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 beasts of that rank.

Time for some experimentation. First, gravity burst.

As he expected, the technique was not nearly as overpowering against the equivalent of a Golden Core cultivator as it had been on the lower ranked beasts. Instead of being completely immobilized, the creatures could resist the area effect but with difficulty. While they could crawl, they could not walk. They definitely could not run.

Benton had enough practice using the technique by that point that the strain of keeping it going was negligible, as was the drain on his qi pool. Worst case scenario, he’d consume one of his many spirit coins.

The next test was Chain Lightning, and as he had feared, it was almost worthless against the rank seven beasts. Well, worthless was only in comparison to the results he expected from his recent fights against relatively weak opponents, but still, he couldn’t just fling a few bolts and wipe out the entire wave. In fact, though the lightning penetrated qi shields and did damage, none of the beasts happened to have a qi aspect that was weak to the attack. Not only did all of them survive, but it would likely have taken dozens of direct hits to kill any of them.

He considered testing temperature manipulation as well, but he already had a good idea of how that would go. It would definitely be possible to kill the beasts in that manner given enough time and enough qi. That method just wasn’t helpful to him at that moment, though.

No, his best attack was the first one he’d conceptualized, the one meant for just such a scenario where he was fighting opponents of an equal or greater realm. He pulled his bow from his ring and nocked an arrow.

Benton didn’t consider himself nearly as good an archer as Yang Xiu because he hadn’t put in close to the amount of time practicing that she had. Still, with Chao Su’s training and Benton’s Mastery of both a general archery technique and a specific arrow technique, he was more than competent enough to hit a mostly immobilized target at a distance of a few hundred yards.

His Layered Variable Shield Breaker with Void Finisher had been created for just such a purpose. He drew back the bowstring and loosed. The arrow hit a Wind aspected elk right between the eyes.

Benton’s channeled Wood qi ate through the qi shield that was weak against that element, and when the arrowhead hit flesh, a sphere of Void qi disintegrated the beast’s head into nothingness.



One down, seventeen to go.

Killing the rest of the wave took more time than Benton would have liked, but any expectation that he could do it faster was based solely on defeating much weaker opponents. Slow, careful, and meticulous were good watchwords for his current mission. Taking a little bit of extra time to make sure he eliminated all the beasts was definitely worth it.

To that end, he Quickstepped to the middle of the beasts after the last had been decapitated. His sense strained to the maximum didn’t pick up any qi sources nearby.

Realizing that he entire wave had gone a lot easier than he had expected, he chuckled. He didn’t have to leave the village after all. Not for the seventh wave, at any rate. Those beasts had been no threat at all.

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Oh well, Benton didn’t regret being extra careful in that regard. For all he knew, a Golden Core equivalent beast would be able to shoot lightning bolts or whatever just like he could. Actually, for all he knew, that was still true, just for rank eights or higher instead of starting at seven.

He’d have to see.

Regardless, he’d been right about focusing so much on killing the entire wave before any of the beasts could reach the village. There was no way his disciples could handle a rank seven. They were too tough and too fast. Not even Yang Xiu would likely be able to make one of the arrows he’d created for them land.

Benton glanced at all the corpses around him. A rank seven beast attacking the village was one less worry he had to concern himself with.

He Quickstepped in the direction of the mountain peak, beginning his search for the eighth wave.

Zou Tian felt that something was off with the way the shadows at the edge of the forest were behaving, but there was nothing he could pinpoint as being wrong. He couldn’t even find a particular spot that drew his attention. It was just an overall sense of unease.

Soon, his fellow defenders began implementing the plan he’d developed, pushing the issue to the back of his mind. They were victorious, and much celebrating was done. He dropped into meditation along with the others, seeking to improve his abilities from his recent experience.

Zou Tian found it hard to concentrate, however. Something nagged at the edges of his thoughts. Something important.



The shadows.

But that was just his imagination, wasn’t it?

No. He was one with the shadow. He was shadow. He knew shadows, and they behaved wrongly.

They behaved as they did when they concealed him.

His eyes shot open. There was another beast out there!


The badger had been commanded to attack the gathering of humans, and while it had no issue with the attack itself, the fact that it had no choice but to do so rankled. Once he’d gotten in range of the gathering, however, all doubts and resentments fled. There was a large source of consumable qi inside.

A large source. A large consumable source. Such a quantity would instantly propel it to rank seven and perhaps even higher.

It just had to get inside that wall and past that barrier, absorb all that wonderful, powerful qi, and ascend to a level the puny humans wouldn’t be able to challenge.

Besides providing both incentive and temptation, the source was like a beacon in the night to the badger’s spiritual sense, allowing it to keep its bearing directly on target as it burrowed deep under the ground.

Inch after inch, foot after foot, it dug, always focused on the direction of the source. Eventually, the badger found itself directly below the massive amount of consumable qi.

The barrier hadn’t extended below the ground. If the beast went straight up, he’d be inside the gathering!

Excited, the badger almost did exactly that. It hadn’t, however, reached near the peak of rank six by being impetuous. It reached out its spiritual sense again and discovered an important lack.

Shadow.



There was almost none in the crucial area near the consumable, which meant the badger would be exposed as soon as it emerged from the ground. And it had already seen what the humans could do to an exposed target.

No, its strength was in remaining hidden, not in a direct frontal assault.

It would find shadow, and there it would rise.

Zou Tian experienced a moment of panic. A stealthed beast was their worst nightmare. If it somehow found a way into the village, there was nothing any of them could do.

He took a deep breath. They had Master’s shield to keep it out, to keep them safe. It didn’t matter that the sect members couldn’t see their foe. The barrier would still detect it.

A warning, however, was definitely called for.

“Beware!” Zou Tian yelled. “There’s a Shadow aspected beast lurking, and I don’t know where it is.”

Ye Zan, a bunch of the guards, the twins, and Kang Lin were all meditating, and Zou Tian felt horrible about interrupting them. Master had drilled into them that there was almost nothing more important than immediately going over a battle in one’s mind to learn from what one did right and what one did wrong.

If there was one thing more important that advancing, though, it was the presence of another beast threatening the sect.

The others didn’t question his alert. They broke free of their meditation and took up positions on the allure.

Their level of trust in him touched a spot in his heart. No longer was he a street rat lookout for a gang, paid with just enough food to keep him from starving. Instead, he was a respected member of a sect, one of their leaders in fact.

Not for the first time, he dedicated himself to doing whatever was needed for his master and his sect brothers and sisters. And at the moment, that whatever was finding the beast.