BWFoster78

Chapter 47 – Reactions

Zou Tian watched nervously as the Twelfth Discordant Brigade crept toward the warehouse. Though Chao Su was one scary guy, the same could be said for Yao Yahui, the leader of the cultivator gang.

Few organizations other than the City Watch and the three sects could match their might. Everyone in the slums were scared of them.

It looked like Chao Su and the pretty girl were about to meet their ends.

Zou Tian sighed. Regrettable. So regrettable. He’d miss the silver tael a d...

Chapter 46 – Shock and Awe

Benton’s enhanced spiritual senses detected sixteen men and three women slowly entering the warehouse. All but one were in the Qi Gathering Realm, mostly minor realms three and four. A couple were in minor realm two. One was in the fifth. Two were in the sixth and another in the seventh. The man Benton assumed was the leader was the only exception, a Foundation Establishment cultivator in the second minor realm.

Gutter trash. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

Or so Su’s memories t...

Chapter 45 – A Not Unexpected Development

The next day Benton ran errands while the twins cultivated. His first stop was the Heavenly Transit Mercantile Association. Ma An had agreed to pick up the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood from the warehouse, but the city wasn’t exactly arranged with street names and addresses like one would expect on Earth. His men and carts had to be escorted to the correct location to pick up the load.

That task accomplished, Benton spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon finding and talking t...

Chapter 44 – Cash Grab

Benton had a good feeling about the boy, Zou Tian. He seemed like the sort who would commit to a group as long as he was given a reason. If Benton were right, all he had to do to reap loyalty was to sow it.

He escorted the boy to the exit, and the two parted on good terms.

No sooner had he returned to the work area than Yang Xiu said, “Why did you reveal so much to that kid, Senior Brother? I thought we wanted to avoid notice.”

Kid? Listen to this brat. The boy was barel...

Chapter 43 – One Scary Cultivator

Zou Tian had maintained oversight—he much preferred that term rather than spying—on wandering cultivators before. In his experience, such people weren’t much more powerful than regular gang members. Basically, they were trumped up peasants who somehow gained access to the most basic and incomplete of trash tier cultivation methods and techniques and suddenly felt themselves better than anyone else.

Not that Zou Tian thought himself better even than those unfortunates. As an orphan...

Chapter 42 – Like a Thief in the … Day?

Per the messenger that arrived at the inn the next afternoon, the warehouse was ready on schedule, and Benton led the siblings there. As they neared the structure, his attention was caught by a young boy lounging in the shade of an alley.

Even though Su’s memories advised about exactly what to be on the lookout for, the kid looked so much like he belonged exactly where he was that Benton almost overlooked him. He scanned the kid with his senses. 2024-10-16 22:28:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 41 – Beyond Expectations

As Benton led the siblings in following the guard’s directions, he passed literally hundreds of people. It wasn’t possible to scan everyone that quickly, but a sampling indicated about what he expected, mostly Es and Fs. There was one D, but the man was middle aged and dressed nicely enough that he probably wouldn’t be interested in uprooting his life at the chance of becoming a cultivator.

If the man were younger or more talented, Benton probably would have pursued it anyway. Rea...

Chapter 40 – Making an Omelet

To simply call Sixth Flawless Flowing City a city did not do it justice. The area it encompassed was enormous. It stretched as far as Benton’s eye could see. He had no way of determining how many people lived within its walls but wouldn’t have been surprised if it were in the millions. Scanning it with his spiritual senses revealed that there wasn’t a huge concentration of qi like he would have expected with a sect, but there were thousands of cultivators present.

Benton hadn’t ...

Chapter 39 – Easy Come, Easy Go

Benton led the siblings on a five-hour sprint to start the day, after which he fed them and let them cultivate for five hours. That was followed by another three hours of sprinting until it grew dark, and they set up camp.

He aimed to set a blistering pace.

Judging from the map the mayor had supplied him, traveling along the road to Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town and then continuing along it to Sixth Flawless Flowing City would take about two months. As the crow flew, however, ...

Chapter 38 – Leave-Takings

Benton smiled as he looked at Yang Xiu, cultivating blissfully as the harvesters worked. She’d hit Small Success with her perception technique the previous night and was drawing close to minor realm six.

Her brother was not doing as well. He still practiced with one of the mortal spears, and he’d hit a wall at improving his weapon technique. His cultivation seemed to be lagging as well.

Benton sighed. He’d hoped the boy would work through his issues on his own, but it was ti...

Chapter 37 – To the Future and Beyond

Benton smiled as all the kids enjoyed the dinner. He had plenty of boar meat to leave for them to eat while he was gone, but he’d need to figure out some variety for long term. Ah well, the upcoming shopping trip would take care of that. Best of all, he should be able to buy them some candies. They’d love that.

Some of them looked like a stiff wind would blow them over, and it was a joy to see them eat until they were full.

The other thing that made him happy was how well Yang...

Chapter 36 – The Sect’s Foundation

Benton had a Sect Point burning a metaphorical hole in his pocket. Yang Xiu achieving Mastery with her archery technique had gained him two, pushing him to his twenty-first total gained. His ten percent rule meant he could use one to increase his personal power.

He hadn’t wanted to make a move while the harvesters had been present just in case any of them caught on to his unusual advancement, but with them departed, he could pull the trigger while he and the siblings walked to the orp...

Chapter 35 – A Greater Treasure?

Yang Xiu sank into a lotus position, immediately beginning to cultivate as soon as her master gave her and her brother leave to do so. Though she wasn’t an expert at cultivating yet, she was getting used to spending a lot of her time cycling, and the qi in the area around the special spirit wood felt different. More intense. Her cycling was more efficient. More effective.

She wanted to spend her day doing nothing but cultivating, but she also had to meditate on the fights she’d just...

Chapter 34 – Analysis

It soon became apparent to Benton that the battle with the rank three had scared off all the other spirit beasts, leaving the area safe for the harvesters. He released the siblings to cultivate while he periodically scanned with his spiritual sense.

Once he felt fully recovered, he cleaned up the site, storing all the beast corpses in his spatial ring, and going to each of the spots of the other battles and doing the same. With that done, he didn’t have a lot to occupy his time.

Chapter 33 – Enter the Dragon

Benton was madder at himself than at Yang Ru.

As someone who had raised three children through the turbulent teenage years, Benton was quite familiar with an immutable law of nature—kids screw up. It was unfortunate that Yang Ru chose the middle of a life and death fight to do so, but it was what it was. Besides, it was in the boy’s character to do what he did. Withdrawing from a fight was not easy for one with the lava qi aspect focused on momentum.

Benton should have conside...

Chapter 32 – The Best

Yang Xiu stood about ten yards behind Ru’er. Her master was off to her left about twenty feet. Sounds of many beasts approaching came from the weirdly colored woods in front of her.

“Get ready,” her master yelled. “Just a few seconds.”

She nocked an arrow.

Her main emotion was excitement. So far, they’d handled everything that came at them with ease. There was no reason to think they wouldn’t do so again.

A raccoon burst through the underbrush. She pulled...

Chapter 31 – Facing the Tide

With the siblings trailing right behind Benton, he raced at full speed toward the large source of qi. The journey took less than a minute, and he quickly stopped before entering the range of the mass of spirit beasts.

Most of the vegetation he’d encountered on his new planet so far looked strikingly similar to what grew on Earth. Not so for what lay before him.

The woods surrounding the overgrown path he traveled suddenly stopped, leaving a gap of twenty yards or so where nothin...

Chapter 30 – Boasts and Beliefs

Benton waited outside the gate with the siblings for the six harvesters to show up. He sensed a handful of spiritual beasts in the area, but none higher ranked than two and none nearby enough to worry about.

“Senior Brother,” Yang Xiu said, “I thought about a question a lot last night, and I still don’t understand. Why are we so interested in this wood?”

Feeling very wise, Benton said, “What conclusions did you draw?”

“Well, Senior Brother, obviously this woo...

Chapter 29 – Unexpected Discovery

Benton instructed his new recruits on the bai-si tea ceremony.

“We’ll start with Mistress Zhong,” he said after the explanation was over.

The orphanage had a tea pot, and being able to boil twice the water at once sped things up. Still, the process involved a lot of slow actions, and he had to give each inductee their moment. With nine people at ten to fifteen minutes per person, it was about two hours before each had officially, per the System, become one of h...

Chapter 28 – Supreme Growth of Heaven

As Benton watched the children eat dinner, he scanned each of them. Most of them returned messages such as: 

The timeline varied from a month to, in the case of a little girl who Zhong Wen informed him was six, over seven years. That information tracked with Su’s memories. It was well known that spiritual roots did not stop growing until sometime between the ages of ten and thirteen, and since...

Chapter 27 – Food for the Soul

Benton felt bad about eavesdropping on the mayor’s conversation, but the situation was simply too important for him to leave things to chance. The information he’d overheard was crucial for informing his actions in the immediate future.

First, though, it was time to see about acquiring new disciples. His thinking was that an orphanage in a village where food was scarce would be a good source of potential recruits. He just needed to make a good first impression, and the perfect start...

Chapter 26 – Let’s Make a Deal

With Benton’s proximity to the village’s wooden walls, he noticed that they showed no signs of the scarring he’d have expected from repeated beast attacks, a discordant fact when compared to everything else he’d observed. Of course, the wall’s material resonated with his spiritual sense to an absurd degree, which obviously had something to do with the lack of damage.

Su’s memories boggled at the expense to construct a wall around a village in the middle of nowhere out of woo...

Chapter 25 – Out of the Woods

Benton intently studied the walled village before him. Neither he nor Su had any experience determining population just from looking at one from the outside, but his best guess was something in the low thousands. It definitely wasn’t a tiny flyspeck, but he wouldn’t classify it as big enough to be a town, either.

He didn’t want to draw any conclusions until he’d gathered more information, but the state of the surroundings was beginning to paint a picture. For one thing, there wa...

Chapter 24 – Wishes and Fishes

Benton kept a watchful eye on his disciples, worried both about them getting injured in a fight and about them growing fatigued from how hard he was pushing them.

A week passed, and the siblings were making progress in many ways. First, distance wise, as they were covering a lot of ground. Each day the siblings got better at targeting their leg and foot muscles with smaller and smaller bursts of qi, allowing them to travel faster and farther. Second, cultivation wise, as they fastidious...

Chapter 23 – Attack!

A hand on Benton’s shoulder woke him, and it took him a moment to grasp the situation. It was dark out with only the flickering light of their fire providing light. He was in his tent on his bedroll. Yang Ru had shaken him.

Benton mentally asked the System how long until his alarm was supposed to go off, a function he’d recently discovered. 

As the small group had ventured deeper in th...

Chapter 22 – Core Harvesting Lessons

Yang Xiu’s hands trembled as the rustling drew closer. She tried to tell herself that she’d killed the last four consecutive spirit beasts she’d faced with her bow, but her self pep talk did nothing to quell her nerves.

Before, she’d been one hundred percent confident that her master wouldn’t let one of the creatures so much as make contact with her clothes. That assurance had been removed. It was her versus the beast. Solo.

A small figure emerged from the bushes. Anothe...

Chapter 21 – Questions and Contributions

The group traveled further toward spirit beast territory, but the creatures were still scarce. Benton was only able to round up one set of rank ones for the siblings to fight each of the next two days. Neither made a kill on their own, but they improved.

On the third day, the density of spirit beasts was high enough that he found two sets nearby for the kids to fight. Even better, Yang Xiu managed a kill by herself on her second one. As if spurred by his sister, Yang Ru killed two out o...

Chapter 20 – A Single Step

As Benton had expected, both his disciples had woken the previous evening in plenty of time to consolidate their cultivation, so as the two ate breakfast, he packed their tents and bedrolls and most of the rest of the supplies from around the camp into his spatial ring.

“It has been said that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step,” he told them, “and today, we will all take that step. It is time to begin our search for a suitable location to found our sect. From ...

Chapter 19 – Advancement

Over the next several days, Benton fixed meals, sparred with his disciples, and offered guidance where appropriate. Mostly, though, the kids stayed on the right track, cultivating and practicing diligently.

Late on the fourth day, he got the notification he’d been waiting for; Yang Xiu had advanced to the third minor realm. Even better, it took only another full cycle for Yang Ru to reach the same milestone, leaving them both plenty of time to consolidate before dinner.

The next...

Chapter 18 – Corrective Measures

Benton stepped to the side. The tip of a spear—well, a sharpened stick, anyway—slid past him a fraction of an inch from his robe.

The stick retracted and plunged toward him again, aimed at his chest. To his senses, the thrust might as well have been moving through molasses.

He infused qi in microbursts throughout his torso and twisted. Again, the attack missed by less than an inch.

His opponent withdrew the stick once more and lunged forward right at his face. That blow ...