Chapter 191: Another Impossibility Made Expected

As soon as Benton returned to the sect grounds, he decided to send a message to Yang Xiu. First, though, he dithered a bit about using a message instead of just Quickstepping to her. Two thoughts convinced him that sending an origami construct was the correct call.

One, his time was valuable. In the ten or fifteen minutes it would take him to find her, exchange pleasantries, give her his instructions, and return to the sect grounds, he could complete diagnosing another array or two. Sure, the savings seemed trivial, but small expenditures added up.

Two, his disciples needed experience receiving messages. If something more urgent were happening, it would be bad if time were wasted by his sect members not understanding what the paper dragon was. The more his people saw them in use, the better.

Decision made, he composed the note.

Yang Xiu,

When your brother and his party return, please bring him, Jin LiJuan, and Zou Tian to me at the sect grounds. As the core of my sect leadership, it’s important that you all understand what happened to Li’er and what my plan for her is going forward.

Gratitude,

Master

P.S. If Kang Lin wants to join us, I have no objection. It’s sect business, of course, but nothing about it is top secret. Purely her call.

There. The note had only taken a few seconds and sending the message consumed a trivial amount of qi. Much more efficient than tracking someone down.

Benton was sure that he would come to be very glad he’d created that technique. It was the next best thing to email. No more rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off when he needed something from someone. Instead, just pause a second to compose a message, fire it off, and wait for the person to come to him.

Awesome. That system was much more like how he’d operated on Earth. There was value in occasionally showing up unannounced in a subordinate’s office, of course, but it was much more efficient to have them come to him.



With that task accomplished, it was time to get to work. The residences had comparatively simple arrays—a small shield, temperature control, alarm wards, and a cabinet designed to keep food in stasis. Even better for his purposes, each house and apartment pretty much utilized those exact four formations and only those four formations. Furthermore, whoever had crafted them had seemingly followed a template. There was little variation.

Unfortunately, they were all constructed to hook into a sect-wide array to feed them qi. The Rising Tide Sect didn’t have a sect-wide array, and that wasn’t something he wanted to attempt to create on the fly. That project was one that would require quite a bit of planning.

Yeah. Lots of forethought and planning. Wouldn’t want to mess that up, especially as he’d need to also create a sect-wide defensive array that was much more complex and versatile than the one he’d used at the village.

He’d leave that for another day.

That decision left him with two options to deal with the immediate problem. One, create an individual qi source to hook into each domicile. That meant that, for each house, each single dwelling, and each apartment, he’d have to create a device that accepted spirit coins, converted those coins into qi, and fed it to the formations for that living area.

Doing one was simple, the work of ten minutes. Fifteen if he got fancy. The problem was that he had no trick for replicating his work. Maybe if he spent enough time, he could figure out some kind of automated factory formation, but creating such a complicated array would take as much time as making the power sources.

The second option was more palatable. Create a formation that networked all the residences together and feed it from a single power station. Much easier. Much faster. The only issue was that, instead of the individual or family being responsible for supplying their own power, the source was centralized, meaning he’d probably end up creating all the coins for that purpose.

Which wasn’t a terrible thing. Making coins was a relatively trivial task for him, and he could delegate the task of resupplying the source with coins. In fact, that was a good idea. He’d have Peng Zhen create a job to check the power station daily or weekly or whatever and add coins as necessary. Since no special skill or knowledge was required to perform the task, any random sect member could take the assignment to earn some contribution points. The sect needed jobs like that.

The second option it was. Benton got started mentally designing the formation. Which didn’t actually take all that long. The entire purpose of the array was to transmit qi from one point to another in the amount demanded by the receiving end. Formations didn’t get much simpler.

More of an issue was the medium to hold the formation. He couldn’t exactly etch it into the dirt. He basically needed a long thin strip of something that he could bury in the same trench he used for the water pipes. Something durable.

Benton had plenty of treated bamboo left over, so why not? After doing the appropriate engraving, he set up the coin station in the pump house, dug a small trench above the water pipe, and was in the process of laying the conduits when his disciples arrived.

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“Greetings, Master,” Yang Xiu said.

The others—Yang Ru, Zou Tian, Kang Lin, and Jin LiJuan, who was holding the wolf cub—repeated her greeting.

“Thank you for coming,” Benton said. “Let’s adjourn to my office for this conversation.”

He didn’t have a real reason for holding the meeting in his office other than simply wanting to establish the habit of using the correct facilities according to their functions. So he led them to the top floor of the administrative building.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t touched the arrays in that building yet, so there was no heat or light. It didn’t have any furniture, either, so they all had to stand.

Maybe it would have been best to hold the meeting elsewhere. Oh well.

“Yang Xiu, Kang Lin, Zou Tian, as you can see, Jin LiJuan has bonded a wolf cub,” Benton said. “This situation will have a big impact on her cultivation journey and, to an extent, on our sect. I wanted all of you to be aware of what’s going on with her, so you understand my wishes on the subject.”

“Yes, Master,” they all chorused.

“First of all,” Benton said, “Jin LiJuan, please give me your hand.”

He scanned her cultivation.

“Hmm. Qi Gathering minor realm four, and your channels have definitely improved.” Benton laughed.



“What’s funny, Master?” Li’er said.

“The entire situation. You all remember how I keep saying that this is a cultivation world and that we should expect that anything can happen?”

“Yes, Master,” they chorused.

“Well,” Benton said, “this is one of those anythings. It is extremely unusual for a cultivator to bond a spirit beast. It is even more unusual for the cultivator to do so accidentally. It is highly improbable for a cultivator to do so accidentally and to achieve such a compatible bond that she gains one hundred percent of the benefits of the beast’s cultivation. It is a sign that the heavens are laughing at us that the cultivator who happened to achieve this highly improbable feat is someone who loathes spirit beasts with every fiber of her being and is now tied to one so tightly that her future cultivation journey is inexorably linked to it.”

Li’er looked like she was about to cry.

“I’m sorry, little one,” Benton said. “I know this feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you, but there are advantages. To be honest, I really didn’t think that you’d ever even make Foundation Establishment, no matter how many resources I poured into you. Your channels were that messed up. Even the enhancement of your spiritual roots didn’t help you much.

“Now, with your bond, I expect you to advance to that realm in less than a month. Finding enough materials to get you to Nascent Soul might be a challenge, but there is no reason for you not to reach Golden Core before any of your fellow disciples.”

All of his disciples looked surprised.

No, shocked. They all looked shocked, and none more so than Jin LiJuan.

“The downside of that quick advancement is that, like I said, you are completely tied to the beast,” Benton said. “You should still cultivate at least a cycle or two daily to keep your channels clear and open. Trust me, you do not want those to atrophy, and gaining cultivation realms without cultivating at all will do very, very bad things to you, understand?”

Jin LiJuan nodded vigorously.

“Right now, the cub isn’t fighting the bond because it is a baby,” Benton said. “It’s depending on you for food and warmth and growth. The bigger and stronger it gets, though, the less it’s going to need you. If I didn’t already know that you don’t particularly care for the beast, I could tell just from the way you’re holding it. If you persist in not caring, the cub will pick up on that, and the bond will decay. When it does, your cultivation will revert back to the way it was a few days ago. Same thing if the cub dies, only worse.”

The girl looked like she had swallowed a fly. “I’d lose everything, Master?”

“Everything.”

“What do I do, Master?” Jin LiJuan said.


“Make yourself care about it somehow. Treat that beast like your life depends on it loving you because, in a very real way, your life does depend on that beast loving you.”

“Yes, Master.”

“In the meantime, keep feeding it rank one cores.”

Zou Tian looked puzzled.

“Yes,” Benton said, answering the unasked question. “Feeding the cub rank two cores would make it reach rank three faster than feeding it rank ones, and it will still need a rank two to finally advance. I don’t want it to go faster, though. The more time Jin LiJuan has before it ranks up, the better. In fact, it might be best to only feed it a core every other day or every third day. It is far more important for her to strengthen the bond than to strengthen the beast.”

Everyone looked like they understood, so Benton moved on to the next topic.

“Jin LiJuan, since you have reached the fourth minor realm, you can pick a weapon technique. Do you want to learn the spear, bow, or dagger?”

“What do you suggest, Master?”

Benton thought about it for a moment. “If you were a beast tamer, I’d say go with the bow as it would be the best choice from supporting your attackers, but you’re not. You will, presumably, be fighting alongside your bonded wolf, though. A bow isn’t a bad choice. Neither is a spear. Or if you want to go the stealth route, the dagger is fine. Really, it’s your choice.”



“I’m not a beast tamer, Master?”

“No. In addition to the fact that you’d make a horrible beast tamer considering your clear dislike for them, you’ve bonded a beast, which precludes you from taming additional ones. Normal beast tamers use a technique to bind a beast to them. They manipulate their qi to produce a sort of pseudo bond that allows them control of the creature.

“Those pseudo bonds aren’t like yours. They’re not as strong for one, and they don’t go both ways for another. The downside is that tamers don’t get cultivation boosts from their beasts, but the upside is that the number that can be controlled is limited only by the tamer’s ability and time.”

“I’ve heard of beast tamers, Master, but I’ve never met one,” Kang Lin said.

“There aren’t a lot of them around since high quality techniques are difficult to find, but beast tamers can really punch above their weight if they can get higher ranked beasts to fight for them,” Benton said.

The girl smirked. “I bet Master has such a technique.”

Benton grinned. “Mayhap I do.”

None of them looked at all surprised by his announcement. It was as he feared. He was completely losing his mystique. The impossible had become the expected.

Benton cleared his throat. “Eventually, I’d like to add a beast pavilion, but there’s no reason to create it until we have interested sect members who have reached at least Foundation Establishment.” He turned to Jin LiJuan. “That being said, I would prefer that you join the beast pavilion unless you really feel strongly about a different route. For now, you’ll mainly be practicing weapons, anyway, and should participate in the Martial Pavilion as if you were a member.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Speaking of which,” Benton said, “have you decided which weapon technique you want?”

“Uh…”