Benton turned to Mo Jian. “Honorable Mayor, how about the villagers?”

“My fellow new inductees are all diligently cultivating ten hours per day as instructed and are approaching the second minor realm, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

“I was more thinking about how we should proceed for the future,” Benton said. “When they reach minor realm four, the martial oriented ones will get weapon techniques and proceed along the same path as Zi Delan’s group now. We haven’t established a clear path for the craftspeople.”

“Ah. They’d be able to produce more quickly if we started them with a crafting technique, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

“Production is important,” Benton said, “but they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves when the beast tide comes.”

The mayor shrugged as if to ask, “Which do you value more?”

That was a tough question. Benton was eager to get his pavilions up and running, and it already was going to take the villagers around a month just to reach a minimum cultivation level.

“I’ll open that to the council for a recommendation as well. Do we first want to get the villagers established doing the job we recruited them for or have them obtain a minimal proficiency with weapons?”

Yang Xiu, usually the first to respond, had nothing.

“If the attack is not imminent, it would seem wise to start crafting, Master,” Zou Tian said. “Even if the attack is imminent, we need arrows, and hopefully, our lives are not truly dependent on these newest sect members defending the sect.”

“They obviously will not be the first line of defense, but beast tides are chaotic. Our frontline fighters may not kill every beast before it can get inside the sect grounds or the village. Everyone who can wield a weapon will be valuable, even if only to save their own lives.”

“I think a compromise solution is in order, Master,” Ye Zan said. “It only takes around a week or so for most people to reach Small Success. Have the villagers attain that level with their craft technique, which should be even faster for them since they already have familiarity with their job. Then, they can mainly work at the designated position but train a couple of hours a day with weapons.”

Benton hmmed. “That idea won’t allow them to cultivate a full ten hours a day, but after minor realm four, there’s no hurry for them to advance. I like it. Good thinking. Anyone object?”

Unlike back on Earth, participants of the meeting rarely had anything contrary to say about one of their colleagues’ proposals. Benton wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Next topic,” Benton said. “Recruitment. I’ll be headed back to Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town in four weeks and will bring back the rest of the orphanage and any others who want to come. I also saw a few potential recruits while walking about town. We’ll need to be ready to onboard them when I get back. Honored Mayor, is this a task you’d be willing to take on?”

The trust between the village and the sect was growing, but it wasn’t where Benton wanted it to be. Working together was a way to continue moving in the right direction. Besides, of all the people at the table, the mayor was probably the one most qualified for the task.

“This one would be happy to, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

“Great,” Benton said. “We also need to talk about adding more villagers. At this point, I’d honestly feel pretty good about inducting every person here. Thoughts?”

“That would be amazing, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

Benton was relieved the mayor thought so. “We need a methodology in place for induction, which we’ve established the very basics of so far. First, we perform the ceremony and use their qi aspect and interests to sort them into a pavilion. Next, they basically go into closed-door seclusion to cultivate until reaching minor realm three. Then comes the Qi Gathering Pill advancing them to minor realm four. Finally, they’re ready to report to their pavilion who will assign them a technique and get them started producing.”

Everyone was nodding along.

“There are around a thousand un-inducted villagers,” Benton said. “Is that about right, Honorable Mayor?”

“Yes, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

“Right now, not counting the outer sect for purely younger inductees, we have five pavilions.” Benton turned to Wan Ai. “If I sent you two hundred people in a month, could you handle that?”

She didn’t answer, instead just sat there with her jaw dropped.

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“Xun Wu? Can you incorporate two hundred new blacksmiths?”

He laughed. “No, Master. I don’t have the resources or infrastructure to even begin to teach them, much less make them productive.”

“Exactly,” Benton said. “Realistically, we need to keep inducting people in batches of maybe fifty to start? We can increase that quantity as our sect grows and we’re more organized and we’ve populated the new sect grounds. Honorable Mayor, thoughts?”

“That is more than acceptable, Esteemed Sect Leader.”

“Zou Tian?” Benton said.

“It makes sense, Master. I’ve seen firsthand how difficult getting something like the Body Cultivation baths started is. Before, I would have thought adding more people equals faster production, but that isn’t the case. The people doing the work have to stop and teach the new people and figure out where to fit them in. Besides, a sect might have a lot more than five pavilions and the few other supplementary divisions. The recruitment you proposed will give us time to find specific people to fill specific spots.”

“Alright, if everyone is agreed on that topic…” Benton paused for a moment to let anyone who wanted to speak up do so, but no one did. “Great. Next is the timing of the batches. It takes about a month to go from induction to minor realm four. After that, new members should be able to get one weapon technique and one craft technique, or second weapon, to Small Success in under three weeks. So, from joining the sect until becoming a productive member takes about seven weeks. How aggressive do we want to be—inductions every three weeks, month, or seven weeks?”

“Three would be way too soon, Master,” Yang Xiu said. “Classes would overlap, and there are barely enough hours in the day to accomplish everything already.”

“Noted,” Benton said. “Keep in mind, though, that I don’t expect you and Yang Ru to teach forever. Eventually, you should find talented proteges and hand off some of those kinds of duties. Be on the lookout for people to fill that role.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Integrating an apprentice into a workflow takes much effort and is a distraction until the individual learns enough to be able to contribute, Master,” Xun Wu said. “This process is smoothed by having a workshop with crafters of many different experience levels as those who have reached journeyman can teach the apprentices. This sect does not have that yet. We’re still trying to find our footing for all our crafts. We’re even using makeshift facilities.”

Everyone was paying close attention. When it came to the subject of setting up a workshop and getting new additions up to speed creating crafts, no one had more experience than the expert blacksmith.

“I am in agreement with Yang Xiu, Master,” Xun Wu said. “Three weeks is too fast. Four weeks is not much better, but it can probably be done as long as we do not get too many apprentices at once. Seven weeks would be better from an efficiency standpoint, but from a total production standpoint, getting new people in faster will be better in the long run.”

“That’s logical,” Benton said.

In the end, everyone was pretty much agreed to start with a month as the time frame, triggering a new round of inductions when the previous round had all, or nearly all in case of laggers, reached the fourth minor realm. If problems arose, they could always re-adjust the schedule or have the recruits spend more time cultivating or learning weapons before moving to crafting.

“The last topic that I had for discussion is new robes for the sect members,” Benton said. “I’ve been reluctant to push for more labor from the non-member villagers, but with our new spirit of cooperation, it would be nice to get seamstresses started creating new clothing for all the sect members from all the fabric I bought.”

“It shall be done, Esteemed Sect Leader,” the mayor said.

Benton cupped his hands. “Gratitude.”

As there were no other topics of discussion, the meeting broke up.

The next twenty-one days flew by. Benton checked on little Jin LiJuan, but her spirit roots hadn’t healed enough to register. She was doing better, though. He told her he’d check back in a couple of weeks and for her not to worry; he was confident that the pills worked. They just had to give it time.

A lot of sect members advanced their cultivation in that time. The biggest Sect Point earners by far were the villagers, who went from minor realm one all the way to minor realm four, the fifty of them increasing Benton’s total by a whopping one hundred fifty points. Second at a paltry thirty points in comparison were Ye Zan’s fifteen guards advancing from the third minor realm to the fifth. Peng Hanying, Xun Wu’s wife and son, and Zhong Wen and her two assistants all also advanced two minor realms, gaining Benton twelve more points.

Xun Wu himself went all the way from the second minor realm to the fourth while both Ye Zan and Hou Yahzu both advanced to minor realm five. The trio together earned another five points.

Techniques were a lot less of a bright spot as they ended up costing Benton thirty-seven points. Since the villagers barely completed their cultivation by the end of the period, none of them learned techniques to Small Success, meaning no points.

Peng Hanying and his family all learned an appraisal skill, but that was a net negative of seven because it had to be created. Same with all the orphans who were slotted into the different pavilions. They did great learning a weapon or craft skill, whichever they were lacking, to Small Success, but Benton had to create techniques for spiritual food preparation, bow making, arrow making, spiritual farming, and formations.

Even the star of techniques for the period, Xun Wu, was a net negative. As an expert blacksmith, learning techniques related to his craft went quite quickly for him. He advanced Hammer Time to Large Success, a pure gain since it had already been created, but lost overall in that the forging skill he also advanced to Large Success cost ten points.

Body Cultivation was as much of a Sect Point winner as Benton had thought it would be. Over the twenty-one days, it produced one hundred and sixty points for him as all but four of the sect members going through the process reached Bronze minor realm six.

Not only were the points earning fantastic for him, but he also felt a lot, lot better about the survivability of his main fighters. Almost as good, Wan Ai and her two assistants were so good at the process that he felt comfortable creating three new techniques, one each for Yang Xiu, Yang Ru, and Zou Tian. They had yet to reach the first minor realm by the end of the period, though.

Benton’s massive gains of four hundred thirty gave him seventy-eight points to spend on himself, a number so big that he was almost overwhelmed. He had to take some time to plan out how best to spend them.