Benton felt bad about eavesdropping on the mayor’s conversation, but the situation was simply too important for him to leave things to chance. The information he’d overheard was crucial for informing his actions in the immediate future.

First, though, it was time to see about acquiring new disciples. His thinking was that an orphanage in a village where food was scarce would be a good source of potential recruits. He just needed to make a good first impression, and the perfect start to that goal would be to supply dinner.

Once he and his disciples were out of the sight of the mayor, Benton started looking for someone he might be able to buy supplies from. He had a decent amount of meat, but even with rationing, his fruit and rice had been used up weeks ago.

An older lady—well, older than Su’s body at any rate—was picking vegetables in a rather large garden.

“Excuse me, Honored Miss, could I purchase a basket of produce and maybe some rice from you?”

The woman looked him up and down.

“I assure you that I can pay, Honored Miss.”

“Taels aren’t much good to anyone around here anymore, and I don’t see you carrying anything for barter.” Her tone was cool but not outright disrespectful, though the lack of honorifics pushed the remark closer to the realm of an insult.

Su’s memories went to him literally killing a mortal who had failed to use honorifics. Of course, there were extenuating circumstanced in play regarding sect internal politics, but still disrespect equaled instant death. Benton was much more understanding. He was a complete stranger to this lady, and he and the kids looked like vagrants. If someone looking like he did approached him on a street back on Earth, he would have been skeptical, too.

“If I did have trade good available for barter, Honored Miss, what in particular would you take in return for vegetables and rice?”

The woman frowned, having obviously expected her initial salvo to send the group away. “The same thing anyone else in this village wants and that I doubt you’d be able to supply—meat.”

That information was useful and, upon reflection, something he should have figured out on his own. The villagers were obviously making use of every available space to grow crops, not to keep livestock. Without the ability to leave the town to hunt, meat would be much harder to acquire, especially since mortals couldn’t handle eating the qi-infused flesh of spirit beasts. Not to mention the fact that the beasts had driven away all the mundane animals.

“Does the Honored Miss have a clean table I might make use of for a moment?”

The request obviously confused the woman, and it forced her to make a decision. Politeness dictated assent to such a reasonable request if possible, so the question became whether she would descend into outright rudeness. If she did, Benton would have to find another trade partner, and the woman would miss out on a valuable resource.

“Follow me,” she said reluctantly and led them to a corner of the garden with a table that held a bucket of water and the leavings from various cut vegetables.

“Thank you, Honorable Miss.”

Benton withdrew the boar he’d roasted the first day he’d met the siblings. Since they’d soon switched to consuming spirit beasts, they hadn’t used all that much of the meat, and the animal had yielded well over a hundred pounds, all of which were perfectly preserved in his spatial ring.

The woman’s jaw dropped. “Esteemed Master Cultivator, excuse this lowly one. This lowly one didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine.” With the siblings becoming more informal as time passed, Benton still hadn’t wrapped his mind around being literally bowed down to. He much preferred simply talking to people. “So how much meat for the vegetables and rice?”

“Esteemed Master Cultivator, this lowly one could not possibly accept your valuable possessions for this lowly one’s meager offerings. It would be this lowly one’s pleasure to gift anything the Esteemed Master Cultivator requires.”

The translation of her panicked speech was, “Take whatever you want. Just don’t kill me.”

It took all Benton’s patience to politely convince the woman that, no, he wanted to barter with her, not steal from her. Eventually, she accepted a pound of meat in exchange for whatever he took. He cut her off about two and a half pounds and left before she figured out he overpaid.

As a bonus, he also got directions from her to a tailor. Cloth was a scarce resource in the village, but for five pounds of boar meat, he and the siblings left the shop wearing clothes that were worn but in not nearly as bad as shape as what they’d changed out of.

The tailor directed him to an inn where a very surprised innkeeper provided them two rooms for the night, no meals included, in exchange for only a half pound of boar meat. Feeling that there weren’t likely any threats in the village capable of any real danger, Benton left the siblings behind to cultivate.

He’d periodically check things with his spiritual sense. If any of the cultivators neared the siblings, he’d rush back and head off any trouble.

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Next stop, the orphanage.

As Benton had been walking around, he’d scanned most of the people he’d encountered with his spiritual senses to surprising results. Only about twenty percent of the people living in the village appeared to have F ranked spiritual roots in lieu of the eighty percent he’d expected. Instead, most people were in the E range. In a relatively small sample size, he’d also encountered three D ranked people in addition to Guang Yin, at least two more than he would have expected.

Another oddity was the almost everyone had a qi aspect that was associated with nature. Su’s memory told him that, even in areas that were steeped in a particular type of qi—such as water qi near the ocean—the people living in those environments still possessed a random assortment of elemental qi aspects. Su’s instincts didn’t know what to make of the situation.

Though cultivators were long lived and certainly not stupid, they didn’t have the scientific method to fall back on, so running tests to prove theories was not common. And even if it had been a normal practice, sects, and even factions of cultivators within sects, did not share secrets with each other. There might be experts out there who would be able to easily explain what Benton was finding, but such knowledge was not widely spread enough to have filtered down to Su.

There wasn’t much immediate impact for him, though, so he mostly just accepted it as something odd that was mostly inconsequential.

Soon he arrived at the location that had been described to him. The village was mostly arranged with groups of four single-story houses facing each other around a central shared courtyard. The orphanage occupied one of those four-house sets.

A small child, maybe six or seven years old, answered his knock and, upon seeing a stranger, called, “Mistress Zhong! A visitor!”

A woman looking to be in her mid-thirties with a round face and a kind smile soon appeared at the door.

“Greetings, Honored Guest. I am Zhong Wen. How may this one help you?”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Zhong.” Benton introduced himself as Chao Su. “It is my understanding that you operate an orphanage here?”

“Yes…”

“May I enquire as to the number of children and the relative ages?” Benton said.

“Uh… Twenty, Honored Guest. From about six to thirteen. At fourteen, this one places them as apprentices to various businesses in the village.”

“It sounds like you do amazing work, Mistress Zhong. I was wondering if I might cook dinner for you and the children.”

“The Honored Guest wants to cook for us?”

“Please. If you don’t mind.”

Zhong Wen tilted her head to the side. “This one doesn’t understand. Why would the Honored Guest wish to cook for us?”

Benton could understand her confusion. He bet she had a hard time getting people of the village to contribute to the orphanage. A stranger showing up at her door to help must have been unprecedented, and she probably couldn’t help but wonder if he had ulterior motives.

And she was right. He did have an agenda he wanted to keep hidden from her. No sense getting her hopes up until he viewed the kids’ statuses.

With that thought in mind, he scanned her. E- with a qi aspect revolving around nurturing plants. Not great, but about what he’d expected.

“There are some who believe that the weak exist only to serve the strong. Others believe that it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak. I’m not sure that I stand firmly in either camp, but I do think that to those whom much is given, much should be expected,” Benton said. “I have been given much, but I cannot assist everyone. Who, though, is more deserving of my help than a group of innocent children who have lost their parents?”

Though he was pretty sure the offer of free food would have eventually won her over on its own, his speech definitely sped things up. “If you wish to give the children a good meal, Master Chao, who is this one to stop you? When would you like to conduct this dinner?”

“Tonight is good.”

“Very well, Master Chao. Will you require the use of my kitchen?”

“I will.”

She sighed. “Please gather your supplies, Master Chao. When you return, you will be granted access to whatever this one has that you need.”

“I’ve got everything that I need. I can go ahead and get started.”

Zhong Wen looked him over, peeking behind him probably to see if he had a cart behind him or something. “Forgive me. I had assumed that you meant you would be providing dinner for the children, not just cooking it. While I appreciate your interest, perhaps—”

Benton withdrew the basket of vegetables he’d recently acquired from his spatial ring and held it out to her. “Apologies for any confusion, Mistress Zhong. I do, in fact, intend to provide everything necessary for the dinner.”

He only wished he had something sweet. There wasn’t a kid on any planet who didn’t like dessert.

Her eyes went wide. From her perspective, the basket must have appeared like magic, and unlike the lady earlier, Zhong Wen didn’t immediately come to the obvious conclusion. It was very possible she’d never had any experience with cultivators.

“I don’t… How did you… What?”

“Don’t worry about it, Mistress Zhong. As I said, I have been given much. The least I can do is provide some food for a bunch of deserving children. Just show me to the kitchen and you don’t have to worry about anything else.”

After so many nights of cooking over a campfire with a single pot, it was nice to have access to an actual stove and a selection of cookware, even if the technology was rather primitive compared to a modern American kitchen, and Benton went all out, creating a stir-fry with vegetables and the boar meat.

Smells must have wafted through the house because children kept appearing at the door of the kitchen, their little mouths salivating. Benton grinned at one little girl who had the cutest pout when he told her she’d have to wait until it was served. She reminded him so much of his youngest at that age.

With the meal preparation finished and the children gathered, all of them, including Mistress Zhong, were surprised when he filled their bowls. They were even more shocked when he told them that they could have seconds.

Honestly, the thought of these little ones going to bed with empty stomachs broke his heart.

His eyes actually welled when he realized just how much the simple meal he’d provided meant to them. They were all so lively and happy and energetic.

Well, most of them. A few of them seemed mad at the world, which was to be expected for kids who had lost everything.

As much as the meal meant to them, it turned out to mean even more to him. Their laughter and smiles fed his soul.

Overall, they reminded him way too much of the kids’ table at his family’s Thanksgiving. A desire to protect them rose in him. These children didn’t have a grandfather, and he no longer had grandkids. It felt like a perfect match.

Benton had come to the orphanage with only somewhat honorable intentions, planning to trade access to food and the promise of the chance of a better life for Sect Points. He hadn’t really thought of them as people to be supported and valued, only as tools to be used.

He had to do better. He would do better.

These kids would be protected and nurtured. All he had to do was to convince Mistress Zhong to go along with his plan. He just hoped that the meal would soften her up enough to listen to his pitch with an open mind.