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Chapter 210 – Psionic Force
🕑 Added 2025-03-05 03:23:03 +0000 UTCA/N 3/5/25 Missed three points when doing the numbers for this chapter. Added those with the appropriate explanation.
Benton’s impression of Fatty Ren kept getting revised upward. The first meeting with the big guy wasn’t all that great as he appeared to be lazy, sitting in his palace eating while someone else ran the town he was responsible for into the ground. That opinion worsened as it became apparent how corrupt the Town Manager was and how downtrodden the residents were.
Since that point, though, Fatty Ren had really come through. By all accounts, he’d performed well protecting the town from the beast tide and was taking a much more active role in administration. The care he showed for his Righteous Rain sect mates was a plus as well.
Where he really started to shine, though, was in how he handled the tasks set by Benton.
Given a month to recruit two hundred sect members, Fatty Ren had done it in a day. Then, he’d shown up on time for his Trials Pagoda access and easily passed, advancing his cultivation to Golden Core. He’d also taken only a few days to get his flying sword technique to Small Success when it usually takes cultivators at least a week of training to reach that milestone.
Finally, he’d volunteered to take on an annoying and time-consuming mission to travel to the city and buy furniture and other necessary goods, returning the next day having made great use of the resources at his disposal. Benton couldn’t have been more pleased with either the items bought or with his newest sect member.
Diligent. Hard-working. Capable. That was how he now thought of the Town Lord.
Fatty Ren had practically blushed when told and, completely embarrassed, had beat a hasty retreat back to his palace in Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town.
The next three days passed very quickly for Benton. There was much truth to the adage that many tasks make time fly as, with his sect members starting to use all the pavilions, the arrays were getting constantly tested.
Luckily, nothing major went wrong. Which actually wasn’t luck. Benton had meticulously tested any portions likely to suffer catastrophic failure. He hadn’t done quite as good a job picking up all the minor issues, though.
One of the alchemy vents only pulled about half of the smoke out of the air, and one of the disposals got gummed up because the Void qi only reached half the drain. Pain inhibitors in several of the sparring rooms fluctuated randomly in certain locations. The fields in the Healing Pavilion had to be adjusted as the rapid stitching together of cuts made patients really uncomfortable. One of the forges would not maintain temperature, and Benton had a difficult time tracking down the problem.
And the list went on.
All in all, though, he had a lot of fun troubleshooting and even more fun teaching the sect members the ins and outs of the formations. By the end of that third day, everyone was pretty much settled in, and things were running smoothly.
Benton also took time to check the progress of the harvesters and the production of the wall. Since the end of the beast tide, the workers had prepared an additional six hundred thirty linear feet, bringing the total to one thousand three hundred seventy linear feet.
Nice. He was closer than he thought.
Depending on the exact configuration, the approximately five acres encompassing the main sect grounds required between eighteen hundred and two thousand linear feet of wall to fully enclose. At forty-five linear feet per day, he should hit the median of nineteen hundred in another twelve days.
Sweet!
Once the wall was finished, he could lay in all the formations, ones designed to stop cultivators for entering and shields that could stop even a Nascent Soul temporarily. His sect members would finally be safe—or at least as safe as they could be in a cultivation world.
That safety was still a couple of weeks out, though, so all he could do at the moment was to prepare himself for battle as best he could. He took a moment to review his gains.
Xun Wu, in addition to successfully modifying his qi aspect through a trial, also somehow found time to advance to Qi Gathering minor realm seven. Twenty-nine cultivators, including Peng Hanying, Pan Xioalian, and the harvesters, reached Qi Gathering minor realm six. Forty-nine more, the second group of villagers, advanced to Qi Gathering minor realm five. The fourth group of villagers made it to Qi Gathering minor realm two.
All combined, sect members advancing in Spiritual Cultivation gained him a whopping one hundred twenty-nine Sect Points.
Nice.
The set of twenty sect members using the Body Cultivation baths advanced through two minor realms, gaining him an additional forty points.
There had been a rush on Soul and Mind Cultivation methods after Benton had extoled their virtues. One hundred fifty-nine sect members had reached the first minor realm of the former and one hundred three of the latter, gaining Benton two hundred sixty-two points.
People only had so much time in a day to devote to an additional cultivation type, though, so they only spent two to five hours on it. Which meant it would take then another twenty to thirty days to hit the second minor realm. Still, with the nearly universal adoption, that was a lot of points to look forward to in a reasonable amount of time.
Techniques were coming along slower. Shi Long, the blacksmith apprentice with the B+ spiritual roots used a trial to advance his forging to Large Success. Zhong Wen, the mistress of the village orphanage, became the first person to fail a trial when trying to improve her archery technique. Benton gave her another shot the next day, though, and she successfully raised it to Large Success.
For those advancing their techniques without use of the pagoda, Wan Ai reached Large Success with her dagger, and Zou Tian advanced to Small Success with his new Shadow Perception. Additionally, eleven other sect members experienced increases, resulting in a total of thirteen more Sect Points.
All told, the haul over the several days was a whopping four hundred forty-six points!
“Now that’s a windfall,” he said to no one in particular.
He had three hundred seventy-seven points to spend on himself before reaching the floor he’d set. For the first time since gaining the System, he had more points to spend than he had things to spend them on.
Eight points brought him to the height he was currently allowed by the System in Soul Cultivation, Fulfillment minor realm nine. After that, he struggled to figure out what he needed.
Concepts were always good, but he already had twenty-three. He was better off just buying them on an as-needed basis.
As for the latest version of his Ultimate Juggernaut Combat BuildTM, he was pretty much set unless he could think of something else that would help him against Nascent Soul Cultivators. Between Aura Defense, a movement technique that maxed his speed, being able to basically teleport with Quickstep, and many powerful attacks, there wasn’t much he could think of that would help.
Still, he dropped into meditation to consider the problem to make sure he’d given the issue the attention it was due. And he was glad he did when a singular thought hit him—Mind Stun.
“System, I should be able to use mind attacks now that I’m at the peak of the Myriad realm. How do I do that?”
Now he was cooking with gas. Sweet!
“System, I would like to purchase Mastery of Mind Techniques that allow me to do the following—Dual Focus, Mind Stun, Mind Crush, Telekinetic Push, and Inflict Fear.”
Benton almost burst out laughing at the notification. He’d purchased the five mind techniques most likely to be of use to him in the Myriad realm, and he still had nearly one thousand points available. The System was going to have to step up its points sink game.
Unfortunately, none of the techniques were as strong as an equivalent Golden Core level attack, but they’d still be of use, especially since Mind Cultivation was so rare. Most opponents would have little or no defense against him. Even Nascent Souls would have some vulnerability.
Due to that unique applicability and the added versatility, the techniques were a worthy addition to his combat build.
Dual Focus allowed him to split his mind and concentrate on two things simultaneously. When he reached higher realms, he’d be able to split his focus even more.
Mind Stun was the signature attack for a Mind Cultivator. It sent a spike of psionic energy, which completely bypassed qi shields, directly to the brain of an opponent, causing a brief disruption to their thoughts. Which didn’t sound like much, but when used tactically, it could change the tide of a fight.
Mind Crush was similar, but the psionic energy sought to damage the opponent’s brain physically. The problem was that cultivator’s brains tended to be quite resilient, so many, many strikes would be needed to actually injure one of them.
True telekinesis wasn’t available until higher realms, but Telekinetic Push channeled psionic force to create a push or pull on an object. The effect wasn’t nearly as strong as doing the same thing with qi, but it had the very large advantage of not being stopped by qi shields.
Finally, Inflict Fear did just what the name suggested. The technique could literally cause an opponent to become afraid. Against a Golden Core or Nascent Soul cultivator, it wouldn’t exactly terrify them into submission or anything, but the sudden onset of a foreign emotion could be a great distraction in the middle of a fight.
Yeah. He was definitely happy he’d thought about adding those techniques to his repertoire.
Feeling very pleased with himself, he pulled up his status.
Comments
Monus
What does he mean there is nothing else to spend his points on? He could learn alchemy, to supply pills instead of using shop points. He could be learning herbology to decrease the reliance on supplies from other cities and increase the start-off point where his sect is once he gets people competent in that discipline. He could learn a cloning skill that allows him to make use of his two streams of thought. He could be learning any sort of skill and apply it to great use! No doubt there is a synergy between mind cultivation and temporal qi such that you only accelerate your thoughts, basically improved parallel increased thinking. There is so much here that is super low hanging and easily thought of.
BWFoster78 Last
I didn't want this realm to be that overpowered. Myriad Focus will come after he advances to the next major realm.
BWFoster78 Last
Concepts are very flexible. They are whatever the cultivator believes them to be. If they have the idea that Concepts are limited by element, then it would be almost impossible for the cultivator to combine multiple elements. Otherwise...
RedFaux
Dual focus is a bit restrictive. Why not something like "Myriad Focus" to not limit himself to two trains of thought
Dusk
So for concepts... Do they have to be for 1 element? Like would his blacksmiths have to create a concept of fire and a concept of metal? Or can they have a concept of metal forging imbuing fire and metal into 1 concept?
Sparkley Unicorn
Freedom units, fuck yeah. Lmao
Sarah Grfghlt
I wonder if we get a timeskip or what kind of ideas benton will have to increase the number of members. I‘d also love to have benton travel (when the wall is finished) to recruit elsewhere or for some new cities and stuff. Exciting!
tonright
Thanks Dusk, but I'm aware how they convert already, it just reads like nonsense and takes ya right out of the story. Especially when there are several consecutive instances. Turns the paragraph into a giant equation in my head. Honestly would be better with some cultivator-world-measure like arm lengths, or some vague equivalence in steps or something lol
Agecher
Yeah, at least use yards, they are similar enough to meters for the other 90% of people to not have to suffer. Great chapter otherwise, maybe he needs a psionic defense technique and a psionic concept?
Dusk
Just divide by 3 and that will roughly give you the distance in meters
tonright
so much measuring in "feet" in this chapter my brain basically shut down lol.
tonright
f i r s t
