Benton woke feeling good. His efforts of the last few days had paid off with him being able to achieve all his tasks and then some. Best of all, his disciples should arrive no later than early evening, and they all could finally begin the last leg of the voyage to Prosperous Gray Forest Village.
In four weeks at the most, they would arrive, and he could finally found his sect.
He walked down the stairs intending to have a leisurely breakfast in the inn’s common room and was surprised to find the normally quiet area buzzing with voices. Not only was the place more packed than usual, but everyone was talking. And there was only one thing on their minds.
“You didn’t hear?” one man said to another who had just walked in. “The Town Manager is dead. Killed by assassins. They say that the Town Lord was taken out, too. Everyone is waiting for our new leaders to announce themselves.”
“You’re an idiot,” someone who had obviously overheard the first man yelled. “The murderer was a man whose wife was confiscated to pay tax debts, and the Town Lord in turn had that husband executed.”
“No!” another patron yelled. “It was a coup. They got the Town Manager but failed to kill the Town Lord. All the leaders were rounded up, and there’s to be a public execution.”
There seemed to be a hundred versions of what happened, but they all agreed on the point that the Town Manager had been killed. Go Fatty Ren!
The fact that the Town Lord had demonstratively followed through on at least one of the tasks Benton had set made him feel a lot better even if he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Fatty Ren held no blame for the conditions in the town other than those arising from simple incompetence.
Benton tended to try to not draw any more notice than necessary when he was in the common room. As it was his second morning eating there, the usual diners had already noted that, though he was a cultivator, he seemed to just want to be left alone.
Today, he decided to attract attention.
He strode purposefully up to a counter and spoke to the innkeeper in a loud voice. “Thank you, innkeeper, for your hospitality and directions your provided.”
“Of course, Esteemed Cultivator. This one was happy to be of service.”
Benton held up his spatial ring and flashily caused a stack of silver taels to appear, which he snatched out of the air. “This should cover my stay. My work here is done. Fatty Ren, the Town Lord, has executed the corrupt Town Manager, Yu Xieren, and has arranged for a new Town Manager who is both competent and not corrupt to be sent from Sixth Flawless Flowing City. I expect that things will soon be looking up here in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town, especially since experienced lawmen who are beyond reproach will also be arriving.”
The man cupped his hands and bowed low. “This lowly one expresses gratitude, Esteemed Master Cultivator.”
There. Even if the delivery was a bit melodramatic, the announcement should at least get the truth out into the grapevine. Hopefully, the source being a cultivator who was at least powerful enough to use a spatial ring would lend it credibility.
After making such a spectacle, Benton couldn’t just sit down and eat breakfast as it would have ruined any mystique he’d managed to build. Oh well, he did have all those street vendor meals.
Once again, he complimented himself on his forethought to buy them as he ate a nice kabob. The vendor, of course, had called it something else, but to Benton, meat on a stick was a kabob, plain and simple.
His first stop was the mercantile, where Peng Zhen had loaded the contents of his shop onto a small horsedrawn cart and was outside vigilantly guarding it lest its contents be purloined.
Oops. Benton knew he’d forgotten something.
“Greetings, Peng Zhen. Do you think you could get a larger wagon? We have ten kids a bit older than your son and another group of six … guards that are coming along as well.”
Peng Zhen looked nervous. “Uh…”
“What’s the issue? It’s okay. I won’t be mad. This is my screwup.”
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The man looked momentarily perplexed at that last turn of phrase but mainly appeared stressed about whatever it was that he had to say. “Many apologies, Esteemed Master Cultivator, this lowly one cannot afford a bigger wagon.”
Oh. Well, that problem had an easy fix. Benton withdrew a hundred taels from his ring and tossed them to the merchant. “This should cover it, right?”
Peng Zhen’s eyes went wide. “Yes, Esteemed Master Cultivator. This is more than enough. This lowly one will take care of it immediately.”
“Great. Can you meet me at the orphanage an hour or so after lunch?”
After getting confirmation from the merchant that the meeting time and place would work, Benton went to the gang’s warehouse. He likewise told them the meeting time and place, describing in great detail the location of the building in question.
There was no need to be at the orphanage before lunch, where he intended on feeding all the kids one more time, so he wandered around town for a while. There wasn’t all that much he hadn’t seen, and there simply wasn’t much for sale that he had any interest in buying.
Regarding recruits, he was quite satisfied with his efforts thus far and was wary of adding too many disciples at once. Organizations needed leaders and an established methodology to handle an influx of new people. Benton had no one ready to onboard the people he’d already recruited, and getting everyone settled and fed and clothed was going to be a logistical challenge.
More people were definitely better from a points standpoint, but he didn’t want his recruits first impression of the sect to be disorganization. Besides, with his growth in personal power, the twins advancing so well, and so many recruits from both the town and the city, he was less worried about being inundated with villagers who had more loyalty to the mayor than to him. Once he founded his sect officially, he was planning to secure his largest volume of recruits yet.
That wasn’t to say that, if he had discovered interesting talents walking around town, he wouldn’t have collected them. He didn’t find anyone who seemed worth the effort, though.
Around lunch, he made it to the orphanage, and just like the first time, the children loved the variety of piping hot meals that came from his ring. What he loved were the changes that had already occurred.
Five women got a lot more done than one who was overwhelmed had. The kids already looked happy and healthier. A lot were wearing new outfits, and two of the ladies were busy sewing more when he arrived.
He was sure that ten weeks would see even more huge improvements.
Since none of the kids stood out all that much in talent or qi aspect, Benton had Mistress Gong select the ten kids to go with them. He figured she’d be able to find the ones who could handle the change the easiest.
If everything worked out like he hoped, he’d eventually transfer all the kids to the village.
Thinking about those orphans, notifications had trickled in all morning informing him that the original set of eight he’d accepted as his disciples had finally reached minor realm three. Mistress Zhong, a similar talent to the children, was already two minor realms ahead of them, but Benton didn’t feel bad about limiting their cultivating to half the time as everyone else. They were kids and needed to play and do other things.
Of course, some of the disciples on the trip now were of a similar age.
Benton hmmed. Maybe he should limit the other young people as well since they, too, deserved play time. That restriction could probably wait, though, until they reached the village. After all, there wasn’t much else for everyone to do while sitting in a wagon.
The notifications brought his total Sect Points to an even fifty, and besides perhaps an individual cultivation method for the time aspected young man, he had nothing that needed spending. Awesome. That last point also represented his two hundred and thirteenth earned, which meant Benton was finally out of hock to himself. As soon as he got seventeen more points, he’d have two to spend on a technique for himself.
He’d have to consider the case of Peng Hanying some more. On one hand, Benton wanted to see how the kid developed that neat aspect of his. On the other, he knew from what the System had told him that it would be Golden Core before the child would be able to do anything really heaven shattering with it, and he likely was never going to make it that far unless a lot of longshots came together.
Finally, both the boy in question along with his family driving a large wagon and the six wannabe gangsters arrived. Benton had all of them pile into the back and led them to the gate leading to Sixth Flawless Flowing City in order to wait for the caravan.
Benton figured that the earliest his disciples would arrive was early afternoon and the latest early evening. They split the difference, coming into sight in the late afternoon.
Yang Xiu, Yang Ru, and, to Benton’s slight surprise, Zou Tian rushed ahead to greet their master.
“How was the trip?” Benton said. “Run into any trouble?”
The three looked at each other. Translation—they had run into trouble.
“Tell me,” Benton said.
“It was nothing, Master,” Yang Xiu said.
He fixed her with a somewhat amused but insistent glare.
“Bandits, Master. But we handled it easily. Ye Zan did a great job defending the wagons while Yang Ru, Zou Tian, and I disrupted the attack, and no one got even scratched. There was no danger.”
Benton frowned. “How many?”
“Seventy-three, Master.”
Yikes. His twenty-four disciples, several of whom were completely non-combatants, were able to take over three times their number of armed desperadoes while protecting a toddler and a little kid. Not bad.
He hated that they’d had to do such a thing, but as he kept reminding himself, he was no longer on Earth. If they were too weak to do what was necessary, they wouldn’t last long as cultivators.
“Well, sounds like congratulations are in order. Unfortunately, there will be no celebratory dinner in a restaurant tonight. You’re not even going to get to stay in an inn. Things are way too unsettled in this town. We’re going to pass through and camp as far outside the walls as we can get on the other side.”