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Chapter 197 – A Road Almost Taken
🕑 Added 2025-02-16 22:52:23 +0000 UTCA/N 2/16/25 - I'm behind. Sorry. This should have been posted yesterday morning. I got stuck on this chapter. On the plus side, I got to reference both Star Trek II and Lost in Space, so there's that. I kind of ended up going down a wrong path, and it took me a while to see that I had to course correct. I think this version is much better. Look for me to catch up as soon as possible.
The day passed quickly for Benton. No emergencies arose, so he was able to devote his entire attention to completing his analysis of formations in the rest of the main sect ground buildings. He hit a couple of snags, and it ended up taking the rest of the day and into the night for him to finish.
In the meantime, Wan Ai entered the Trials Pagoda and successfully completed advancing her herb technique to Mastery. Which was fantastic. That would help her alchemy so much.
What would help her even more would be learning a beginning technique for pill making. He could easily create one for her that would cram all the information she needed into her brain. As it was, she was making do with learning from manuals that he’d acquired for her, and as far as he knew, she had yet to be able to produce a single pill yet.
Not that her failure was a bad thing. She was still in the Qi Gathering realm. When she advanced to Foundation Establishment, he’d give her an actual technique for making pills, and her current experience would really help her learn that one. Really, successes and failures weren’t nearly as important at the moment as the process of digging in and learning and trying.
A knowledge technique on top of that, though, would speed her even further.
The problem was time. His best guess was that she would breakthrough to Foundation Establishment in two hundred to two hundred and twenty days. That was maybe enough time to master another Qi Gathering level technique. Maybe. But her dagger technique was also only at Small Success.
In an ideal world, she’d have all her techniques mastered by the time she advanced, giving her a fresh start to work on the new, more important ones he’d be giving her. The likelihood of her reaching Mastery with her weapon and a new technique seemed small. The likelihood was that she’d advance with both of them at Large Success.
Was it better for her to move to the next major realm with two mastered techniques and purely mundane experience with pill making or to have only one mastered technique, decent control but not mastery over her weapon, and enhanced but not expert knowledge about pill making?
In the end, that was something only she could decide.
He used a message to summon her. It didn’t take long for her to arrive, and unsurprisingly, she brought Zou Tian with her.
After they got the standard greetings out of the way, Benton explained her choices to her.
“I prefer to learn on my own, Master,” she said as soon as he’d finished speaking.
Benton sighed. “I get that. I really do. And I don’t want to put any more pressure on you than you probably have put on yourself.” He paused. “Alchemy is very important to any sect. It’s maybe not quite as important to us because I have … resources. Those resources are precious, however. The sooner you and the Alchemy Pavilion can produce high quality Qi Condensing Pills and healing pills and all the other miraculous medicines available to us, the better for the sect. I’m not asking what you prefer.”
He wasn’t exactly bleeding Shop Points, but he devoted a lot of them to accelerating cultivation. If not for that usage, he could really start to think about other, more wondrous options.
She looked chastened, which was not his intent at all.
“Wan Ai, I am so proud of you,” Benton said. “You have taken to cultivating like a fish to water. You learned how to prepare the Body Cultivation baths much faster than I expected. You have risen to every challenge thrown at you. The sect is lucky to have you.”
Her subdued looked turned to one of uncomfortableness and embarrassment.
That girl! It was impossible to recognize her great work without making her face turn beet red. Even worse, there was nothing he could do to make her more at ease. Anything he could say about it would only make it worse for her, so all he could really do at that point was ignore it and move forward.
“First, I need your honest self-assessment,” Benton said. “What would be the most helpful for you in the immediate and near-term future—mastering your dagger technique or improving your knowledge of making pills?”
“None of the others can prepare herbs well enough to make pills, Master,” Wan Ai said. “It’s not like the baths. If the preparation is not done perfectly, the pill fails to form. If any one of a dozen other things aren’t done perfectly, some of which I have little understanding of, the pill fails to form.”
“It sounds like you’re saying you need both.”
She winced. “If getting me better fast is required, mastering use of the dagger to make the cuts I need is imperative, but there are so many other details that I’m struggling with. I can learn it from books, but it requires much practice. Which requires a lot of herb preparation. Everything takes time.”
“Are you close to reaching Large Success with the dagger?”
“Yes, Master.”
Assuming she judged her progress accurately and she was only days away from advancing the technique, it made no sense to use the Trials Pagoda again. It should be much more efficient with techniques that people were stuck on or had progressed to the middle stages.
Besides, from her expression and her tone, she obviously did not want the new technique, much less to have her progress artificially accelerated. And normally, that refusal would have been the end of the matter. She was considered an adult in her society and should be free to make her own decisions, even if those choices weren’t the ones he would have made.
The particular subject they were discussing, however, impacted more than just her. The good of the sect was at stake.
Ah. To an extent, anyway. It wasn’t like the sect would fail or anything due to her decision, but overall, her learning being accelerated would lead to a more effective use of resources.
He wondered how far he should go in forcing her to do what he wanted. Spock famously said at the end of Star Trek II that, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The one.”
Benton’s eyes almost moistened at remembering the scene. It had hit him hard, burning itself into his memory as a really good scene. On the other hand, a movie hitting really strong emotional notes maybe wasn’t exactly the best justification for making a particular espoused philosophy a founding principle of his sect.
So probably ordering her to take the pill technique was a bridge too far. And another attempt to convince her would be very coercive at that point. She’d likely see it as an order even if he didn’t phrase it in that matter. But maybe he was justified in being a little coercive given that the situation called for it?
One more attempt. He’d drop it if she didn’t agree.
Of course, if she took the new technique, his conscience was probably going to bug him quite a lot. Ugh.
“I’m sure you have good reasons for the way you feel,” Benton said. “Perhaps you want to achieve your success on your own merits and feel that a new technique is cheating. Perhaps you feel that you’re already getting a lot of attention from your peers and me giving you a new technique will add to that. Perhaps your reason is something else entirely. The point is that I believe your reason, whatever it may be, is good and reasonable. My opinion of you is way too high from me to believe anything else.”
Wan Ai looked like she was about to cry. Zou Tian looked horrified.
Yikes. That last part was a bit manipulative. More than a bit, really. How could any of his disciples say no to any request that followed that particular lead up?
Danger, Will Robinson. Danger. Maybe coercing an impressionable young lady to take the technique was worse than ordering it directly.
“You know what,” he said. “Just forget it. It’s not that big of a deal. We can skip the introductory knowledge technique and go straight to one for pill making when you reach Foundation Establishment.”
“Master,” she said, her voice trembling, “if it’s truly important to the sect…”
Benton almost laughed. The whole situation was feeling way too icky by that point. It was fine to joke around with his sect members, and manipulating enemies with misdirection and by other means was fair game. Whatever he’d been doing to her, however, was pretty the definition of not okay.
“No,” he said. “I’m officially taking the offer off the table, and if you try to buy the technique with your contribution points, it will not be available. Go back to practicing.”
Both the kids cupped their hands.
“I do expect you to reach Mastery with the dagger before you advance, though,” Benton said. “If it doesn’t look like you’re going to reach that target on your own, you need to use the pagoda again.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Zou Tian,” Benton said, “I expect you to keep an eye on that situation.”
“Yes, Master. I’ll help her practice.”
As soon as they left, Benton felt a huge sense of relief. He’d almost started down a bad road. What was the saying? “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Something like that.
He had to remember that he had almost absolute power over those kids. If he decided to kill one of them or destroy their cultivation or anything else, no one would say a word.
Maybe forcing one of the sect members to take a technique she didn’t want to take for reasons that he didn’t understand when his way would have benefited the sect wasn’t exactly the moral equivalent of murder, but abusing his power felt like a slippery slope.
How far was it between coercing a sect member to take the choice he wanted and slapping them in the face and yelling, “You dare!”?
He shuddered. Not far enough for his tastes.
Comments
RedFaux
Power corrups is more applicable here anyway. And shortcuts are usually a terrible terrible idea in xianxia unless you're a protagonist.
ShadeByTheSea
I prefer the "Power reveals", to the "Power corrupts" statement. I feel it's more true. Plus the knowledge technique should be a standard one all the alchemist should get. You better believe if there was a way for doctors to remember all the drugs out there and the uses it would be required.
richard bond
Safe by inches. Good call Benton. :)
