There was absolutely nothing that affected Benton’s emotions more than a sick or injured child, and the sight of poor, suffering Jin LiJuan shivering under her covers hit him right in the heart.

“M-Master?” she said, waking as he entered the room. “Master! You’re back.”

“Shh. It’s okay. Just rest.”

“I wanted to cultivate, Master, and you said you’d be back in two months. Two. It was three. And I wanted to cultivate.” Tears streamed down her cheek.

“I know. I understand.”

“It’s going to be okay, right Master? Whatever I did you can fix, right?”

Benton didn’t think so. Nothing from either his Pill Basics technique or from Su’s memories even hinted at a cure for someone whose spirit roots had literally been burned out.

“You need to do what I tell you to do,” he said, “and right now, that’s to rest. Sleep. Obey Mistress Zhong.”

“Yes, Master. Of course, Master.” She turned over and closed her eyes like she’d somehow drifted immediately off.

Shaking his head at the little girl, Benton walked toward the room’s exit.

“Master?” she called.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t … I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Li’er. It’s okay.”

Benton liked people depending on him. He liked responsibility. He liked taking care of others. But that responsibility suddenly weighed on his shoulders like a ton of bricks.

How was he going to fix her? Could he fix her?

“System,” he said internally, “is there any technique that I can learn or that I can create for a disciple that will allow me or that disciple to heal Li’er?”

No.

Benton let out a frustrated breath. There was only one more card left to play.

“System, is there a pill or set of pills I can buy to heal Li’er?”

Information on pills is not available. Please complete the Found a Sect Quest to unlock the Shop in order to access that information.

Well, that wasn’t a no, so hope lived. Of course, it wasn’t a yes, either.

He waited until he and Mistress Zhong had walked well out of the child’s earshot to speak. “How disappointed would she be if she could never cultivate?”

“I’ve tried to prepare her for the possibility, Master. Lightly. Just hints. It did not go well. I think it would crush her. She’s already hanging on by a thread. Can you do anything?”

“I don’t know. For now, no. Soon, maybe? I truly do not know. Any solution is a longshot, though.”

To even find out if he had a shot at healing her, he needed to found his sect. Of course, it wasn’t like completing that very quest wasn’t already the top item on his To Do list. That System response just gave him another reason to hurry.

Next stop, the mayor’s house. Well, after lunch, anyway. He had all those meals he was sure the kids would enjoy, and he’d told Mo Jian to meet in two hours. It wouldn’t do to turn up early.

As expected, the kids original to the Prosperous Gray Forest Village loved the exotic street vendor food from the city, especially the desserts. The ones from the town enjoyed the meals, too. It was just that they’d been eating the cuisine for a month already.

Finally, Benton reached the mayor’s house.

After a servant let him in, the mayor greeted him. “Esteemed Master Cultivator, welcome to this lowly one’s humble home.”

Benton wondered what had happened in the last hour for him to suddenly rate a “this lowly one” in lieu of the “this one” he’d received at the gate.

After a few more pleasantries and the mayor serving tea, they got down to business.

“All the cards on the table,” Benton said. “Your village is in bad shape. The beasts have worsened since we left. Even if there’s not a beast tide, I don’t see how any of you can survive without help. Do you have any hope of receiving that help from anyone other than me?”

The mayor sighed. “No, Esteemed Master Cultivator. This lowly one has no way of protecting or feeding his citizens without assistance and no way to get the assistance. Further, these lowly ones can’t even flee as it’s too dangerous.”

“Thank you for admitting that.” Benton paused. “This is going to be a long conversation. Is there any way you can drop the whole long-winded honorifics and third person stuff?”

“This … I can do that.”

“Thank you again.”

The mayor cupped his hands and bowed slightly.

“To be frank,” Benton said. “I want to start a sect. That’s why I brought so many people with me.”

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“Here?”

“Yes. The village is a perfect location for me due to the beasts, the wood, and the mountain. And the sect will be a great boon to you and the villagers as well. You’ll gain cultivators to cull the beasts, a way to get your goods to market, and a way to feed your people,” Benton said. “It’s what I call a win-win, and I’d like for you and me to be partners in getting things set up.”

“What exactly do you mean by partners?”

“I mean that the village and the sect treat each other cordially. That both sides understand and act like what helps one helps the other instead of nickel and diming each other by having to trade favors for every single little thing.”

“Nickel and diming?” The mayor stumbled over the unfamiliar words.

“An expression that means we don’t charge each other for tiny services. If a beast is threatening the town, I don’t try to get you to perform a favor for me in return for killing it. If I need someone to take care of the orphans for a few hours while the sect members are busy, you don’t charge me for the time.”

“I see.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t work out a broader framework for our partnership. I don’t expect your people to do work for free. I just want your people and mine to both feel like we’re in this together and neither of us try to put one over on the other guy.”

“What kind of framework did you have in mind?” The mayor again stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

“How about I list out some things I need from the village and what I’m willing to give in return? Then you can tell me what I might add to the giving part and if any of the asks are more difficult than I imagine.”

“That sounds acceptable.”

“Okay, the first thing that I need is land on which to build my sect. The land needs to be big, a hundred acres at minimum with the option of expansion later, and its ownership wholly granted to me for whatever use I want. It should be located to the southeast so that it lies between the village and the source of the spirit beasts.”

Even though the quest just said he had to claim the land, Benton worried that anything less than a deed from an official source might cause the System to reject his founding of the sect. Regardless, such a concession from the mayor should be an easy one.

“In the spirit of … partnership, that ask is relatively minor. We have unused farmland aplenty, and the village appreciates your desire to put your sect in a protective position.”

Good. The mayor was being cooperative. Things might work out better than Benton had expected.

“Next, I need enough Orange Vigor Spirit Wood to build a wall around, say, five acres of the land to start with along with the labor to cut it and to help building the wall.”

“That might be a problem.”

“How so?” Benton said.

“Assuming you’re providing protection for the harvesters, I don’t see a huge problem providing the labor required to gather the wood because Guang Yin’s men have experience working in dangerous conditions. Converting the wood into planks and such can be done inside the village. Building the wall, though? I assume you want to match the height and general construction of the one around the village?”

“Yeah. Bigger even. Twenty feet tall at least.”

“That’s a massive undertaking, meaning we’d have to find scores of people willing to work outside the village’s wall in order to build a wall around the sect. No matter how much you assure them it’s safe, I don’t think you’re going to get enough volunteers to build it in less than years.”

“If that were an issue,” Benton said, “I could just have my sect members provide labor, but I’d rather them do other things with their time. Besides, I’ve got a better idea. We build the wall inside the town in huge sections. Then, we just have to put them together around the sect.”

“And how are you going to transport them there?”

Benton made the mayor’s table, tea set and all, disappear into his ring. “It’s surprisingly roomy in there.”

“Big enough to…”

Benton nodded.

“That’s…”

“I know.”

“If that’s the case,” the mayor said, “I think we can come to an arrangement on the wall building, but I’d rather wait until all your asks are on the table, which I expect to be returned, before talking compensation.”

“Great,” Benton said, making the table reappear. “Next ask is recruitment. Once we get the wall built, I’m going to want twenty-five villagers to join my sect to fill specific roles. Each person will be allowed to refuse, in which case I will ask someone else until we have enough who accept to fill all twenty-five positions. I expect you to assist in finding people who would best fit the roles I’m looking to fill.”

“That sounds reasonable as long as each person has a choice.”

“In return, I’m willing to provide cultivation methods to you, four town administrators of your choosing, and twenty younger people to serve as village guards so your defense against the spirit beasts won’t solely rest on me.”

“What about talent level?”

“I can tell you the talent level of anyone you pick before you finalize your choices.”

“That’s generous of you, but it wasn’t my actual concern. You seemed to have picked orphans at random when you were here previously. Surely all those kids weren’t sect material.”

“Hardly,” Benton said. “No sect that I know of would have taken them.”

“Then I have a concern about exactly what your sect will be doing with them.”

Ah. The mayor suspected he might be a demonic cultivator or have some kind of nefarious use for low talent recruits.

“I have committed, and will continue to commit, to do everything in my power to bring each and every one of my sect members to at least the Foundation Establishment realm as long as they follow my instructions and are diligent in their cultivation.”

The mayor frowned. “Committing to doing everything in your power is … something. That doesn’t commit you to a result, though.”

“No, it doesn’t, and that’s because I cannot guarantee that each and every one of them will reach Foundation Establishment. Cultivation is not one plus one equals two. Cultivation is one plus one usually equals two but could end up at five or twenty or one half. I believe my cultivation methods and expertise will result in a minimum of eighty to ninety percent of the F ranked talents reaching Foundation Establishment within five years.”

Benton was actually sandbagging those quantities by more than a little bit. Assuming he got access to pills at some point, he could do a lot better than both that percentage and that timetable. Even if the Shop disappointed, the Poison Claw Sect could provide what he needed to get most sect members through bottlenecks even if the resultant toxicity guaranteed their journey wouldn’t make it pass Foundation Establishment.

The mayor still looked skeptical.

“Would it help if I told you that Elder Kang Ya-Ting of the Poison Claw Sect in Sixth Flawless Flowing City was quite impressed by both the breadth and quality of the techniques and cultivation methods I can offer my sect members? Heaven grade. Top heaven grade.”

“You’re being honest?”

“Completely.”

The mayor sighed. “Everything else you’ve told me has panned out so far, so I’m going to extend my trust to you on this. If the cultivation methods that you pass out don’t live up to your claims, that’s going to erode what trust we’ve managed to build.”

“I understand. You will not be disappointed.”

“If you’re willing to do everything you said, plus continue to provide us with food and supplies we need to survive, I have no choice but to make the deal in principle.”

“Fantastic!” Benton said. “We can hammer out the details later. Percentages of the sale of wood each of us get, rates for daily labor, etc. The thing I need immediately, today, right now, is a deed to the sect’s land.”

“I have just the place in mind, an abandoned farm that shouldn’t be too overgrown. It had about thirty acres of fields. The area around it is unowned wooded lands. There should be no issue in writing an official letter as the Village Mayor assigning you as the owner of about one hundred fifty acres.”

“Perfect. I think we should celebrate this momentous occasion with a feast.”

The mayor winced. “Uh…”

“How about this—the food is on me if you’ll provide the labor.”