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Chapter 95 – One Fell Swoop
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 10:03:01 +0000 UTCWan Ai was at the orphanage deeply engrossed in studying the Body Cultivation scripture Master had given her when Zou Tian came for her. It felt like she’d barely even scratched the surface of everything she needed to understand, and the distraction was not welcome.
“This one was able to find a perfect lab for you, Senior Sister,” he said.
Wan Ai blushed. No one had ever referred to her as a senior before. She certainly didn’t feel qualified to give orders to anyone other than small children, much less someone who had the ear of Master.
Hiding her face, she silently started gathering her items.
“There’s too much there for us to carry by ourselves, Senior Sister. Just grab the most important items, and this one will have laborers carefully pack up and transport the rest.”
She cupped her hands and bowed.
The boy escorted her to a house not too far away from the orphanage, and while she explored the multiple rooms, he left to arrange for her alchemy equipment to be transported over. There were a few tables set up in the largest room, located in the back corner of the house, and she spread out the herbs she’d carried with her onto them.
Master expected her to prepare hundreds of baths. Hundreds. Each required cutting many herbs in a way that preserved whatever essence the dried material still retained. Then the various essences had to be mixed in hot water and combined with a spirit beast core.
Wan Ai had no idea how to do any of that. She didn’t even know where to start. Beyond some basic cooking duties, she’d never used a knife or mixed things. Besides learning how to access Master’s jade slips, she knew nothing about beast cores.
How in the world was she supposed to do any of it? And Master was counting on her. He kept saying over and over how important her task was.
The two techniques and the cultivation method were supposed to help her, but the information held within them was so overwhelming. Her head felt like it was about to explode. She’d never held a cultivator technique prior to the day before but was expected to learn two of them fast enough to get the baths prepared as soon as possible.
She didn’t want to let anyone down, especially not Master. And not her new sect Brothers and Sisters. They were counting on her. What if they got in a fight and got hurt or killed because they weren’t strong enough because she hadn’t figured out the baths fast enough?
Time passed as she stood frozen, one hand on a bundle of herbs and one on her dagger. Not cutting. Not really even holding. Just with one hand on top of each.
There was a knock on the front door.
“I’ll get it, Senior Sister,” Zou Tian said, leaving the room.
She startled. What? When had he returned? How long had she been just standing there like an idiot?
When he came back, he led four men carrying crates stuffed with straw to protect the fragile glass inside. They quickly unpacked them, leaving her pill furnace and all the glassware set neatly on an unused table.
“Is this workshop to your satisfaction, Senior Sister?” Zou Tian said.
“What? Oh. Yes. Sure.”
“If this one might comment, it seems like Senior Sister is having difficulties.”
She sighed. “I guess, but that’s my problem, not yours.”
“This one begs to differ, Senior Sister. Master assigned me to help you. Let me do my job.”
“I don’t know what you can do about it! I don’t even know what I can do.”
“Why don’t you start by talking me through the issue, Senior Sister?”
She might as well. It wasn’t like staring off into space was getting anything done.
“Fine.” Wan Ai held up one of the jade slips. “This tells me what essences or what herbs need to be added to a mixture in what quantities and then how to combine them all together with the right amount of water heated to a certain temperature and then how to release the energy of a spirit beast core in just the right way into the bath.”
She held up a separate jade slip. “This one will teach me, among a great many other things as far as I can tell, how to tell which sections of a herb have the best essence inside and how to cut off the bad portions so as to not lose any more of the essence in the process. And that’s very important because the bath doesn’t require a certain amount of herb; it requires a certain amount of essence. And if I get that wrong, the whole bath will be ruined, including the very expensive spirit beast core, but I won’t know that it’s ruined until the whole thing is finished.”
Finally, she held up a third slip. “And this one is supposed to help me learn how to use my knife so that I’m quick and efficient and precise, which is also important because the herb processing technique is supposed to tell me where to cut, but if my hands can’t get the precision part right, I could cut the essence instead of the dead part.”
She glared at him. “What can you do about it?”
“Not much, Senior Sister. I can only share a bit of wisdom that Master told Senior Sister Yang Xiu. He said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Don’t worry about the last mile or the hundredth mile or even the first mile. Just take a step, any step, and then take another,” Zou Tian said. “Master has confidence in you. He wouldn’t have asked you to do this if he didn’t believe in you.”
Wan Ai slowly inhaled, held it for a moment, and exhaled. “You think so?”
“I know so, Senior Sister.”
Maybe the boy could be of some help. She felt calmer already. In fact, she felt much calmer than she should.
“That’s weird,” she said. “I usually feel uncomfortable when around other people. With you, it’s almost like I’m alone.”
“That’s my special talent, Senior Sister. I can mask my presence. I can stand in the middle of a room and most people in the room will gradually forget that I was there.”
“That’s really interesting.”
“Master was really smart to assign me to assist you, Senior Sister. Not only do we share the dagger technique, but I think you’ll be more at ease around me than around anyone else.”
“You think he understood that when he picked you to help me?”
“Absolutely, Senior Sister. Master is truly unfathomable,” Zou Tian said. “Now, if you’ll allow me to give you some tips about learning techniques?”
Maybe she could perform the huge task required of her by starting with taking a single step. Maybe. With help.
She cupped her hands toward him. “Gratitude.”
###
Benton found himself with not much to do after lunch, so he took a run through the wilds and killed several rank three spirit beasts, very deliberately not using his void qi to avoid damaging the pelt or any of the meat. Rank three materials were quite pricy, and he employed a waste not, want not kind of attitude.
After he got back, he received a pleasant surprise. The mayor had been busy. He reported that all fifty-six villagers, including himself and the six harvesters, were ready to be inducted into the sect.
Benton was super excited to gain so many points at once and to fill so many necessary positions in his sect.
The only problem was that these were to be the first sect members that were not to be inducted first as his personal disciples. If his experience with the twins was any indication, the System would expect some kind of official ceremony, and the last thing he wanted was another long, drawn-out ritual involving tea.
From Su’s memories, the other sects didn’t do anything like the bai-si ceremony. There were tests, and those who passed were admitted. Which would be great, but Benton didn’t plan on testing anyone. Every one of the fifty-six were expected to be admitted.
He had an idea that played into the whole testing thing, though, based on the sorting hat from Harry Potter. The question was whether the System would accept it. How embarrassing would it be if he said, “Boom! You’re all sect members now!” but the System didn’t acknowledge them because it didn’t like how he’d inducted them?
Like just about anything in his new reality, gathering everyone took a while. There were no cell phones or even landlines to call people, after all. Messengers had to be sent to each house. People had to be tracked down.
The whole process was a pain.
Finally, though, the fifty-six villagers and an escort of Ye Zan’s guards were ready to make the trek to the arena.
It occurred to Benton that he could have used the time at lunch to get the amphitheater set up so he could use that instead.
Nah. The arena was fine. And he’d eventually need the beast cores he’d just collected.
Apparently, stories about him had been circulating because the villagers seemed more scared of him than potential beasts. That wasn’t an optimal result, but their fear at least kept them quiet throughout the trek.
Once in the arena, he had all the villages sit in one section of the lower stands while he stood in front of them on the sand. He pulled a table from his ring and put the orb on top of it.
“Welcome, everyone, to the first official induction ceremony for the Rising Tide Sect. One by one, you’ll come up here and touch the orb. I’ll then tell you about your talent level and qi aspect and gift you an appropriate cultivation method along with a spirit beast core to use to access the jade slip.
“With the mayor’s help, I’ll then assign you an official position in the sect.
“Once everyone is finished getting tested and assigned, you’ll officially be named members. After that, I’ll guide you all through the process of sensing and cycling qi.”
He paused to let all that sink in before saying, “Any questions?”
There were none, thankfully.
“If the Honorable Mayor wouldn’t mind coming up first?” Benton said.
“Of course, Esteemed Sect Leader.”
The mayor, as Benton knew from the first time he’d scanned him, was a nature aspected E- talent. Nothing special at all for the town. Benton presented him with a jade slip containing the Supreme Growth of Heaven Cultivation Method and a rank one beast core.
“The Honorable Mayor will remain in charge of the village and command the sect members placed under his authority as he sees fit,” Benton said.
No one seemed surprised by the announcement, which was good. Even if the villagers thought the arrangement odd, they didn’t say anything about it.
Honestly, it did rankle Benton a little, and he couldn’t wait for the day that the entire village would hopefully be more integrated into the sect.
Baby steps, though. Baby steps.
He had the rest of the villagers come up, starting with the man seated nearest the stairs leading down to the arena floor. He turned out to be one of the math whizzes slated for the Formations Pavilion. After announcing the man was an F+ ranked nature aspect, Benton desperately wanted to call out, “Ravenclaw.” He managed, somehow, to restrain himself and assigned the man to the correct pavilion.
Not much of interest happened during the sorting. Not counting the harvesters, there wasn’t a single villager better than E+, and forty-seven out of forty-nine were nature aspected. He gave the two who weren’t the Supreme Foundation of Heaven Cultivation Method.
All six of the harvesters were either D or D- ranked, and all had nature aspected qi. Benton wasn’t as sure what to do with them as far as what to method to give them, so he had them stand by so he could talk to them while the others tried to sense qi.
Once each of the villagers had been sorted, Benton said, “By the power invested in me by the immortal heavens, I now pronounce each of every one of you members of the Rising Tide Sect.”
As hokey as that statement was, the System accepted it because he immediately received a notification.
After instructing the villagers on how to sense qi, Benton turned to Quang Yin and his fellow harvesters. “All of you are in the third or fourth realm of Qi Gathering, and frankly, I’m not sure what to do with you. It seems like a waste to have you continue to cultivate that terrible technique, but changing methods mid-realm is difficult in the extreme. Not to mention that such a thing is likely to cause a qi deviation or even kill you outright.”
“We’re fine how we are, Esteemed Sect Leader,” Quang Yin said. “We accepted our fate long ago. The only thing we were hoping to get was that spiritual wood harvesting technique.”
“Yeah, giving you that is a no brainer, but I’m not quite so sure I’m willing to just let your talent go to waste. I know you’re all older, but you also have much better spirit roots than the vast majority of people in my sect. It just seems a shame to have you languishing at the lower levels of the first major realm.”
“What option do we have, Esteemed Sect Leader?” Quang Yin said.
Benton quickly queried his System exactly that question. It turned out that a pill that would completely cleanse the cultivation of someone of such a low realm was pretty cheap, two per Shop Point. Definitely worth it.
“I can wipe out your current cultivation completely, meaning you’d have to start over from scratch. In return, you’d get a much better cultivation method. The only problem is that I really don’t want to delay building my wall, and you won’t be able to harvest the wood for a while if you reset. I’m not sure the best path forward.”
“The Esteemed Sect Leader would really expend such effort, including a valuable resource like a Cultivation Cleansing Pill, on lowly ones such as us?” Quang Yin said.
“Of course. You’re my sect members, now.”
Benton wasn’t sure, but he thought that, at that very moment, those six men started to think of themselves the way he thought of them, as members of the Rising Tide Sect.
“If it pleases the Sect Leader, these lowly ones would first harvest the necessary wood and then reset our cultivation.”
“That would be perfect. Gratitude,” Benton said.
“No, Sect Leader, gratitude to you.”
Of course, resetting their cultivation would also wipe their techniques, so there was no point in them learning the new one until later. The harvesters all agreed with that assessment.
It took a few hours, but before he left the arena, he’d gained fifty Sect Points, bringing him to one hundred eighteen available and giving him five to spend on himself. In one fell swoop, he’d literally almost doubled the size of his sect. Additionally, by assigning the new members to various pavilions, he'd fulfilled the requirements of the Pavilionize Quest, earning him an additional five Shop Points.
