The twins’ birthday party turned out to be one of the best nights of Benton’s new life. He liked that the sect mbers and villagers seed to appreciate the experience of the new dessert he served them even if they found the icing to be a bit much. Watching Yang Xiu swoop around fearlessly on the glider and Yang Ru take a much more tentative approach amused the sect leader to no end. The main thing that ward his heart, however, was seeing Jin LiJuan play with the other kids.
At first, she’d been just as reticent as he had expected. Her expression during her first attempts at play made her look more like she was approaching a battle than a ga of tag.
Slowly, though, she loosened up. The fake smile she was keeping plastered on her face to appease him disappeared, and a genuine one replaced it. She clearly had better endurance and greater speed and agility than her playmates, so they all ganged up on her.
Benton expected the girl to react with anger. Instead, she laughed.
She laughed!
He watched with a grin as Jin LiJuan leaped over rows of seating and rushed about hither and yon, tagging the mortal kids who were having just as much fun trying to evade her.
Still, he tried to keep from getting too excited by what he was seeing. Her family being slaughtered in front of her had affected her in ways from which she might normally never recover, and he definitely was no therapist to determine her actual ntal state.
Playing with kids from the village, though, seed like at least a small step forward. Her actions certainly gave him hope. Combined with the healing effect from the technique he had given her, she just might one day fully recover.
She continued playing with the group until the villagers, unused to late nights, departed well before midnight. The party wound down pretty quickly after that point.
Jin LiJuan lived in the apartnt building ran by Mistress Zhong—which Benton thought of as the Outer Sect—and knowing that the girl would be eager to advance her cultivation, Benton monitored the building’s exit closely from his office.
Sure enough, Jin LiJuan walked out with the pup early the next morning and went directly to the Contribution Points Shop. Shortly after she entered, he got a notification that she’d reached Qi Gathering minor realm seven, giving him three additional Sect Points.
After reading the ssage, he let out a relieved sigh. He hadn’t really expected anything to go wrong, but the girl wasn’t exactly on a normal path. Expecting the unexpected was a good rule of thumb for anyone in such abnormal circumstances.
With that worry off his mind, he went ahead with his next set of plans for the day—inducting new mbers. The batch would be the first since he made the decision to reduce the ti between recruitnts from four weeks down to two and to increase the number from fifty to seventy-five.
The mayor already had the choices queued up, so all it took was a ssage dragon to have them sent over to the amphitheater. Benton’s entire day was spent babysitting to make sure no one had a bad reaction to the improvent of their spiritual roots.
Not that he thought such a thing was possible given the System’s track record. He did figure that it was a good move to have the sect leader present for each induction, however. For one thing, it probably did his reputation, and corresponding average loyalty, good to have the new mbers see him watching over them. Second, he just felt it was the right thing to do.
In the back of his mind, though, he knew he would not always be available to oversee the process, so he made a ntal note to train the mayor in performing the induction, the guards in watching over the mbers while they spent twelve hours incapacitated, and the Healing Pavilion on monitoring everyone’s well-being.
By early evening, the new mbers’ spiritual roots had been improved, and they’d each taken the first step in becoming cultivators by taking in their first mote of qi, giving Benton seventy-five Sect Points.
He took a mont to review his gains from the last three days.
Besides Jin LiJuan’s three points and the seventy-five from the new mbers, Benton had gotten one hundred ninety-five from the inductees in Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town increasing their cultivation from the first minor realm to the second. Body Cultivation yielded him another twenty and techniques six—Peng Hanying, Guang Yin, and another harvester had passed their trials for half that number and the other half ca from various mbers advancing. With mbers only working on Mind or Soul part ti, no points were earned from either of those sources.
Total, Benton gained two hundred ninety-nine Sect Points over three days, darn near a hundred a day. Not bad. Not bad at all.
He checked out an abbreviated version of his status screen.
Sect Na:Rising TideSect mbers:537Disciples:56Sect Points:1,242Shop Points:360
Yikes. He officially had over one thousand Sect Points, and seeing such a large quantity made him want to start buying stuff. Before he went on any kind of spending spree, though, he needed to seriously think about what the future held and what might be helpful.
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The best thing he could do to protect his sect was to beco more personally powerful, but with his Spiritual, Body, Mind, and Soul Cultivation all maxed out, there wasn’t much he could do until he reached one thousand sect mbers. He had a plan in place to do just that, and unless an ergency arose, he’d stick to that plan.
Other than advancing, he couldn’t find any holes in his Ultimate Juggernaut Combat Build. He’d already bought every technique he could think of to Mastery. If anything else that seed powerful occurred to him, he could instantly purchase it, but in the anti, he was pretty happy.
His most imdiate concern was an attack by Jade Chaleon Sect Nascent Soul cultivators. The wall wouldn’t be completed for another nine days, but with all the sect mbers from the village living on the main sect grounds, it might be a good idea to begin building the attack towers. They would not be, overall, as good a defense as the formation he planned, but sothing was better than nothing. And the more towers he had, the more formidable they would be for defense.
Another imdiate help would be if his low reald sect mbers could help take on any Nascent Soul attackers, and as unlikely as that assistance sounded, there actually was a thod to do so—battle formations. By having each of a squad of sect mbers learn the sa formation technique, they could pool their qi and use the resulting power to attack higher reald cultivators.
There were two problems with that thod, however. One, the technique required external qi manipulation, so all his Qi Gathering sect mbers still couldn’t contribute. And unfortunately, the combined might of the few Foundation Establishnt cultivators he had wouldn’t amount to much.
Two, the technique had to be learned to Small Success, Large Success, and finally Mastery by each sect mber just like any other technique. That process was a long one.
Basically, battle formations would be a fantastic combat resource in the future when he had hundreds of sect mbers stuck in the middle of Foundation Establishnt, but at the mont, it was a nonstarter.
One thought did make his smile, though—hundreds of his blue-robed Foundation Establishnt sect mbers flying into battle on gliders and maneuvering in aerial battle formations, untouchable by enemy combatants at the sa level while sending devastating attacks from range.
The next avenue he was considering for improvent might be a good use of resources, though. Now that Benton had actual buildings for his sect, it was beginning to feel like a real organization, but things were progressing really slowly, especially cultivation. And on one hand, there wasn’t much he could do. He was already using pills to bypass two entire minor realms and using alchemy to speed things up even farther would hurt the mbers’ cultivation bases. There was one thing, however, that could definitely help—providing cultivation rooms to enhance the quantity and quality of qi available.
That thod of speeding cultivation was more natural—for values of natural—and shouldn’t harm cultivation bases like alchemical ans would. Of course, he’d have to monitor his sect mbers to make sure no harm was being done, but that task was quite easy for him.
A bigger concern was how to achieve the qi enhancent.
Increasing qi density in a room was a pretty trivial undertaking for a formation expert of his caliber. Any Golden Core cultivator with a deep understanding of the craft could create an array to double or even triple the qi density in a room. Easy peasy.
Of course, the resulting area would be of only a minor benefit to the cultivators using it. Basically, it would be an artificial version of the Wood. Anyone cultivating there would shave a small percentage, five to twenty percent, of the ti required to reach the next minor realm.
That percentage was not insignificant by any ans, but it also wasn’t a ga changer. It also wasn’t anything that his sect mbers didn’t already have access to with the Wood.
A true cultivation room that included an actual qi source could not only half the ti taken to reach the next minor realm but could also increase the Power and Foundation of the cultivator, assuming that the source elent corresponded to the cultivator’s aspect.
So obtaining qi sources for his sect mbers’ use was a slam dunk, right? In a way, it was. The issue was that the things were a lot more complicated than an array fed by the correct spirit coin, and they were expensive. The cheapest available from the System cost a thousand Shop Points. Each. And that relatively low-cost one only cut cultivation ti by twenty-five percent. Even if he wanted to buy that inferior version, he couldn’t as he had less than four hundred points available.
“System,” he said, “can I purchase a crafting technique that will allow to make qi sources?”
Host does not have the prerequisite knowledge and Concepts necessary to use a technique to create qi sources.
Honestly, he’d been expecting a flat no in answer to that question. Prerequisites were sothing that he could deal with.
“System, please provide with a list of the prerequisites.”
In order to create qi sources, Host requires the following:
Knowledge of Origin Qi
Knowledge of Origin Qi Manipulation
Concept of Origin Qi
Technique to Manipulate Origin Qi
Knowledge of Qi Sources
Concept for Each Qi Source to be Created
Ability to Create Base to Host Qi Source
Technique to Imbue Base with Origin and Elental Qi
Yikes. That was a lot of things he needed. Luckily, he had over twelve hundred points available. That list contained twelve points worth of Qi Gathering level knowledge techniques, sixteen points worth of Foundation Establishnt level techniques, and thirty-two points worth of Concepts.
Considering the wealth he was sitting on, an investnt of sixty Sect Points to possibly create qi sources was totally worth it even if he had to spend even more on crafting techniques to create the bases.
Obviously, he’d have to balance ti spent on qi sources with building the towers, but at least gaining the ability to create sothing so beneficial to his sect mbers was worth a bit of effort at the mont.
Benton sat in a lotus position and readied himself. “System, please purchase all those techniques and Concepts to Mastery.”
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