It took the entirety of Benton’s self-control not to burst out laughing at Yang Xiu’s expression when he told her that Yang Ru had passed her. Nothing like good old sibling rivalry to spur his disciples to greater heights.
The boy had really impressed him, though. It took a lot of effort to advance two techniques at the same time so quickly, and killing a rank six beast at Foundation Establishment minor realm one was quite an accomplishment, one that Benton doubted many could make.
He scanned the boy.
Name: Yang Ru Affiliation: Rising Tide Sect Age: 15 Cultivation: Foundation Establishment - Minor Realm One Qi Available: 2,968 Body Cultivation: Bronze - Minor Realm Seven Techniques (Qi Gathering): Foundational Archery Essentials – Small Success Foundational Spear Essentials – Mastery Stone Skin – Mastery Techniques (Foundation Establishment): Inevitability – Small Success Total Momentum Transfer – Small Success Spiritual Roots: A- Qi Aspect: Low viscosity lava flowing down Mount Burning Thunder
Just when he thought he couldn’t be any more impressed by his disciple, the boy exceeded expectations again.
“Kang Lin,” Yang Ru said, “will you go on a walk with me?”
It had been a long, long time since Benton had been in a position to ask a girl on a date, but he remembered how much courage it took to ask a question like that one. The way things were going, great grandkids might be in his future.
He mentally pumped on the brakes. Hopefully, his far future, several years at least. There was no hurry for such a thing.
After taking Yang Xiu back to the Wood with the first trip and the two potential lovebirds with the second, Benton turned his attention to his gains over the last several days.
Techniques had been a loser as no one besides Yang Ru had a significant advancement.
Likewise, cultivation advancements had slowed down quite a bit with most of his sect members getting into the higher minor realms, meaning that each took longer and longer, and the newest villagers not quite hitting the second minor realm yet. Of course, the time between advancements sped a little by so many taking advantage of the Wood’s higher qi density.
The six harvesters, at least, advanced from minor realm four to five.
Body Cultivation was the star of the show. Besides the twins and Zou Tian advancing to the seventh minor realm of Bronze, thirty sect members had reached minor realm one, twenty minor realm four, and ten minor realm five.
All those improvements made Benton feel a lot better about their chances of surviving the beast tide. The improvements also added another fourteen points to his personal total, giving him eighteen overall when combined with the remainder from his previous spend.
He’d already mastered all the techniques he’d decided to purchase, but working with Yang Xiu had pointed out a weakness—Stealth. She was able to detect his exact location way too easily.
By spending eight points, he could create a layer around him that blocked sight, sound, and smell. Even better, knowing that his disciple spotted hidden spirit beasts by identifying voids, his technique could be tuned to match the surroundings, eliminating that particular vulnerability. Combined with his invisibility to spiritual sense, he’d be undetectable.
Well, to someone at Foundation Establishment.
To hide from Golden Core cultivators, he’d need to supercharge the qi aspects used. His mastered Concept of Illusion could handle the visual part of the technique, but he’d also need to spend sixteen each for sound and smell.
And if he were committing that far to stealth, he might as well go all out to include a perception technique to maximize his information gathering capabilities. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think that illusion would work as well for something seeing long distances as Light or Vision or something similar would.
Another thought had occurred to him, though. At some point, he needed to advance both his mind and soul cultivation at least to the start of the second major realm, and he also needed to buy knowledge of both of those to guide his sect members.
Thus, he created a new table:
Stealth 8 - Sound Concept 16 - Smell Concept 16 Perception 8 - Light/Vision Concept 16 Soul Cultivation 11 Knowledge of Soul Cultivation 4 Mind Cultivation 11 Knowledge of Mind Cultivation 4
He honestly felt like he’d earn all ninety-four points soon, and besides that, it was nice to not feel that any of the purchases were pressing. Stealth, along with the two Concepts needed to supercharge it, was definitely a nice to have, but his combat build wasn’t centered around hiding or scouting.
Likewise, Mind Cultivation wasn’t a huge add for him. He really wanted to get into crafting, where the upgrades would presumably come in handy, but that desire would have to wait until after the tide as he already had a lot on his plate simply protecting his sect members and the village from high ranked beasts.
Soul Cultivation was a much direr need. There was no telling when, or even if, he might encounter demonic cultivators. On the other hand, he was hard pressed to feel any sense of urgency about them given that the only attacks he knew about happened twenty years apart.
In contrast, knowledge of both cultivation methods would be useful. Though no one had taken him up on it yet—probably because the Contribution Point Store never officially opened and the impending beast tide was eating up all of everyone’s focus—his sect members had access to a Soul Cultivation method. At some point, he’d need to guide them in their decisions regarding it.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Mind Cultivation might be even more useful for his sect members since he had so many people intending to pursue crafting. It would be much better to purchase knowledge of it before he created any techniques.
In retrospect, he wished he’d done that for Soul Cultivation as well.
He shrugged. Oh well, with all the points he was raking in, eating those ten if necessary wasn’t exactly the end of the world.
With eighteen Sect Points available, he bought knowledge of both types to Mastery, leaving him with ten.
That left him with plenty to master one of the two Foundation Establishment level techniques—Stealth or Perception. Which would help him more in a beast tide?
Honestly, none of the beasts he’d encountered so far could hide from his spiritual senses as long as he was close enough, so he doubted that adding more perception would help.
Stealth, though, might come in handy. Tides were created by a single, high rank spirit beast driving other creatures to do its will and could not be ended until that Big Boss was defeated. Obviously, the only person in the sect capable of such a feat was him. The ability to sneak past hordes of minions to get straight to the final battle would be quite useful.
Besides, Yang Xiu was too good at finding Zou Tian since she’d reached Foundation Establishment and he hadn’t. It would be nice to give her a real challenge, and Benton’s mastery of the technique would allow him to dial his complete undetectability down enough so that she could just barely sense him if she truly pushed herself.
Perfect!
He made the purchase, leaving him with only two points left. Rather than banking them, he sunk one point each in both cultivation types, taking him to the first minor real for each.
He looked at his status.
Sect Name: Rising Tide Sect Members: 212 Disciples: 57 Sect Points: 730 Shop Points: 159 Host Cultivation: Golden Core - Minor Realm Nine Qi Available: 5,647,745 Host Body Cultivation: Gold - Minor Realm One Host Mind Cultivation: Higher - Minor Realm One Host Soul Cultivation: Manifestation - Minor Realm One Host Techniques (Qi Gathering): Basic Archery – Mastery Basic Spear Combat – Mastery Expert Golden Core Cultivation – Mastery General Knowledge of Mind Cultivation – Mastery General Knowledge of Soul 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 Stealth – 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 Healing - Mastery Ice - Mastery Illusion - Mastery Lightning - Mastery Metal - Mastery Momentum - Mastery Poison - Mastery Space - Mastery Time - Mastery Void - Mastery Water - Mastery Wood - Mastery Menus: [Cultivation Method] [Technique] [Quest] [Perk] [Advancement] [Shop] [Sect]
He tensed as he locked in the two cultivation changes, but there wasn’t much of a difference. He experienced neither pain nor anything that felt like the expanding of his mind or soul.
In hindsight, the lack made sense. He was at the beginning of the third major realm in Body Cultivation and at the peak of the same major realm in Spiritual Cultivation. Comparatively, his gains in mind and soul had been like sticking the very tip of his toe into the water instead of being fully emersed like he was with body and spirit.
More impactful was mastering the knowledge of the two types.
Mind Cultivation would indeed be very useful for crafters. For example, an alchemist trying to combine many essences into a pill had to focus on the heat of the furnace and controlling the rate of absorption of each of the essences at once. The human mind, even when enhanced by Spiritual Cultivation, simply wasn’t capable of splitting in the ways necessary.
Higher realms brought other advantages, allowing things like telepathy, telekinesis, and psionics.
Neat.
Telekinesis would be invaluable for an alchemist as using qi to manipulate essences could cause impurities due to contamination of the cultivator’s qi aspect into the mixture. The same was true for a blacksmith in trying to fuse metal essences into a weapon. Almost all crafters who created truly high ranked treasures would find it useful.
Not to mention that it would earn him a lot of points. With the quality of the methods created by the System, all but his least talented disciple could easily reach the second major realm, and there was no reason to create a separate technique for each qi aspect.
There might be some minor benefit for creating one method per craft, but he’d have to consider that issue. He’d selected a very broad expertise of the cultivation type as a whole, so the knowledge for each realm was somewhat rudimentary compared to the expertise provided by his Spiritual Cultivation techniques that focused on a single realm. Still, even if he had to create one method per pavilion, he’d end up making lots of profit considering the sheer quantity of sect members who’d end up using each one.
For the moment, though, his sect members were better off preparing for the beast tide by advancing their Spiritual Cultivation or becoming more proficient with their weapons. He moved on to considering what he’d learned from the other knowledge technique.
Soul Cultivation appeared to have three benefits. One, as Benton had already been told by the System, was protection against certain attacks. What he didn’t know was that it protected from other types than just draining by demonic cultivators. For example, there was something called a gu worm that allowed rival cultivators to possess one’s body. Soul Cultivation helped in resisting such possessions.
Two, it anchored one’s self. Benton wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but something like, if someone tried to influence your personality to control you, that feature increased one’s resistance. Or something. It sounded important.
Three, it gave one some minor amount of control over reincarnation. That was … useful. Having been through a similar process, he could definitely say that having choices was better than not.
Benton let out a sigh. There wasn’t a lot more that he could do to prepare for the beast tide. His skill set, as far as useful techniques that he could think of were concerned, was maxed out, and his disciples were all diligently cultivating and practicing.
The driving question was—was it enough?