Chapter 48 - Retail Therapy

True to Benton’s decision, he and the twins spent the entire day in the warehouse cultivating, sparring, and practicing techniques. In the early evening, Yang Ru reached Small Success in Stone Skin, quickly returning one of the three Sect Points that had been spent on the technique.

Benton pulled up the boy’s status.

Name:Yang RuAffiliation:Host's DiscipleAge:15Cultivation:Qi Gathering - Minor Realm SixQi Available:87Techniques:Foundational Spear Essentials - Mastery Foundational Archery Essentials - Small Success Stone Skin - Small SuccessSpiritual Roots:A-Qi Aspect:Low viscosity lava flowing down Mount Burning Thunder

Just because he hadn’t done it in a while, he did the same for Yang Xiu.

Name:Yang XiuAffiliation:Host's DiscipleAge:15Cultivation:Qi Gathering - Minor Realm SixQi Available:87Techniques:Foundational Archery Essentials - Mastery Foundational Spear Essentials - Small Success Peerless Peering and Perception - Small SuccessSpiritual Roots:AQi Aspect:Perfectly smooth ice balanced on the razor edge of freezing and thawing

Her progress on advancing techniques had stagnated a bit, but to be fair, their schedule while they’d been traveling didn’t leave her much time to do anything besides minimal cultivating. Overall, he was very pleased with both the twins’ progress.

Other than checking and re-checking System stuff, it was mostly a quiet, boring day for Benton. He really needed to find a hobby since he wasn’t cultivating. The only thing he had to occupy his time was planning for the next day.

So far, they hadn’t accomplished much in the way of their goals for the trip. The only big tick marks on the checklist were selling the wood and securing the manufacturer of a supply of really good spears.

Recruitment so far had been a total nothing burger. At best, they had one potential prospect in Zou Tian, but given the sect recruitment restrictions, who knew how much trouble it would be to get the boy out of the city without drawing undue attention. Benton had a feeling that, if he tried to leave with a wagon full of orphans, he’d be stopped by the City Watch.

The fact that his prospects were looking so negative in that regard was a big problem. He needed more sect members, ones without ties to the village.

All he could do would be to keep his eyes and ears open and hope that an opportunity presented itself. Which wasn’t exactly a plan. Ugh.

The rest of his To Do List was more easily solved. He had in his possession just under one hundred forty-eight thousand silver taels and a lot of stuff to buy, including food for the village and for his future sect, weapons, spirit herbs for body cultivation, fabric for sect uniforms, and various materials to hopefully get his disciples doing alchemy and arrays and crafting talismans and creating all the other stuff necessary for cultivators to thrive.



Yeah, that huge pile of city notes seemed like a lot until he started thinking about how much he had to buy. On the other hand, in neither of his two lives had he gotten to spend so much money at one time. The closest comparison was when he put down fifty thousand bucks as a down payment on his house.

Some retail therapy, as his wife used to say, sounded like a fine idea after the stress of yesterday followed by the boredom of the morning and afternoon. The only question was—should he leave the siblings cultivating in the warehouse or drag them shopping?

Okay, so he was probably projecting the attitude of his kids back on Earth when they’d been teenagers onto the twins. They actually seemed to enjoy seeing the sights of the big city.

Not like they had gaming consoles and the internet to keep them occupied.

A thought occurred to him. He was grooming the twins to be the leaders of a sect. The more life experiences they had, the better. Going out into the city with a list and a pile of cash would be a good learning opportunity for both of them.

That seemed dangerous, though. The number of Bad Things that could happen to the pair in a cultivation world was endless. Bandits. Looking wrong at a member of the City Watch. Offending a member of one of the sects. Running across an arrogant young master. Being accused of stealing. Having their money pickpocketed. Scam artists. The list went on.

Yikes.

Benton sighed. When he was a kid, he spent his summers outside. His mom shoved him out the door after breakfast, and other than maybe coming home to grab a quick sandwich for lunch, he wasn’t expected to be seen again until the streetlights came on. If he and his friends ended up riding bikes miles away from home, no one knew or cared.

In contrast, his grandchildren were raised practically encased in bubble wrap. Want to ride a skateboard? You’ll need a helmet and kneepads and elbow pads. Want to play at a friend’s house? Mom will arrange a playdate and drive you there. His youngest granddaughter didn’t start walking the two blocks to the school bus stop alone until she was in fifth grade.

Benton’s worst fear as a parent was that something truly bad would happen to one of his children. He understood the impulse to lock them in their rooms so that nothing could ever hurt them.

On the other hand, he and his wife weren’t raising kids; they were raising adults. To get to that point, kids needed to experience freedom and to make mistakes and to get scraped knees and to make their own decisions.

That philosophy applied even more to the twins. They were, after all, already considered to be adults in their society.

The next morning, he addressed them after breakfast. “My budget for filling three wagons with food for the village and the sect is seventy-five thousand taels. We also need enough fabric to create two to three robes for at least one hundred people. My preferred colors are blues and silvers.” He handed each forty thousand taels and a copy of the mayor’s list. “Be back by dinner.”

“Yes, Senior Brother,” the two chorused.

Neither looked fazed at all by his instructions, and when they left, Benton grinned. They really were two very good kids.

He quickly found Zou Tian in a nearby alley. “I’m going to be at either the Excellent Celestial Emporium, the Flawless Tower of Herbs, or the Swift Hunter Weapon Vault. Follow my disciples and come find me if they get into any trouble.”

Just because he’d decided to let the kids walk a tightrope didn’t mean he wasn’t going to make sure that the safety net was in place.

Since the city apparently had rules about craftspeople only being allowed to sell their wares wholesale to distributors, Benton had had to ask the people making his spears for recommendations on the best places to buy what he needed. The three shops he’d told Zou Tian about had been the consensus choices.

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With less than seventy thousand taels to buy all that he needed, he decided to go in order of the most important items on his list to the least important, and the absolute must have was spirit herbs. Those little green treasures were his ticket to convert taels into Sect Points—and of course to strengthen and protect his sect members—through Body Cultivation.

A relatively short walk found him at the herb shop, which he almost walked right past. He was, after all, expecting a tower. Instead, he found a run-down shack in the middle of a lot of other run-down shacks.

If he were judging a book by its cover, he would have kept on walking past it by design instead of accident, but it had been recommended. Once inside, he was glad he hadn’t followed his impulse. An overwhelming but not unpleasant wall of herbal scents hit him as soon as he walked through the door. The place was literally packed with herbs.

Quite possibly the oldest woman he’d seen on two planets greeted him, and he explained his need for spirit plants that could be used in Bronze level cultivation baths.

“Does the gentleman have a recipe?” she said.

“No, sorry. I just need herbs that work in general.”

She hmmed. “How many?”

That question was the one that most concerned him. He didn’t want anyone in the city to know he was starting a sect. Food and even fabric could be purchased in large quantities without drawing much attention. Herbs and weapons, though…

Try as he might, there wasn’t much he could do about the possibility of raising suspicions. At his best speed, it was a two-month roundtrip journey from the village to the city. It might be a year or more before he returned to buy supplies. He needed to equip his soon to be established sect for the interim period.

His only choice was to mislead and obfuscate as much as he could.

“Depends on the cost,” Benton said. “My client gave me limited funds but were really hoping I’d be able to get enough for about fifteen hundred baths.”

“Fifteen hundred? Why would they need that many?”



“It’s a small sect that recently experienced a beast tide, so they’re awash with cores. Instead of converting all those to money, they decided to make all their members into body cultivators.”

She hmmed again. “This lowly one can see the benefit. Expensive to use all those cores, but if that’s their priority, this lowly one can’t gainsay them.”

Once the lady got over her shock, they started dickering. It turned out that there wasn’t a whole lot of spirit in the spirit herbs for the Bronze level, so the plants were reasonably cheap, less than ten tael per bath after a discount for volume was applied. The issue was that she just didn’t have nearly enough for that many baths.

“How many do you have?” he said.

“If the Esteemed Master can give me a week, eight hundred?”

Ugh. That would help a lot, but he really wanted to lay in a supply for the foreseeable future.

Seeing his dismay, she quickly said, “These herbs aren’t all that hard to grow. This lowly one can get the Esteemed Master books and seeds. Mortal tools are sufficient for harvesting.”

Well, he did have a lot of kids he was feeding that really didn’t have any other job. Surely, he could find someone who wouldn’t mind working in a small herb garden. Not to mention that, with the entire village having retreated inside the walls, there had to be farmers who were out of work.

“That is acceptable,” he said.

They settled on nine thousand taels, half paid immediately and the rest upon pick up. Budgeting for the entire amount so he didn’t accidentally spend it left him with just under sixty thousand taels.

Next stop, the weapon store, which he was sure would take a large, large dent out of his remaining funds.

Upon entering, he spotted a smiling middle-aged man helping a customer and a teenage boy sweeping. Benton, as was his wont, scanned all three of them. The man and his customer weren’t anything special. But the boy…

Affiliation:Swift Hunter Weapon VaultAge:16Cultivation:NoneSpiritual Roots:BQi Aspect:A bar of iron slowly liquifying in a hot forge

Wow. Benton’s eyes almost popped out of his head. Not only did the kid have the highest potential out of anyone he’d seen thus far save the twins, but his qi aspect practically destined him to become a blacksmith.

Benton quickly approached the boy.

“Hello, Esteemed Master, how may this lowly one be of service today?”

“Do you know much about weapons?”

“Yes, Esteemed Master, as much as an apprentice can. Weapons have been lowly one’s passion for as long as I could remember.”

“Interesting. And you really wanted to sell them instead of making them?”

The boy’s face fell. “This lowly one’s family is not rich enough to afford to apprentice me to a blacksmith.” His tone brightened. “But this shop is the next best thing, and this lowly one will strive to serve the Esteemed Master well.”

The boy’s interest in smithing was exactly what Benton had expected considering the qi aspect, which only made him want the boy for the sect so much more. The combination of such a high potential with a well-defined and necessary role made him the perfect recruit, and given his circumstances, Benton thought he had a chance to pull it off.

The first step of his plan was to gain the merchant’s respect, and there was no better way to accomplish that goal than to spend that bunch of cash.


While Benton wanted every member of his sect, or nearly every member of his sect, to wield a spear, he wasn’t planning on pushing archery nearly as hard. Still, given the condition of the wilds surrounding the village, he needed to be able to field a solid number of archers to man the walls in the event of a beast tide.

“I’d like fifty bows, please, of various styles, sizes, and pull weights, ranging from solid mortal weapons all the way to a few that are suitable for Foundation Establishment cultivators.”

When Qi Gathering cultivators fought with melee weapons, they actively used their power to make themselves much stronger and faster, meaning the weapons needed to be far tougher than anything used by a mortal. For bows, the main difference was that cultivators could utilize a far higher draw strength, which didn’t result in nearly as big an impact as with melee weapons. He was fine saving a little of his limited funds to give some sect members good but slightly inferior bows until he could afford to replace them with something better, especially since he had a use for every tael he saved that he felt was even more important.

The boy was far too junior to negotiate such a major deal, so the man was called over. Using the same “small sect client” excuse, Benton settled for twenty-five mortal bows, twenty Qi Gathering bows, four regular Foundation Establishment bows, and one custom order bow that had been half paid for by a Golden Core cultivator who’d never returned to pick it up. He also selected one hundred inexpensive spears to use in training, a thousand arrows, and two dozen basic knives.

And just like that twenty-five thousand of Benton’s remaining taels were gone. On the plus side, the man would have the weapons ready the next day instead of a week like the other place, and even better, the man was looking at Benton like he was right up there next to the City Lord in terms of status.

Benton feigned turning to leave before stopping and turning back to the man. “I just had a thought. I believe your young clerk has some interest in smithing. Is that correct?”

“Yes, Esteemed Master,” the man said doubtfully.

“I actually have need of someone with that interest. I’m having some equipment custom made, and it would be a benefit to recruit someone who could watch the process and then travel with me to perform simple maintenance and upkeep tasks when required.”

The boy’s eyes lit up with hope. He turned to the man expectantly.

“This one is sorry, but Shi Long has entered into an apprentice contract with the shop. This one cannot excuse that commitment.”



This guy! It apparently wasn’t enough that he’d gotten paid in order to basically receive free labor in exchange for teaching the boy, but he also wanted to get paid more to let the kid out of the deal.

Fortunately, Benton had funds, and a recruit like Shi Long was worth almost any price.

“I would certainly be willing to provide remuneration to obtain his contract from the Swift Hunter Weapon Vault.”

Benton found the negotiation that followed to be quite distasteful. He felt like he was buying a kid outright, which was icky in the extreme. Giving into such feelings would have served no purpose, though, so he hunkered down and bargained, settling on a ridiculous five hundred taels. There was no way that the original apprentice contract had cost a quarter of that, but Benton had apparently made his interest way too well known.

Regardless, he was happy with the result as he ended up with his third best recruit so far following him from the shop. Even after having to pay another five hundred taels to convince the blacksmith making the spear tips to teach Shi Long his techniques, Benton felt like he’d gotten a bargain.

Benton’s final stop was the Emporium. His main goals at the closest thing to a general store that he’d seen was to buy tubs suitable for the body cultivation baths and to pick up whatever he needed to get Wan Ai started down the path to become an alchemist, a profession Su didn’t know much about.

Benton believed that she wouldn’t be able to use a pill furnace at all until Foundation Establishment. The saleswoman disagreed.

“If you’re expecting a Qi Gathering apprentice to produce a healing pill that can be used by a cultivator, you’re right,” she said, “but one can absolutely still use an external heat source to create pills suitable for mortals. With recipes from a beginner alchemy book, which we have in stock, and a few basic ingredients, your apprentice can get valuable experience drawing out herb essences and combining it into pills that have a real use.”

Benton was sold. The more his disciples could do earlier, the better. And the whole setup was cheap compared to everything else he was buying. He also found a beginner book on arrays and twenty-five flags that were reasonably priced. All told, those items were less than two hundred taels, so he splurged on Wan Ai’s knife, purchasing one for a thousand taels that the woman insisted would serve her for harvesting, cutting, and, in a pinch, self-defense through Foundation Establishment.

The bathtubs were also not as simple as he’d imagined, since ones specifically meant for body cultivation had various arrays etched into them. Each one was a thousand taels, much more than he had expected to spend.

But he needed them, so spend he did.

No sooner had he finalized the purchase than Zou Tian burst through the door. “Esteemed Master Cultivator, come quickly. There’s trouble!”