The mont of silence marked the end of Ye Zan’s morial service, but with the entire sect present, Benton needed to take a few monts to conduct business. Which wasn’t exactly an ideal scenario, definitely sothing he wouldn’t have even considered back on Earth.
That understanding made the transition from the ceremony to other matters more than a little awkward. How was he supposed to begin, “Since I have you here…”?
Ugh.
“The creation of the Hall of Heroes was the last step in making the sect main grounds move-in ready,” Benton said finally.
That segue wasn’t exactly a good one, but at least it sowhat tied what he’d been talking about to what he wanted to bring up in a halfway coherent manner.
“Obviously, the grounds are by no ans finished,” Benton continued. “A huge priority is to get a wall built around the entire central area, including the pavilions and residences.”
The lack of beasts made danger of that sort of attack minimal, but the threat from rival cultivators lood large. A permanent structure such as the wall constructed from a qi rich material like the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood made it the perfect conduit for formations. Benton was desperate to get that barrier finished and tie multiple defenses into a grand array that would hold off, for a ti at least, even a Nascent Soul cultivator.
“The minimum crucial installations are complete, however.” Benton said. “All the pavilions have a building dedicated to that specific purpose, and there is enough residential capacity for over three hundred people. My expectation for you is that most sect mbers move into one of the residences starting within the next several days. Mayor Mo Jian may choose to remain in the village at his discretion, and Lord Fatty Ren, the leader of the new Rising Tide Sect branch in Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town, will continue to remain in residence there along with his recruits. Otherwise, unless you receive direct dispensation from , you are expected to relocate.
“Council mbers should find housing today and explore their pavilion tomorrow. The arrays in the buildings are complex. You will need guidance to understand all the functionality. Please schedule ti with tomorrow so I can provide that guidance.
“Regarding housing, the tallest apartnt building is reserved for Mistress Zhong, the kids currently living in her orphanage, and any other resident she sees fit to allow to live there. All other housing will be assigned upon request based on a priority list. The order of that list goes by mbership in the council, highest cultivation realm, longest ti in the sect, and highest age. Thus, if two sect mbers who are not part of the council and who were inducted at the sa ti and are in the sa minor realm want the sa dwelling, the oldest one will be given priority. If the two happen to be twins, figure it out.
“The morning of the day after tomorrow, the housing not assigned to council mbers will beco available for assignnt. Tour the residential neighborhood and create a list of dwellings that interest you ranked in order of preference. Before noon, you need to submit that list to sect administration.
“My two assistants, Sun Hua and Xu Gang, can be found on the second floor of the Administration Pavilion. They will handle assigning housing based on the priority list and the submitted requests.” Benton eyed each of the two young ladies. “I apologize for not consulting with you first and will provide you a list of dwellings and a list of sect mbers sorted nurically in the order I ntioned. I trust the two of you will be able to handle the rest?”
Truthfully, he’d horribly underutilized the two assistants the mayor had long ago assigned to him. Basically, beyond introducing himself and telling them to cultivate, he hadn’t given them much to do at all. Now that everyone was moving onto the main sect grounds, he expected their role to beco much more important.
Sun Hua imdiately cupped her hands, seemingly happy to be addressed. Xu Gang only followed along after noting what Sun Hua had done.
“Finally,” Benton said, “I just want to say that I’ve been very pleased by everyone’s diligence and progress so far. Great job everyone. There are, however, two resources that are currently being underutilized—Soul Cultivation and Mind Cultivation.”
Most people in the crowd stared at him blankly.
“Every sect has access to Spiritual Cultivation, and a lot of them practice Body Cultivation to so degree. Almost no one cultivates the mind, though, and even fewer have access to Soul Cultivation thods. These two types of cultivation give the Rising Tide Sect an advantage that no one else can match, and we’re not utilizing them enough.
“While neither provides the pure physical benefits and power of Spiritual and Body Cultivation, both convey plenty of advantages. Cultivating the soul can make your life more satisfying, increase your ability to use qi, and protect you from demonic cultivators. Mind cultivation can give you access to ntal attacks and let you split your thoughts, which is very beneficial to crafters. Scriptures will be available in the Contribution Points Shop. I highly suggest that everyone choose at least one or the other and begin working it into their schedules. Note that, for beginning cultivators, ti spent on Soul and Mind Cultivation does not count against your ten-hour maximum per day.”
Given his experience in the past, making one of his desires so blatantly known should cause everyone to rush to comply. Which ant he had to follow through with his promise to have cultivation thods waiting for them in the Contribution Points Shop.
As soon as he dismissed them, he Quickstepped to his office in the Administration Pavilion, dropped into a lotus position, and pulled up his Cultivation Creation nu.
He already made two Soul Cultivation thods—the one he’d already given to Peng Zhen that focused on defense against demonic cultivators and the one for the forr Righteous Rain cultivators to help them heal. The first question was whether or not more thods were needed.
Benton ntally reviewed the purpose each of the four soul characteristics given by the System. Inviolability made the soul resistant to outside influence, such as attacks by demonic cultivators and control by gu worms. Size made it easier for a person to lead a more fulfilling life. Strength helped both resist and heal damage as well as leading to special abilities. Finally, Tempering enhanced one’s qi pool and physical prowess.
He didn’t want to spend a lot of points creating a bunch of thods, but picking one or two more to give his mbers options was probably a good idea. He’d only invested fifty Sect Points so far. Two more thods would devote another fifty. One hundred sect mbers reaching the first minor realm would return that many quickly, and everything after that would be pure profit.
Yeah. He could definitely afford to invest a few more points to give his sect mbers more choices.
One of the previous thods was heavily weighted to Inviolability for defense and the other to Strength for healing. An option for the new thods was to make one that was heavily weighted for each of the other two characteristics. The one devoted to Size would make people happier, but he didn’t anticipate a lot of his sect mbers making that choice, considering how power mad the entire cultivation world was. The one focused on Tempering, on the other hand, would be a good choice for anyone set on a martial path.
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That last one actually sounded like a perfect option for so of his sect mbers, so he created the Martial Soul thod for Soul Cultivation, allocating fifteen points to Inviolability to protect against demonic cultivators, ten to Size since he wanted his sect mbers to be happy, ten to Strength since preventing and recovering from injuries were both important, and sixty-five to Tempering. The thod would increase the attributes his sect mbers most valued while providing them so defense if they soday happened to encounter a demonic cultivator.
Instead of creating the second one to be focused on the remaining characteristic, Size, he decided a balanced option would be better, so he allocated twenty-five in each category and called it Balanced.
He quickly wrote up a detailed description of what each characteristic did and how the characteristics were distributed in each of the four cultivation thods. Luckily, Peng Zhen was a reliable fellow who could be counted on to describe the contents of the note in detail before letting any of the sect mbers make a selection.
Next, Benton needed to create one or more thods for Mind Cultivation.
Of the four types of cultivation, Mind was probably the weakest, especially in the beginning. Like Soul, it had five major realms—Higher, Inner, Myriad, Expert, and Grandmaster—and a practitioner reaching the peak of the first realm couldn’t process information much more quickly or in higher quantities than a mortal. The second level provided so benefits, such as weak mind attacks and the ability to achieve greater focus, but considering that the level of effort was equivalent to that needed to reach Foundation Establishnt, it required a lot of work for a relatively small gain.
Myriad and above was where the cultivation type shined. A practitioner’s mind attacks beca much more powerful, and one gained the ability to split one’s focus, a huge benefit for nearly anyone but sothing especially valued by alchemists and formation masters.
Unfortunately, the likelihood of reaching Myriad was about the sa as the likelihood of reaching Golden Core—small. Which was one reason Benton hadn’t pushed for his sect mbers to learn that type of cultivation.
Even taking into account the level of effort required, however, reaching at least Inner could give his people a decent advantage. In a fight between two people of a similar realm, being able to distract one’s opponent with a presumably unblockable mind stun could provide a decisive turning point in a battle, even if the distraction caused was quite brief.
The real advantage was that, with the extrely high-grade cultivation thods provided by the System, almost all his sect mbers would be able to advance to Inner.
When he’d started recruiting every person he could find into his sect regardless of talent level, Benton hadn’t had any plans other than, “Hey, I need sect mber. These people can beco sect mbers.”
A Foundation Establishnt cultivator in the mid minor realms held value. With access to techniques that allowed them to externally manipulate qi, they could learn to create low-level but necessary pills and arrays and weapons, etc. They’d beco the worker bees of his sect and, hopefully, experience a nice life featuring good health and a standard of living much higher than most mortals. Considering that most of them started as peasants, the fact that they’d be expected to live around a hundred and fifty years as a cultivator was much better than the average peasant’s expectation of death sowhere in the early fifties.
So it was a genuine win-win. They got a genuinely better and longer life. He got lots of Sect Points. Yay.
Now, though, he was considering how to improve their lives as cultivators even more. Power equaled success in a cultivation world, and the plan forming in his mind had the potential to maximize the strength of every single mber of his sect.
The fact that he would also be on the receiving end of a lot more points was sothing that didn’t really even factor into his decision making, but it was a nice bit of lagniappe.
Normally, rank made a lot of difference in battles between sect mbers. An A from one sect would beat a similarly reald C rank from a rival sect nine tis out of ten. In contrast, Benton expected his sect mbers to be able to compete versus similarly reald cultivators from other sects based solely on the quality of his System-provided cultivation thods and techniques.
What would happen when he added Body Cultivation to that equation, though? Maybe they couldn’t jump major realms, but the pure physicality of his sect mbers would allow them to punch upward several minor realms at least.
Add to that Soul Cultivation that advanced his sect mbers’ qi pools and physical might. And on top of that, add in an ability to launch a mind stun at a critical mont.
Benton liked the thought of that. No one in the sa major realm would be able to beat one of his mbers in a fight. And there was no reason that the sa shouldn’t apply to abilities in crafting.
Not only that, but so people had a talent for cultivation. For example, Wan Ai just took to Spiritual Cultivation like a fish to water, advancing much faster than her spiritual roots would normally suggest she would. By exposing sect mbers to the two additional cultivation types, it was possible that so of them would discover an unrealized talent and advance farther than projected.
He couldn’t help envisioning a sect where his mbers advanced realms much slower than other sects, but they advanced Spirit, Body, Soul, and Mind simultaneously. It was a vision of the future that he liked.
In fact, he liked it so much that he decided he needed to advance his own cultivation in those areas, and with a total of seven hundred seventy-two Sect Points, he was seventy-two points above the floor he’d decided on of seven hundred points.
“System, what’s the maximum level of mind cultivation that I can advance to presently?”
Host has t the requirents to advance to the peak of Myriad.
The answer was exactly what Benton had expected. Myriad corresponded to Golden Core, the peak level he had currently qualified to reach. He quickly also confird that he was allowed to advance to the third level of Soul as well, the Fulfillnt realm.
If his calculations were correct, it would take him eight points to reach the peak of Higher, eighteen to reach the peak of Inner, and thirty-six to get all the way to the peak of Myriad. That was a total of sixty-two points. And he’d need the sa amount to reach the peak he could climb in Soul. Which was more than he had available to spend unless it was an ergency.
Benton had a choice to make. Should he max out one or advance both equally? And if he went with one over the other, which should he choose?
If he knew he was going to fighting demonic cultivators soon, Soul would be the best choice. If not for Su’s experience with his sect being wiped and what Benton had learned about the downfall of the Righteous Rain Sect, the thought of demonic cultivators would not have even entered his mind. Most sects never encountered a single one of their ilk.
Benton did have those mories and knew what happened to that sect, however, so he had to consider demonic cultivators a real risk. But he knew of only two attacks, one two decades prior and one about a year ago. That particular threat wasn’t exactly looming on the horizon like his current issues were.
Being able to use mind stun and split his consciousness into multiple threads seed like a better use of points for the imdiate future, so he chose to advance his Mind Cultivation fully.
That selection left him with fifty-four Sect Points. Which was close to being enough to get him all the way to the peak he could go in Soul Cultivation but not quite. It was oh so tempting for him to just dip a bit into his nest egg, but he decided that, lacking a real need to do so, he’d only spend down to the seven hundred mark, aning he advanced to seventh minor realm of Fulfillnt.
As soon as he triggered the upgrades, he braced himself. And rightfully so. The huge increase of his Mind and the lesser one of his Soul was intense.
When he recovered, his greater processing speed made him rember that he’d completely forgotten to create thods for Mind Cultivation for his sect mbers.
Doh!
The proper thing to do was to dig deep into that area of cultivation just like he’d done with Soul Cultivation earlier and create a selection of thods for his sect mbers, floor be damned. Practically speaking, though, he was wiped emotionally from the morial service and physically from the huge upgrades he’d just experienced. He just didn’t have it in him to give the matter the attention it deserved.
Instead, Benton went twenty-five Sect Points under his floor to create a basic Mind Cultivation thod that balanced all the characteristics. He’d have Peng Zhen let the crafters know that more options would be coming in a few days.
Good enough.
He was confident that the steps he took today would lead to great things for his sect in the future. To reach that future, though, he needed ti for his sect mbers to cultivate three different thods as far as they could, a process of many years even for the least talented of them.
To give them that ti, Benton had to hold off all the threats facing the sect.
Not an easy task. Not an easy task at all.
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