Since the spirit beasts were currently located far enough from the village to not even register with Benton’s spiritual sense, his sect members were not in imminent danger, meaning he did not need to keep a close watch on them. Instead of spending his time at the village plaza or in the Wood, he decided he much preferred his own land, the sect grounds.

No longer being on full time guard duty and having finished his major preparatory tasks didn’t mean that he was taking it easy, however. He spent another day creating spirit coins and imbuing arrows, adding two hundred fifty of the former and one hundred twenty-five of the latter. Shortly before the sun sank below the horizon, a notification popped up.

Host’s Disciple, Wan Ai, has reached Qi Gathering – Minor Realm Nine.

Host is awarded one Sect Point.

Host has 786 Sect Points Available.

Go, Wan Ai. Not that he thought she’d have any trouble absorbing the pill, but he was glad to see the confirmation all the same. It was nice to have another sect member nearing Foundation Establishment. After her, Xun Wu was actually the closest to advancing, and he hadn’t quite reached the seventh minor realm yet.

There was no need to go congratulate her again. He’d leave that task to Zou Tian. Wouldn’t want to interrupt them again.

Or maybe disrupting those congratulations was exactly what he should do. Even if society considered them adults, they were still only teenagers. Which made the fact that the two of them basically lived together really awkward now that he thought about it.

Benton frowned. Should he deal with that situation? He had no idea. Maybe Zhong Wen could give him advice on the subject. Having a talk with her about the subject was a priority as soon as all the beast tide related projects were complete.

Dismissing the potentially unpleasant consequences of teenage love from his mind, he returned to considering his next steps for protecting the village when another horrible thought occurred to him—the arrows he’d made certainly were powerful enough to kill a rank six, but what about beasts who were so fast or agile that they could just dodge them?

Shoot.

He should have considered that possibility earlier. It was, after all, a driving factor behind one of his attack skills.

At least it wasn’t too late to fix the issue.

Reviewing his knowledge of formations, he came up with several solutions. One, use a Wind Concept to make the arrow faster. Two, add a homing function just like his technique.

The obvious winner from a functional standpoint was the second, but there was a problem. Making an arrow faster involved a trivial formation, even simpler than the one he’d already put on the tip. Adding a homing function, on the other hand, was much more involved. He’d either have to design something or, more likely, buy a template from the Shop.

Either way, the inscription would definitely be more complicated and, thus, take longer to create. And he had a lot of arrows to fix.

Wind it was, then.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger on purchasing Mastery of the new Concept, he hesitated. Wind was the qi aspect most used by cultivators to make an arrow faster, but that was only because it was a relatively common secondary element. Many cultivators chose to be archers based on discovering it as their qi aspect.

In contrast to anyone else in the world, Benton had access to literally any aspect, and he was beginning to suspect that the number of aspects was infinite. Since he most wanted to increase the speed of the arrows, why not go right to the source?

“System, can I create a Concept for the qi aspect of Speed?”

Yes.

Hot dog! He’d only given himself a fifty-fifty chance of Speed actually existing as a qi aspect, but that long shot had actually worked.

“System, please create a Concept of Speed as propelling targets to the absolute highest velocity possible and purchase it to Mastery.”

Concept creation purchase confirmed.

Host currently has 770 Sect Points.

Sweet. Now to test the combination of his new qi aspect with a formation.

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Benton grabbed the crappiest arrow he could find and inscribed a simple pattern designed to enhance velocity, imbuing fifty qi into it. He pulled his bow from his spatial ring and loosed.

As soon as he let go of the bowstring, Speed aspected qi flooded into the simple wooden shaft. An instant later, it burst into pieces, showering the surroundings with splinters.

Well, that didn’t work.

He tried again but imbued only ten qi into the formation.

The arrow lasted a moment longer but ended up in the same condition well before it had a chance to actually hit anything.

Mortal grade arrowheads had been fine for his previous work because the qi didn’t affect it until impact, and after impact, the condition of the delivery method simply didn’t matter. Enhancing an arrow’s speed, on the other hand, applied the effect of the qi in flight. The poor quality shafts simply couldn’t hold up to the forces involved, preventing them from reaching their targets.

He only had one more chance. It wasn’t possible for him to imbue less than a single unit of qi, so if the next test shot didn’t work, he’d need to add another formation to structurally reinforce the shafts. Which would take way too long.

Holding his breath in anticipation, he loosed. The arrow flew not quite as fast as a bullet, but a lot swifter than a normal arrow would have, and imbedded itself in a tree trunk.

Success!

The more qi a formation was expected to hold, the deeper the channels of the inscription were required to be. Since Benton was using the literal minimum amount of qi for the formation, inscribing went really quickly. Additionally, since the channels were so shallow, not nearly as much correction was required to raise the formation’s quality.

To get a low heaven grade product only took two and three-quarter minutes per arrow.

Of course, with six hundred twenty-five arrows to fix, it still took him over a day to finish. Combined with creating even more spirit coins, both to feed the formation and to replenish his three Foundation Establishment cultivators, it was late afternoon before he felt like he’d accomplished all he needed to.

Overall, he was feeling pretty good. Still no sign of the beast tide starting, and he’d completed the defensive formation, built up a healthy amount of spirit coins, and created weapons that should give his sect members a chance against the higher ranked beasts.

What next?

He needed something offensive with a bit more oomph to it than the arrows. Something that would give even beasts caught up in a tide pause. Something explosive.

Hmmm.

He had all the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood he wanted, and that stuff really held qi well. It would be pretty simple to inscribe a chunk of it with a formation rigged to explode on contact. Yang Ru and the girls could chuck it into the backlines of the beasts and rain destruction on them.

Yeah. Benton liked that. He Quickstepped to the Wood.

The trees would regrow as long as any of the stump remained, so the harvesters left about a foot of old growth each time they cut one down. Since the gathered trees were up to three feet in diameter, even a slice of a few inches would give him several good pieces to work with.

Luckily, Benton had observed the process of cutting the trunks enough to both know where the tools were kept and how to use them, and soon, he had a nice flat section of wood to craft with. He further broke that section into a dozen oddly sized and irregularly shaped chunks.

Perfect.

He needed to create a formation, though. Even though what he wanted was similar in concept to the one he used for the arrows, that one was made using runes specifically developed for archery. Modifying it would be just as onerous, if not more so, than creating one from scratch.

The key was to keep things as simple as possible, and the explosive portion of the design fit that idea to a tee. It was a spiral of deep channels that held a comparatively large amount of qi. A simple rune carved into the start acted to accept an input of qi from a second formation in order to trigger a fast eruption of the entire contents of the first.

Easy peasy.

That second formation was a bit more complicated. He started with a rune that would accept a qi input from an external source. Once that qi was entered, the rest of the formation would activate, converting a small amount of motion into qi. When enough of the Momentum aspected qi built up, the device armed, and as it was said back on Earth, Mr. Grenade was no longer your friend.

A cessation of motion would then trigger the Momentum aspected qi to flow into the explosive formation. The result would be a massive eruption.

At least, that was the theory. Benton still had to test it. He took the smallest of the pieces and inscribed the two formations on it.

All he needed to do was to charge the…

Wait. The device needed a name. Not grenade, though. It was more like an IED, but it wasn’t improvised. It was a FED, a Formation Explosive Device.

Yes.

Benton charged the FED with five hundred units of Ice aspected qi and Quickstepped to the rock outcrop where he’d tested his chain lightning. One qi unit shoved into the trigger formation activated it, and he chucked it as far as he could. Which, as a peak Golden Core Cultivator with Gold Body Cultivation, was pretty darn far.

It arced over the valley and hit the mountain on the other side. An explosion of ice erupted as soon as the FED hit the ground. Even from several hundred yards away, the frozen gust of wind almost knocked him back, and a huge chunk of ground and rock had been obliterated.

Sweet.

That would do some serious damage to spirit beasts who were bunched up. He’d just have to make it very clear to everyone that they needed to duck behind the wall when the device was thrown.

Benton Quickstepped back to the plaza and, over the next several hours, crafted the eleven additional chunks of wood into FEDs. Just for the heck of it, he created one of each of the qi aspects he thought would be most destructive—Earth, Fire, Gravity, Ice, Lightning, Metal, Momentum, Poison, Void, Water, and Wood.

He once again called the twins, Zou Tian, Kang Lin, and Ye Zan. Once they’d gathered, Benton explained the FEDs, what they were, how to use them, and most importantly cautioned them to throw as far from the village wall as possible and warn people before activating them.

“Obviously,” he said, “only Yang Xiu, Yang Ru, and Kang Lin can use these, so I’ll distribute three to each of you. Ye Zan, you can hold on to the last two. Use them to replenish the supplies of any of the Foundation Establishment Cultivators who run out.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Great,” Benton said. “When the beasts get so annoying that you’re … FED up … with them, you now have a way to get rid of them.”

He looked at his disciple expectantly, but none of them reacted.

“Fed up? Get it?”

They all just looked at each other.

Benton really needed to teach them all English, so they’d understand his puns. He added that task to his To Do eventually list.