of branches.
Master was in a hole that was at least forty feet deep, one of two that marred the grounds at that location, but as soon as the trio landed, he Quickstepped up to the surface.
"Master," each of the three cupped their hands.
"Is there anything we can do to help, Master?" Yang Xiu said.
He looked back at the mess lying around. "No. Not really. This is all stuff you'd need technique to help with. Besides, your time is better spent getting stronger. Your trip to Sixth Flawless Flowing City has probably already been enough of a distraction. Tell me what you found."
Kang Lin stepped forward, told him about Grandfather's contacts for the materials, and handed over the metals.
Master looked them over for a moment. "These should work. You've done well. I'm stoked about the cauldron. I really didn't think you'd be able to even get me a lead on one, and finding three of the materials for trade is a lot better than I had thought you'd accomplish."
Kang Lin let out a relieved sigh and cupped her hands. The twins followed her lead.
"Did you run into any trouble?" Master said.
Yang Xiu caught Kang Lin's eye, and she nodded.
"Five Foundation Establishment cultivators from the Jade Chameleon Sect attacked us," Yang Xiu said, "but they were trash. Yang Ru and I beat them without suffering a scratch."
Master grinned. "Excellent. Sounds like you three did great. I'll have to think of a suitable reward. For now, tell Peng Zhen that you each earned ten thousand Contribution Points."
The twins were much more excited to receive the praise and the promise of a suitable reward than they did the award of so many Contribution Points, but Kang Lin knew much better about how the economies of sects worked. At the moment, those points were only starting to hold value, but as the sect grew, that form of wealth would become as precious as spirit coins.
She was excited about all three.
Benton was pleased with the kids' progress in obtaining the materials he needed for the qi sources, but of the six he wanted to make, he was only somewhat close with Fire. Once he traded five Orange Vigor Spirit Wood kernels for five Fire stones from the Poison Claw Sect elder, he'd have the mineral requirement taken care of, and he already owned a Fire-aspected core from the rank ten Cyclops he'd killed at the end of the beast tide. Combined with the metals his disciples brought back, all he needed was an appropriate plant material to create qi source for Fire.
Still, he had no idea where to find that plant material, and really, the qi sources were more of a long-term project, anyway. He'd keep his eye out for any materials—attending that auction in six weeks sounded like a no-brainer—but for the moment, his priority was to shore up the sect's defenses.
Which was exactly what he was doing.
While the twins and Kang Lin were away, he'd been a busy, busy little sect leader. Every single stick and large stone in the piles near him had been inscribed with either channels or both channels and formations, and he'd dug two large holes and compacted the dirt underneath as densely as his strength and skills would allow. When he hadn't been working on either of those activities, he'd made spirit coins. A lot of spirit coins.
Even with how fast he could inscribe with his superhuman reflexes and techniques at Mastery, there were just so, so many sticks and so, so many stones.
Heh. He'd should be able to break lots of bones.
Anyway, the only way he could finish those tasks and create the thousands of greater spirit coins his towers would need was to use time dilation.
The kids had been gone a little over two days. To him, close to twenty had passed. He'd even had to enclose the tree trunks with his Time Manipulation to finish off their curing after he'd completed his prep work.
Of course, a lot of that work hadn't been the grind of repetitively inscribing the same channels on sticks or the same set of arrays on stone. No, quite a bit of it had been planning and executing his masterwork—the two tree trunks.
They were the core of his entire plan. He was going to armor them, of course, but he expected attacks from Nascent Soul cultivators. Withstanding that kind of force required multiple layers of defense.
The first layer was the natural toughness of a several-foot-thick trunk of Orange Vigor Spirit Wood enhanced by an alchemical process developed by Master Alchemists for just that purpose. Benton, with his peak Golden Core strength combined with his Gold Body Cultivation, could break the log, but it wouldn't have been easy, especially since it maintained its latent flexibility.
On top of that brute toughness, Benton meticulously added arrays for defense. Since the trunks were to be encased tightly in stone, he couldn't add a qi shield, but he could add separate arrays for increasing strength, toughness, and structural integrity as well as one that dispersed any attack that hit the wood to impact a wide area instead of a narrow point.
The logs served two primary purposes. The first was simply to be a strong base foundation for each tower. The second was to transfer qi from the thousands of greater spirit coins that would be located in a secure spot in the ground to where it was needed to power the many formations attached to the trunk.
The key to providing that second use was redundancy. And more redundancy. And once he thought he had enough redundancy, he doubled it. If ten pathways were damaged, dozens more would carry the load. Each point where qi was transferred from the trunk to be delivered to another spot was fed by at least ten channels. And that was for the minor ones. The qi traveling to the main weapon had over a hundred paths it could take.
All that work was behind him, though. The next part was going to be a bit tricky.
Each stick had four qi channels, each running from the base to the tip and separated around the circumference by ninety degrees. Their purpose was simple. Qi traveled up to trunk and through the branch. Which in turn powered whatever array that touched the stick that needed the qi.
Stones were great for inscribing formations on. They were naturally strong against attacks and sturdy enough to handle large quantities of qi without any alchemical treatment needed. Benton had layered each with much the same formations as the main trunk—increased strength, toughness, and structural integrity.
There were two crucial differences, though. First, since some, most, or all of the stones, depending on the circumstances, would at some point be on the exterior of the tower, each stone got a qi shield that activated for any portion of it not touching another piece of rock.
The second added formation made him feel like a freaking genius. The entire purpose of the stones was to protect the main trunk, right? Well, what if, instead of a stone transmitting the energy of an attack to the stone below it and then the stone below that one and so on and so forth until reaching the core layers, the rock absorbed as much energy as it could?
Nice right? A lot of energy that would have gone to destroying the base would instead be wasted. It was an awesome defense.
The final array did just that. Any force of qi impacting the stone would be absorbed by the formation.
There was a minor tiny little flaw, though. If the force was more than the array could handle, the energy had to go somewhere. And he didn't want it transmitted toward the core, right? So he made the array channel all that energy into exploding the rock outward from the tower.
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Okay, so important safety notice—no sect members were allowed anywhere near the towers while under attack.
The end result, though, was thousands of rocks that basically functioned like circuit breakers. A Nascent Soul's attack would destroy dozens at once, but that result was still far better than all that energy being used to damage the core.
The real problem was that he needed to get qi to each of the stones to power the defensive formations. Hence, the sticks.
So the next step in the process of constructing the tower was to sink one of the ninety-foot-tall logs vertically ten-feet deep into the bottom of one of the forty-foot holes he'd dug. That was enough to keep it standing while he worked on it, drilling small holes into the trunk, attaching a branch, and adhering the two together with a small, quick formation.
Easy peasy. Except that he had a lot of sticks to attach. And each had to be precisely placed where he'd joined a nexus of at least ten channels on the main trunk. And he had to be careful to place the longer branches on the bottom. And then he had to do the entire thing all over again with the next log.
One good thing was that only the forty feet of the log that stuck out above the hole had branches attached, so really, he was doing less than half of each long. Still, just that task took him the entire rest of the day and into the night.
The next stage was less tedious but still fairly time consuming due to the amount of concentration required to manipulate so many techniques at once. It involved making the base as stable as he could possibly think of how to make it.
If one had ever pushed a stick into the dirt and pressed against the top, one knew that the stick would simply topple right over, pushing up through the dirt that buried it. The solution to that problem was to bury the stick really deep.
Easy enough except when one had to plan for defending against Nascent Soul cultivators. The amount of strength one of those could bring to bear was enormous. Simply unimaginable. No matter how deeply Benton buried the log, one of them could either just topple it or pull it out.
That vulnerability was unacceptable.
In a move that he fervently hoped was way overdesigning, he wanted to coat the portion of the log in the hole in a cone of molten lava, which, when cooled into igneous rock, would provide quite the ballast. Before he'd inscribed the formations on the trunk, he'd scored the entire bottom half with thousands of small indentations. The goal was for the lava to seep into those cuts and harden, essentially creating a bond between rock and wood.
The process of actually accomplishing that feat was not easy, however. First, he had to melt the pebbles to form lava. Next, he used his Mastery of Telekinetic Push to move the lava where it needed to go to flow down over the wood.
Of course, therein arose an issue. Lava was hot. Really hot. Wood, even supernaturally strong spirit wood that was alchemically treated, burned. The two coming into contact with each other would normally be a Bad Thing.
Benton had to manually make sure the combination was not a bad thing. While still controlling the lava flow with telekinesis, he used Dual Focus and Extreme Area Temperature Manipulation to keep the lava flowing and the wood from burning. Which was not easy. Not easy at all.
Once the trunk was fully coated with a thick layer from the bottom up, the job grew much easier. The cooled igneous rock insulated the trunk from burning, so all he had to do was heap more and more lava onto the base until he got the huge hulking mass that he desired.
A final touch was to inscribe a formation around the circumference of the rock base that increased the Gravity pulling on it. Benton didn't know how strong a Nascent Soul cultivator was in comparison to him, but even with his Body Cultivation, he couldn't budge the log with its giant ballast.
Satisfied that he'd done all he could, he repeated the process for the second tower.
It was nearly noon the next day before he finished.
The third step, at least, was truly easy. He simply had to cover what remained of the hole with dirt and compact it. No problem. That was the work of less than an hour.
The fourth step was the most time consuming of them all—placing the stones. Each had to fit perfectly, from aligning with the stones around it in a structurally sound manner to contacting with at least one branch so that its defensive formations could draw the qi they needed. Even more time consuming was that it was impossible to simply line up the arrays of the individual rock with the channel on the stick. Instead, he had to inscribe a new channel on the stone from a linking point in the arrays to the qi source.
Finally, in lieu of using some form of weak mortar to hold the rocks together, he created a binding formation for each stone at each point where it contacted another one. There were a lot of points of contact. A lot.
Repeating that entire procedure thousands of times took hours and hours. More than a day and a half had passed by the time he finished. And he'd never been so glad to have been complete with a task in his life.
The only thing that got him through the tedium was looking forward to the next task. Benton Quickstepped to the Blacksmith Pavilion.
"Are they finished?" he said.
Xun Wu didn't so much as flinch at the interruption. "Right over there, Sect Leader."
After Quickstepping across the room, Benton examined two massive pieces of forged iron. Turrets. And they were both perfect. Exactly what he'd wanted. He'd forgive the blacksmith for not being entertaining since he did such excellent work.
Benton cupped his hands. "Gratitude."
Not waiting for a reply, he Quickstepped back to the future gate area. The turrets were not quite finished as he still had to do his part, inscribing. They got the same defensive formations as the wood and the stones as well as a qi shield. Additionally, a set of three metal bars extruding from each of the cardinal directions got formations that made them capable of firing pure elemental qi of any of the five primary elements.
The fourth and final bar for each set of rods was much longer and was hollow to boot. And he bet that those would take more time to inscribe than all the other work on the turrets put together.
Benton needed something that one might reasonably think would provide a danger to a Nascent Soul cultivator. But what? After all, their auras dampened the effectiveness of any qi attacks launched at them. Of any qi use at all anywhere near them. So how did one overcome that defense?
His great idea was to not use a qi attack. What if, instead, he could use a small amount of qi to launch something at immense speed? If the object were dense enough and struck with enough velocity, the force created might even be enough to make a Nascent Soul feel it.
Obviously, what Benton needed was a railgun.
One minor problem—he'd been a middle manager back on Earth. He had some peripheral knowledge of engineering involved in construction just from running a few projects involving building campuses for his corporation, but the company did nothing with military contracts. Other than knowing about the existence of railguns, he couldn't tell you how to make one to save his life.
Had he discovered the fatal flaw in his plan?
Benton was just about ready to install the turrets on his two towers, but there was a problem. His plan was to have four separate weapon arrays located in four groups dispersed equally around the circumference, the idea being that when one set was damaged or destroyed, the turret would rotate the next set to engage the target.
Three of the four weapon arrays were simple affairs, each blasting an enemy with a burst of pure elemental qi. Honestly, they weren't all that impressive unless the enemies were Foundation Establishment and below. A Golden Core's shield would shrug off the attacks as nothing more dangerous that a mosquito bite.
The fourth array was supposed to make up for the lack by providing a weapon that might be considered strong enough to at least make a Nascent Soul hesitate. Maybe. If they didn't have enough defensive techniques to deflect a purely mortal slug of metal hurtling toward them at supersonic speeds.
Hey, it could happen.
Basically, Benton was trying to build a railgun, but he had little to no idea how to do it. And the System was no help when it came to technology. The Shop wouldn't let him purchase any weapon not common to the medieval level of development that was characteristic of his new world, and neither could he buy the direct knowledge of how to build a railgun or laser or any other type of modern weaponry.
In the case of transplanting technology from Earth, the System helped he who helped himself. From vague recollections from scifi novels, Benton knew that a railgun used electricity to create magnets or something, and those magnets somehow accelerated a munition to really high speeds. Which wasn't exactly all he needed to know to build one.
His memory, however, did give him all the clues he needed to make the System provide him with the knowledge he required.
First, the System absolutely would not provide him with any information about electricity, but since Lightning was a naturally occurring type of electricity and a secondary qi element, it had no qualms about selling him Mastery of knowledge of that element for four Sect Points. The technique didn't tell him how to create a motor or anything like that, but that lack was okay. He didn't need a turbine or whatever was used to create electricity on Earth. A Lightning spirit coin provided the exact source he needed. Neither did he need copper wire as his inscribed channels performed that function.
Magnetism was even easier. Since it was also a natural phenomenon and, it turned out, also a secondary qi element, the System easily let him buy knowledge of it and, once he'd determined exactly what he needed, a Concept as well.
It turned out the device was actually pretty simply, though he had to scrap the hollow metal tube he'd had Xun Wu make since iron wasn't nearly as conductive as he needed it to be. Instead, Benton used two ingots of one of the metals the kids had brought back from Sixth Flawless Flowing City to construct two rails and another tube, all five feet long. Importantly, he placed the two conductive strips parallel but opposite each other such that the positive end of one corresponded to the placement of the negative end of the other. The tube went between the two strips. A projectile, a large chunk of a different, more dense, conductive metal, was positioned at the start inside the tube.
The Lightning qi ran up one strip, through the tube, and back down the other strip, creating a circuit. The Lightning running through the metal created a magnetic field which created a force that pushed the projectile. More qi meant a faster and, thus, more powerful attack.
When Benton tested it, there was a loud crack of lightning, followed by a boom as the projectile broke the speed of sound. All in all, the display was pretty darn impressive. If a spy were watching, that spy might reasonably believe that Benton expected his railgun to be able to hurt a Nascent Soul cultivator.
The spy would, of course, be wrong, but he couldn't be blamed for believing Benton's deliberate campaign of false information.
With the decoy main weapon figured out, Benton finished up the two turrets and installed them on the top of their respective towers. By the time he was done, it was mid-morning, and he was fairly satisfied with his progress. The wall would be ready for installation the next day, giving him well over twenty hours to complete his construction of a trap and the actual main weapon.
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Honestly, the railgun was the best attack that Benton could come up with on his own. If he was very fortunate, a Nascent Soul who was caught off guard might be hit once by a projectile, but it definitely wouldn't cause enough damage to kill one of them. Which wasn't nearly good enough. Benton needed something that was guaranteed to kill one.
Luckily, he was a cheating cheater who cheats. He purchased a template for a very powerful variable qi element beam that the System assured him would blow through a Nascent Soul like a BB through a paper target.
The problem was the eye-watering cost. The two schematics, one for a trap and one for the weapon, cost a combined two hundred fifty Shop Points. He only had three hundred sixty total, and the sole reason the number he had was that high was because he behaved like a miser, buying only what was absolutely necessary.
Needs must, though. The formation was crucial for defending his sect members, and they were more important than an infinite number of Shop Points. Grimacing while he did it, he pulled the trigger on the purchase, bringing him down to one hundred ten points.
As he had expected, the Primary Array Weapon was quite complex and required a lot of qi, over five million per shot. That meant a single shot required a minimum of five hundred greater spirit coins, which took him around two and a half hours' worth of work to create. Again, that was for a single shot. One.
He prayed to the heavens that he never missed because that enormous expenditure for nothing would probably make him cry.
Luckily, he'd been prepared to deliver that much qi or even more, and he'd left a spot near the top of the tower to install the formation. Unlike the very visible and inviting target that was the turret, the PAW was hidden, the area where it was installed looking exactly like the stones that surrounded it in every way because it was actually underneath several of the stones.
Of course, the concealment had to be ejected out of the way simultaneously with the activation of the PAW, meaning the weapon would become a target after the first time it was fired. And it wasn't mobile, either. The PAW on each tower was aimed to hit one place, a point near where the hidden trap was to hold the target stationary.
For his plan to work, the Nascent Soul would have to be forced in the vicinity of the trap, fall victim to it, and the PAWs be triggered in the very brief moment of time before the cultivator broke out of the hold.
Benton had confidence that he could handle a single Nascent Soul cultivator in a one-on-one fight. A scenario involving multiple enemies in that realm grew trickier. He figured, though, that he'd be able to manage all the necessary conditions to set up the PAW to kill at least one of them.
The first part would be the most difficult—getting one of the enemy cultivators to the spot where the trap would activate. Either trickery or force would be required. After that step, the rest should be easy. He could remotely trigger the trap, which would be connected to the PAWs so that the activation of both was simultaneous.
Basically, slam the Nascent Soul with an attack to force them to the correct location and activate a remote device that triggered both the trap and both PAWs simultaneously. A big beam that essentially ignored aura would lance out and disintegrate most of the target's body.
Perfect.
If Benton was absent from the sect, however, and one of the sect members was forced to use the towers for defense against a Nascent Soul… Well, there was some chance they could manage that first critical step. A tiny, miniscule, almost infinitesimal chance, but a chance. And that was better than nothing.
Inscribing the PAWs and the trap took the rest of the day and into the night, but once finished, he was left with only one task—installing and concealing the power sources. Wanting to start with as many spirit coins as possible, he used his Time Manipulation for several hours, creating a lot more of them.
When done, he tunneled underneath the towers using his excavation technique, installed the source, surrounded it with concealment arrays to hide the massive amount of buried qi, and filled the tunnels back up with dirt. No one but him would be able to replenish the source when it ran out, but that was okay. The extra security made the inconvenience worth it.
Finally, the towers were complete, making him feel a lot better about the defense of his sect. By that time, the wall pieces were ready, so he began the long process of digging footings, installing the prebuilt sections, and connecting them together.
His superhuman strength, speed, and endurance combined with techniques that would have been the equivalent of magic on Earth allowed him to enclose the entire five acres of the sect in under a day. Even with that major accomplishment done, he didn't let up. He had no way of knowing if an attack was imminent, so he would not let himself rest until the sect's Grand Defensive Formation was complete as well.
Unlike the construction of the wall, the GDF was not simple. First, there were nearly two thousand linear feet of surface that had to be covered, and unlike with the one he did for the village, he was not inscribing a simple array to keep out one type of threat. No, the GDF was a complex interwoven set of formations that was both more versatile and more powerful than the one he'd used for the beast tide.
By the time he'd finished, a whopping ten days had passed, but with the combination of the two towers and the GDF, he felt he actually had a chance of defending his sect from an attack by multiple Nascent Soul enemies.
Sun Hua had settled into her role as the sect leader's head administrative assistant, relishing the purpose the position had brought to her life. The whole situation was quite unbelievable, really. Before the founding of the sect, she'd given up hope of ever being more than a spinster who performed odd jobs around the village.
Since the founding, not only was she quite gainfully employed and using all the skills Mother had taught her, but her work mattered. She helped keep the sect running happily and efficiently. It was she who organized the move-in and she who resolved minor annoyances the members had so that those complaints never reached the sect leader's ears.
Of course, the former villagers who were now sect members were all on their absolute best behavior. Their new status as cultivators was quite the upgrade from their previous mundane lives, especially given that they'd basically been locked inside the village walls for several years with no hope of escape while facing starvation.
Despite a vague threat from a rival sect, everyone was optimistic about the future. Their personal power was improving seemingly by the day, and they trusted the sect leader to take care of any enemy who dared to attack. No one wanted to risk drawing the sect leader's ire by being anything less that the picture of a perfect sect member.
Thus, the main problems she had to deal with were minor things such as issues with arrays in the houses and pavilions. The sect leader had warned everyone that he had not personally built the houses and, for the most part, had not inscribed the arrays. Though he'd given everything a once over to ensure basic functionality and safety, he told them to expect malfunctions due to degradation from age.
Everyone was supposed to report any issue no matter how small. His plan was to use the repairs to teach the members of the Formations Pavilion how to perform maintenance.
To that end, Sun Hua was given instructions to evaluate the severity of each reported problem. If it didn't have an impact on the "standard of living" of the occupants and didn't represent a "safety hazard," she was to note the issue on a "punchlist." Anything that was major or seemed dangerous, she was to bring to him immediately.
Luckily, she had deemed everything registered thus far to be of trivial concern. Which was really fortunate because the sect leader was busy with a project. The entire sect was abuzz with speculation on what he was doing since his work was outside in plain view where the main gate was to eventually be placed.
With him being so obviously consumed by the project, she definitely didn't want to bother him unless she could not avoid it.
The day after Senior Brother, Senior Sister, and Esteemed Kang Lin left on their gliders to go to Sixth Flawless Flowing City, though, a problem occurred that required the sect leader's attention. The previously perfect behavior of the villagers turned sect members experienced a disruption.
Two young men notorious for being rivals got in a fistfight. Not in the arena or in the Martial Pavilion or any other location where such activities would be proper. No, they fought in the cafeteria.
One of them threw the other onto the buffet, ruining a great deal of food and causing actual damage. Two of the arrays that kept pans warm were broken. A portion of the buffet was cracked. Several serving dishes were destroyed.
Everyone was on edge waiting to find out what the sect leader would do about it. Would he execute both boys? Or maybe just the one most at fault? Cripple their cultivation? Kick them out of the sect? Imprison them?
Rumors and speculation ran rampant.
By dinnertime, complaints arose as the cafeteria's capacity to keep the buffet hot was cut in half, meaning a lot of people had to eat cold food. There were murmurs and complaints, mostly directed toward the two idiots.
Sun Hua well knew, however, that such sentiment could find a new target quickly enough if something wasn't done.
The sect leader, as far as anyone could tell, was too busy to pay much attention to any of the commotion as he was hard at work. Someone had to tell him, and that someone was Sun Hua.
Unfortunately, she hadn't yet gotten over how intimidated she felt in his presence. Her feelings were somewhat understandable. He was, by far, the most powerful person anyone in the village had met in their lives. On the other hand, he had a reputation for being one of the nicest people anyone had ever met as well.
But it wasn't like she was scared he would annihilate her with a blast of qi if she displeased him or anything. She was more worried that, if she made a big enough mistake or too many of them, he'd fire her. After all, her position was important. He needed someone competent. And though she hoped she was the best person for the job, she couldn't bring herself to be confident that she actually was.
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She usually ended up making herself so nervous thinking about how many things she could do wrong when she talked to him that she became much more likely to mess up. And the situation grew worse the longer she had to think about facing him.
The walk to where the sect leader was working was dreadful. Sun Hua tried to go over the important details in her head to keep her mind off the prospect of being demoted. Two idiots got into a fight. The cafeteria was damaged. They need to be punished. The sect members are on edge waiting to see how he will react.
Clear. Concise. Logical.
When she finally arrived, he was at the bottom of a large pit doing something to the dirt on the bottom. She, of course, did not interrupt him but instead waited for him to notice her presence.
After about fifteen minutes, he drifted up to her.
Hanging in the air in the middle of the hole, he said, "Sun Hua, I'm glad you came by. I meant to inform you that I would be consumed with this project for at least the next couple of weeks. Unless there is a dire emergency, I need to not be disturbed."
She immediately cupped her hands. "Yes, Sect Leader."
Apparently, he took her words as her not needing any further information because he immediately started drifting back toward the bottom of the hole. Which was the exact opposite of the truth. She needed direction on what to do while he was indisposed.
Should she try to gain his attention, or should she simply leave? What a disaster!
She couldn't just let him go without giving her any guidance at all. The sect members needed her to find out how to handle those two idiots.
Screwing up all her courage, she called, "Sect Leader! Who is in charge while you're busy?"
The mayor was clearly in charge of the village, and each pavilion had its own leader. But with Senior Sister and Senior Brother away, there was no one designated to be in charge of the entire sect.
The sect leader had already sunk far enough into the hole to be out of her sight, and she heard him laugh.
"You are!" he yelled.
Her eyes went wide. He couldn't be serious. She hoped that he wasn't serious. In her heart, though, she knew that he was.
She couldn't be in charge. What if a real problem came up? How could she possibly take responsibility for the decisions? Even with the issue of the two idiots, she couldn't bear the thought of everyone knowing their punishment came from her.
Sun Hua stood there not too far from the edge of the hole, stunned, for quite some time, processing what had just happened. On one hand, it was a complete disaster. She did not feel in any way qualified to make decisions that affected the entire sect. On the other hand, Mother would be proud when she found out. Really proud. Her daughter had just become one of the most important people in the village. Maybe even in more than just the village. The entire region.
Ugh. Mother would definitely try to gain any advantage she could from Sun Hua's influence. Settling old scores. Gaining material benefits.
Sun Hua was much more worried about performing her job competently. Mother's teaching had actually covered what to do in a similar situation. The assistant was supposed to pay close attention to her employer's decision-making process so that she could anticipate those choices. Then, if left to fill in for the employer, she could, to some degree, replicate the employer's thinking and thus be praised as a model employee.
The problem was that Sun Hua hadn't been the sect leader's assistant for nearly long enough to learn anything about the what and why of his choices. Not only that, but even if she'd been in the position for years, the sect leader was unfathomable. His age and level of power made his sensibilities simply beyond her understanding.
She could never replicate his decisions. Her only hope was that Senior Sister and Senior Brother returned before she had to commit to any action.
It was already close to evening when the sect leader put Sun Hua in charge of the sect, so she was able to put off any ruling in the case of the two idiots until the morrow. And of course, she spent a sleepless night worrying over it.
The murmurs grew louder the next morning, so she had to do something. She announced that the sect leader had put her in charge of the sect while he was otherwise engaged.
To say that the sect members and the villagers were shocked was an understatement. The announcement, at least, gave her leave to delay acting a little while longer.
Then, miracle of miracles, Senior Sister, Senior Brother, and Esteemed Kang Lin arrived back at the sect in the late morning. Senior Sister had taken over running the sect during the aftermath of the beast tide, even going so far as to appoint a new guard captain. She or one of the others could decide how to punish the two idiots.
Sun Hua was saved!
The trio immediately reported to the sect leader on arrival and, after, departed to the Marial Pavilion. Sun Hua found them there.
After greetings were exchanged, she got right to the problem, explaining in detail what had happened with the two idiots getting into a fight, the damage that had been done, and the desire of the other sect members to see them punished.
"What did Master advise?" Senior Sister said.
Sun Hua had honestly expected to hear an order telling her what to do, not the question she'd actually received, so an honest answer tumbled from her mouth before she had a chance to hone it into a more advantageous message. "The sect leader told me that I was in charge."
The three looked at each other. There were some smiles and some nods.
"The ways of our seniors are somethings unfathomable to us juniors," Kang Lin said. "Sometimes they order us to do something we feel incapable of doing. It's possible that he believes you are capable of performing this task. It may be a test to see how you perform. It may be a way of him challenging you to hopefully propel you to new personal heights. Regardless, if it is Master's desire that you be in charge, it is not for any of us to usurp that decision."
Put that way, Sun Hua immediately saw the wisdom in the answer. The sect leader had put her in charge, and his command was absolute. For better or for worse, she had to lead the sect until he said otherwise.
Her heart sunk into her stomach. She was not qualified for such a task. At all. She or the sect or both were doomed.
After finishing the Rising Tide Sect's Grand Defensive Formation, Benton took a break. In the sixteen days since the twins and Kang Lin had returned from Sixth Flawless Flowing City, he'd been working nonstop, first to complete the towers, then to construct the wall, and finally on the massive qi shield. When he had a moment to spare, he activated Time Manipulation and created spirit coins.
Even before the period before starting the defensive measures had been busy for Benton as he'd prepared the sect grounds for move-in. Despite his supernatural stamina, constant work that involved intense concentration wore on him. He was tired and needed to relax. For that entire night, he did nothing but read and sleep and just chill.
The next morning, he Quickstepped down to the second floor of the Administration Hall, finding Sun Hua at her desk.
"Greetings, Sect Leader," she said, cupping her hands.
He graced her with a warm smile. "The sect is still standing. I don't hear any peasants with pitchforks and torches storming the building searching for either of us. I take it things went well during the period you were in charge?"
"This lowly assistant believes the sect members progressed adequately while the sect leader was otherwise occupied."
He laughed. "Good. Anything important that I need to know?"
She presented him with a stack of paper. "Reports of all my activities, Sect Leader."
Benton looked at the thick stack. Each page seemed to be filled with tightly written characters. He didn't know how she found time to do anything other than write while he'd been preparing the sect's defensives. "This is quite the amount of information."
"I'll summarize, Sect Leader. The first ten pages are a list of arrays that have demonstrated some form of error or malfunction. The location and type of each formation is noted along with time and date of witnessed errors and a detailed description of the problem. None were deemed important enough to address immediately, though it would be appreciated if fixing the heating array in the cafeteria is made a priority when repairs are effected."
Benton perused the list. It was quite extensive and very thorough. It was also just what he needed to start teaching the member of the Formation Pavilion how to do repairs. He'd begin that task later if nothing more important drew his attention.
"Your note indicates the cafeteria array was damaged in lieu of simply malfunctioning?" he said.
Sun Hua described a fist fight between two teenage boys that had resulted in a bit of chaos.
Benton sighed. "I suppose they need to be punished."
"Already taken care of, Sect Leader. This lowly assistant created a Punishment Pavilion, temporarily of course, pending your final approval. Senior Sister picked out five promising spear users to serve as enforcers."
"I see, and who did you pick as the leader?"
"That choice was difficult, Sect Leader," Sun Hua said. "The most qualified potential applicants were the sect members leading the other pavilions, but Assistant did not deem the job important enough to pull someone from a critical position. The mayor, of course, would have been a perfect choice, but he has the important mission of keeping the village running smoothly, meaning this lowly assistant could not ask him. In the end, this lowly assistant had to, as the Sect Leader would say, think outside the box."
"Really, how outside the box?"
"Please understand that there were no other sect members that Assistant felt were suited to the position, Sect Leader. The person chosen had to be someone who possessed either great cultivation strength or a strength of will so powerful that others naturally bended to her. Since all the strongest cultivators who were at all suitable for the position had other, more important, duties, Assistant chose someone with the attributes of the latter."
Benton began to get worried. He wasn't very dialed in to the various personalities of the villagers, but he'd heard stories about Sun Hua's mother. The woman did not sound like someone he wanted on his council.
"This lowly assistant begs forgiveness, Sect Leader, but the interim leader of the Punishment Pavilion is Mo Nuying, a mortal." Sun Hua dropped to her knees and kowtowed. "Please forgive this lowly assistant if that decision has brought shame upon the sect!"
He'd mainly been worried about the girl choosing her mother. Selecting a mortal was no big thing, though he needed to get to know the woman, Mo Nuying. She must be quite the character to have impressed Sun Hua so.
"Rise, Sun Hua. Anyone can become a member of this sect easily enough. The much more important piece of the puzzle is choosing someone who is right for the job," Benton said. "Creating a Punishment Pavilion was an inspired idea. Well done! And I will withhold judgement on your selection until I meet her and see her at work, but regardless, you will not be punished if I decide to pick someone else instead."
Slowly the girl rose to her feet and cupped her hands. "Gratitude, Sect Leader."
"No, Sun Hua." Benton cupped his hands. "Gratitude to you for taking care of things while I was busy. Is there anything else that I need to know?"
For the next half hour, she filled him in on the various minutia she had handled while he was building the defenses, gaining confidence with each decision he praised her for.
"Again, well done!" he said after she'd completed her report. "The next time I call for a council meeting, we'll need to add two more members. The first, obviously, is Mo Nuying."
"Of course, Sect Leader. Assistant will make a note so that the inclusion is not forgotten. Who is the second addition?"
"Sun Hua," he said.
"Yes, Sect Leader?"
Benton grinned. "You misunderstood. I wasn't calling your name. I was telling you the name of the second addition—Sun Hua."
"Apologies, Sect Leader. Assistant was not aware of a sect member that shared that name." The poor girl looked so confused.
He barely held back a chuckle. "Sun Hua, you are the second new member of the council."
"Oh. Oh!" She cupped her hands. "Gratitude, Sect Leader."
"You earned it. Good job." He so much wanted to affectionately tousle her hair, but the young woman was in her twenties. Even if he had been the immortal that everyone thought him to be, he didn't think he could get by with such an act. Pity.
With that bit of business out of the way, Benton reviewed his gains for the past twenty days and, boy, were there a lot of them.
From Body Cultivation alone, he added one hundred forty points, and those advances reminded him of something important. Due to not wanting to distract Wan Ai from learning pill making, he'd never started the twins on their regimen for Silver. Given that she'd finally been successful in creating one and had then practiced for weeks since, he felt fine with giving her a new task. He made a mental note to pop on over there soon and give her a jade slip for each of the two new baths.
The biggest surprise from his notifications were the addition of seventy-five new sect members. Someone, probably either Sun Hua or the mayor had noted that the two-week time period for a new induction were upon them and went ahead with it. Benton couldn't help but wonder who had conducted the ceremony. And since he'd gotten points, someone must have distributed cultivation methods.
No one in the sect was had spiritual senses like his that could detect talent and qi aspect, so they'd probably just given everyone the basic method that everyone could use. He'd have to check and make sure the newbies had all been given ones appropriate for them. For all he knew, he could have missed a talented genius who deserved an individual method.
Benton also noted that Mo Nuying's name was included on the list. Good. That was one less thing that he had to remember to do.
One expected name was not listing in any of his notifications, though. While someone had been on their toes regarding inducting the new villagers, the same did not go for authorizing the beast core necessary to advance the wolf pup and Jin LiJuan. Benton would also have to check on her soon.
Besides the seventy-five Sect Points he received for the newbies reaching minor realm one, a lot of other movements within Qi Gathering gained him points. The previous set of inductees reached the second minor realm, awarding him another seventy-five. The branch members in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town and the fourth set of recruits from the village all made it to minor realm three for a whopping two hundred forty-five points. The first set of fifty villagers he'd inducted advanced to minor realm five, giving him yet another fifty points. And finally, and despite the numbers being paltry in comparison, came the notification that made him most happy, both Shi Long and Zou Tian hit minor realm seven. He had comparatively few members reaching the higher minor realms, but each time one advanced so far it was them getting just a little bit closer to Foundation Establishment. Benton couldn't wait to get all his sect members to that realm.
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All told, Spiritual Cultivation gained him four hundred forty-seven points. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Mind and Soul Cultivation finally started paying dividends with his sect members reaching the respective second minor realms in their chosen path—one hundred three for the former and one hundred fifty-nine from the latter.
As usual, techniques weren't quite as lucrative as his other methods for getting points, but Benton wasn't going to complain. With the secret that persevering in the trials was the key to success, no one else failed, and he gained twenty from the pagoda. The original village inductees also started having more success with advancing their techniques, and they, along with a few others, added another sixty-one points.
All told, his sect members' diligence in practicing their skills earned him eighty-one points.
Adding all those subtotals gave him a grand total of a whopping nine hundred thirty points. Not as the total he had available. As the total he'd gained in twenty days.
Amazing.
As Benton was wont to do without really even thinking about it, he pulsed his spiritual sense, searching for any dangers, and unlike normal, he found something. Cultivators. Two of them approaching rapidly.
On the plus side, they were only in the Golden Core realm, so he wasn't too worried about it being an attack. If they were stupid enough to have hostile intent, they were going to be really surprised to find both his Grand Defensive Formation and the two towers operational.
He estimated he had at least a minute or two before they reached the sect grounds, more than enough time to check his status.
Sect Name:
Rising Tide
Sect Members:
612
Disciples:
56
Sect Points:
2074
Shop Points:
185
Host Cultivation:
Golden Core - Minor Realm Nine
Qi Available:
5,647,745
Host Body Cultivation:
Gold - Minor Realm Nine
Host Mind Cultivation:
Myriad - Minor Realm Nine
Host Soul Cultivation:
Fulfillment - Minor Realm Nine
Host Techniques (Qi Gathering):
Basic Archery – Mastery
Basic Spear Combat – Mastery
Expert Golden Core Cultivation – Mastery
General Knowledge of Mind Cultivation – Mastery
General Knowledge of Soul Cultivation – Mastery
Knowledge of Beast Binding - Mastery
Knowledge of Glassmaking - Mastery
Knowledge of Lightning - Mastery
Knowledge of Origin Qi - Mastery
Knowledge of Origin Qi Manipulation - Mastery
Knowledge of Magnetism - Mastery
Knowledge of Qi Sources - Mastery
Knowledge of Rank 1 Formations – Mastery
Knowledge of Rank 2 Formations – Mastery
Knowledge of Rank 3 Formations – Mastery
Nascent Soul Cultivation Knowledge – Mastery
Pill Basics – Mastery
Host Techniques (Foundation Establishment):
Absolute Speed Enhancement - Mastery
Analysis – Mastery
Aura Defense - Mastery
Automatic Reaction Variable Shield – Mastery
Blacksmithing - Mastery
Chain Lightning – Mastery
Folded Space Quickstep – Mastery
Extreme Area Temperature Manipulation – Mastery
Foundation Excavation - Mastery
Glass Creation - Mastery
Healing – Mastery
Hydro Blast - Mastery
Illusion Detection and Mitigation - Mastery
Illusion Illumination - Mastery
Imbuing - Mastery
Layered Variable Shield Breaker with Void Finisher Weapon Augmentation – Mastery
Meditation – Mastery
Origin Qi Manipulation - Mastery
Pause Time – Mastery
Perception – Mastery
Power of the Heavens - Mastery
Rank 1 Formation Construction – Mastery
Rank 2 Formation Construction – Mastery
Rank 3 Formation Construction – Mastery
Rank 1 Formation Construction Acceleration – Mastery
Rank 2 Formation Construction Acceleration – Mastery
Rank 3 Formation Construction Acceleration – Mastery
Rank 1 Inscription – Mastery
Rank 2 Inscription – Mastery
Rank 3 Inscription – Mastery
Seeking Speeding Arrow – Mastery
Space Dragon Origami Messenger - Mastery
Stealth – Mastery
Stone Shaping and Construction - Mastery
Teleportation - Mastery
Variable AoE Gravity Burst – Mastery
Variable AoE Shield – Mastery
Variable Spirit Coin Manifestation – Mastery
Voice Amplification - Mastery
Host Techniques (Golden Core Concepts):
Anti-Tribulation - Mastery
Earth - Mastery
Fire - Mastery
Gluttony - Mastery
Gravity - Mastery
Healing - Mastery
Ice - Mastery
Illusion - Mastery
Light - Mastery
Lightning - Mastery
Metal - Mastery
Magnetism - Mastery
Momentum - Mastery
Nature - Mastery
Origin Qi - Mastery
Poison - Mastery
Shadow - Mastery
Smell - Mastery
Sound - Mastery
Soul - Mastery
Space - Mastery
Temperature - Mastery
Time - Mastery
Tribulation Lightning - Mastery
Void - Mastery
Water - Mastery
Wood - Mastery
Host Mind Techniques (Myriad):
Dual Focus – Mastery
Inflict Fear – Mastery
Mind Crush – Mastery
Mind Stun – Mastery
Telekinetic Push – Mastery
Menus:
[Cultivation Method]
[Technique]
[Quest]
[Perk]
[Advancement]
[Shop]
[Sect]