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Chapter 106 – Personal Growth
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 14:55:09 +0000 UTCAs Benton walked through the forest far from any of his sect members, he contemplated what to do with the points he had available to increase his personal power. Seventy-eight points was an unprecedented amount, more than enough to max out his ultimate juggernaut combat build.
His first step was obvious, to max out everything he was currently working on. Since he had so many, he went ahead and used four points to bring both Analyze and Pill basics to Mastery, even though neither was of critical importance. Eight more advanced the Seeking Speeding Arrow and the Pause Time techniques to Mastery as well. Finally, another eight brought him to Foundation Establishment minor realm nine.
That was it. Done. His plan for a combat style that had seemed so out of reach just a short while ago was now complete, and still had fifty-eight points remaining. Astounding.
Time to advance to Golden Core.
The only problem was that neither he nor Su knew much about the realm.
“System, please bring up the Advancement Menu.”
He was still astounded every time he saw the absurd amount of Sect Points he had available. With how long it took his sect members to get to Foundation Establishment and how many points he had stocked up, he honestly wouldn’t feel bad about devoting even another hundred or two to his growth. His only hesitation was that he didn’t want to advance so quickly that he couldn’t control his power.
“System, I’d like to please add a technique.”
“I want to become an expert on cultivation in the Golden Core realm, both to guide my sect members cultivation when they reach that level and to understand how to best form my build to take advantage of the power the realm provides me.”
Techniques worked a bit differently than cultivation methods in regards to major realms. A technique related to knowledge or internal qi manipulation was only classified as Qi Gathering even if the cultivator learning it was in a higher realm. Thus, the technique for gaining knowledge about a higher cultivation realm was still relatively inexpensive for Benton.
Well experienced by that point with having loads of information dumped directly into his brain, he sank into a lotus position. “System, please give me the technique and advance it all the way to Mastery.”
The System confirmed his choice, subtracting four Sect Points, and information flooded his brain.
In the Qi Gathering realm, cultivators gained the ability to sense qi, pull it into their body, and manipulate it internally. Foundation Establishment allowed cultivators to manipulate qi externally, using it to power attacks and defend against them in turn. At Golden Core, cultivators embarked on a long, intense process to form a Concept related to their qi aspect.
A Concept developed when a cultivator solidified understanding of their qi aspect into a concrete set of beliefs. Prior to that point, the cultivator’s qi was somewhat malleable. Was void an absence of matter or a substance that abhorred matter? The answer depended on the cultivator, and it could shift so that techniques using both could be employed by the same cultivator as long as they could justify the underpinning belief.
Forming a Concept eliminated that flexibility. Some techniques would have to be discarded if they fundamentally conflicted.
In return for the added constraint, a Concept granted extraordinary power. The amount of a damage done by a fireball flung by a Foundation Establishment cultivator simply didn’t compare to the same fireball flung by a Golden Core cultivator whose understanding of fire incorporated great damage.
By the same token, Golden Core cultivators were usually able to conceptualize their qi as a tangible thing and use it to support devices like flying swords. Some grew their understanding so much that they were able to convert their entire beings into qi, allowing them to imitate teleportation.
As a practical matter, a cultivator advancing from the peak of Foundation Establishment to the beginning of Golden Core gained only a large quantity of available qi. It took years of meditation and reflection to convert their understanding of their qi aspect into a Concept.
Benton, courtesy of the Sect Leader System, had a cheat.
“System, please create a personal technique solidifying my Concept of void as abhorring all matter.”
Okay. Well, that kind of made sense.
Benton shucked off all his clothes, putting them several yards away from him. “System, please advance me to the first minor realm of Golden Core.”
Wait a second. Hold the phone.
“System, what requirements have I met to be allowed to use my Sect Points to ascend to Golden Core?”
“System, you’re saying that, if I hadn’t filled each of those criteria, I wouldn’t have been able to advance?”
Overall, the System had been really good to Benton, but he was beginning to get a little bit annoyed at its present behavior.
“System, when were you going to tell me about this little stipulation?”
Of course, that was the answer. Never mind that not informing him beforehand could have been a disaster had he attempted to advance in an emergency and not been allowed to.
“System, why the heck is the deal with this restriction? I could have been killed if it had popped up at the wrong time.”
Benton wasn’t all that happy with how he’d been informed, but he got the point. He was very glad that he had, in fact, been focusing on building the sect and that his sect members thought well of him. The whole thing could have turned into a debacle otherwise.
“System, what are the requirements to reach Nascent Soul?”
Well, he definitely had some work to do, and it was a little disappointing that he couldn’t just keep signing up people and use those points to become immortal without meeting the requirements. Honestly, though, recruiting more people and making their lives better were always the essential part of his plan.
Realistically, he was less than a year out from meeting the first of the criteria, and he had plenty of potential recruits to fulfill the second. A year or two would surely put him past one thousand members. And for the final one, it seemed like the villagers liked him a lot. As long as he didn’t do anything to screw up his reputation, the last one should be filled simultaneous with the second.
He'd just have to avoid fighting any Nascent Soul cultivators until then.
“System, please spend the four points to advance me to Golden Core.”
For the second time in a matter of months, Benton’s body was purged of impurities, and a putrid, toxic sludge was ejected from his pores. Once again, he nearly gagged. At least, he didn’t ruin his clothes that time.
After scrubbing himself thoroughly, dissolving the mess that came out of his body with void qi, and getting dressed once again, he considered how many points he should spend immediately.
“System, please create a personal technique solidifying my Concept of void as abhorring all matter.”
“System, confirm choice.”
What happened next wasn’t the flood of information that he’d expected. Instead of gaining knowledge, he experienced the weird sensation of having his beliefs solidify. It was like he’d spent his life as a political independent and suddenly became a hardcore partisan. The other side’s views could no longer possibly be in any way reasonable.
He could no longer believe that void was the absence of matter. It was solely a substance that abhorred matter.
Trippy. Very trippy.
Benton had to test what the change actually meant. “System, please create a personal technique allowing me to make storage rings using void qi.”
That result was exactly what Benton had expected. Creating storage rings with void qi involved thinking of void as nothingness. If you created a ring filled with void that abhorred matter, anything put inside the ring would be destroyed.
“System, please create a technique for my sect members allowing them to make storage rings using void qi.”
Okay. That was a relief. For a moment, he’d been afraid that his Concept would prevent him from creating techniques for his disciples that went against his understanding of the aspect.
Of course, he could only intellectually understand that someone could consider void as the absence of matter even though the idea seemed literally ludicrous to him. The consequence of his new powerup was that his creativity regarding void was forever restricted. For all the aspects for which he formed a Concept, he’d be much more reliant on his sect members to define how their qi aspect worked in a particular technique.
The quantity of Concepts Benton needed would consume massive amounts of Sect Points, too. An opposing Golden Core cultivator would laugh off the best attack a Foundation Establishment cultivator could throw at them as simply not being powerful enough. Using enhanced qi in such a fight was necessary.
Benton currently employed Void, Gravity, Time, and Space extensively. He needed Concepts for each of those aspects to supercharge his main techniques. At sixteen points a pop to get each to Mastery, that was a total of sixty-four points, more than he had remaining.
Worse, those weren’t the only aspects he used.
Both his shield and his main attack used variable qi based on his opponents’ attack or defense. The reality of the situation was that, in order to be a true juggernaut Golden Core cultivator who could protect his sect from all enemies in that realm, he needed Mastery of the Concepts for all the qi aspects he would possibly use.
Of course, such a feat was impossible. There were conceivably an infinite number of qi aspects. In practical terms, accounting for the five primary aspects and a good number of the most common secondary ones would account for almost all circumstances. Leaving sixteen points available for anytime he might encounter something esoteric should cover the rest.
That was still a massive number of Sect Points that he needed to spend.
He had forty-six points out of the original seventy-eight left, which wouldn’t make a dent in the number of Concepts he needed. On the other hand, he had no real use for the nearly four hundred points devoted to his sect members. By the time even a fraction of those were needed, he’d have gained so many more that reserving them was pointless.
Overall, he felt pretty good about using a good chunk of them.
Advancing his four most used aspects to Concept Mastery was a no brainer. Adding the five primary elements was also something he would prefer to do since it would account for around three quarters of likely attacks and defenses.
Of course, those expenditures added up to a total of one hundred forty more Sect Points to spend. He had to draw the line somewhere.
Four secondary aspects. That was the line. He’d stop after adding Mastery of his Concepts of Ice, Lightning, Poison, and Illusion.
The next step was much more tedious. Benton was, obviously, a cheating cheater who cheats when it came to how much easier he advanced everything cultivation related compared to normal cultivators. Whereas a normal cultivator would spend years meditating on their qi aspect in order to develop a Concept, he just had to formulate an idea and tell it to the System. He still had to figure out what that idea was, though, for each of twelve new Concepts he was adding.
That process took a while. Once he’d finished, he used his main attack to target a dead tree with a mere ten qi. The entire trunk and a portion of the ground several feet in diameter disappeared.
Yeah. He was definitely more powerful. Much more powerful.
Benton pulled up his status.
Comments
Sarah Grfghlt
I wonder when he will create a communication/telepathic technique. It was one of my first thoughts, sect wise would it be so convenient. Tftc!
BelligerentGnu
Now I'm curious as to what concepts he decided on for each element
Daoist_Matt
TFTC! 😋🥳
Monus
And with his newfound power he should work on culling some of the more dangerous beasts further towards the mountain. Especially high foundation and Golden core opponents. Depending on how beast waves work here that would be double advantageous - reducing the beast desity would broaden the time frame and reduce the overall danger of the event upon occuring. To facilitate that he could use a stealth technique or a flying technique or both.
Monus
I had some long message written about how he should obtain a few more techniques such as an arrow-in-flight copying technique, to facilitate something like an arrow rain and a perception technique that allows him to use direct all of his arrows at different spirit beast for the upcoming beast tide. Because... Offense is the best defense and all that, but somehow Patreon lost it on the way. So here is the abbreviated version.
