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Chapter 96 – Dislike, Excitement, and Ambivalence
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 10:04:01 +0000 UTCAfter escorting his newest sect members back to the village, Benton returned to the area outside the arena. As the site of his sect and land he personally owned, the place was already becoming special to him, and he wanted to spend as much time as possible there.
Work was never finished for a sect leader, apparently, because he had no time to wander his territory just to get familiar with it. He had System business to attend to. Three items, actually. One he didn’t want to do; one he was excited by; and the final one he was kind of ambivalent about.
His mom had raised him to eat his Brussel sprouts before dessert. Speaking of that nasty vegetable, he hadn’t encountered it on his new planet. If for no other reason, his being transmigrated to a cultivation world was truly a blessing.
The first item—the thing he didn’t want to do—was a certain status check, but wants and needs were two different things indeed.
“System,” he said out loud because there was no one around to hear, “show me the Build a Proper Foundation Quest status.”
Just as he’d thought. The first two prerequisites had been fulfilled. His average loyalty, however, had dropped below the required six with the addition of the new sect members.
Time to see exactly how bad it was.
“System, what is my current average Loyalty Rating?”
Well, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The villagers must all have some loyalty toward him, or the average would have been much, much lower.
Okay, the fun stuff was up next.
He had five points to spend on his personal power. Actually, he seriously considered moving his allotment to twenty percent now that Sect Points were rolling in with such relative frequency. Only the fact that he’d committed to spending another thirty-five for the sect members dissuaded him from immediately acting on his impulse.
“You know, what I really need to do is to set a hard benchmark, or I’ll always find some reason to put off increasing my personal draw. So, here goes. The next time my total Sect Points rises above one hundred with no expenditures pending that I’ve already committed to making, I will raise my personal allotment to twenty percent.”
Benton tensed, but no lighting flashed.
The lack was good. Imagine if every little promise he made resulted in such theatrics. Really, it would be kind of cool, but it would get old at some point. Surely. Maybe.
That decision tackled, he moved on to making the choice of how to spend his current points.
His technique for attaching qi to the tip of a weapon was quickly becoming his go-to attack. It was both powerful and flexible. He could just imagine cutting down beast after beast by attaching small amounts of void qi to the tip of his arrows during the tide.
Five points wasn’t enough to max out the technique, however, with him being one point shy of making that purchase. Besides, he needed to start incorporating the other techniques that were to become his staples into his combat style, and to accomplish that, he needed to buy them at Small Success to start practicing them.
That left his choices as some combination of pausing time, folding space, the variable shield, or the gravity area attack. He wanted all of them. That night. Immediately.
Alas, he didn’t have enough available points. The shield cost four points just to learn, so that one was out as he preferred to add two new techniques.
That elimination meant he needed to also get rid of one of the remaining three. Of those, the one that would affect his combat style the least was pausing time. He felt that it would eventually become his ace in the hole. The ability to stop in the middle of a chaotic situation and figuratively catch his breath and plan his next move would be invaluable. But the use of such a technique should be fairly intuitive.
The other two required practice, making them a higher priority at the moment.
“System, please give me the techniques we previously discussed for folding space and creating a gravity area attack, both at Small Success.”
The System confirmed his choice, giving him the Folded Space Quickstep Technique and the Variable AoE Gravity Burst Technique.
That purchase left him with one point remaining, and fully expecting to be swimming in points in the near future, he didn’t want to save it.
“System, please increase my body cultivation by one minor realm.”
The choice to raise that particular category was easy. It was the only thing listed on his master plan that cost a single point.
With the happy task finished, he moved on to the one he was ambivalent about.
“System, I would like to create a Soul Cultivation Method.”
“Okay, those possibilities are … interesting. Give me Manifestation, please.”
Benton expected the next screen that popped up to be the one to select a qi aspect, but the System skipped that one. Maybe qi didn’t matter for the soul?
The territory was completely new for both Su and Benton, so he really had no idea.
None of those categories sounded familiar at all. What the crap was soul tempering? What benefit was it to have your soul get bigger? Or stronger, for that matter? Sure, bigger and stronger was, for most things, better, but what, specifically, did it do for one’s soul?
With so many things on his mind, he just didn’t have the bandwidth yet to figure it all out. Luckily, he had a cheat.
“System, if my primary objective were to have my disciples’ souls resist demonic cultivator draining techniques, which of these categories should I choose?”
Okay, well when the System put it like that…
“System, give me five points in each of the attribute enhancements and place the other eighty-five in Inviolability.”
His selection was confirmed, and he was asked to come up with a name. Man, he hated that part with such a passion.
“System, call it the Defense Against Dark Incarnation.”
He chuckled. DADI would protect his sect members.
“Confirmed.”
He ignored the next screen in favor of calling up his status.
###
Ye Zan escorted Xun Wu and his son into the house. “As you can see, I have four guards on the perimeter, and I will be just outside your room. No one and nothing will interfere with you while you’re incapacitated.”
“Gratitude, Ye Zan. I and my family thank you for your diligence,” Xun Wu said.
Ye Zan didn’t know the blacksmith very well and didn’t want to upset him, but his curiosity got the better of him. “May this one ask you a question?”
“Of course, but no need for such formalities. As far as the sect goes, I’m the inferior one.”
Said the man who was soon to be an A ranked talent and who was already an expert blacksmith. Ye Zan would never think himself superior to someone like that just because he’d been cultivating six weeks longer.
“Why did you decide to take the pill? Yang Ru won’t say anything about his experience, but to hear Yang Xiu tell it, there was a lot of pain.”
Xun Wu pulled back his sleeve, revealing a scarred forearm. “You don’t become an expert blacksmith without experiencing the flame. Pain doesn’t scare me. To answer your question, though, it’s because my entire life has been about bringing out the potential in a piece of metal through the purification of the forge. I figure that's exactly what the pill will do to my spiritual roots, bring out my potential through purification. Can’t do that without a lot of flame and a big hammer. I’m hoping that the pill is both.”
Ye Zan could understand how a blacksmith could have that perspective. He just didn’t know if he’d have the dedication to do the same. A relatively short while later, screams of pure agony come from inside Xun Wu’s room.
It was probably a good thing that Master hadn’t made such an offer to Ye Zan.
After those thoughts, he was thus quite ashamed when the next visitor arrived—Peng Zhen with his son, Peng Hanying.
“You both understand that, even though we’re not positive, it is extremely likely that using these pills will be the most excruciatingly painful experience of your life,” Ye Zan said.
The father looked hesitant, but the boy nodded. Ye Zan was tempted to write off the bravery as a youngster who had no idea what he was about to go through. But something about the boy’s eyes changed his mind.
“You don’t have a doubt at all, do you?” Ye Zan said. “May I ask why?”
“If there is anything that my father taught me, it’s that life only offers you so many opportunities. It may be a handful; it may be three; it may only be one. You have to be ready to grab hold with both hands when one comes along.”
Peng Zhen smiled. “I just hate that you’re going to have to suffer for it, my son.”
“I trust Master. The pain will only be temporary, but the benefits will be for my very long life.”
More and more, Ye Zan found himself impressed not only by his master but by his fellow sect members. He was truly glad that he’d accepted that escort request offer from Kang Ya-Ting.
Comments
Daoist_Matt
TFTC 😋🥳
Monus
They usually work well with epub if that's an option for you.
BWFoster78 Last
Noted. I'll take a look at that and give the thought consideration.
BWFoster78 Last
It would be pretty easy for me to upload a pdf with the chapter. Would your TTS work with that?
Monus
Some potential stuff to fix: "System, give me five points in each of the attribute enhancements and place the other eighty-five in Inviolability.” given that there is no other indication I would have imagine attribute enhancement to be its own entry not category. You had a similar sub category in another cultivation menu as well. I think it would be clearer to just remove it. It adds very little and only causes confusion right now. Or if you want to keep it, give the list proper bullet points. Especially since involitabiliy is also an attribute?
tonright
I use TTS to read online content for disability reasons. I just realised that you're inserting some text in the form of images and that's why it's skipping all of the "system" dialog aaaaa. Makes so much more sense to know why I was confused about what was going on lol
