As Benton watched over his sect members cultivating in the Wood, his thoughts turned to the progress everyone had made. They’d all worked really hard over the last four weeks.
All his recruits from Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town had advanced from minor realm four to minor realm five, and Xun Wu, Shi Long, Zou Tian, and the original group of eight orphans from the village also reached their next minor realm, the sixth. Pan Xiaolian and the other forty-nine villagers were the big point earners as far as Spiritual Cultivation went, moving all the way from the first minor realm to the fourth. The wood harvesters actually surpassed the other villagers’ feat, resetting their cultivation and going all the way from nothing to minor realm four, but their smaller numbers didn’t result in quite as high a gain.
In total, Spiritual Cultivation added two hundred and four Sect Points to Benton’s total.
Recently, it had seemed like techniques were costing him more than they were returning, but the last month turned that trend around. With some notable exceptions, sect members learned techniques he’d already created, meaning all their work resulted in mostly pure profit for him.
One exception was for the healers. Realistically, the five villagers slotted into that pavilion wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything miraculous until reaching Foundation Establishment, but the technique he created for them essentially gave them all the knowledge a doctor on Earth might possess. It was, hopefully, enough for them to be able to triage patients during the upcoming tide to determine who needed a pill immediately and who could survive without one. They’d also be useful in dealing with scratches and bites by applying mundane bandages, etc.
Benton feared that need of miraculous resources like Healing Pills might exceed his supply of Shop Points to buy them. Having people he could trust to make good decisions about when to use them would take a large load off his mind.
The other exception was the four techniques Benton had promised Ye Zan, covering perception, stealth, defense, and movement. Each of the guards got one of the techniques at least to Small Success during the month, giving him an additional seventeen to offset the cost of forty.
Besides the five points earned from the healers, Wan Ai’s Alchemy Pavilion made ten, four from the villagers learning their craft and the other six from weapons’ techniques. Nine more points came from crafting as Xun Wu’s team and the new Formations Pavilion found time to devote to their practice.
Most of the points from techniques, though, came from sect members getting either their primary or secondary weapons, or both, to Small Success. Those advancing weapons included the wood harvesters who also each reached Small Success with their crafting technique as well. Having previous experience in an area really accelerated the learning curve.
In total, Benton earned a net eighty-two Sect Points for the month from techniques.
The biggest point earner by far, however, was Body Cultivation. The twins and Zou Tian advanced from minor realm one all the way to minor realm six. Ye Zan’s guards, Zi Delan’s group, and the rest of the seventeen Martial Pavilion members who had started the process advanced all the way to the peak of Bronze. The twenty village guards and an additional twenty sect members all began the process, the guards reaching minor realm three and the rest minor realm two.
All in all, Body Cultivation netted Benton a whopping two hundred sixty-seven Sect Points for the period.
Needless to say, he was left with a huge personal allotment to spend, one hundred twenty in total.
Benton used seventy-eight of those immediately to max out his Ultimate Juggernaut Combat Build Mark Two. He advanced his area of effect shield, Meditation, and his Time Manipulation techniques to Mastery, as well as buying and mastering Nascent Soul cultivation knowledge and Healing. Additionally, he moved all the way to the peak of Golden Core, minor realm nine.
That left him with thirty-eight points.
Of course, he wanted to further advance his cultivation, but that path forward was barred to him until he reached one thousand loyal sect members.
His Mastery of Nascent Soul Cultivation gave him a lot of information about what would happen in the next major realm. While it was true that he would receive a new body at that point, not everything would be washed away.
The new body would be free of impurities and any pill toxicities, and cosmetically, the cultivator had a lot of control over what the new form would look like. Things like spirit roots, channels, meridians, and the dantian would remain unchanged, however. Whatever successes or failures one encountered over their cultivation career was carried with them.
The same holdover of Spiritual Cultivation characteristics was true for improvements made by Body Cultivation. The strength and toughness of whatever realm one achieved would be carried over.
Thinking that increased toughness would be a good thing if he had to fight in the middle of a bunch of raging spirit beasts, Benton used twenty of those points to raise his Body Cultivation to Gold minor realm one.
That purchase completed his Mark Two build, and he had twenty-two points left over. The biggest problem he could think of with his combat style was lack of an area of effect finisher. His current gravity technique worked great for crowd control, but it was extremely difficult to actually kill anything truly powerful with it.
Void was a special qi aspect. It worked great at destroying matter but was inefficient in that it required a relatively high amount of qi. Thus, trying to use that aspect for a large area effect was suboptimal.
Kang Lin’s lightning aspect had been on his mind lately, though.
He could just imagine calling down huge bolts of lightning like Thor in those movies, except his version wouldn’t just explode everything in radius of the initial strike. His attack would chain to the next person nearby.
Benton rubbed his hands together. Yeah. That sounded perfect.
For eight of the twenty-two points, he created Chain Lightning and bought it all the way to Mastery. Since he’d already mastered the Concept for Lightning, he decided to save the remaining fourteen points for a future Concept, of which Healing was his most important priority.
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He pulled up his status.
Sect Name: Rising Tide Sect Members: 162 Disciples: 56 Sect Points: 657 Shop Points: 96 Host Cultivation: Golden Core - Minor Realm Nine Qi Available: 5,647,745 Host Body Cultivation: Gold - Minor Realm One Host Techniques (Qi Gathering): Basic Archery – Mastery Basic Spear Combat – Mastery Expert Golden Core Cultivation – Mastery Nascent Soul Cultivation Knowledge – Mastery Pill Basics – Mastery Host Techniques (Foundation Establishment): Analysis – Mastery Automatic Reaction Variable Shield – Mastery Chain Lightning – Mastery Folded Space Quickstep – Mastery Healing – Mastery Layered Variable Shield Breaker with Void Finisher Weapon Augmentation – Mastery Meditation – Mastery Pause Time – Mastery Seeking Speeding Arrow – Mastery Variable AoE Gravity Burst – Mastery Variable AoE Shield – Mastery Variable Spirit Coin Manifestation – Mastery Host Techniques (Golden Core Concepts): Earth - Mastery Fire - Mastery Gravity - Mastery Ice - Mastery Illusion - Mastery Lightning - Mastery Metal - Mastery Poison - Mastery Space - Mastery Time - Mastery Void - Mastery Water - Mastery Wood - Mastery Menus: [Cultivation Method] [Technique] [Quest] [Perk] [Advancement] [Shop] [Sect]
Besides Benton becoming probably the strongest Golden Core Cultivator on the planet, the other exciting change for the sect was that the village seamstresses finished enough robes for all the members to get at least one. Since they really didn’t have core, inner, and outer divisions yet, there were only three versions of the robes.
As the sect leader, Benton got a style all his own, mostly blue but with streaks of silver woven in and no accent color. He quite liked it.
The second version was for each of the council members. Those were opposite Benton’s, being mostly silver with streaks of blue. Each pavilion had its own accent color, which each member had incorporated into the sash and sleeve cuffs. Pavilion heads had a gold insignia representing the pavilion on their shoulders.
The colors were green for Alchemy, black for Blacksmith, gray for the Contribution Point Store, purple for Formations, yellow for Healing, red for Martial, orange for Outer Sect, and brown for Woodworking.
All the other members of the sect received plain blue robes but with the pavilion accents.
When Benton looked at all the people cultivating in the Wood, they looked like a real sect. They just had to survive the beast tide and set the buildings, and they’d be as real as real could be.
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Yang Ru sighed. He was in a relatively isolated section of the Wood next to his sister and Zou Tian and was supposed to be cultivating. Concentration was coming hard, though.
The closer it came to time for Kang Lin to arrive, the more distracted Yang Ru became. By the time Yang Xiu finished the cycle she was working on, he still hadn’t managed to even start the next one of his.
“What’s wrong, Brother?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Uh huh. Nervous about tomorrow?”
“No.”
“I think it’s sweet that you’re so nervous about making a good impression on your fiancé.”
“She is not my fiancé.”
“You don’t want to marry her?” Yang Xiu said, feigning shock. “Why not? Isn’t she pretty enough for you? I think she’s pretty. Don’t you think so, Zou Tian?”
The boy grinned. “Not as pretty as Senior Sister.”
Yang Xiu barked out a laugh. “Don’t you mean, not as pretty as Wan Ai?”
Zou Tian’s face reddened. Yang Ru would have felt sorry for the boy, but it was infinitely better for it to be him on the receiving end of the teasing.
“I think the lovely young lady will make a great companion for Senior Brother,” Zou Tian said diplomatically.
“Master said that I just have to get to know her. There is no commitment to anything else.” Yang Ru grimaced. He knew the words had been a mistake as soon as they’d left his mouth.
“Brother, brother, brother.” Yang Xiu grinned. “If we were back in town, would you have any say in who Mother, Father, and the elders picked for you?”
He so badly wanted to bring up the fact that she hadn’t agreed to marry Fang Wei, but that was neither fair nor a good comparison. The Lord Mayor had sidestepped the entire process, not letting their parents or the elders have a say.
Not to mention that Yang Ru didn’t want to ruin his sister’s mood by bringing up such a painful subject.
The worst part was that his sister was right. Yang Ru would have ended up marrying whoever they picked for him. He didn’t know why the thought of marrying Kang Lin was bothering him so much.
“I can just imagine Mother’s and Father’s faces now,” she said. “Their big, strong son getting married … to a girl who can beat him up.”
There. That was it. Of course, Yang Xiu would see the issue even before he did.
From his youngest memories, his parents had appointed him the protector of his sister, a job he had failed at. But that was in the past. He was one of the strongest members of their fledgling sect, and his future was bright. His entire purpose in life was to become the sect’s protector.
If his bride to be could beat him in a martial contest, what value did he bring to the relationship?
“We should be cultivating,” Yang Ru said, closing his eyes and attempting once again to concentrate on cycling qi.
It didn’t help him much, but at least Yang Xiu stopped teasing him.
A couple of cycles later, she stopped and said, “Go get Master. I think it’s time.”
Great. Just great.