The group traveled further toward spirit beast territory, but the creatures were still scarce. Benton was only able to round up one set of rank ones for the siblings to fight each of the next two days. Neither made a kill on their own, but they improved.

On the third day, the density of spirit beasts was high enough that he found two sets nearby for the kids to fight. Even better, Yang Xiu managed a kill by herself on her second one. As if spurred by his sister, Yang Ru killed two out of the three he fought the next day.

After dinner that night, Benton said, “The first order of business is to determine what you want done with your cores.”

“Our cores, Senior Brother Chao?” Yang Xiu said.

She was getting much better about just asking Benton questions. In fact, she was becoming less formal with him overall. Her relative casualness suited him just fine.

“If you kill a beast on your own,” Benton said, “the core is yours to do with as you please.”

“But Senior Brother, you helped by making the beasts run right to us.”

“I still count it as your kill.” He grew serious. “Responsibilities and requirements will always be part of your life as a sect member, but it’s important to know that risk and hard work result in you gaining what you need. Besides, I’d feel like a huge jerk if I just took them from you. Do you have any idea how much one of these is worth?”

She shook her head, and Yang Ru grunted.

Benton wasn’t quite to the point of speaking grunt yet, and the response could have easily meant either yes or no. Honestly, he sometimes felt like responding to the taciturn boy with "I am Groot.”

In the end, Benton decided to disregard the confusing response and continued with his explanation. “Room and board at a decent inn will run you about a silver tael in a medium sized city. A villager making five taels a week would generally be considered prosperous. Do you agree?”

“Father would have thought five in a week to be a blessing, Senior Brother Chao,” Yang Xiu said.

“You were from a smaller village, were you not?”

She nodded.

“Prices and wages tend to be higher in more populated areas.”

She nodded again.

“We’re getting off subject,” Benton said. “The point of that illustration was to establish agreement on the relative value of a silver tael. Maybe it would stretch a little further in your village than in the city nearest my former sect, but as far as order of magnitude goes, we’re close, right?”

“Yes, Senior Brother.”

Benton held up one of the tiny rank one spirit beast cores, not much larger than a pea. “If you can find a merchant who has ready access to trade with a sect, you’ll easily get fifty to a hundred taels for this, depending on the qi density, the qi aspect, and a few other more esoteric factors.” He pulled another core from his ring. “This is my lone rank two core. It would go for something in the seven hundred fifty to a thousand range. For rank three and above cores, you can’t even buy them for taels. You must use spirit coins, the currency that cultivators use.”

Both kids gawked. Even Yang Ru looked thoroughly surprised. The cores the two had collected combined so far was worth more than their parents likely saw in a year.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“So, yeah, see why I won’t just take them from you? You earned them, so they’re yours.”

“Thank you, Senior Brother Chao,” they chorused.

“If you’d like, you can choose for me to hand yours over to you right now. You can keep them for personal use or to sell when we reach a town or, I don’t know, to play marbles with them. Whatever floats your boat.”

They looked at him strange, likely because marbles weren’t a thing in his new reality. He soldiered on. “Your other option is to give them to me in exchange for sect contribution points. I’ll pay ten for a rank one and a hundred for a rank two, and since it’s a lot easier for me to hold the cores now than it is for you, I’ll give you the option to buy them back from me at that same rate once we arrive at somewhere stable.”

He’d found time to query the System about contribution points. A full management menu would open once he founded his sect, but the System would thankfully start keeping track of whatever he assigned to his disciples whenever he wanted.

“What are contribution points, Senior Brother?”

Sometimes he forgot that the two kids were so green that their knowledge of the cultivation world came almost solely from what he taught them.

“Everything that cultivators use is expensive compared to what mortals use. Your family might have bought a chicken to kill and eat for a single tael or less. A cultivator only eats chickens that are close to their rank, so a minimum of a hundred taels for the core and anywhere from a tenth to a half of that for the meat. Want to use some herbs to flavor your stew? Grow them in your garden over the course of days or weeks or buy a bunch for a small fraction of a tael. Herbs that interest a cultivator might take centuries or even millennia to grow and cost anywhere from tens of taels to riches the likes of which you wouldn’t believe.

“Instead of dealing with the huge numbers involved, cultivators came up with their own currency, a coin that is infused with qi. These can be used to pay for things, but they are also useful as a resource. When your qi available runs dry, you can simply drain a spirit coin to replenish it.”

“Does that mean we can create these coins, Senior Brother?” If Yang Xiu were in a cartoon, she’d have dollar signs for pupils.

“Right now, you have forty-six qi available. The absolute lowest denomination of spirit coin starts at one thousand qi. So the answer to your question is not yet.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll get there sooner than you think,” he said. “But the point is that spirit coins are worth so much and are so useful that it sometimes is impractical to use them. Say you need to buy one of those rank one cores from the sect. It’s worth a tiny fraction of a spirit coin and keeping enough silver on hand to make change would bankrupt the entire continent. Sect members needed a convenient way to pay for things.”

“Contribution points,” Yang Xiu said. “I understand, Senior Brother. The sects create their own money.”

“Exactly. As long as the sect stands, it’s a secure and guaranteed currency that is simple and convenient. And if the sect falls, believe me that you have much bigger problems to worry about than losing a bit of cash.”

With the siblings having gained a full understanding of how the point system worked, they made the sensible decision to sell all their cores to him.

“The next thing you need to decide is if you’re ready to move onto the next phase of spirit beast hunting,” Benton said. “Right now, I am personally guaranteeing that no spirit beast will lay the tiniest of claws on you.”

Well, assuming they didn’t get ambushed by one even he couldn’t handle, anyway, but that exclusion was probably best left unspoken.

“The next stage is for me to go hands off. If you get attacked,” he shrugged, “you get attacked.”

As much as Benton hated to see either of the kids hurt, he knew that protecting them too much would harm them in the long run. Of course, the weak rank one spirit beasts they’d been fighting weren’t nearly a match for either of the siblings. At worst, they were at risk of suffering a scratch not much worse than one of Benton’s younger grandkids falling off a tricycle on the road.

His disciples didn’t need to know that, though. According to Su’s memories, believing they were facing death would help them advance with their weapon techniques.

“Yang Xiu, you defeated the last four of your opponents. Yang Ru, you defeated two of your last three. That is good enough for me to take off the training wheels should you so choose.”

The siblings looked at each other, but Benton couldn’t tell if they were both agreeing to face the beasts alone or challenging each other or asking each other what the heck training wheels were.

“Senior Brother Chao,” Yang Xiu said, “I wish to face the spirit beasts alone.”

Yang Ru glared at her, his protective instinct coming to the fore, but his sister was not dissuaded. He eventually gave up and grumbled, “Me, too, Senior Brother Chao.”

“Very well,” Benton said. “Your safety is now your own responsibility.”