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Chapter 82 – Distant Thunder Portends a Storm
🕑 Added 2024-10-19 17:46:08 +0000 UTCStarting in the early afternoon, Benton’s musings were interrupted by notifications. Not that he minded. Not for those kinds of notifications.
By the time the caravan stopped for the night, he’d received eight more of those notifications as the guards started reaching the next minor realm. The first of those was Huang Yimun, who was the winner of the extra Qi Condensing Pill.
Happily, the points earned by the guards were just enough to bring Benton to his two hundred and fortieth point earned, meaning he had the three Sect Points he needed to create his new technique.
“System,” he said internally, “please spend three points to create a technique to stack void qi and variable other qi depending on opponent’s shield type on top of a weapon’s metal tip.”
As the rest of the caravan made camp, Benton once again pulled his council into the woods, including Peng Zhen and Zi Delan. After he officially founded his sect, Benton figured he’d eventually have two different councils, one for more bureaucratic decisions and a core one for more strategic discussions. For now, though, he wanted all those in leadership positions to get used to the concept of being asked their opinion.
He did feel somewhat bad for leaving out Hao Cheng, but the little guy didn’t seem ready for that kind of responsibility yet.
“In the next week or two,” Benton said, “we will start encountering spirit beasts, and this meeting is to discuss our plans. Obviously, I’m not too concerned about a beast being able to defeat the twins and me. My main worry is that one of them will somehow slip through and attack one of our weaker members while the fighters are otherwise occupied. Thoughts?”
The group was mostly silent, but just when Benton was about to continue, Ye Zan spoke up. “I’m not sure what options are available to us, Master. Can you share some of your abilities with us to help us plan?”
Another disciple dropped the useless third person nonsense. Good.
“Sure,” Benton said. “My first thought was that, since we’re past the point where any spies can easily spot us, I could store all our goods in my ring. I could even store some of the wagons in my ring as well but not the animals unless we’re going to kill them first.”
It wasn’t like there was any traffic at all besides them on the overgrown dirt path from Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town to the Prosperous Gray Forest Village, so anyone they encountered could safely be considered to be a spy and captured or eliminated.
Their caravan was also getting quite long with seven big wagons and one cart. It spread out far enough that the tail lost sight of the front when going around a bend or over a hill. Reducing the length and concentrating the group should make defending it easier.
There were a lot of people that Benton had collected. Him, the twins, Zou Tian, and Shi Long; Ye Zan’s seventeen guards, including the drivers; Xun Wu’s family of five and Peng Zhen’s family of three; Zi Delan’s gang of six; and the ten orphans made a total of forty-six. That was a lot of defenseless small kids to keep track of and defend.
“Additionally,” Benton said, “my senses are quite adept at picking out spirit beasts from miles away. Even ones that are heavily dependent on stealth for ambush attacks are still easily detectable within hundreds of yards.”
“Well,” Ye Zan said, “Those two advantages will be very beneficial, Master. We should be able to put everyone in three wagons, which will greatly reduce the amount of space to patrol. I worry, though, that none of my guards have any experience fighting spirit beasts.”
“Good point. Once we enter their territory, we should rotate two of your guards hunting with Yang Xiu and another two with Yang Ru in order to get that experience. With three of your people driving wagons and the four hunting, that leaves five off duty and five actively guarding? As long as I stay with the caravan, that should be fine. If the density of beasts increases, we’ll shift to keeping everyone around the caravan.”
“Yes, Master. Though that means we won’t be getting a full ten hours of cultivation in.”
“That will be a necessary sacrifice and only a temporary one. I’d rather plan to be as safe as possible.”
With the decision made, Benton saw no need to keep the goods in the wagons exposed for another night, so he immediately swiped everything into his ring once he’d finished escorting the rest of the council back to the campsite. That act drew some excited murmurs from the rest of the group, but not many of them knew enough about spatial rings to understand how phenomenal his was.
Benton immediately traipsed back into the woods until he found an area with a few dead trees. Time to test out his new technique.
When he was a teenager, he remembered watching a television show that featured two protagonists who were prohibited by law from owning guns, so when they needed a lethal weapon, they taped a stick of dynamite to an arrow to blow stuff up.
Adult Benton had more than a few questions about that tactic. Wouldn’t taping a heavy explosive to an arrow shaft effect the trajectory? Did dynamite really explode on contact like that? Would a single stick of dynamite blow a small shack into little splinters?
Kid Benton sure had enjoyed the spectacle, though, and the image of that one explosion endured in his mind.
Thus, when he used his new technique to charge ten fire-aspected qi onto the tip of an arrow and loosed at one of the dead trunks, he was expecting something spectacular.
He didn’t get it. The fireball was underwhelming. It didn’t even ignite the dry wood because it flared so fast.
The next time he pulled the arrow back to his cheek, he concentrated on adding one hundred fire aspected qi to the technique and let loose.
The trunk exploded into fiery chunks.
For a moment, he basked in the feeling of being a good ol’ boy before deciding that he really didn’t want to burn down the forest. He rushed forward and used his ring to douse the flames with pond water.
Time to see what void would do.
Again, he started with ten qi, and the result was … interesting. There was no sound after the thunk of the arrow hitting the tree. A chuck of wood just disappeared as if it had never existed, leaving a perfectly smooth semi-spherical divot about four inches in diameter. The arrow’s shaft fell to the ground, the tip and front half having disappeared.
Benton shivered thinking about what that would do to a human. Yikes.
In order to fully test his new technique, he dialed the void qi up to one hundred. Purely for science. Not just because he really wanted to see what would happen.
He took careful aim at the center of a trunk that had fallen to lean against another tree and loosed.
Thunk.
Most of the middle of the tree and the entire arrow just soundlessly disappeared. The bottom, which no longer had anything supporting it, crashed to the ground soon to be followed by the top that had been braced against an upper fork in a neighboring tree.
That was so cool.
One more test. Charging both fire qi and void qi with ten each, he aimed at a third trunk. He barely even saw a flash of fire before it, along with a chunk of the dead wood, was eaten by the void.
That was the attack of a juggernaut cultivator. Combined with his variable shield that formed the instant he was hit, he was going to be a force to be reckoned with.
Rather pleased with himself, Benton returned to the camp where Ye Zan and Huang Yimun used their Qi Condensing Pills, propelling them to minor realm four. After getting the notification about gaining another Sect Point, Benton offered the guard captain and the other guard their choice of the sect’s bow technique or spear technique. Both chose the spear.
“I’ll be giving the same choice to each of the guards upon reaching the third minor realm,” Benton said. “Once they reach Large Success with their chosen technique, I want them to learn the opposite one to Small Success. When that is accomplished, you and I will sit down and discuss what other techniques would be useful for them to learn.”
“Yes, Master.”
Benton went to each of the ones who had reached the third minor realm, congratulated them, and offered them the weapon choice.
The next day, Hou Yazhu took his pill, advancing to the fourth minor realm as well. A few more of the guards reached minor realm three. Before they all settled in for the night, Benton went to each of them offering them a choice of weapon technique and explaining his expectations.
As a bonus result from consolidating the wagons, adding additional oxen to pulling each one actually sped the pace. A little. It was still glacial, of course, but better was better.
The following day, the rest of guards reached the third minor realm, and Benton followed his new protocol with them as well.
Astoundingly, he also received a notification that Wai Ai reached Qi Gathering minor realm five.
Benton called up his status.
Nice. Ninety-two Sect Points. Considering how many he hoped to earn through body cultivation, he might actually reach those eighty-four free points he needed to advance himself. After all, he had … one … unused at the moment.
Hey, it was a start.
Actually, he was considering changing his ten percent allotment. There weren’t many disciples who were going to be reaching Foundation Establishment anytime in the near future. Assuming he could get the right pills from the Shop without breaking the bank, he thought the twins might advance soon after the sect was founded. Other than them, only Wan Ai was getting within striking distance.
If body cultivation panned out how he hoped, he’d have more than enough points to secure techniques for his disciples for a while to come, and that assumption didn’t even take into account recruiting more sect members from the village. He felt it likely that he could at least double his personal point allotment to twenty percent and maybe even go to twenty-five without impacting his ability to create new cultivation methods and techniques.
During the next five days, all the guards advanced their respective weapon techniques to Small Success, earning Benton seventeen more Sect Points. That quantity took him to two unused points for his personal advancement, and he was torn. He planned for the Shield Breaker technique to become his go to damage dealer, so taking it to Large Success would greatly enhance his combat effectiveness by reducing the qi expended by ten to twenty-five percent. On the other hand, the technique was meant to be used with a weapon, and picking up the arrow technique would make it less likely for a target to evade him. And he could buy that one immediately.
More damage or a higher chance to hit? Tough call. With some regret, he decided to wait for one more point in order to advance his most powerful technique.
Sometime in the mid-morning, he sensed rank one spirit beasts in the distance. That was close to a week sooner than he had expected, meaning that the beasts had expanded their territory greatly in the little over two months he’d been gone. He couldn’t help but wonder—what storm did that metaphorical distant thunder portend?
Comments
richard C bond
"Wai Ai reached Qi Gathering minor realm five" should be "Wan Ai" there.
