Benton scratched the back of his neck. That pun had been bad even for him. Greg would have both hated and loved it.
A pang of regret flooded Benton at the prospect of never seeing any of his grandchildren again, but he quickly brushed it off. They’d be fine without him. Yang Xiu and her brother would have died if Benton hadn’t been there to save them.
Of course, she almost died because he left her alone, too. He’d never even considered something as mundane as a boar as being dangerous and hadn’t realized that his spirit sense didn’t work on them because they had no qi.
His only solace was that she’d be outclassing those types of threats very soon. Even getting to the second minor realm of Qi Gathering with a fighting technique under her belt would give her enough power to not worry about any mortal animal.
“Disciple greets Senior Brother Chao,” Yang Xiu said.
“How’s your brother?” he said, turning toward the prone figure near the fire ring.
“Answering the Senior Brother’s question, Disciple Yang Ru experienced a lot of pain and fell unconscious. He hasn’t moved much since then.” She sounded concerned.
Benton almost asked her to dial back the formality, but Su’s memories objected. The culture of his new world held such conventions to be important, and trying to bypass them would do more harm than good. He just needed to get over his sensibilities.
“I see,” he said.
He pulled up Yang Ru’s status.
Name: Yang Ru Affiliation: Host's Disciple Age: 15 Cultivation: None Techniques: None Spiritual Roots: A- Qi Aspect: Low viscosity lava flowing down Mount Burning Thunder
One data point, his name, had been added and another, his affiliation, had been changed. The third difference was the most significant, the one Benton had hoped to see. Yang Ru’s spiritual roots had increased from B+ to A-.
“The pill worked,” Benton said before relaying the exact results. “The worst of the effects should be over. With luck, he’ll mostly sleep until he recovers.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“Senior Brother Chao, should this … should I take my pill now?”
Benton raised his eyebrows. “You watched what your brother endured, and you still wish to take it? Why?”
“Senior Brother Chao, I don’t want to let my brother down. I don’t want to let Senior Brother Chao down.”
He would have preferred to hear a reason that was more centered on the benefits to herself, but it wasn’t like the pill would damage her. It would, in fact, do her a lot of good, and using it made sense. As long as she had some personal rationale for proceeding, he wouldn’t try to stop her.
“Very well,” he said. “Do as you wish.”
While she prepared herself, Benton flitted quickly around the campsite, stowing both the cooked boar and the one Yang Xiu had slain in his spatial ring as well as cleaning dishes in a nearby stream and other such tasks. Too soon, she was ready to take the pill.
Benton regretted his decision not to intervene almost as soon as she’d swallowed the darn thing. Watching a fifteen-year-old kid suffer so much was one of the worst experiences of either of his lives. It was a huge relief when she finally succumbed to the pain and fell unconscious.
The pill had worked just as well on her as on her brother, increasing the quality of her spiritual roots from A- to A. Hopefully, that gain would make all that suffering worth it.
After setting up two of the tents he’d taken from Fang’s men and laying down bedrolls inside, he settled in for a long wait. Yang Ru, slightly sore but otherwise none the worse for wear, woke just as night was falling, and Benton fed him. After attending to bodily functions, the kid went right back to sleep. A few hours later, Yang Xiu woke and basically followed suit to her brother.
Benton dozed until sunrise when he began preparing for the day. First, he used his menu, spending ten Sect Points—leaving him with just seventy—to create Yang Ru’s cultivation method. It was the same as Yang Xiu’s except being named the Divine Flowing Fire Method and attuned specifically to Yang Ru’s qi aspect.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That task accomplished, he made breakfast, warming up slices of the spit-roasted boar and cooking more rice. The smells did the trick, and soon both the kids emerged from their tents.
“Good morning!”
“Disciple greets Senior Brother Chao,” Yang Xiu said.
Yang Ru echoed the same right after her.
“Are you two feeling okay? Any ill effects from the pill?”
After receiving replies that both contained way too many words and were way too polite assuring him they felt as fit as fiddles, they all ate.
“Are you two excited?” Benton said. “Today, you become cultivators.”
Their eyes both went wide.
He removed the two jade slips from his spatial ring and held up one of them. “Yang Xiu, this is the Divine Flowing Ice Method. It will be your cultivation method.” He handed it to her before repeating the process with Yang Ru.
Benton pulled two rank one beast cores from his ring and again held one up. “This is a beast core.” He explained that, since they could not yet manipulate qi external to their bodies, they needed a source to do so. “Simply hold both the slip and the core in one hand and concentrate on what you want, gaining the knowledge held within the slip.”
Neither of them immediately took a proffered core from him, instead looking at each other.
“You can do this one at a time or both at once,” he said. “I have used jade slips and seen them used many, many times. Having information injected directly into your brain feels a little weird, but it isn’t dangerous or painful.”
Yang Xiu was the first to act. “Thank you, Senior Brother Chao.”
She practically snatched a core from him and followed his instructions. A moment later, she blinked, looking dazed.
“See, no pain right?” Benton said.
“This lowly … I am a touch lightheaded, Senior Brother Chao, but have experienced no other ill effects.”
Frowning, Yang Ru took his spirit beast core from Benton and used the Divine Flowing Fire jade slip.
Both kids tried to hand the slips and the cores back to Benton.
“Keep them. You may want to review the material or something, and you’ll definitely need the cores when I give you techniques.” He grinned. “Now, it’s time for you two to become cultivators. Do you have any questions about the methods you just learned?”
Both shook their heads.
“When you breathe in,” Benton said, “small motes of qi in the air enter your body. Without a cultivation method, those motes escape. Mortals do it all the time. The trick is to look inward until you can feel those motes. Once you do, use the technique as instructed by your method to cycle the qi though your body. Complete one cycle, and you’ll become a cultivator.”
He had both of them sit in a lotus position, making themselves as comfortable as possible.
“Great,” Benton said. “Get to cultivating.”
Yang Xiu, followed by Yang Ru, closed her eyes. Thirty minutes later, she was quite frustrated, but she didn’t give up. Less than five minutes after that, a blue box popped up.
Host’s Disciple, Yang Xiu, has reached Qi Gathering – Minor Realm One
Host is awarded one Sect Point.
Host has 71 Sect Points available.
Yes! Finally, he’d actually gained a Sect Point. Go, Yang Xiu. Even better, another box popped up a few minutes later with a similar message regarding Yang Ru, leaving Benton with seventy-two points.
He observed the two with his spiritual senses. In Su’s experience, an average D+ or C- cultivator was able to complete one cycle in about an hour, but that result was obtained only after gaining experience with the cultivation method. The first cycle was likely to take anywhere from two to five times longer than that.
Yang Xiu finished her first in just over an hour. Yang Ru didn’t take that much longer. The combination of natural born talent and a System-provided method perfectly attuned to their respective qi aspects worked wonders.
The next five hours or so passed very slowly as he watched the siblings cultivate. Yikes, it was boring. Talk about something that was not the most exciting activity imaginable, but after the boar attack, there was no way Benton was going to move a step away from that camp for more than a few minutes.
After preparing a lunch consisting of yet more rice and meat from the spiritual rabbit he’d killed earlier, he watched the siblings closely. Yang Xiu was the first to complete her latest cycle, and he touched her on the shoulder, causing her to open her eyes.
“Take a break and grab some food,” he said.
About ten minutes later, Yang Ru finished a complete cycle, and Benton repeated his actions.
“Nine cycles in just over five hours for each of you,” he said once they’d all finished eating. “That’s really good. General practice is to limit sect members to around ten hours of cultivation a day, and I wouldn’t have expected an average outer sect disciple to be able to get in a full ten cycles on their first day. You’ve each almost reached that many at the halfway point, each completing cycles in less than a half hour. Well done!”
Yang Ru simply grunted at the news, but Yang Xiu beamed.
“Thank you, Senior Brother Chao!” She paused. “Do we have to stop at ten hours?”
Benton laughed. “Yes. The rule is there for a reason. You can damage your channels by trying to do too much too fast. Until you reach at least the high Qi Gathering Realm, you must adhere to this restriction.”
“Yes, Senior Brother Chao,” the two chorused.
Benton didn’t know specifically where his Advantageous Starting Location was located, but he felt what could best be described as a pulling sensation when he faced the northwest. He assumed that was the System telling him which way to go.
Unfortunately, his senses indicated that many spiritual beasts resided in that direction.
It was time to share his plans with his disciples.
“The way ahead is dangerous. Even with me protecting you every step of the way, the risk is not worth it for you to travel that path as you are now. At the very least, I want each of you to attain the fourth minor realm before we depart from this campsite. Understand?”
“Yes, Senior Brother Chao,” the two chorused again.
“For the next several days,” Benton said, “your only job is to cultivate for around ten hours a day. Once you break through to the second minor realm, I’ll teach you a weapon technique, and you’ll be responsible for practicing that for a minimum of two hours a day in addition to cultivating. Got it?”
“Yes, Senior Brother Chao.”
“Now, obviously, cultivation takes quite some time, even with how fast you two are, and I’m eager to get on with founding my sect.” Benton pulled a Qi Condensing Pill from his ring and showed it to them. “Therefore, once you reach the third minor realm on your own, I’m going to give you each one of these. That should quickly bump you up to the fourth minor realm. Any questions?”
“No, Senior Brother Chao.”
“Great. Then what are you waiting for? Get back to cultivating.”