Benton needed to know what shape the old sect buildings were in before he considered how much to pay for them, and Fatty Ren simply didn’t know, having not been out to the site in years. Thus, Benton insisted on seeing the Righteous Rain Sect grounds before even mentioning a possible price. He and Fatty Ren did agree in principle that Benton could take whatever he could carry out.
So, Benton jogged toward the sect grounds. Not ran, jogged, at a nice, slow twenty-five miles per hour or so because he wanted time to think.
It would be easy enough for him to rob the Town Lord blind. His ring had a total volume equal to about the size of the interior of a football stadium and one of the larger ones at that. Many buildings could be contained inside the volume of a stadium, but considering how spatial rings actually worked, even more would fit.
When Benton thought about a storage space, he tended to envision something like a box in the shape of a square cube, say, twenty-seven cubic feet in volume, meaning it was three-feet wide by three-feet tall by three-feet deep. Logically, if he wanted to fill that box with widgets that were cubes one cubit foot in volume, he’d be able to fit nine widgets placed into the shape of a square three units wide by three units long on the bottom of the cube. Two identical squares could then be added on top of that layer, equaling twenty-seven widgets. Simple.
If he wanted to put, say, a stick in that storage space, the longest that would fit would have a length of three times the square root of three feet. Anything longer wouldn’t fit.
In actuality, spatial rings didn’t work like that at all. There was no box. Any empty or void space placed inside did not take up any volume.
Assuming the same twenty-seven cubic foot space, you could still fit exactly twenty-seven solid one-foot cubes in the space, but if the cubes were empty, the number you could fit inside would be higher, the actual amount dependent on the volume of the material that made up the cube.
So, if the material making up each of the one-foot cubes only took up half a cubic foot, he could actually fit fifty-four of them in the storage space even though, from looking at the two widget cubes, they appeared to take up the same volume.
That method meant he could easily place an eight-foot spear in his hypothetical twenty-seven cubic foot storage space because the spear’s length literally didn’t matter, only its volume.
It was kind of trippy to think about, but it gave him a lot, lot more space than he would have otherwise had. If he dropped a house inside, the living space inside didn’t count against his total.
All that to say that he could fit a lot of buildings inside his spatial ring, even with all the other crap that was starting to accumulate in there. Even if the sect grounds were as big as the Flowing Tiger Sect was in Su’s memories, Benton could still take a significant portion of the buildings. Which would be great for the sect he was founding but less great for any kind of future business relationship with Fatty Ren.
How scrupulous to be with the deal wasn’t something Benton could decide without more facts. He needed to weigh the needs of the present versus the long term. And he needed to see how reasonable Fatty Ren would be.
First, though, Benton had to find out exactly what was available.
From eavesdropping on Guang Yin and the mayor back in Prosperous Gray Forest Village, Benton knew the Righteous Rain Sect was destroyed roughly twenty years ago, and he suspected that the place might have sat abandoned for all that time.
Nature can reclaim spaces in a startingly low number of years. It was possible he would find that trees and vines had basically destroyed all the buildings, meaning that all the intrigue and meeting the Town Lord had been for nothing.
When he reached the grounds, though, they looked immaculate. The gate had no rust and swung open at a touch with not so much as a squeak in protest. Cobblestone paths were perfectly preserved. Grass grew to a uniform three inches.
As he walked further in, every house he saw was the same. It looked like the world’s most anal-retentive HOA ran the place. Each structure was painted a shade of blue as befitted a water sect and, coincidentally, Benton’s color preference. Each one was in perfect repair.
Until he reached even further in.
Signs of a battle started to show. A pole with a chunk cut out here. A hole in a wall there. Houses completely demolished. Burn marks. Some of the buildings were in shambles.
But a lot, most, weren’t.
Benton rubbed his hands greedily. He could literally plop a building he needed into his ring and place it on the ground when he claimed land for his sect. At most, he’d need some paint if he wanted his sect not to look exactly like the abandoned one.
He walked through a couple of the buildings, a single-family house and a larger multi-tenant facility, and they were basically empty, someone having scavenged everything not nailed down. The structures themselves, though, looked like they’d been built the day before.
Intellectually, he had known arrays were both a thing and were powerful. Hell, the Poison Claw Sect’s arena had proved that. But whatever was keeping these buildings intact was super impressive in a very practical way.
Benton whistled as he jogged back to the town. He’d promised to visit Fatty Ren tomorrow around lunch, so he had the rest of the afternoon and evening to get the lay of the land.
He started meandering.
Shops were deserted and nearly empty of anything to buy. There was some fresh produce, presumably from farms outside of town, but that was it. Very little fabric or alcohol or any other type of trade good. None of the people looked like they could afford it, anyway.
As he walked, he scanned everyone he saw. There were a couple in the D range and even a C-, but their qi aspects didn’t interest him enough to pursue recruitment just yet, though he did make a mental note of where he saw them, of course.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Finally, though, he walked into a shop that appeared to have once been a general mercantile. Like all the others, there wasn’t much available to buy. The shelves had some wood carvings that appeared to be an attempt at art and some random vegetables. The man behind the counter, an F+, barely even looked up when Benton walked in.
Then, a kid came out from the back, and that entrance changed everything.
Affiliation: Incomparable Yellow General Mercantile Age: 12 Cultivation: None Techniques: None Spiritual Roots: F- Qi Aspect: An instant locked in place
What the what? An instant? Like an instant in time?
The supremely untalented child in front of Benton had time aspected qi. He hadn’t even known that was an option.
Up until that point, all the personal techniques Benton had gotten from the System hadn’t required any specific qi to use, but after seeing the kid, his mind spun with possibilities.
“System,” Benton said internally, “what is my qi aspect?”
Host does not have a qi aspect.
That answer was worrying.
“System, does that mean I can’t use techniques that are specific to a particular qi aspect?”
Host can utilize techniques for all qi aspects.
Benton literally had to resist pumping his fists in joy. That feature of the System wasn’t just a cheat; it was broken.
Fire qi users couldn’t suddenly switch from throwing a fireball to creating a wall of ice. A cultivator couldn’t call a lightning bolt from the heavens one second and bury an opponent in an earth pit the next.
Normal cultivators, anyway. Benton’s possibilities were limitless. He was going to have so much fun with his new discovery.
“System, can I make a Foundation Establishment ranked technique that will allow me to stop time?”
Stopping time requires too much qi by orders of magnitude for a Foundation Establishment cultivator. Such a technique could not be used until the Nascent Soul realm. Host should be able to utilize techniques that speed or slow time in the Golden Core realm.
Okay, he couldn’t use it yet, but manipulating time was definitely on the table. He could live with the restriction.
“System, what techniques can I buy in the Foundation Establishment realm that use the time aspect?”
Host can create a technique to view events in the past associated with a place or object. Host can create a technique to step outside of time to view a situation. Host can create a technique to view possible immediate future reactions to an event. Etc.
Nice. The first example seemed like it would have limited usefulness for his purposes, but the second could be great. In a bad situation? Press the stop button for a while to come up with a plan.
The third example could be totally broken, depending on how it worked in actuality. Seeing a nearly infinite number of options of what an opponent may do next in combat would not be nearly as useful as seeing the three most likely reactions.
Even cooler was the fact that, since using the time aspect was definitely possible, space, gravity, and void likely were as well. Benton went through each one of those three aspects and independently confirmed with the System that he was able to use them. In the Foundation Establishment realm, he didn’t have enough qi to do anything truly awesome, but it was just a matter of time until he reached higher realms.
Forget throwing fireballs, he wanted void bolts.
The boy’s voice drew Benton from his woolgathering. “Honorable Father, we have a customer, an Esteemed Cultivator.” His tone was urgent.
The man looked up, his eyes wide. “Apologies, Esteemed Cultivator. How may these lowly ones be of service?”
Benton introduced himself, and the shopkeeper reciprocated. His name was Peng Zhen, and his son with the fascinating qi aspect was Peng Hanying.
“I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Esteemed Cultivator. Please ask.”
“First of all, how did things get so bad in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town?”
Peng Zhen looked around the store, as if seeking anything to get him out of answering the question.
“It’s okay,” Benton said. “You can speak plainly. I certainly won’t tell anyone here what you told me.”
Peng Zhen looked like he swallowed a fly. More accurately, he looked like someone forced to choose between the least bad of two awful options. But finally, he spoke. “It’s the Town Manager, Esteemed Cultivator. At first, he just skimmed a little off the top of the taxes, but when the Town Lord appeared not to notice or care, he got more and more bold. Now every penny goes into the pockets of him or his corrupt enforcers.”
Benton had thought it would be something like that. “Why haven’t you left?”
“Sadly, this lowly one has no funds to move and start over. At first, this lowly one used savings to keep the shop open, thinking that things would eventually get better. But it didn’t, and now, there is no more money.”
Perfect. Benton wanted the time-aspected kid. Even though Peng Hanying had ultra poor spirit roots that wouldn’t allow him to advance high enough to actually make use of that powerful aspect, Benton’s Pill Basics technique had revealed a possible method to elevate him a tier or two. It was the same desperate, ruinously expensive measure that sect leaders sometimes tried on their own children, but with Benton’s expertise, he might be able to minimize risk if the System could provide the right perfect purity pills at a price he could afford.
That was a lot of ifs, but it wasn’t like it cost him anything to recruit the family and see if everything would work out. Low risk and high reward. Just the kind of gamble he liked.
Besides, he had a thought in mind as for how the father could benefit the sect as well.
“If someone offered you a position in a village,” Benton said, “would you take it?”
Peng Zhen looked skeptical. “It depends on who is making the offer and what the offer is, Esteemed Cultivator.”
“What if the person making the offer is an Esteemed Cultivator?” Benton grinned.
The shopkeeper looked flummoxed, but Peng Hanying chuckled.
“Just a little joke,” Benton said before explaining about setting up a sect in the village, including the fact that it was beset by spirit beasts. “In a way, it sounds like a worse situation than here, but I assure you that I and my disciples can handle spirit beasts. I have a real need for a merchant to run the contribution point shop for my new sect.” He pulled out a spear, a bow, and a bottle of pills from his ring. “I have a few things like this merchandise to start, and soon, my disciples will begin crafting. They’ll need a place to sell their wares to their fellow sect members.”
Peng Zhen was really skeptical. After all, if something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. But between facing slow, inevitable doom in the town or moving to the village, there was only one path that at least had a bit of daylight at the end.
They arranged to meet in the morning two days later, and when Benton left to find an inn, he was feeling really good about the direction his sect was taking.