BWFoster78

Chapter 165 – Vengeance

Jin LiJuan tried not to hate spirit beasts, but the task was difficult. She was highly motivated, though. Master didn’t ask much of her, just that one thing.

She hadn’t understood why Master even asked her not to kill beasts in anger. The strong sect members killed beasts wherever the creatures were found, and the entire sect had trained so hard learning weapons and techniques for what seemed like the sole purpose of killing beasts.

Mistress Zhong has patiently explained to Ji...

Chapter 164 – Goodbye Home

Benton grinned. He had the core of his sect placed. The Administration Hall, the Library, the Lecture Hall, the Amphitheater, six pavilions, and a couple of auxiliary buildings had been installed near the eventual gate. A short distance away was the Contribution Points Shop and the Trials Pagoda. Farther on was the arena.

That was a great start.

With the work locations clearly established, he needed places for all his people to live and chose the large empty area opposite the aren...

Chapter 163 – Placemaking

12/22/24 A/N: Sorry for being a little late in my posting. I'm traveling for the holidays, and there was a glitch with the wifi and my mother-in-law's house.

Benton frowned as he received a notification. Not a half hour had passed since he had sent Yang Xiu to the Contribution Points Shop to arrange payment with Peng Zhen for a trial.

Well, she must have accomplished that task because the System informed Benton that that she had requested to participate in a trial. He was sure he...

Chapter 162 – A Slippery Solution

The Trials Pagoda immediately approved Yang Xiu’s request to be attempt a trial to improve her shield technique, and the next thing she knew, she was standing in a room that was unfamiliar to her. The floor was covered with some sort of springy material, and one wall was filled with mirrors.

Other than her, it was completely empty.

A gangly man with long bushy hair and an equally unkempt beard appeared.

“Take the shield,” he said.

“What shield?” Before the la...

Chapter 161 – Volunteer

Nighttime neared as Benton watched over the fifty newest inductees into the Rising Tide Sect while they all writhed in agony. He dearly hoped they all would be as positive that improving their spiritual roots was worth the pain after they finished the process as they did going into it.

 Since it was his second time performing such a task in a very short period of time, he was, frankly, getting a little bored.

Honestly, he was really eager to begin setting up the sect building...

Chapter 160c – Arc 2 Prologue

When Teng Wuying imagined climbing to a high position in the Jade Chameleon Sect, he never envisioned quite so much paperwork. As he signed one report and picked up another, his assistant stepped into the room.

“Your Esteemed Brother, Teng Jian, has successfully broken through the seventh minor realm of Golden Core, Esteemed Elder,” she said.

“Understood. No instructions at this time,” he said, dismissing her.

The moment had finally come. It was time to inform the ho...

Chapter 160b – End of Arc 1 Important Characters

Chapter 160a – Arc 1 Epilogue

12/17/24 A/N: Okay, this is kind of a weird way of doing things, but I'm combining three of what would be chapters in a novel into a single post. The first is this epilogue, which is almost long enough to stand alone. The second, though, is a table that hopefully you can bookmark and come back to if you forget who someone is? And the third is the prologue for the next arc, and it's a bit on the short side. So I decided to post them all separately because that's the way they would be in a book...

Chapter 159 – Trials and Tribulations

Kang Lin waited in the stands of the arena, eagerly anticipating Master’s presentation to begin. When he announced that there would be rewards, she was sure that, considering the source, it would be something over the top and nearly impossible.

She was not disappointed.

A Trials Pagoda was a thing of legend. No sect on the continent had one, but a few larger, more powerful sects in other places had found or established such wonders. Enough stories had made their way to the conti...

Chapter 158 – Celebrate Good Times

Despite Benton’s reservation about the Trial Pagoda being a point sink, he pulled the trigger, confirming that reward as his selection, and the System stowed the building in his spatial ring. The time taken to bathe and deal with the prompts allowed a decent amount of his qi to be restored, but he still decided to consume ten spirit coils to add another one hundred thousand units.

With the tide finished, he wasn’t expected to run into any danger, but it was better to be prepared tha...

Chapter 157 – Well Played

Benton slowly lessened the effect of his gravity burst, lowering him to the ground. Once he landed, he stowed the cyclops’ corpse in his spatial ring. It occurred to him that the fight would have gone a lot better had he known about the beast’s weakness earlier.

He should do something about that oversight, but it wasn’t like he could just snap his fingers and gain as much knowledge of spirit beasts as he wanted. Oh wait…

Next time he was spending points, he’d add that te...

Chapter 156 – High Tide

Benton hated that he would have to risk everything in a fight that he wasn’t assured of winning. What was the saying? It was something like, if the outcome of a fight is in question before you start, you’ve already messed up.

Well, he’d definitely messed up.

The cyclops was shaking with barely contained rage. It could burst forward with an attack at any moment.

The beast’s aura was screwing up all his techniques, making them cost more and be less effective. Even with...

Chapter 155 – Unexpected Revelation

12/10/24 Author's Note: I wasn't really satisfied with the ending of the last chapter. In particular, the reason that Kang Lin attributed to Yang Ru's interruption made no sense whatsoever in the context of the story. I've been stewing over how to fix it for a while, and the obvious solution occurred to me today. I made a small edit to correct. Thanks!

When Benton hadn’t received notification of any advancements, he’d feared the worst, that the village and all the defenders had some...

Chapter 154 – Alright Stop, Meditate and Listen

Zou Tian stepped out of the light and into Shadow. As he anticipated, the badger began moving as soon as he’d fully entered the alley.

It was decision time. Would it go for his throat or the coins? With the creatures extreme speed, especially compared to him, he only had time to defend against one, and the wrong call would mean disaster for him and maybe for the rest of the village. For Wan Ai.

Making the right call, on the other hand, didn’t guarantee success. It just gave th...

Chapter 153 – Attack a Creature a Major Realm and a Half Higher Than Me? Sure.

Yang Ru was a step away from the shadowed alley when he heard the call to stop. Already primed to react to the slightest stimulus, Yang Ru halted. Cupping the shaft of his spear around the pile of spirit coins in his hands, he brought his weapon up into a guard position.

“Why?” he yelled.

“It’s right in front of you,” Zou Tian called.

Good. That was exactly the result Yang Ru wanted. For the badger to attack him and be drawn out into the open.

But the implica...

Chapter 152 – An Aura of Success or Failure?

Benton dropped Stealth just before loosing the bowstring simply because it felt more sporting to give the eagle a chance in lieu of having the swift arrow appear literally out of nowhere. Not that it mattered. His Foundation Establishment level archery technique made his arrow faster than a bullet and added a seeking function.

Even if the bird would have had time to dodge the arrow, it wouldn’t have been able to.

The tip struck true, aimed at the junction of the right wing and t...

Chapter 151 – Into the Danger Zone

Benton stood atop a cliff, looking over a wide valley. In the distance, a single snow-covered peak rose, ascending into the clouds. The qi signature at the top was so strong that it almost overwhelmed his spiritual sense even from miles away.

He dearly, dearly hoped that the huge source of qi wasn’t the Big Boss he had to face.

According to Su’s memories, a beast tide being caused by an entity at an equivalent realm to Nihility or higher was extremely unlikely. As in, no one h...

Chapter 150 – The Badger Strikes

By the time Benton found the eighth wave, he still hadn’t gotten any notifications indicating advancements from his sect members. He was beginning to get worried. There was absolutely nothing he could do about whatever was going on with his disciples, though.

Well, that conclusion wasn’t one hundred percent true. Instead of taking care of the beasts currently within range of his spiritual sense, he could Quickstep back to the village and check on things, but such an action risked hi...

Chapter 149 – Alert!

Benton grew concerned as he continued his search for the eighth wave. His disciples should have long since been able to dispatch the two rank six beasts that attacked the village and followed that fight up with consolidating their gains. So far, though, he hadn’t received a single notification about any of his disciples advancing due to that battle.

Of course, it was possible that none of them had gained enough to move any of their techniques or cultivation forward.

He frowned. ...

Chapter 148 - Worst Nightmare

Finally, Benton found the seventh wave at the edge of his spiritual sense, and he Quickstepped several hundred yards in front of them, placing himself between the beasts and the village. Immediately, he activated his Stealth technique and Quickstepped up to a branch of a tall tree, so he could get a visual.

He counted eighteen in the wave.

Perfect. Less than twenty as he’d predicted, and a reasonable number for him to attack on his own even given his lack of experience with beas...

Chapter 147 – The Kobayashi Maru

Ye Zan watched the two injured cultivators leap back over the wall. The cheetah jumped after them, but the shield held, repelling it.

He struggled with what he’d just witnessed. Frankly, Yang Ru and especially Kang Lin had been lucky to escape the rank six beasts with their lives. In the right circumstances, Senior Brother could one shot a creature of that rank, but the matchup against two highly agile foes that focused on Speed was absolutely not the right circumstances.

Having...

Chapter 146 – That Didn’t Work

It wasn’t long after Benton sensed the last of the rank five beasts near the village dying that he received the notifications. Yang Xiu advanced her attack technique to Large Success. Even better, Yang Ru did the same for both his primary techniques.

There was no similar notification for Kang Lin, but that lack was fine. Benton already felt better about the village’s chances for a successful defense with the twins’ powerup.

Not long after—way too short a time, actually—t...

Chapter 145 – A Turtle, a Fork, and a Shell

The fight between Kang Lin and the turtle continued. Most of her thrusts landed, but the damage they caused was trivial for a rank five beast with such high defense and vitality.

Its head blurred toward her, and she dodged. It was slow to move and couldn’t evade worth anything, but it obviously had some kind of skill that allowed it to snap its powerful jaws forward.

If those caught her, she’d definitely lose a limb if not her life.

“Killing the beast doesn’t matter!...

Chapter 144 – Razor’s Edge

11/25/24 A/N: I'm on vacation this week. I didn't anticipate that impacting my release times, but I posted this chapter and the last a little later than intended. I'm hoping to return to my normal practice of releasing the night before for the rest of the week, but I may be a little late as circumstances dictate. Thanks in advance for your understanding!

Kang Lin was more than a little nervous about jumping over the wall and into the fray. Her last battle hadn’t gone very well. Sure, ...

Chapter 143 – Shut Up

Benton was not encouraged with the way the beast tide was progressing. The first three waves had been great. Better than great. Awesome. Perfect.

His sect members had dispatched the creatures with barely any assistance from him and had advanced as a result. When it came down to brass tacks, however, meaning the performance of the three Foundation Establishment cultivators, the acceleration of the waves signaled disaster.

Still, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the ...

Chapter 142 – Better to Lose a Fortune

The fast approaching fourth wave worried Benton greatly. The beast tide was not likely to crest at rank six, and any higher than that was the equivalent of Golden Core and above. Fighting such an opponent near the village was a bad idea.

The kinds of energies that a rank seven or higher had access to could destroy even a wall made from Orange Vigor Spirit Wood with even an incidental blow. None of the sect members, not even the twins and Kang Lin, had a chance of surviving if forces of ...

Chapter 141 – Saving Resources

Benton watched his sect members engage the third wave at melee range. The heaviest hitters were Ye Zan’s two guard groups, but Zi Delan and his team did surprisingly well. Other assorted fighters who’d advanced to the peak of Bronze Body Cultivation also joined in the battle.

Overall, the group was smaller than for the previous waves, as planned. Rank three beasts were simply too strong and too dangerous for anyone not tough enough to handle them.

The surprising addition to th...

Chapter 140 – Good as New

The second wave passed in much the same manner as the first. About two-thirds as many beasts hurled themselves at the village wall. They were slightly more powerful than the previous attackers, but both the wall and the shield held. Increased toughness led to more arrows being required to take some of them down, and the injuries to the melee fighters were a bit more pronounced with scratches being more prevalent and some actual cuts appearing.

Overall, though, the defenders acquitted th...

Chapter 139 – Many a Slip

Zou Tian danced around the edges of the pile of spirit beasts, his dagger flashing as he killed a creature with every strike.

The rest of the sect members he’d exited the village with were all inundated by the creatures, but his Hide Presence technique left him undetectable until the moment he struck and then only to the beast his dagger stabbed. Since it inevitably died immediately, he stayed effectively invisible.

At first, he’d been worried for his associates who were liter...

Chapter 138 – Waxing Tide

Benton felt pretty good about himself. His barrier worked perfectly, and the morale of all the villagers and the sect members defending the wall seemed to be high.

Pan Jiang, in particular, was grinning like the proverbial cat who’d ate the canary. Though Benton had chosen the kid as the one to draw first blood on a whim, it was a good call. The boy had volunteered for a tough job that wasn’t likely to lead to as much personal glory as the defenders who were designated for cleanup d...