Chapter 217: Interest, Mortification, and Excitement

Benton’s heart broke for Li’er. The girl had been through so much. He couldn’t even imagine the impact that watching spirit beasts kill one’s family would have on a person. It was said that children tended to be resilient, but there was a limit to what anyone could endure.

On one level, he had realized that her life hadn’t been easy. No one’s life as a peasant in a cultivation world was easy, especially not one who was orphaned. But he hadn’t quite understood just how much she was suffering until she mentioned the dreams.

She needed something to help her. In an ideal world, he would have created a Mind technique for her, but she was one of the few sect members who, with his advice, had not begun cultivating either her Mind or Soul. Her spiritual pathways were just too messed up for Mind Cultivation, and he honestly didn’t know how she’d fare with Soul Cultivation. He figured it was better to focus her time on learning techniques since her Spiritual Cultivation was turning out to be so accelerated.

Since she wasn’t cultivating her Mind, though, there was no chance of her quickly getting rid of the dreams herself.

If her brain had been physically damaged, he could have patched her up quickly with his healing technique. But she was dealing with injuries to her psyche, and his Mind Cultivation level did not confer psychic abilities nearly powerful enough to provide external therapy.

That left him with only one choice.

“System,” he said internally, “I need a Qi Gathering level technique for Li’er that will help quiet and heal her mind. It absolutely must prevent nightmares starting as early as Small Success. The technique should be useable by cultivators using any qi aspect.”

When prompted, he went with zero in Foundation and split the one hundred allocation points between Ease and Power. The System affirmed the creation of the technique, Quiet Mind Restoration, for ten Sect Points, and he handed her the jade slip.

“Start learning this technique immediately,” Benton told her. “It’s more important than learning to use your sword. Understand?”

She didn’t look happy about it, but she cupped her hands. “Yes, Master.”

“Good.” Benton looked out over the crowd and noticed Peng Zhen and the rest of his family were present. “It looks like the Contribution Points Shop is closed for the evening, but I’ll send word that you have my permission to draw one rank two and nine rank one beast cores. Feed Ganzou the rank two tomorrow and then a rank one every other day until they’re gone. When that happens, come to me to discuss the next step.”

Those instructions cheered her noticeably. “Yes, Master.”



He chuckled. “You realize that you’ll hit Foundation Establishment before Wan Ai, Xun Wu, Zou Tian, and Shi Long, right? All of those should be your senior sect brothers and sisters. In fact, you’ll probably pass Yang Xiu and Yang Ru before long. I might have to start calling you Senior Sister before everything is all said and done.”

Okay, that last part might have been a little exaggerated. The resources he’d need to advance her once she made it to the Golden Core realm were going to get expensive. Still, his statement brought an actual real grin to her face. He counted that as a win.

“For the rest of tonight, I have a very important mission for you,” he said, “but I honestly don’t know if you’ll be able to accomplish it.”

“Tell me, Master. I won’t let you down. I swear it.”

He paused, letting the moment build, and when he finally spoke, he channeled every bit of gravitas his many years had granted him into his voice. “Have fun. Eat cake. Play. Be a kid.”

She scowled at him.

“You swore, did you not?” he said.

Jin LiJuan hung her head. “I did, Master.” She sighed. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ask, Li’er. That’s all I ask.”

With that heartbreaking conversation over, Benton turned his attention to his next challenge. He’d killed enough time. The two glider bases should be ready.

He Quickstepped to the Blacksmithing Pavilion. Usually, the pavilion leader, despite working in the heat of the forge, looked pristine. No sweat. Calm. Normally toned skin.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Not so for that occasion.

Xun Wu looking as haggard as Benton had ever seen. Sweat pouring off his brow. Clothes mussed and stained with black soot. Clearly agitated and not able to stand still. And with a face red from the fire.



“Damn near killed me getting this finished so quickly, Sect Leader,” Xun Wu said, “but here you go.”

The blacksmith really had outdone himself. Laid out on a large table were the two identical glider bases. In lieu of the simple triangles that Benton had requested, the artisan had created two pairs of phoenix wings. Bright red in color, they measured a good ten feet from wingtip to wingtip. And the detail! The man had made the metal resemble feathers, each of which was distinct as they blended together to create the wings.

The wingtips were the lowest part with the feathers swept back to provide plenty of surface area for the glider to sit stably on the ground. From each of those tips, the wings rose in a graceful arc, and when the line reached near the center where the phoenix’s body would be, it dipped down and flattened, providing a footrest with straps to hold the pilot in position.

Other than the fact that Benton would have preferred dragon wings to a phoenix, they were absolutely perfect. The kids were going to love them! And considering that the artwork on the cultivation planet featured eastern style dragons, the choice to use phoenix wings was probably the way to go, anyway.

With the bases exceeding Benton’s expectations, he had to do his part to make sure the glider was nothing short of amazing. The problem was that he really needed to get back to the party so that the cake could be cut.

For anyone else, being so short on time would have been a huge, huge issue. There simply would have been no way to create arrays to control Gravity for lift and Wind for thrust and, after a bit of consideration, a shield for safety when—not if—his disciples crashed.

That was hours of work, and he only had minutes to spare.

Luckily, Benton was a cheating cheater who cheats.

He actually hadn’t read all that many cultivation novels back on Earth, but between what he had read, Su’s memories, and Benton’s experiences on his new planet, it became readily apparent to him that all qi elements were not created equal. For example, Void was simply much better at destruction than any other element. When it came to overall being overpowered, though, three stood far above all the others—Gravity, Space, and Time.

Benton, of course, had Concepts for each and made use of those via techniques. Quickstep used Space and was probably the technique he used the most. Gravity manipulation was something he also used on a regular basis, more so for crafting than the purpose he originally intended. But it was quite handy.

His Time Manipulation technique, on the other hand, went relatively unused, both in combat and in everyday life. Which was pretty stupid on his part. It provided, after all, a very powerful advantage.

Time to make use of it.

He snickered at the pun before triggering the technique. At the cost of less qi than he naturally regenerated, a bubble separated him from the world. Outside that bubble, time moved normally. Inside, it sped up. An hour inside only took one minute outside.

Not being a complete idiot, Benton had used one half of his dual focus to plan out the arrays he would be using, starting from the instant he’d given the instructions to have the glider bases constructed. So now that he had them in his possession, there were no wasted moments figuring out what to do. Instead, he got right to work inscribing.

True to his prediction, the first one took about an hour and a half to finish the work, test, fix the errors he discovered, test it again, and repeat that process until he found no more errors. The second went much faster, taking him half the time.



Roughly two minutes and fifteen seconds after triggering the bubble, he dropped the technique and Quickstepped back to the amphitheater with the gliders safely stowed in his ring.

From what he could tell, people were having such a good time that they barely noticed that he left. They did notice, however, that he had returned. He made sure of that.

“May I have your attention please,” his amplified voice rang through the stadium. “It’s time for the cake. First, though, we must sing.”

###

Yang Xiu experienced a lot of emotions in a short period—interest in what the cake that Master created tasted like, absolute mortification when he led the nearly one thousand people in the stadium in singing “Happy Birthday to you, dear Yang Xiu and Yang Ru,” and excitement over the promised/implied presents.

After suffering through the serenade, she was the first person to receive a slice of the dessert. The cake, it turned out, was sweet. Very sweet. More so than anything she’d ever tasted. She thought liked sweet things, but it was a little bit much for her. The soft middle part was good, just about the right amount of sweetness. That icing, though! Wow. She couldn’t imagine anyone being able to eat much of it.

Even if very few people ate much of the icing, it was quite easy to scrape off, and the layer underneath was a new and exciting treat that everyone seemed to enjoy. And hey, some people seemed to actually like the icing. Wan Ai, in particular, seemed to have much more of a sweet tooth than anyone else, eating not only all of hers but Zou Tian’s uneaten portion as well.

The main even came after everyone had finished, though. Master called Yang Xiu and Yang Ru up to the stage next to him and had them close their eyes.

“Where I come from, it is tradition to give presents to loved ones in celebration of their birthday,” Benton said. “When I came to this area nearly a year ago, this outgoing young lady and taciturn by an equal measure young man were the first people I met. My life is better for that encounter, and to commemorate both them turning sixteen years old today and my meeting them, Xun Wu and I created gifts.”

Yang Xiu couldn’t see what happened next as her eyes were closed, but the crowd made a large commotion.

“Yang Xiu, Yang Ru!” Master said. “Here are your presents!”

Her eyes shot open and immediately landed on two identical strange objects sitting on the stage before them. She wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but she was excited to find out.