Chapter 71 - Home Alone
The next six days passed with excruciating slowness for Benton. Creak, creak, creak went the wheels. Followed by another creak, creak, creak. And another creak, creak, creak. Endless, endless creaks.
He missed cars and buses and trains and planes and literally any mode of transportation that moved faster than a oxen-driven wagon on a rutted dirt path, especially ones that didn't creak.
The only possible thing worse than how slowly it took to get from place to place when moving at mortal speeds was the negligible amount of entertainment offerings. One would have thought that cultivators, some thousands of years old, would have created some form of mobile television or something with qi, but they didn't even really read novels. Cultivation took up all their time.
Ugh!
Worse, in those six days, he'd only gained two measly Sect Points, those from Xun Wu's wife and son reaching the second minor realm, bringing Benton to thirty-nine. He needed more recruits.
Luckily, they'd be at Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town in four more days, and hopefully, he'd find new disciples there.
Thinking about that eventuality, however, made Benton realize some of the problems with such recruitment. For example, the town had a bad reputation for lawlessness, and there might be rogue cultivators in the town left over from when the Righteous Rain Sect ran things. He wanted to get his disciples in and out of there as quickly as possible to avoid danger.
Recruitment, on the other hand, took time. You couldn't just snatch people and drag them into your wagon as you passed.
Well, he could. If there weren't any powerful cultivators around, no one could stop him. Still, he wasn't quite that desperate for recruits yet.
No, he'd need to find an orphanage and make an offer somehow without sounding like a creep. And he felt bad about using kids young enough to still be in an orphanage for martial pursuits, so it would be nice if he could grab a street gang or two as well. Most of the young people engaged in those types of activities had been driven to it by hunger and desperation. He doubted they were beyond redemption.
He also needed to think about what his sect needed to run efficiently. For example, there would surely be a cafeteria at some point, so he'd need a cook, or more likely cooks, for that work. Maybe that was a day two issue, however. With thirty-six people, tasks like cooking could be delegated as a rotating duty instead of requiring a dedicated person.
Still, Benton couldn't put off filling all positions on that basis. The fewer openings he started with, the easier it would be to focus on what he needed next. He resolved to keep his eyes open for opportunities to put people in needed roles.
With his desire to spend time in the town firming, the beginnings of a plan stirred in his mind, one that would coincidentally get him off that stupid, creaking wagon.
As far as he could determine, the caravan traveled about twenty miles a day, and they'd left the little village where they'd found Xun Wu ten days ago, so about two hundred miles. The first part of Benton's plan required him to make double darn sure that no cultivators were following them, and he figured going about halfway back to that village would be about far enough.
On Earth, the fastest man alive ran a bit under thirty miles per hour, but that speed was maintained only for relatively short sprints. Benton figured he could do much better, probably around fifty miles per hour and keep up that pace for most of a day. So, two hours there, two hours back.
A short while later, Yang Xiu and Zou Tian returned to the wagons from training in the woods, and Benton called them over to him. "I'm going to run back a ways to make sure we're not being tailed. Should take me about four hours. You two stick close to the wagons and, when Yang Ru gets back from his hunt, have him do the same."
"Yes, Master." Hey, their answers were getting more in sync.
With that, Benton took off, smoothly accelerating away from the caravan and reaching speeds that would have required a car back on Earth. It was the first time he'd truly stretched his legs and let loose since reaching Foundation Establishment. It was liberating. It was fun.
It also didn't take much of his attention. His mind had advanced just as his body had, and processing all the inputs from his enhanced velocity felt completely natural. His feet found sure purchase with every step despite the ruts dotting the path.
That ease allowed him to concentrate almost fully on his spiritual sense, and it picked up nothing. Not a cultivator. Not a spiritual beast. Nada. Nil. Bupkis.
If the sects had sent anyone else after them, either they could somehow hide from his spiritual sense in a way no one and nothing else had been able to or whoever they sent were mortals. His disciples could handle mortals.
When he'd reached a pond he remembered seeing on the fifth day after leaving the village, he turned back toward the caravan. As little of consequence happened on his return to the wagons as had happened on the way to the pond.
That evening, he again called his council into the woods.
"I have two conflicting desires," Benton said. "First, I want to get the entire caravan through Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town as fast as possible. I want to avoid any trouble with gangs or cultivators or anyone else, and the best way to minimize trouble is to minimize our time spent there.
"Second, I have business I need to attend to there. The sect needs more recruits from outside the Prosperous Gray Forest Village, and a deteriorating, lawless town sounds like a great place to pick up some new people. The sect also needs building materials. Obviously, we have the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, and there's plenty of rock and timber near the village that we can collect. I was wondering, though, if anything is left of the Righteous Rain Sect. I know the place has probably been deserted for twenty years, but if I can scavenge or purchase cultivator-ranked materials there, that would give our sect a great start. And honestly, I'd like to find out more about what actually happened to the sect to find out if it's something we need to be concerned about.
"Obviously," Benton continued, "there's a simple solution—I run ahead of the wagon train."
"Master should go ahead and leave us," Zou Tian said.
"I agree," Yang Xiu said.
"What if you're attacked while I'm away? I'm putting you in danger." Benton met Xun Wu's eyes. "I'm putting your kids in danger."
The man scoffed. "What danger? The most alarming thing I've seen is that bear Yang Ru killed, and it was dead before it got within a mile of us. We'll be fine."
"Master," Ye Zan said. "We'll reach the town in less than three days of travel. Between my guards and Senior Brother and Sister, I can't imagine anything that could challenge us."
Once again, Benton felt that he had the best disciples. They were completely right. He was being too much of a worrywart. The twins were in the seventh minor realm and had more qi available than most cultivators at the peak and were highly trained with their weapons to boot. As long as a Foundation Establishment cultivator didn't show up, Benton felt good about their chances against any foe.
And if any calamity that couldn't be solved by killing occurred, they had Ye Zan, who was a competent mercenary leader with more than a little real-world experience, and Xun Wu, who was an actual adult who had raised children. They'd be fine.
They also had plenty of provisions, including hard tack to eat for lunch, and water to drink. To the best of Benton's ability, he'd tried to detect any cultivators anywhere nearby and hadn't. Not only that, but he'd turn back if he detected any between the caravan and the town, a distance he could traverse in less than an hour and a half.
He couldn't reasonably think of a likely threat to the group.
His lack of imagination didn't mean he felt good about it. If only they all had cell phones, he'd feel as at ease with the situation as the first time he and Evelyn had left their oldest home alone when going on a date night. Meaning not at all.
"How about this?" Benton said. "I'll run to the town in the morning and run back to spend the evenings and nights with the caravan."
"If that's what you want to do, Master, but I don't think it's necessary." Yang Xiu was actually looking a bit upset.
Benton understood her pique. He'd raised teenagers. They felt themselves ready for anything the world could throw at them and didn't react kindly to being protected from it. Parents had to walk a fine line between letting them spread their wings and keeping them safe.
Those kinds of decisions were the hardest to make.
"Okay," Benton said. "You've convinced me. I'll leave right after breakfast in the morning. See you in a few days."
Chapter 72 – A Friend Parting at Speed Is a Friend Indeed
Yang Xiu crept through the forest, all her enhanced senses alert. Everything her eyes saw in the early morning light was exactly as it should be. None of the shadows were just a little too big. The bulge on the backside of that tree was just a knot, not a small person trying to conceal himself behind it. Nothing was out of place.
Her ears filtered out the bird song and leaves rustling in the wind and even three squirrels dashing through leaves a hundred yards away. She didn't hear any of the sounds she wanted, though. Breathing. Cloth rubbing together. Wind whistling strangely around a body.
Neither did her nose pick up the scent of a human, not the slightest whiff of sweat or body odor. And if taste or touch could help her find Zou Tian, she had no idea how to accomplish such a feat.
She was close to calling the game when he quietly stepped out from behind her.
That was unexpected. There was no reason to give up when he clearly had her beat.
He put a finger to his lips before motioning for her to follow.
They moved silently east for several hundred yards before a smell hit her—a man who had not experienced the cleansing power of soap in weeks, maybe months. Zou Tian stopped and pointed, but she had already spotted him.
The man was older, well above thirty, and rough looking with a gnarled beard and wearing torn and stained clothes. And he held a sword.
A peasant holding a noble's weapon was unusual. Very unusual. Only one type of person could possibly fit the picture her mind was painting. A bandit.
Yang Xiu shared a glance with Zou Tian. The boy wasn't as adept at reading her questions as her brother or Master, but with familiarity of being together nearly constantly for days on end, he was picking up the skill.
Zou Tian pointed past the man and held up eight fingers. Then he pointed south and flashed his ten fingers five times before shrugging.
A camp. At least fifty men but probably more. And these eight were out doing something. Scouting. Hunting. It didn't matter.
They needed to get back to the caravan and report.
It could barely be called midmorning when Benton reached Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town, and it only took him that long because he'd slowed to a regular walking speed when he'd started encountering people on the road. Not that there were many, mainly farmers from outside the walls dragging handcarts of produce to the market.
Most of them looked … ragged. Poor. As if everyone had fallen on hard times. They resembled the citizens of Prosperous Gray Forest Village in a way but only more so. Skinnier. Sadder. Clothes more torn. Nothing was patched. They looked worn down by life.
There was a malaise about them.
If the population Benton had seen so far was indicative of the state of the town, it was failing and failing fast.
When the Righteous Rain Sect had fallen, the village had been devastated because there were no longer any cultivators culling the spirit beasts, but Benton sensed none of the creatures anywhere near the town. Obviously, losing the sect would have been a huge blow to the local economy, but why had things gotten so bad?
There was only one explanation that fit the bill—incompetent or corrupt management. Or both.
Benton couldn't help but feel for the kids raised in such a wretched town, but he was already trying to save the villagers. He wasn't in a position to help all the children in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town, too. Not yet. But hopefully, he could get some of them out of the miserable place.
First, he needed to get a better feel for what was going on. He extended his spiritual sense over the entire area. There were five cultivators in the Town, one near the center and the others to the northeast.
Benton wasn't even able to speculate on what that quantity meant. Were they wandering cultivators? Representatives from the three sects? Cultivators trying to fill the void left by the Righteous Rain Sect?
Who knew?
He strolled up to the gate. There was no line. No one else was entering.
Two rough looking men in dirty clothes that in no way resembled uniforms accosted him. The only thing that made them look even a little officious were the swords at their respective hips, though the rust on the metal guard and ratty appearance of the sheaths did more to harm the image than enhance it.
"Tax of one silver to enter," one of them said.
"Yeah. Right. Pull the other one," Benton said.
Both their hands went to the hilts of their swords.
"If either of you pull those things out of their sheaths," Benton said, "it will be the last thing either of you ever do."
Both of them tensed.
"Are you both stupid?" Benton said. "Do you see these robes? I'm not a monk."
"Anyone can pretend to be a cultivator. Don't mean they are one."
He pulled his spear from his spatial ring. "Can just anyone do that?"
They whispered to each other, but his new Foundation Establishment body came with all the best features included, like top of the line hearing. Which was really annoying when sitting above creaking wheels all day every day. But for listening in on hushed conversations, it was top notch.
"That ring is valuable. Think we can take it?" Thug One said.
"Are you crazy? You have to be high ranked to use one of them rings. Means he's high realm like the Town Lord. Besides, you couldn't do nothing with it no way."
Those guys weren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.
"Who is this Town Lord you're talking about?" Benton said.
The first one looked shocked that Benton had heard them talking, but the second, the one with two brain cells to rub together at least, nodded appraisingly.
"He's a mighty cultivator," Thug Two said. "Not gutter trash like you."
Benton didn't understand what the thug was trying to accomplish with that comment. If Benton had been a normal cultivator, both of the thugs would have been dead by now after issuing such an insult. Even he had to repress instincts he didn't know he had when a mortal called him gutter trash.
In fact, Benton decided there was no reason to fully push down that impulse. He reached out quick as a lightning strike and lightly slapped Thug Two. Lightly for a cultivator, that was.
The man's head snapped around, and he flew several feet before sliding to a stop.
There were only a couple of realistic options Benton could think of for a mortal to be so insulting to a cultivator. Either the thugs were just that stupid, or they felt like their position protected them enough that they could run their mouths off with impunity.
Probably both.
On the other hand, Thug Two's response had contained an interesting tidbit. Only sect members tended to refer to other cultivators as gutter trash, which meant that whoever he'd heard the phrase from was probably in a sect. Ergo…
"Is the Town Lord in a sect? Which one?" Benton said.
Thug One went from being completely at ease to being visibly terrified. "Righteous Rain. And if you touch us, they'll come down on you. Hard."
Benton frowned. "But I heard they're all dead."
"Those are vicious lies told by their enemies."
Clearly, talking to those two—well, one, because the other was no unconscious—wasn't going to get Benton anywhere, and he considered just ignoring them and going about his business. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that he was about to establish a sect near the town, and he wanted his sect to last, meaning he needed a good foundation. And part of building a solid base was gaining an understanding of what was happening in literally the nearest settlement to him.
His only concern was that he didn't know what he was walking into or if he'd be able to bluff the Town Lord like he had the Poison Claw Sect.
He nearly slapped his forehead at the thought. Of course. He was an idiot.
Someone was claiming to be a Town Lord, and that person had probably been a sect member. There was no way the three sects in Sixth Flawless Flowing City didn't know about the person, meaning the person was acting with their tacit approval. There was no way any sane Town Lord, then, would do anything to upset the three sects, up to and including handling a friend of one of those very three sects as anything less than a special guest.
Even if the Town Lord were hostile toward Benton, the pin he wore on his robe combined with his cultivation being hidden from spiritual senses would surely make the Town Lord take a step back to consider how to proceed.
Honestly, Benton doubted a Golden Core cultivator was holed up in a flyspeck like the Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town, anyway. At best, the Town Lord was probably at Foundation Establishment, which just wasn't a level that Benton feared since he'd advanced.
If Benton couldn't talk his way out, he could always retreat. Or fight.
With any luck, the Town Lord would even be friendly, and trade relations could be set up between the town and the village.
"How about this?" Benton said. "If you take me to the Town Lord, I'll give you a silver tael. I'll even throw one in for your friend, even though he's lying down on the job."
The thug may have been stupid, but at least he was greedy. Two taels were more than enough to get Benton an escort to the Town Lord's mansion, located at the center of the town. He idly wondered if Thug One would actually give the other one to Thug Two.
Somehow, Benton doubted it.
He was wary when he stepped inside, but the fact that there was only one cultivator present buoyed his courage. That and the pin worn on his left breast. And the thirty-nine Sect Points he had available.
It would only take twenty points to catapult him to Golden Core, leaving him plenty to add minor realms or techniques at a moment's notice.
When he saw the Town Lord, though, Benton was pretty sure he wasn't going to need any of that.
He'd read the term Fatty in a cultivation story before, but he hadn't understood until he saw the guy. The dude belonged on one of those trashy reality shows about people who needed a crane to be removed from their house.
Benton didn't know if the guy could even stand, much less fight. If a collared girl in a metal bikini were placed at his feet, she wouldn't look out of place.
Wow. Just wow. Benton had no other words.
He scanned the Town Lord.
Affiliation:Vermillion Incomparable Rain TownAge:35Cultivation:Foundation Establishment – Minor Realm NineQi Available:???Techniques:???Spiritual Roots:C-Qi Aspect:Ever hungry consumer of allYikes. No wonder the guy had a weight problem. His qi aspect was literally gluttony. How did that even work?
From Su's memories, guys like that should not be underestimated. The fat wasn't just there as a result of them overeating. It was a form of stored energy that could be directly used to shield them or for great offense outbursts.
As Benton was finishing reading the status, the huge guy noticed him, looking a little apprehensive.
Benton cupped his hands. "Salutations, this one greets the Esteemed Town Lord. This one is called Chao Su."
The Town Lord beamed. "Greetings Honorable Chao Su, Esteemed Friend of the Mighty Poison Claw Sect. Has the Esteemed Friend come from the city?"
"This one has, Esteemed Town Lord."
The exchanged pleasantries for a while, and the Town Lord introduced himself as Fatty Ren.
Yeah. He literally called himself Fatty. Where Benton was from, calling someone fat was fighting words. Culture in a cultivation world was definitely different.
It turned out that the Town Lord been in Sixth Flawless Flowing City when the Righteous Rain Sect was destroyed. He'd rushed back as fast as he could given his girth, but the fighting was long over by the time he made it to the town. Since then, he'd done his best to re-establish what he could of the sect, managing to find four outer sect Qi Gathering members, and, with the blessing of the big three sects, tried to maintain order.
Benton offered him some of the street vendor food from his ring, and Fatty Ren was very thankful. Then, Benton offered to leave him the meat from a couple of spirit beasts to have his servants cook, and Fatty Ren became his best friend for life.
"So Fatty Ren, what exactly happened to the sect, anyway?" Benton said.
"We don't know for sure, Friend Su. The attack happened in the middle of the night and was over in a matter of hours. Very few sect members who were present at the time were known to have escaped. The four Qi Gathering brothers and sister are the only ones I've found, but they didn't see anything as the building they were in exploded before they could be roused. They know only that their lives were saved by an elder evacuating them. After, he woke them and directed them to run off and hide. I've been trying to track other sect members down, but they are difficult to find. Frankly, I'm running low on funds."
Benton couldn't imagine what just the food budget for Fatty Ren was, so he could well understand the Town Lord running out of money.
"Was there any description of the intruders who attacked your sect?" Benton said.
"A few mortals saw figures dressed in black, but that doesn't really tell me anything. Many sects who want to hide their identities would wear black for a night ambush."
"I see. And I'm assuming you have no leads on them?"
"Sorry. I've tried. And the sects in Sixth Flawless Flowing City have promised me all the aid I need if I find them. They disappeared without a trace, though."
Both the Righteous Rain Sect and the Flowing Tiger Sect were ambushed at night by cultivators dressed in black and were wiped out nearly to a man. Benton's guess was that the same demonic cultivators were behind both attacks, though they were twenty years apart, but he hadn't heard enough facts from Fatty Ren to definitively draw that conclusion.
"Understood," Benton said. "Well, thanks for indulging my curiosity."
"No problem, Friend Su. How long are you in town?"
Fatty Ren genuinely seemed like a nice guy, if a bit incompetent, so Benton explained about the caravan and that they were on a mission of mercy to the Prosperous Gray Forest Village.
"Say, you said you were low on funds, right?"
Fatty Ren nodded.
"Do you happen to own the sect lands as Town Lord and highest surviving member of the Righteous Rain Sect?"
"I do. Are you interested in purchasing those lands?" Fatty Ren frowned.
A friendly cultivator who gave you food was great when he was just passing through town. One who intended to stay became a potential rival. It was best for Benton to make it clear that he would be departing at speed as soon as he could.
"No, I've already decided on hanging out near the village for a while, though I would be open to visiting just to keep on friendly terms. Maybe bring some dinner with me."
"That would be most appreciated, Friend Su."
"Back to the topic, though. I'm not interested in the lands, but let me ask, what shape are the buildings in?"
Chapter 73 – The System Isn't Just a Cheat; It's Broken
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.
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 MercantileAge:12Cultivation:NoneTechniques:NoneSpiritual Roots:F-Qi Aspect:An instant locked in placeWhat 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.
Chapter 74 - Severely Outnumbered
Benton had a leisurely breakfast in the inn the next morning. His first task of the day was to find an orphanage. With the understanding that he wanted to donate food, the innkeeper had given Benton directions to one, and he didn't want to arrive there too early and disrupt whatever their normal routine was.
When he finally made it to the place, it was even worse than he had feared. Kids were running around everywhere. A quick count of those outside yielded twenty-three kids mostly old enough to be scanned—in the F range across the board—and there had to be more in the rickety two-story building. And every one of them he saw was thin, too thin.
He asked one of the kids who ran the place and was told he needed to talk to Mistress Gong.
"Is she the only adult here?" Benton said.
The kid shrugged. "Some of the older ones of us help out."
Yikes. Some of his friends back on Earth had ended up with three kids, and they'd felt outnumbered even with having two adults. Caring for so many by herself must be a nightmare for Mistress Gong.
The kid agreed to lead him through the house in return for a copper bit, and Benton passed at least a dozen or more kids from toddlers ranging up to maybe eight or ten years old using the bedrooms as playgrounds.
"Mistress Gong! Mistress Gong!" the kid yelled. "We have a visitor."
Benton heard her mutter "What now?" before she appeared from a doorway. Ragged was the only way to describe her. She was in at least her late fifties and her filthy, tattered dress was askew. There was a baby in her arms and a toddler clinging to her right leg, so she had effected a staggered walk to drag the child along with her.
Yikes.
She showed no emotion at seeing a cultivator in her orphanage. Actually, she showed no reaction at all, simply staring at him silently.
"Greetings, Esteemed Mistress Gong," Benton said. "I heard you were doing good work here taking care of orphans and hoped to make a donation."
"Sure. Whatever. Just, I don't know, leave it downstairs. There's an empty bowl in the kitchen. I'll be down to put it away after finishing changing the babies."
Strange. Benton had never seen anyone so worn down by their circumstances that they didn't even seem to care if someone was offering to give them money to help out. "May I ask how so many orphans came to live with you? And how many are you taking care of exactly?"
"I don't know. Fifty? Some of the parents died and some left. Some, who knows?"
The tragedy of the place was breaking his heart, and he seriously considered taking all fifty of the orphans with him to the village. There were two serious problems with that idea, though. One, he didn't have the infrastructure in place to take care of so many children, even if some of them were nearly adults by society's standards. Of course, he could seek help from the mayor, who surely could arrange babysitting services as long as Benton was paying for clothing and feeding and a little extra on top.
Unless it was a complete emergency, he thought asking favors before establishing a long-term relationship with the mayor was a bad idea. It gave the village too much leverage in whatever deal they ended up making.
Two, a much more pressing reason, the forest near the village was teeming with spirit beasts. Benton felt pretty good about protecting the people in the caravan as it currently was. Almost all of them, after all, were cultivators, the twins were exceptionally capable of hunting beasts, and he had the guard to defend the rest of the group.
Adding in fifty kids sounded like a recipe for disaster. All it would take was for a child or two to run off into the woods for a potty break while Benton and the twins were otherwise occupied. Murphy's law said that event would take place at just the wrong time, and all Benton would find of the kid would be a pair of bloody sandals, if that much.
He would not allow that to happen, especially when there was a better alternative—take a few of the kids with him and get the orphanage some resources so that they could survive until he returned.
"Would you accept help if I could hire someone to assist you?" Benton said.
"Yeah. Fine. Whatever."
"Okay. I'll see what I can do. I'll be back later."
Benton left a thousand taels in the bowl where Mistress Gong had directed his donation to go and resolved to come back before lunch to make sure the kids were fed.
As he walked out, though, the first thing he noticed was the complete absence of children in sight, which was really weird considering the scene when he'd entered, but the second thing he noticed likely explained the first.
Two men, presumably part of the town enforcers given their resemblance to the men he'd met at the gate, stood fingering the hilts of swords hanging from their waists. He mentally tagged them Thug Three and Thug Four.
"Can I help you gentlemen?" Benton said.
"We heard you came to give the orphanage a donation," Thug Three said. "That was mighty generous of you."
"Thanks? Is that a problem?"
Thug Four was chewing on some kind of stick, and he took it out of his mouth. "Well, yes. See, you didn't pay the donation tax."
"Donation tax, huh?"
"Yep," Thug Three said. "Donation tax."
Benton sighed. "You're really going to rob an orphanage?"
"Hey, hey, hey, hey," Thug Four said, making a downward motion with his hands. "Not rob. Tax. It goes to support the town."
"Yeah. All that support going to the town is so very evident. I love what you've done with the place."
"Look, you can hand over a little more of a donation to pay the tax," Thug Four said, probably trying to sound like he was being reasonable, "or we can collect it from the nice mistress here."
Benton had no doubt that, if he paid them, they go take whatever was inside, too. No wonder Mistress Gong hadn't been exactly enthused about the money.
"Or," Benton said, "I can kill both of you right here, right now, and no one has to worry about any tax."
Back on Earth, he hadn't been prone to threatening people, but then again, he didn't exactly have a lot of run-ins with true scum in his old life. He found that, after having to lie and bluff his way through surviving in Sixth Flawless Flowing City, it felt nice to mean exactly what he said.
"You can't do that," Thug Three said. "The Town Lord protects us."
"When was the last time Fatty Ren moved his ass out of that enormous chair? Protect you? Yeah. Pull the other one."
Both the enforcers drew their swords, and Benton took just an instant to consider his actions.
Despite his words, he did not want to get in the habit of killing easily. He might be living in a cultivation world, but there was still room for ethics. To kill or not to kill? What was the ethical thing to do?
Or a different question, was the world a better place with or without enforcers who were so far gone into whatever self-delusion they lived under that they really felt it was okay to rob starving orphans?
When put that way, the answer was simple. Without.
With a thought, his spear was in his hand, and he swung. Thug Three's head separated from his body, and both thudded to the dirt. Benton swept the corpse and head into his ring, bringing his count of bodies to dispose of to an even twenty.
Thug Four glanced from his dead friend to Benton, his eyes wide with fear.
"Take me to your leader," Benton said.
The man brightened. "The Town Lord's palace is that big building over there." He pointed. "I'm sure you—"
"Not Fatty Ren. The Town Manager. What's his name?"
"Yu Xieren."
"Take me to him."
Thug Four seemed resigned to his fate as he led Benton toward the center of town until stopping outside a mansion that, although being smaller than the Town Lord's palace, certainly appeared more opulent with statuary everywhere and a grand entrance framed with columns that appeared to be made of real gold. A few servants worked on a garden in the front. All of the servants were relatively young, attractive females, and all wore short outfits that most of society would consider scandalous.
Benton had seen everything he needed to see. With another swipe of his spear, Thug Four's head was separated from his body.
Instead of storing it in his ring, Benton tossed it up to the door for the Town Manager to deal with and left, stalking toward the Town Lord's palace.
Chapter 75 – Scum of the Earth
Benton rarely got truly angry, but the idea that the Town Manager and his enforcers were so corrupt that children were suffering irritated him a great deal. For them to actively take their greed so far as to actually rob an orphanage, though? That was beyond the pale. Benton was infuriated.
He marched directly into the Town Lord's palace and into the private cultivation chamber, not stopping to be announced.
"Friend Su. What's wrong?" Fatty Ren looked nervous.
"I killed one of your enforcers."
"Enforcers?"
There was no deception written on Fatty Ren's face. He really had no idea who the enforcers were.
Benton took a deep breath. Though the Town Lord should have been responsible for the welfare of his citizens in Benton's opinion, cultivators didn't always view mortals as important. Blowing up at Fatty Ren wouldn't help anything. Neither would creating a fireball technique on the fly and literally blowing him up.
"How exactly did it come about that you were appointed Town Lord?" Benton said.
"Well, the previous Town Lord was a member of the Righteous Rain Sect and was killed in the fighting, so the previous Town Manager tried to get everyone organized in the days following the attack. It wasn't going well, though. There was a lot of chaos. A mortal merchant who had dealings with the sect happened to be near the gate when I returned, and he told me about all the horrible things that were happening, how terrible the Town Manager was, and how much new leadership was needed."
"Let me guess," Benton said. "The merchant convinced you to be the Town Lord and to appoint him to be Town Manager."
"No. Not at all. I had to plead with him to replace the old Town Manager."
"Uh, huh," Benton said. "Let me guess, the merchant is named Yu Xieren?"
"Yes! Do you know him?"
"Let's just say that I know of him." Benton shook his head. "And that was twenty years ago?"
"Yeah. I guess."
Benton sighed. "And how do you think things have gone since?"
"The reports I get are that things are going as well as they can be. Tax collection is falling, as is the population, but I don't know what we can do about that. The Town Manager tells me we have a lot of problems because we lost the sect. He says a lot of stuff about economics and trade goods and inflation and high unemployment and things like that. He assures me, though, that the people are as happy as they can be under the circumstances and that he's doing everything he can to make things better."
"I see. And when was the last time you saw any of the town for yourself?"
Fatty Ren looked slightly chagrined. "I've been cultivating. A lot. The Town Manager said that the best thing I can do is be strong just in case anyone tries to attack us, and I've made enormous progress. Until I got bottlenecked, anyway."
Enormous was the right word.
Benton couldn't believe what he was hearing. The so-called Town Lord literally had no idea what was going on in his own town.
"Look, I'm going to be straight with you," Benton said. "Times are really tough in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town. Earlier today, I was at an orphanage ran by a single woman that had more than fifty kids. Fifty! And they all were so thin from a lack of food that they looked like a stiff breeze would knock them over. Their clothes were filthy and tattered. It was one of the saddest sights of my life. But then I discovered something worse."
Fatty Ren looked like he was hanging on every word as if his life depended on it.
"I donated some money to the woman at the orphanage," Benton said. "Not much. Just a thousand taels. And when I left, two men who the citizens of your town refer to as enforcers told me they planned to take that money."
"Where were the Town Manager's men?" Fatty Ren said, seeming angry for the first time in the conversation. "They are supposed to make sure things like that don't happen."
"They were the Town Manager's men."
Fatty Ren's face went blank before he finally said, "Oh."
"You've been played. Yu Xieren is robbing this entire town blind for his own enrichment. He's living in the fanciest mansion in town, one that looks far more well maintained than your palace, and sending his men out to take whatever they want. There is no law here, only him and his thugs."
"I see."
Benton paused for a moment, reminding himself that getting mad at the man in front of him, while justifiable, would probably not be helpful. "It's good that you at least see the problem, but what are you going to do about it?"
"I … I don't know." Fatty Ren paused. "Can you kill Yu Xieren?"
"Easily, but I think that's a horrible idea."
"Why?"
Benton sighed again. "Because this is your town, not mine. I can't be your problem solver. I have my own responsibilities. If you ever get in a jam that you can't handle, call on me by all means, but this situation is one you can get under control yourself."
"Oh. Okay." Fatty Ren looked lost.
Benton felt sympathy for the Town Lord. He just wanted to cultivate and to eat, desires that conflicted greatly with the responsibilities of a role he'd accepted and yet was so profoundly unsuited to fill.
If his incompetence was only harming himself, it would be one thing, but lots of people, children, were suffering because of it. Benton had to do something for their sakes.
"I guess I could offer some advice?" Benton said.
"Please!"
"The cultivators from your sect that you told me about, the ones who were in the Qi Gathering realm when you found them, do you trust them?"
"With my life. They are my only sect brothers and sister that I know still live. They would never betray me nor I them."
"Good," Benton said. "Send a servant, one you trust, to them with a message to visit your palace. When they get here, explain what has happened. Have them execute the Town Manager and those of his thugs as they see fit."
"I can do that!"
Well, at least he was enthusiastic now that he'd been shown a path forward.
"Great," Benton said, "but getting rid of the Town Manager is just the start. It ends things getting worse, but you need to turn the ship around. Do you have a way to contact anyone in the Sixth Flawless Flowing City?"
"Yes!" Fatty Ren said. "I have messenger talismans."
Benton knew what they were in theory but hadn't been able to find any for sale. The devices recorded a user's voice and flew to a location as directed. The recipient's name was printed on the outside of the device.
The talismans were the cultivation world equivalent of email, just a lot slower and more expensive.
"Fantastic. Contact Elder Kang Ya-Ting of the Poison Claw Sect. Tell him everything that has happened. You can trust him. Leave nothing out and make sure you tell him that you're contacting him because I told you to. Ask for his assistance. Tell him you need someone trustworthy to take over as Town Manager and a score of men to fill law enforcement roles. Got it?"
"Yes, Friend Su."
"Good. I'm going to find some helpers for Mistress Gong at the orphanage and return there to feed the kids lunch. In the meantime, you'll get started on your tasks?"
"Yes, Friend Su." Fatty Ren paused. "There is, perhaps, one misunderstanding between us that I wish to clear up."
"Oh?"
"Regarding the Qi Gathering cultivators. I meant it as I said it. They were in the Qi Gathering realm then and are still in the Qi Gathering realm now."
Sects only accepted talented recruits. At the very worst, the Righteous Rain Sect would have accepted members in the D range. A single one of the four remaining members getting stuck in the first major realm would be unusual but not unheard of. For all of them to get stuck like that made no sense.
"What?" Benton said. "After twenty years? How?"
"The attacks damaged their cultivation, reset them back to mortals and made it difficult for them to advance at all after starting again. Even with years of efforts and all the resources we could find and afford, the best of them has only managed to reach the seventh minor realm."
For what Fatty Ren reported to be true, those four sect members had to have had their cultivation damaged when they were attacked those twenty years ago. There was only one way that type of damage could have logically happened to all of them.
There it was. Proof. The two sects had both been attacked almost exactly twenty years apart by demonic cultivators.
Benton blew out a breath. "Understood. Thanks for telling me that. I'll catch you later and we'll talk about the sect grounds, okay?"
Fatty Ren cupped his hands, "Gratitude, Friend Su!"
Benton felt a little better as he exited the palace. Things weren't any better in the town yet, but it was possible improvements would start occurring in the near future. Assuming that Fatty Ren wasn't just putting on a huge act, of course, but Benton didn't think that was the case.
Anyway, he needed to find helpers for the orphanage, and from what he'd seen so far regarding employment opportunities, candidates for any paying job should abound. The problem was that Benton knew almost no one who could help him find good people to fill those positions.
Almost no one wasn't no one, though, and he rushed to Peng Zhen's shop. As Benton had suspected or at least hoped, the shopkeeper knew several women who would be glad to accept a job taking care of children as long as there was steady pay involved. He also knew of someone trustworthy enough to hold funds and pay for the orphanage's expenses with it.
Benton gave over another two thousand taels to Peng Zhen for that purpose. The shopkeeper promised to go immediately to get the four women who would be working there.
A villager who made five silver taels a week was doing well, but the town was in really bad shape. Inflation was probably running rampant. Best to double that. So, fifty taels a week for salary, counting Mistress Gong. Another hundred a week or so for food? Seemed high, but better to overestimate. Add another fifty for clothes.
His two thousand taels should last at least ten weeks, especially since he'd directly given another thousand to the orphanage already. He made a mental note to head back to the town before then to check on things.
Or he could just leave more money. The problem was that he didn't one hundred percent trust that all the funds would be used for their intended purpose, and he didn't want to create a new Yu Xieren.
The village couldn't be more than six hundred miles away. At a sustainable running speed of fifty miles per hour, he could make it to town in a day. A long day, but a day.
Fine. He'd just commit to doing that.
His tasks finished, he went to the orphanage to tell Mistress Gong the good news.
"You!" she said as soon as he walked in the door. "What did you do?"
"You're going to have to be more specific. I've done a lot of stuff."
"Don't give me that young man! The children told me that two enforcers were waiting outside for you, but the money you left is still here. A thousand taels. So, I'll ask again. What. Did. You. Do!"
"It sounded more like an exclamation than a question that time."
Mistress Gong was not amused, and her glare would have put even Evelyn's to shame.
"I killed them."
Her jaw dropped.
"It's okay, though. I went to the Town Lord and explained things. Hopefully, things are going to be changing around here quite soon."
The town was going to need a new lord if things didn't do just that.
When Benton eventually got Mistress Gong calmed down, she got riled right back up again when she found out about the help that was coming and the funds she'd have available in addition to the silver taels he'd given her directly.
At first, she was excited, but eventually, she narrowed her eyes. "What do you want?"
"I want to see these kids happy, healthy, and well fed."
She stared at him for a moment. "Okay. I actually believe that. But you want something else."
"Well, I would like to take ten of the older kids with me when I leave tomorrow."
"I'm not even going to ask what you need them for. I should ask. I feel terrible for not asking, but I don't really need to know. You promise it's not for something weird or dangerous or … whatever?"
"I swear that I will do my best to provide them with the opportunity to live a long, healthy, ethical life."
"Well, your promise and a tael will buy me a meal down at the tavern, but I guess I haven't got much choice."
"Fantastic. Let me take a look at them, and I'll tell you which ones I want."
Man, he really felt like he was buying these kids, even to the extent of picking the features he wanted like he would a car. If he wasn't positive that he was acting in the best long-term interests of these kids, he would have felt like total scum of the earth.
But he was so he didn't.
Chapter 76 - Offers and Acceptance
Feeding the kids hot, fresh food from the street vendors of Sixth Flawless Flowing City was one of the most satisfying experiences of either of Benton's lives. Considering that the kids had never seen a spatial ring, the fact that they were more excited by the food coming out of it than the spectacle of its very existence was a bit sad, but their enthusiasm for the amount and variety of dishes trumped Benton's ability to experience any emotion besides sheer joy.
He had great fun providing one meal after another and watching as the children all tasted various items off of each other's plates. The smiles on their faces warmed his heart.
Thus, he was in a much better mood upon leaving the orphanage on his second visit than he had been on his first, and the same attitude applied upon his third visit to the palace in little more than a day's time.
Fatty Ren was excited as well. "I have done as you advised, Friend Su! I expect to hear back from my sect brothers and sister soon that their task is done, and the message talisman has been sent."
"Great job, Town Lord." Benton cupped his hands and bowed lower to the man than he had on any previous occasion. "Let's have lunch and then we can get down to other business."
Stocking up on the street vendor meals had been Benton's best decision since transmigrating to the cultivation world. Everyone loved it. His disciples. The children. And Fatty Ren most especially.
"This is fantastic, Friend Su! How did you do this?"
"It's nothing special. I just bought some meals and put them directly in my spatial ring. It's no big thing."
"Friend Su, you are definitely not simple. I've never seen or even heard tell of a spatial ring that kept food this fresh. Depending on the quality of the device, there are definitely preservation effects, but look at the steam rising from this dish. It looks and smells like it came straight from the vendor, but it's been in your ring for weeks."
Benton scratched the back of his neck. He'd assumed that all storage devices shared that feature. Once again, the System proved it provided only the best.
When lunch was over, the two moved on to business.
"Honestly, Friend Su, you've been a great help to me. You can just take what you want from the sect grounds."
Looking at things from Fatty Ren's perspective, he probably wanted to keep in Benton's good graces just as much as the other way around. After all, the Town Lord had no idea how powerful Benton was, a cultivator whose realm could not be read and who was a friend of the respected Poison Claw Sect and who casually suggested reaching out to an elder of that sect for help. Fatty Ren was probably just grateful he hadn't been curb stomped yet.
"Nonsense," Benton said. "The buildings there are perfect for my needs, and I am not a pauper that I need to take things for free."
"How about you suggest a price, then?"
Normally, Benton would hesitate to be the first to put an actual number out there as it was a lousy negotiating tactic. Making the other guy go first conveyed so many advantages. But he really felt that Fatty Ren would accept just about anything that was put on the table.
Benton's great benefit in the situation was that he could use resources he had in plenty in order to obtain those he desperately needed.
First, though, he needed to set the record straight.
Benton pulled the leather cord with the eleven spatial rings on it from underneath his robe. "Just to be clear, I need a lot of building materials. The amount that I will take will be noticeable."
"Oh."
"Yeah, so keep that in mind when I set the price."
Fatty Ren nodded.
"You are poor in cash, and I find my stores being depleted more than I like as well. One thousand taels should help you manage your payroll for your servants, however, and I can spare that much. I can also give you three spirit coins, which obviously you can easily convert to taels should you choose to do so."
Giving away three coins still left Benton with two from looting the Chameleon Jade Sect cultivator, so it was all found money as far as he was concerned.
Fatty Ren was looking a little disappointed, though, so Benton hurriedly continued.
"Cores are always handy to have around for formations and what have you, so I'll throw in ten assorted rank ones and ten assorted rank twos."
That addition perked the Town Lord up a little. Time to seal the deal.
"Finally, I'll give you two hundred pounds of rank two spirit beast meat." That quantity represented almost the remainder of that rank of meat that Benton had in his ring. He wasn't too worried about running out, though, as they were soon to be back in the village where he could easily restock.
As he'd suspected, there was nothing that excited Fatty Ren like food, and he only had one request—that Benton throw in twenty of the vendor meals. Considering that quantity represented only about ten taels worth of food, he was more than happy to comply.
The two exchanged pleasantries, and Benton was off to the sect grounds, running flat out in contrast to the first time he had visited. It took him only a short time to reach his destination.
He was going to have so much fun!
First on his shopping list, houses. Figuring around a hundred sect members living in his compound seemed reasonable, but he probably needed to supply housing for at least twice that many to account for growth.
The Righteous Rain Sect had three options for living quarters—single person huts that ranged from a single room for outer sect disciples to much more luxurious affairs with dedicated cultivation rooms for those in the inner sect, single family houses with two to four bedrooms and various floorplans that all included a cultivation room, and multi-tenant facilities that were basically apartment buildings in the shape of pagodas.
Well, if the Righteous Rain Sect had offered all those options, Benton didn't see why his sect wouldn't have the same. First, he wanted a really big building for all the younger sect members to live in under Mistress Zhong's supervision, and he found the perfect structure—a eleven-story tower with six apartments per upper floor, the ground level being reserved for communal spaces. Since each apartment could easily house two or three youngsters, that would take address most of his needs right there.
With a gesture, he transferred the entire thing into his storage, from foundation to roof. It was quite neat to watch as the biggest thing he's stored yet just disappeared into a tiny piece of jade wrapped around one of his fingers. Living in a cultivation world was cool.
The building would have also taken care of most of the volume of his ring if not for how the storage space treated void space. As it was, the essentially flattened materials still took up a chunk of volume. He still had plenty remaining, though, so he added another smaller apartment building just in case he found a need for it.
Benton definitely seemed to be collecting families lately, so he added twenty houses of various sizes and configurations. He also figured that single dwellings would be popular with some sect members, so he grabbed thirty of those as well.
There. His sect had plenty of room to grow, and his sect members would be spoiled for choice.
Benton decided to save the really fun part, the pavilions, for last, so he contemplated what support structures were needed. Well, what sect wouldn't be complete without a library? And as luck would have it, the grounds had many, five in fact. All had been stripped of books and scrolls over the years, but the shelves were all in place. He chose a five-story building that featured several built-in reading nooks that tickled his fancy.
Next came dining facilities. The sect grounds contained numerous restaurants and cafeterias. Benton selected two of the former and rather large version of the latter. He also grabbed a few shops and the building the sect apparently used for issuing jobs.
An important addition was a large lecture hall and also an amphitheater. Benton smiled at the thought of standing in front of a hundred disciples giving a lecture on cultivation.
Administrative space was also important, so he added a four-story pagoda filled with office space. He could see himself taking over the top floor as the sect leader.
Benton walked past a bathhouse and barely resisted slapping his forehead. He actually needed two of those—one for cleanliness and one for body cultivation. A quick search yielded exactly what he needed, and he was able to store both in his ring.
And of course, he couldn't forget the cultivation rooms with arrays to increase qi density. He grabbed a building that looked appropriate.
The only thing left in the ancillary building category was maybe some type of social gathering spot? He didn't know what that should be, though. Besides crafting, cultivating, and fighting, sect members didn't do much for pure entertainment, so he just grabbed a couple of random buildings that could be purposed into whatever he eventually needed.
The Righteous Rain Sect had been massive. There were multiple buildings dedicated to each pavilion, and Benton didn't need the biggest one for his tiny sect. Instead, he chose reasonable sized pagodas that varied from three to five stories, depending on the discipline.
First and largest was the martial pavilion, which had lots of different areas to train with various weapons, including a room with dimensions much larger inside than out for an archery range and arrayed rooms for sparring. Perfect. And of course, he had to have an arena for sect members to show off their prowess in front of a crowd, so he selected the smallest one of those available, though it still looked like it held several hundred spectators.
Next, alchemy. There were lots of arrays in that building, and Benton had no idea what they did. He figured that three floors filled with labs would be more than enough for the immediate future, though.
He also found an area he believed to have previously grown herbs, but all of them had been picked. There was a shack in the middle though, and he grabbed it just in case it had any control arrays for that purpose.
Finally, he found a nice four-story pagoda dedicated to formations that was broken into private work areas, communal labs, and classrooms. He wasn't sure how it differed from any normal building, but with sects, there were probably some arrays or something set up, especially considering the topic researched and taught there.
The last important need he determined were areas for crafting the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood. Transporting the raw materials was fine for now, but he both needed to outfit his sect with weapons and to gain a greater share of the profit by selling a finished product. To that end, he found a forge for the blacksmiths and a woodworking area. While searching for the latter of those, he came across a small building just for fletchers and decided it was also a must have.
By the time he crammed in the last building, his ring was actually getting a little tight on space, and considering that the town wasn't that far from the village if he ran, Benton decided he had enough for the moment.
He'd checked off a lot of his wish list for the visit to Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town. Find out what happened to the Righteous Rain Sect. Check. Fatty Ren had confirmed Benton's suspicions that the attack had almost certainly been by demonic cultivators.
Gather building materials. Big check. He could plop down an entire sect ground well in excess of his needs in minutes.
Finally, recruit. Almost a check. He'd arranged for ten orphans to serve as rank and file, and he'd added a family of three, including a new head of the contribution point store and a kid with an intriguing qi aspect.
There were two problems, though. One, adding all thirteen people he'd recruited in the town as disciples would bring him to forty-nine total. That number was way too close to fifty without being fifty. He had to find at least one more person or that would bother him. Concern two was a more significant issue. Considering his soon to be formed sect would be located in an area beset by spirit beasts, his membership was skewed toward non-combat, with twenty-nine disciples, compared to only twenty who were designated to defend the sect.
Benton needed more fighters.
There was also that quest to recruit Foundation Establishment cultivators. He and Fatty Ren were on pretty good terms, and surely, letting go of a good chunk of his former sect's buildings had to be an indication the large man might be ready to move on to a new sect.
Benton wasn't quite ready to present that proposition, though. For one, he wasn't one hundred percent sure he wasn't being scammed about the whole Town Manager being the bad guy thing. Sure, his instincts were telling him that the greedy mortal was the problem and the overseeing cultivator was simply too lax with oversight, but Benton couldn't be one hundred percent sure.
Second, he didn't have the leverage he wanted yet. Asking a Town Lord to join a sect that hadn't even been properly founded yet wasn't the same as asking a mortal the same thing. Besides, Benton could just imagine the enticement it would be if the Shop offered a solution to the bottleneck problems the five former Righteous Rain cultivators were experiencing. It would be nice to have that possibility in hand when he approached the former Righteous Rain Sect members.
Finally, the quest only returned Shop Points, and Benton literally had no idea how beneficial those were. Considering his experience with the System so far, he believed that the access would present heaven defying opportunities, but he wasn't ready to go too far out of his way to gain a few more of those points until he had a definite need for them.
No, that bit of recruitment was a goal for the future not the present. Better to stick to filling a definite immediate need—more fighters.
He spent the evening walking through the poorer areas of town dressed in his roughest robes, no weapon visible, with a coin pouch hanging from his belt. A few kids tried to steal the pouch, but he basically thwarted their efforts by grabbing their hand and kept on walking. They were not who he was looking for. After all, trying to rob an obvious cultivator, even one down on his luck, was stupid for a mortal, no matter how desperate they were.
An hour or so into his searching, he got a notification.
Host's Disciple, Zhong Wen, has reached Qi Gathering – Minor Realm Four
Host is awarded one Sect Point.
Host has forty Sect Points available.
Nice. Way to go Mistress Zhong. The out of the blue increases were totally the best ones. Even better though were two more that followed later as Chang Xiaodan and Xiao Rong, Mistress Zhong's helpers, achieved the same feat, bringing his total Sect Points to forty-two.
Those popups were the only bright spots in his wandering, though, as he had exactly zero luck finding the recruits he wanted. He almost gave up, but taking what he resolved to be one last look down another crowded street, he finally got what he wanted when his ears picked up a whispered conversation from an alley.
"Are you crazy? He's obviously a cultivator," Smart Street Rat said.
"Not a very good one," Dumb Street Rat said. "Look at his robes. They're as dirty as my clothes and torn as much besides."
"Idiot! Look at his face. It's perfectly clean. He took a bath before his walk but somehow didn't change his clothes? And if he's too poor to buy new ones, then what is in that fat coin pouch? It's obviously a trap."
Lack of talent could be overcome with pills and heavenly cultivation methods and techniques—to an extent anyway—but street smarts couldn't be taught. Benton needed people who he could eventually give a mission to and expect that mission to be carried out with little or no handholding. He felt very lucky to have found the twins, Zou Tian, and Ye Zan. One more group with such a person as a leader would be fantastic.
Benton walked until he was out of sight of the two boys before using a deserted alley to ascend to the rooftops. He backtracked until eventually spotting his quarry down below and following them all the way back to what looked like an abandoned warehouse where they met four other boys.
None of them were special at all according to Benton's spiritual sense. The only reason he had any interest at all was the leader's acumen.
Suppressing a sigh at not hitting the jackpot by finding talent and intelligence in the same place, Benton channeled his inner Zou Tian, finding a glassless opening for ventilation and climbing inside.
Using the joists, Benton silently maneuvered himself until he was right over the young men.
Time to make an entrance. Benton dropped down right in the middle of them.
"Boys, I have an offer you're not going to want to refuse."