Benton’s spiritual sense was unrivaled in detecting spirit beast intrusions, even to the extent of being able to determine rank at a great distance. It did not, however, operate independently. For it to be active, he had to concentrate on doing a sweep.

It was not possible for him to constantly monitor for beasts. For one, he had to sleep occasionally. For another, he simply could not focus on just that all the time.

As a compromise, he tried to do remember to sweep periodically, at least a couple of times an hour. Sometimes, he went for longer than that, especially when he was engaged in doing something else, like intensely planning for his future build.

Usually, that worked just fine. Even though his disciples who were most in the line of fire couldn’t damage a rank four beast, they were perfectly capable of defending against one until he could reach them. The twins, especially, he didn’t have to worry about.

His lack of attention was, for the first time, causing a real issue. When the gong rang, he quickly swept the area with his spiritual sense. Two rank fours were attacking the village. Yang Ru had one occupied, but the other was free to enter the village and cause havoc.

The scan revealed something even worse, though. A rank five. And Yang Xiu was close to it. Too close.

While a rank four was well within her capability to hold off, a rank five was much more dangerous. Too dangerous.

Traveling the two and a half miles to her location in a single step took over twenty thousand qi. Once he would have been apoplectic seeing that huge quantity. Now it was a tiny drop in the bucket of his ocean of qi.

An instant after forming his intent, he was standing in the forest near where he’d detected the two qi signatures. Yang Xiu was in a tree, her eyes focused on a spot in another tree. He didn’t see anything where she was looking, but his senses told him that was the location of the beast.

“Our first rank five,” he said. “Good job spotting it.”

With a thought, his bow was in his hand with an arrow nocked, but as he was about to shoot, he ran into a problem. Benton could sense the creature, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t even know what type it was for sure. Though from the length of the qi signature, he suspected it was a snake.

He didn’t have time to mess around with that beast. The village was in trouble. A miss would waste time. A hit that wasn’t a kill would waste time. And not being able to see the beast, he was sure that he would miss a lot as his arrows’ homing worked off his senses. If he couldn’t see the thing, the arrow couldn’t either.

Yang Xiu could see it, though. She certainly wouldn’t miss.

Benton wondered—could he use his attack technique on her arrow? If so, that would open up some interesting possibilities for the future.

He lowered his bow. “We don’t have a lot of time, but I just had an idea I want to try. You shoot the snake. Aim for the neck. The fangs are valuable.”

Like a complete champ, she calmly raised her bow, pulled back the string, and loosed. Except, for her, it was like all that was one smooth motion. She truly was phenomenal with that weapon.

Thunk.

The arrow flashed light, countering the shadow aspected creature’s shield, before the void triggered. Suddenly, a head and a sinuous body, more than a foot wide and thirty long appeared in a tree. In separate pieces.

Both fell to the ground.

As he stepped toward them to sweep them into his ring, he said, “Neat. I suspected my technique would work with any arrow, not just one I shot, and it did! Now, take my hand. We need to get to the village. Two rank fours are attacking.”

She scrambled down the tree with no hesitation and grabbed his outstretched hand.

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“On three,” he said, “take a step. Three. Two. One. Go.”

They both stepped, and he triggered his movement technique, spending over fifty thousand qi to emerge near the northeast side of the village. Yang Ru was on the ground fighting off a gorilla.

“Help your brother with the gorilla,” Benton said, letting go of Yang Xiu’s hand. “I’ll take care of the other one and return.”

He stepped to the opposite side of the village, landing outside the wall. He turned to find another gorilla climbing it while two of Ye Zan’s crew and three of the village guards were doing their best to keep it from getting in.

And succeeding so far, though with some injuries. Another of the villager guards was lying outside on the ground on his back, missing an arm. He was still breathing, at least.

Nothing another Major Healing Pill couldn’t fix.

The expense was completely worth it. The important thing was that there were no deaths.

Benton did move creating a Healing Pavilion up his priority list, though.

Time to deal with the threat.

He didn’t want to use a ball of qi, be it void or anything else, because the guards were in too close of proximity to the target. Gravity was tricky as well, but Benton felt it was his best option.

Creating a point in the sky above and just slightly behind the beast, he increased gravity two hundredfold.

Not used to being subjected to gravity flowing in the wrong direction, the gorilla didn’t even have a chance to grab hold of anything before it flew into the air.

Seeing the creature jerk so hard gave Benton another idea. He canceled his first burst and used another one to pull the gorilla slightly away from the men on the allure.

The next step would probably be messy, and there was no point showering those poor guys in blood and guts.

He created two more microbursts, one in front of the gorilla, targeting its torso, and one behind, targeting its lower back. He applied a force two hundred times the pull of gravity to each.

The spirit beast’s top half went one direction and its lower the opposite.

He’d used gravity to literally pull it apart.

Nice.

Gross, but nice.

No time to gloat, though. The twins were still dealing with the other gorilla.

Not that he was worried. There was no way a rank four could hurt the two of them working as a team. In fact, giving them a little bit more time to fight was probably a good thing for their development.

After calmly stowing both halves of the beast in his ring, he purchased a Major Healing Pill from the Shop for a point and fed it to the downed village guard, restoring a man who’d been doomed to die even if treated by the most advanced technology on Earth to full health in seconds.

A cultivation world did have certain advantages if one could get used to the sometimes casual brutality.

His cleanup and mission of mercy complete, he stepped to the other side of the village where Yang Ru’s spear and Yang Xiu’s bow completely stymied the other gorilla.

She fired an arrow at the spirit beast, and Benton used his attack technique to attach a layer of water, to oppose the beast’s earth shield, and a layer of void qi to the projectile’s tip.

The arrow hit with a splash. Immediately after, a one-foot diameter sphere of the creature’s chest disappeared into nothingness, killing it instantly.

Benton frowned. That move was probably a little bit hasty as it had destroyed some edible parts of the beast. Valuable edible parts of the beast.

Oh well.

Overall, he was quite pleased. He’d zipped around that area surrounding the village and his sect faster than the Flash and easily killed one rank five and two rank four beasts in seconds each.

Best of all, even though he’d consumed over a staggering one hundred thousand qi, he’d naturally regenerate it in a little over four hours, and since that was only twenty percent of his total, he had plenty more to deal with any other emergencies that came up.

He did purely love being a Golden Core cultivator.

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Every time Yang Xiu thought she had a handle on Master’s power level, he proved her wrong. Whatever had happened to him since the last time she’d seen him fight had made him simply beyond. He was stronger, faster, and more versatile than any cultivator she’d ever read about.

There seemed to be nothing he couldn’t do.

But Master’s unfathomability wasn’t important at that moment. There was something much more urgent she needed to concentrate on.

She sunk into a lotus position and meditated, sending her mind back to the encounter with the rank five snake. How her instincts had warned her before her mind had caught up. Hearing where sound wasn’t coming from.

Her perception was perfect. For a long while, nothing that had a presence—visible, audible, or olfactory—could hide from her. After tonight, nothing that scrubbed an area of any of those senses would be able to conceal its presence from her, either.

Zou Tian was going down, as Master would say, the next time they played Hide and Seek.

The more she concentrated on her experience finding the snake, the more her gains solidified, the more using her ability in that manner became a part of who she was, became a permanent part of her skillset.

It clicked. She felt it, just as she had with her archery technique.

Mastery.

“Great job, Yang Xiu!” Master said. “Two months to go until you reach Foundation Establishment, and you’ve already mastered your technique.”

She didn’t know how Master knew already, but he did. He always did.

Yang Ru shot her a glance of mild congratulations. Was his skin turning a green tint?

Why, yes. It was.