Kang Ya-Ting remained in the alchemy shop until Chao Su and his young … ward were well out of sight. The boy was interesting in that the elder had almost forgotten he was in the shop.
That the boy could evade notice meant he was manifesting his qi aspect even though he was a mortal. Such a thing wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare.
Some people, even wizened cultivators, believed a display like that one meant the mortal would automatically have great talent, thinking that the potency of the spiritual roots somehow led to the ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The boy had just as much chance of a being an F or any other rank as a random person on the street.
The real reason the boy was able to blend into the space was that the boy’s qi aspect was abnormally strong.
That strength was both a blessing and a curse. It meant that every technique the boy used that closely aligned with his aspect would have a greater effect than if it were used by another person of a similar rank. It also meant that it was vastly more difficult for the boy to use cultivation methods and techniques that didn’t align closely with his qi aspect.
Finding such resources could challenge even a mid-sized sect, but Kang Ya-Ting figured that issue wasn’t much of a problem for Chao Su.
Did he recruit the boy because his talent with shadows, a sought-after trait for assassins? Hmm. Probably not. Chao Su simply didn’t seem like the type to employ those kinds of methods. He also wasn’t likely to have been of the belief that the boy was supremely talented due to the qi manifestation.
No, the most likely reason the boy ending up with Chao Su was exactly what he had said. The boy found himself in danger due to helping them avoid any more entanglements than were necessary with a local gang. Chao Su definitely seemed the type to be loyal to those who assisted him.
That small mystery resolved, Kang Ya-Ting turned to the attendant. “He knew not only the type of pill, but the purity and price as well. Is that usual?”
“At the level he displayed?” the attendant said. “No. Not usual at all.”
“Could he perhaps apply that level of insight to examining a cultivator with his spirit sense?”
“Oh no, Esteemed Elder. This one didn’t mean anything like that. Any alchemist can pick up a version of what he can do. Even this one can determine a pill’s general purity just from years and years of working in a shop. None of that helps at all in learning to discern information about fellow cultivators.”
“I see. Try to put into context, then, how unusual his ability is.”
“He displayed three distinct skills, Esteemed Elder. First, he has a good sense of a pill’s value, but that ability is relatively common. Anyone who buys or sells lots of them will pick that up. He also displayed immense knowledge. Detecting that mislabeled pill like that? This one missed it. The master alchemist who priced the pills missed it. A lot of people in the chain missed it. He didn’t. But that doesn’t necessarily indicate any special ability with qi. It probably just means he’s seen a lot of pills in his lifetime, many more than this one has.
“The third skill was the amazing one, but anyone could achieve it. One simply needs to spend literal centuries honing and fine-tuning their spiritual sense to detect the most minor of fluctuations in a pill’s makeup. This one can’t imagine the time and patience it took to develop that ability to the degree he showed. He is a true expert.”
“While you were in the back, he told me that the concentration pill can be used in combination with two other pills to permanently increase a cultivators qi pool,” Kang Ya-Ting said. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “This one thinks that information needs to be reported to the head of the alchemy pavilion.”
“I see.”
In retrospect, he and Dai Shuren had probably been letting their imaginations run away with them. A Nascent Soul realm cultivator had all the time in the world to study things that interest them. Spending so much effort working with pills that one became an expert was much more likely than Chao Su having an ability they’d never even heard rumors about anyone else having.
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Benton and Zou Tian made it to the arena in plenty of time for the spars, not that the sect wouldn’t have held the start for them anyway. Kang Ya-Ting introduced the martial pavilion elder, Pan Cai, who was very complimentary toward the twins. From a different cultivator, Benton might have thought the guy just blowing smoke, but Elder Pan really seemed like a straight shooter.
“This one has actually arranged for two contests for each of your disciples. First, a demonstration against the sect’s top Qi Gathering practitioner with their respective weapon, followed by a spar with a sect member of a similar realm that this one chose to be a particularly challenging matchup.”
“Perfect. I’d like for them to be truly tested. Adversity brings growth.”
Benton didn’t know how prophetic his words would be.
Yang Ru was first up for the demonstration. He and a young lady stood facing each other a few feet apart. Both held spears.
Benton scanned the girl.
Affiliation: Poison Claw Sect Age: 16 Cultivation: Qi Gathering - Minor Realm Nine Qi Available: ??? Techniques: ??? Spiritual Roots: C+ Qi Aspect: Forked lightning ripping the sky asunder
Ooh. Nice. She was at the peak of Qi Gathering, and she was the first actual cultivator he’d seen with the lightning aspect. Sixteen could be a bit old to have not reached Foundation Establishment, but that could be due to many factors. Like maybe she had just turned sixteen and she’d been recruited half a year or more after her fourteenth birthday. Sects only visited villages once a year, after all. Most kids weren’t inducted literally as soon as they came of age.
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More importantly, she was the top spear user of her realm present in the city. She should be able to give Yang Ru a run for his money.
“What do you think, Zou Tian? Who will win—Yang Ru or the girl?”
“This lowly one wouldn’t dare venture a guess, master.”
The kid was so stiff. Well, he’d loosen up eventually. The twins did.
“Who is the girl?” Benton said.
“Kang Lin,” Kang Ya-Ting said proudly.
“Daughter?”
“Granddaughter.”
“You dog. Congratulations.”
The same elder who had overseen the spar between Yang Ru and Pan Jiang entered the arena and immediately gave the rules. Both contestants must remain in position, not moving more than a foot in any direction, and the goal was to disarm their opponent, which would result in an award of three points. Any touching of the body counted a point against the person doing the touching. Match point was eleven.
After both contestants signaled their understanding, the match started, and it went exactly how Benton had expected. Elder Kang’s granddaughter wiped the sand with Yang Ru. The lightning qi aspect showed itself in her speed and her agility, and she clearly had much, much more experience fighting cultivators than he did. Against a spirit beast, they might be an even match but not in contest like that one.
Final Score—Kang Lin eleven, Yang Ru one. The girl had gotten a little aggressive with one of her thrusts and touched his finger when she disarmed him, costing her the shutout.
Overall, Benton came away quite impressed by the young lady. She was poised and purposeful in every move she made.
As soon as the ending was announced, Yang Ru sank to ground in a lotus position, meditating deeply.
Kang Ya-Ting and Pan Cai both looked a little embarrassed and apprehensive at the result.
“The Esteemed Elders think I’ll be angry because his disciple lost the match?” Benton said.
“Apologies for this one’s granddaughter, Esteemed Master Cultivator. She did not give your disciple much face.”
Benton smiled widely. “Nonsense. She did great. Exactly the kind of thing I wanted to happen. The Esteemed Elder should be proud.”
“The Esteemed Master Cultivator is pleased?” Pan Cai said.
“Of course, because… on second thought, this is a good learning opportunity.” Benton turned to Zou Tian. “Pop quiz, why am I happy?”
The boy clearly had no idea what a pop quiz was, especially since Benton had switched to English for the words, but he tried gamely enough to answer the question. “Master is happy because … the defeat can … make Senior Brother better?”
“Exactly. Winning or losing that contest doesn’t matter in the slightest. There were no stakes. No consequences. I mean, face? Who cares? He has mastered his spear technique. He surely thought himself the mighty knower of all that was knowable regarding the spear. Now, he really knows something important—that mastery of a technique does not mean mastery of the wider concept of fighting with a spear. Maybe this fight will propel him to new heights of greatness. Maybe one day he’ll be in a life and death struggle and the lessons learned today will save him.”
The two elders looked contemplative.
“Do you know what I’m most happy about, though?” Benton said.
Zou Tian thought about it for a moment. He stared down at the area where Yang Ru was busy consolidating his gains from the fight. “Senior Brother’s reaction to the loss, Master?”
“Yes. Two for two. Great job, Zou Tian.” Benton grinned at him. “Yang Ru didn’t rage at the heavens due to the unfairness of the contest. He didn’t sink to the depths of despair because he let me down by losing or some other nonsense. No, he immediately did what he needed to do to become better. What a great disciple!”
While they’d been talking, more than a score of young cultivators had swarmed the arena setting up all matter of targets, signaling that the next competition would be an archery contest.
“Did the Esteemed Master Cultivator choose his disciples’ weapons?” Elder Pan said.
“I did.”
“Interesting choices. Some look down on spears and bows, say that they’re peasant weapons. Bows in particular are frowned upon.”
Benton grinned. “Some people are idiots.”
Elder Pan chuckled in returned, in a manner that certainly seemed genuine. “This one agrees but would like to hear the Esteemed Master Cultivator’s reasoning.”
“Well, not much to tell, really. We were going to be fighting spirit beasts mainly, and against those, range is good. More range is better. The spear keeps jaws and claws at bay. The bow allows a Qi Gathering cultivator to hop up into a tree and engage from afar.”
“But for the long term?” Kang Ya-Ting said. “Does the Esteemed Master Cultivator plan to have his disciple abandon the weapon?”
“Of course not!” Benton said. “Look, I understand the point. A high realm cultivator can simply blast away with qi, so why use the bow? Well, if I’ll tell the Esteemed Elder why. Obviously, no one has unlimited qi, not even Nascent Soul and above. At a certain level, it takes qi to deal damage, and attacking at range also requires qi to get that attack to your opponent. The bow is more efficient, using the body’s strength combined with mechanical force to push the damaging qi to the target, and if a stronger, faster launch is needed, you can still add that oomph with qi. You’ll still end up saving more than someone launching the same attack with qi alone.”
Apparently, neither of the elders expected such a spirited defense, and all of them fell into silence.
It didn’t take the crew long to clear the sand, and soon Yang Xiu and a young man entered the arena, both holding their bows and with their quivers ready. Like Kang Lin, the new sect contestant was in the ninth realm, though only fifteen years old with C- talent.
The elder once again announced the rules. There were eleven targets. Closest to the center for each target earned a point. Most points at the end won. They would alternate who went first, and since going second conveyed a slight advantage, the Poison Claw Sect member would start the contest, meaning he was first up one more time than Yang Xiu.
Kang Lin had held multiple advantages over Yang Ru, including more experience sparring against cultivators, the contest favoring agility over strength, and the two being forced to remain essentially stationary. From Benton’s initial observations, the archery contest seemed to be a more even match, but the targets weren’t all straightforward. He was sure there was an inherent advantage for the young man baked into it somehow but wasn’t sure of the specifics at a glance.
The first two targets were exactly what Benton would have expected from an archery competition. One was placed twenty-five yards from the starting line and the other seventy-five. The two split the points, with Yang Xiu winning on the longer of the two. Both were close, though, with less than an inch determining the victor for each target.
The third had a ten-foot wall between the start line and the target. The boy walked to the wall, looked around it to take in the target’s position, returned to the start line, and shot nearly vertically. The arrow arched over the wall and actually hit the target, though nowhere near the center.
Yang Xiu did her best, but she’d never tried a shot like that. Her arrow stuck in the ground a few inches shy of the goal.
The fourth target was odd. A narrow pole stood between the starting point and dead center on the target. To the right of the pole was a wall, six foot tall and three wide, positioned parallel to the line between the archer and target.
The purpose of the pole was clearly so the archers couldn’t fire directly at the bullseye. Perhaps the goal was to see which of them could get closest to the pole without hitting it and causing the arrow to stray off to one side? That reason was clearly in Yang Xiu’s mind as the feathers from her arrow literally grazed the pole as the arrow passed.
She grinned, clearly thinking she’d won the point, until her opponent stepped up to the start. He shot so that his arrow deflected off the wall and hit the bullseye.
The rest of the contest went similarly. Yang Xiu was clearly talented at archery, but she also clearly had no experience with the kind of trick shots required to win that competition. Still, she never gave up, winning three more points to lose the match seven to four.
Mirroring her brother, she sank into meditation at the conclusion of the contest. The only difference was that she had enough social grace to congratulate the young man who beat her before doing so.
All in all, Benton thought he’d found about the best disciples a master could want.