Benton instructed his new recruits on the bai-si tea ceremony.
“We’ll start with Mistress Zhong,” he said after the explanation was over.
The orphanage had a tea pot, and being able to boil twice the water at once sped things up. Still, the process involved a lot of slow actions, and he had to give each inductee their moment. With nine people at ten to fifteen minutes per person, it was about two hours before each had officially, per the System, become one of his disciples.
Completing the Recruit Additional Disciple Quest nine times gave him that many Shop Points, not that he could spend them yet. He was looking forward to actually founding the sect and triggering the opening of the Shop.
Baby steps, though. Baby steps. His future sect had just taken a major leap forward, going from three members counting him to twelve. He was happy with the progress. Even better, he saw a path forward. Complete some reputation quests for the village and then ask for the land he needed.
The sun hadn’t entirely set yet, but it was getting late, approaching time when the children should be getting to bed. His many years of experience as a father of young children told him that, if he gave them the jade slips and let them start cultivating, they’d be up all night. Better to wait until he was free tomorrow evening for that.
Benton had Zhong Wen send them off to bed.
As his new recruits filed out, another child, a girl, appeared in the doorway.
“Hi,” he said.
The girl scowled at him. “You are making them cultivators.”
“Jin LiJuan!” Zhong Wen yelled. “Show respect to Master Chao!”
The girl ignored the mistress. “Why them and not me?”
Benton had scanned her earlier in the evening but didn’t remember the exact results. He scanned her again.
System is unable to analyze target’s cultivation because the target’s spiritual roots are not finished growing. Repeat scan in 0.9 months.
“This cultivator apologizes, Jin LiJuan,” Benton said kindly. “You are not quite yet ready. If you are willing, I will induct you in about a month.”
“A month? Fine. I can wait that long, but I will hold you to it.” The girl turned and stalked from the room.
“This lowly one is so sorry for that outburst, Master Chao,” Zhong Wen said. “She has taken the loss of her family even worse than most of the others.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand completely.” He removed the cultivation method jade slip and a rank one beast core from his ring. “Are you ready to become a cultivator?”
She looked nervous. “Yes, Master Chao.”
He gave her the slip and the core and instructed her on how to read it. She took a while to fall into a meditative trance and at least another three quarters of an hour passed before a blue box popped up.
Host’s Disciple, Zhong Wen, has reached Qi Gathering – Minor Realm One
Host is awarded one Sect Point.
Host has 46 Sect Points available.
Well, he’d at least gained back one of the points he’d spent on the venture.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he berated himself for it. That way of looking at things was horrid. Investing his points was the only way forward, and the ROI for just these nine disciples was pretty darn good.
Man, he’d been so lucky with the siblings. It had taken them less than five days to reach the second minor realm. They both possessed such amazing talent.
Not so for Zhong Wen. The process of just sensing qi had taken much longer for her than it had for either Yang Xiu or Yang Ru. Of course, that delay wasn’t necessarily due to Zhong Wen’s lesser talent. It could have been because of her relatively advanced age, or maybe, it was simply a variance between people. Since Su hadn’t been an integral part of his sect’s induction process, his memories weren’t much help.
“I must protect some men tomorrow morning as they harvest spirit wood, but I’ll return tomorrow evening as soon as I can to go through this process with the children. I’ll also bring my other two disciples so that you can meet them. They’re good kids. Well, fifteen, but still kids to me."
“What about my two assistants, Master Chao?”
Truthfully, Benton had basically forgotten about them, having been focused on the induction and everything else. “Whenever you want.”
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“If the honorable Master Chao can wait, I can get them now?”
He wondered if Zhong Wen was in desperate need of help or if the prospective assistants were in worse situations than she had made out. Probably the latter. In a village where food was scarce, it couldn’t be easy to take in an extra mouth to feed.
“Sure. If you don’t think it’s too late.”
“This lowly one will return immediately. A few minutes. Please wait, Master Chao.”
Zhong Wen practically sprinted from the room. Her estimate of a few minutes was a little optimistic, but less than fifteen had passed before she returned, two young girls in tow. She introduced them as Xiao Rong and Wan Ai.
Benton’s scan didn’t turn up anything impressive for the first girl, an E with a pretty standard nature-oriented qi aspect. The second girl, though…
Name: Wan Ai Affiliation: Prosperous Gray Forest Village Age: 14 Cultivation: None Techniques: None Spiritual Roots: D Qi Aspect: Dry leaves ignited by a wildfire
The D-ranked spiritual roots were impressive only in comparison to the other recruits he’d seen recently but nothing when compared with the siblings. What really excited Benton was the girl’s qi aspect.
He’d come to the orphanage with the goal of establishing a way to farm Sect Points as the lack of those was his most pressing immediate problem. To truly establish a sect, though, one needed more than two outstanding recruits and a bunch of walking potential points. A sect was divided into various pavilions, and each of those pavilions required a suitable elder to lead it.
The Martial Pavilion was easy. One of the siblings would head it. Or Benton might decide to establish one for the spear and one for the bow.
Other necessary pavilions included, at the very least, Smithing, Formations, Treasures, and … Alchemy.
Anyone with either fire roots or nature roots could become an alchemist. Some other minor elements also did well in the profession. The absolute best trait for a potential alchemist, however, was a combination of fire and nature elements, exactly what Wan Ai possessed.
Benton hadn’t even considered he might find a potential pavilion elder at the orphanage. He was over the moon at what he saw.
His gaze must have indicated just how struck he was because, when he finished reading the box, he noticed the expressions on the faces of the girl and Zhong Wen. They shared a glance.
Prior to learning to interpret the glances that Yang Xiu and Yang Ru exchanged, Benton probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out the meaning of that silent communication. With that experience, he clearly saw that it communicated a resigned acceptance on the part of both women that he had a prurient interest in Wan Ai.
It sickened him that they would think that of him. It sickened him more that they would accept it as a matter of course. That reluctant tolerance and the commonality of sheer brutality were two things he most hated about the might-makes-right world he’d found himself in.
“No. That is not what is going on. Just no.” He pointed at Wan Ai. “That young lady possesses spiritual roots an order of magnitude better than any of the children inducted tonight. More so, her nature makes it likely that she would take well to the practice of alchemy, a crucial profession for any sect. I apologize if my expression made you think my interest was indicative of anything other than how much benefit she can potentially be to the sect.”
They both cupped their hands and bowed low. Benton couldn’t tell if they were embarrassed at the topic or chagrined at being called out or if they even believed him at all.
“Are you interested in being an alchemist, Wan Ai?” he said.
She looked at Zhong Wen. “This lowly one promised to assist Mistress Zhong with the children, Master Chao.”
“I’m sure that Mistress Zhong can find someone else to help her.”
“If it benefits … the sect, Master Chao.”
That acceptance wasn’t exactly as enthusiastic as he would have liked, but he supposed she didn’t really know anything about what she was agreeing to. According to Su’s memories, though, a cultivator’s inclinations were heavily influenced by their qi aspect. Considering that hers were so well suited for alchemy, she’d probably end up enjoying it.
Benton saw no harm into pushing her into an area that she had a good chance of liking and that she would be good at, not to mention something that was good for him and the sect as a whole. The real question was whether or not she was worth the creation of a unique cultivation method. Alchemy required external qi manipulation and thus couldn’t be practiced until she reached the Foundation Establishment realm, so a method attuned to her qi aspect would not help her directly with the profession. It would give her a larger qi pool, though, and would both speed her cultivation and increase her chances of breaking through.
The downside was that he was starting to run low on points. Spending ten on her now would leave him at thirty-six, and that calculation didn’t even take into consideration that she would need custom techniques to prepare to become an alchemist.
He could delay things a bit, wait until he recouped more points from his recent inductees. That approach would give the additional advantage of perhaps having the Shop open before he started her cultivating. Maybe he could buy a Spiritual Root Refinement Pill for her.
Doing so would improve her cultivation speed and enhance her power, both good things for someone so likely to become an important member of the sect. On the other hand, even if the pill somehow boosted her all the way to the C rank, she’d still be just an average talent.
That expenditure probably wouldn’t be worth it.
In the end, his decision came down to the fact that he had so few outstanding talents to choose from. Normal sects had many villages, towns, and cities feeding them all the most talented young people. He had none of those resources. His finding anyone above an E would purely be the result of serendipity.
The absolute least he could do when he did find one of them would be to make it as smooth and easy as possible for them to advance in realms. He needed to be prepared to invest in those disciples when he discovered them. Period.
Thus, he decided that creating a unique method for her was the way to go and that it was best to get her cultivating as soon as possible. He created the Fiery Forest Method for her, which was relatively balanced between Foundation, thirty points; Ease, twenty-five points; and Power, forty-five points.
After inducting both her and Xiao Rong, he started them both on their cultivation journeys, gaining him two Sect Points back and leaving him with thirty-eight.