With not a whole heck of a lot to do other than watch two kids literally sit around, the next three days passed slowly for Benton. On the morning of the fifth day only a couple of hours after Yang Xiu started cultivating, he got the notification he’d been waiting for.
Host’s Disciple, Yang Xiu, has reached Qi Gathering – Minor Realm Two
Host is awarded one Sect Point.
Host has 73 Sect Points available.
He quickly scanned her with his senses.
Name: Yang Xiu Affiliation: Host's Disciple Age: 15 Cultivation: Qi Gathering - Minor Realm Two Qi Available: 5 Techniques: None Spiritual Roots: A Qi Aspect: Perfectly smooth ice balanced on the razor edge of freezing and thawing
Five? She had five qi available in her second minor realm? He’d only had two. Nice.
As boring as the process had been for him, it was immensely satisfying to have her make such a huge jump forward.
There was no need for him to touch her shoulder to pull her from her cultivation trance. She was staring at him with wide eyes.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You have broken through to the second minor realm.”
“Thank you, Senior Brother Chao.”
He could see the question on her face even though she didn’t ask it. “You remember the next part of the method, correct?”
“I need to consolidate my gains, Senior Brother Chao?”
“Let me guess, the method wasn’t too specific on how exactly to do that, huh?”
Yang Xiu nodded.
“First of all, you need to meditate but not cultivate. Whatever you do, do not pull in a single mote of qi. Understood?”
“Yes, Senior Brother Chao.”
“While meditating, you need to do two things. One, reflect on what you have learned by cultivating and what reaching the second minor realm means to you. Two, dive your consciousness inside yourself and study the changes to your body. Explore your lower dantian and the channels your qi uses to circulate. Your muscles are stronger, and your skin and bones and organs have grown slightly tougher. Study how each of these differ from what you remember before. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Senior Brother Chao.”
“Right now, you’re feeling agitated, right? Like something isn’t quite right with you?”
She nodded again.
“After an hour or two of meditating like I told you to do, you’ll suddenly feel normal again. At that point, you should get up and move around. Run. Jump. Feel how your body flows. It will feel off at first, but again, something will just click after a while. At that point, your gains will be consolidated, and you can begin cultivating again.”
“Thank you for the instruction, Senior Brother Chao.” Despite the formal and exceedingly polite wording, a hint of warmth was evident in her tone.
It was hard not to feel for the siblings. They’d apparently lost their parents to a psycho stalker and been forced to run from their village, hounded by the forces of that same psycho. Benton couldn’t imagine one of his children or grandchildren being forced to go through something like that tragedy.
If she were to start seeing him as a surrogate parent, he could definitely live with that role.
He waited until she had once again fully entered into a meditative trance before beginning preparation for the next phase of powering up his disciples—techniques. His choices were either to have them both learn the spear and supply them with mortal weapons he’d taken off Fang’s men or to give them his only true cultivator grade weapons, the spear and bow he’d been given by the System.
That decision was a tough call and one he’d been deliberating on for days.
Benton hadn’t had a chance to use his bow yet, but over the course of his hunt for spirit animals, he’d begun to grow attached to the spear. It was well-nigh indestructible and slid in and out of his kills with incredible smoothness. He didn’t know when he might have an opportunity to find anything remotely similar in quality and didn’t relish the thought of giving it up.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Honestly, though, his strength didn’t matter. Both the kids would surpass him soon. It made sense that the strongest among them should possess the strongest weapons, right?
As much as part of him didn’t want to admit it, that reasoning was all too clear. He pulled up the appropriate menu.
Welcome, Host, to the Technique Creation Menu.
Select Cultivation Realm:
Qi Gathering
Foundation Establishment
Golden Core
Nascent Soul
Nihility
Ascension
Half Immortal
True Immortal
Immortal King
Immortal Emperor
Heavenly Saint
Celestial Being
He obviously chose Qi Gathering.
Cultivation Realm set to Qi Gathering.
Sect Point Factor set to one.
Select Applicability:
Targeted to Specific Qi Aspect
Sliding Scale (Specify)
Any Qi Aspect
That screen represented Benton’s first real decision for the technique. He was convinced that Yang Xiu’s high qi availability was almost solely the result of two factors. One, he’d set the power of her cultivation method to sixty-five. And two, her cultivation method was tailored to her specific qi aspect.
Though he didn’t know the relative percentages each of those two factors contributed, he was sold on the concept that specific qi aspect equaled good.
For techniques in the Qi Gathering realm, Su’s memories told him otherwise. In that realm, cultivators were unable to manipulate qi externally, and the qi inside their bodies was already converted to their aspect as part of the method of drawing it into their dantian. At Foundation Establishment and after, a technique being perfectly aligned with one’s qi would assist in converting and controlling ambient qi. Until that point in cultivation, a technique’s aspect simply wouldn’t have much impact, though other sects and clans held a different opinion.
That conclusion left the lower Sect Point expenditure as the only benefit of choosing to target a technique to a specific aspect, and making a choice based on that reason alone was so short sighted as to be completely idiotic.
The logic of the decision did not make it any less painful. Dreading all the points that were about to disappear from his total, Benton reluctantly made his selection.
Any Qi Aspect selection accepted.
Please specify what skill or ability the Host wishes for the technique to impart.
That request was pretty darn open ended. He willed it to select the ability to use a spear for combat.
Skill/ability specification accepted.
Please allocate 100 Technique Creation Points in the following three categories:
Ease
Power
Foundation
That part of the process was always going to be the most difficult. He stopped to think it over.
Ease seemed like the least important part of a combat technique. The speed of learning didn’t seem to matter all that much, not compared to Power and Foundation at any rate. Still, it wouldn’t do to have a technique his sect members weren’t able to eventually master.
Maybe ten points? Fifteen? Definitely no more than twenty. The allocation process was not an exact science by any means.
After a moment’s consideration, he decided that Power would be more difficult to quantify than the last category, so he skipped it for the moment.
Su’s memories indicated that Foundation for a technique, like Foundation for a cultivation method, contributed greatly to success in the next realm. In fact, the impact was likely even higher for the former than the latter.
If that theory were correct, Foundation was hugely important, even more so than Power at the Qi Gathering stage. After all, hopefully his sect members would be more likely to have his protection at the beginning and, since lower realms took less time to go through than higher ones, would probably get in fewer fights.
Yes, that answer felt correct. It was much more important to build a proper Foundation than it was to attain immediate prowess. More than half should go to that category. Maybe sixty points?
Power was still important, however, and the twenty points he had remaining were too few. If he lowered Ease to fifteen, he’d have twenty-five left.
That distribution felt right. He locked it in.
Technique Creation Point allocation selection accepted.
Please provide a name for your technique.
Ugh. That problem again. Uh… The Foundational Spear Essentials Technique.
Man, that name sounded so completely lame, but screw it, it was descriptive at least.
Name accepted.
Congratulations, Host, on the creation of the Foundational Spear Essentials Technique!
Would you like to create this method for ten Sect Points?
He winced at the expenditure but chose yes.
Technique created.
Host has 63 Sect Points remaining.
That task accomplished, he re-opened the menu and queued up another technique using similar inputs. The creation of the Foundational Archery Essentials Technique left him with only fifty-three points.
Ouch. That total remaining was getting a lot lower than he would have liked. The only good thing was that he could use these two techniques for all his future sect members. He’d still need to create a generic cultivation method, though, at a cost of twenty-five points. That left him with only twenty-eight points for emergencies and for any necessities that he hadn’t considered yet.
He really needed to recruit outer sect disciples as soon as possible.