In the absence of an emergency arising, Benton was done with his spending spree of Sect Points. He’d just utilized a massive amount for improving himself and wanted to get used to the changes before adding any more. Besides, he’d overspent his personal allotment by quite a bit.
Unlike previous times when he’d dipp...
2024-10-21 15:20:15 +0000 UTC
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As Benton walked through the forest far from any of his sect members, he contemplated what to do with the points he had available to increase his personal power. Seventy-eight points was an unprecedented amount, more than enough to max out his ultimate juggernaut combat build.
His first step was obvious, to max out ever...
2024-10-21 14:55:09 +0000 UTC
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Benton turned to Mo Jian. “Honorable Mayor, how about the villagers?”
“My fellow new inductees are all diligently cultivating ten hours per day as instructed and are approaching the second minor realm, Esteemed Sect Leader.”
“I was more thinking about how we should proceed for the future,” Benton said....
2024-10-21 10:13:01 +0000 UTC
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The next four days passed with no exciting developments besides the incremental improvements made by Benton’s sect members. Peng Hanying was able to advance from the first minor realm to the second, but it was Wan Ai who made the most major improvement in cultivation. She first hit minor realm six before using a pill to get...
2024-10-21 10:12:01 +0000 UTC
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A little more than a month prior, Zi Delan and his friends were struggling to find food, often resorting to methods he did not feel comfortable with just to keep himself alive. Mugging innocent people. Robbing stores and homes. He’d hated doing it, but the choice was thieving or dying of starvation.
At least, they’d...
2024-10-21 10:11:01 +0000 UTC
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Kang Lin met her grandfather in Elder Dai’s chambers, cupping her hands and bowing low as she presented the scroll containing Chao Su’s response. The letter was, of course, unopened.
Grandfather removed the wax seal and began reading. After but an instant, he lowered it and peered at Kang Lin. “What was Chao Su’...
2024-10-21 10:10:00 +0000 UTC
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Yang Xiu couldn’t believe how unfathomable her master was.
First, he hopped over the fifteen-foot-tall gate with all the ease she would have demonstrated leaping over a fallen tree trunk. Upon landing, he calmly stood there as the jaguar, for no apparent reason, was repelled from atop Yang Ru.
Again for no appar...
2024-10-21 10:09:01 +0000 UTC
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Benton developed a routine over the next several days, beginning his morning by joining the twins on a sweep of the wood harvesting area and doing check-ins with his sect members and the villagers working on the wall. The craftspeople were actually under-utilized, creating a twenty-feet long by twenty-feet tall section every ...
2024-10-21 10:08:01 +0000 UTC
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Benton quickly ran to the harvesting site and found a large pile of wood laying on a tarp, including multiple tree trunks exceeding forty feet in length. He stored all of it in his ring and ran to the village.
It was late, and most everyone was asleep. Not knowing where to deposit his load, he ran by Peng Zhen’s house...
2024-10-21 10:07:00 +0000 UTC
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Benton rushed from the house and to the gate. Not even willing to wait for the village guards to open it, he leapt over the fifteen-foot-tall structure. He needed to get away. He needed to think.
First, though, he needed to commit to his decision. His new decision, not the old one that he reneged on.
Ugh.
...
2024-10-21 10:06:00 +0000 UTC
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Benton met the twins the next morning at the gate. The three of them made a quick run clearing both sides of the road leading to where the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood grew and doing a sweep through and around it.
He killed many beasts, mostly rank twos, but didn’t use any of his new techniques. They required practice bef...
2024-10-21 10:05:00 +0000 UTC
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After escorting his newest sect members back to the village, Benton returned to the area outside the arena. As the site of his sect and land he personally owned, the place was already becoming special to him, and he wanted to spend as much time as possible there.
Work was never finished for a sect leader, apparently, be...
2024-10-21 10:04:01 +0000 UTC
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Wan Ai was at the orphanage deeply engrossed in studying the Body Cultivation scripture Master had given her when Zou Tian came for her. It felt like she’d barely even scratched the surface of everything she needed to understand, and the distraction was not welcome.
“This one was able to find a perfect lab for you, ...
2024-10-21 10:03:01 +0000 UTC
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Prosperous Gray Forest Village was a quiet place, especially for the last ten years or so. They rarely received visitors, and other than the occasional spirit beast attacking the walls, nothing much happened.
The death of the village that Mo Jian presided over was a slow one, one characterized by starvation, lack of res...
2024-10-21 10:02:01 +0000 UTC
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With Kang Lin having departed, it was time for Benton and his council to get back to work.
“Alright, everyone,” Benton said. “Let’s move back to the arena floor. There are a few more important issues to discuss.”
No one groaned as he led them back onto the sand and set up the tables and chairs again. He ...
2024-10-21 10:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Benton’s face must have showed his concern at sensing a cultivator heading their way because Yang Xiu said, “Is something wrong, Master?”
From the cultivator’s movement speed, they weren’t using a flying sword. In fact, they weren’t moving fast at all. Unless he missed his guess, it was someone in the Qi Gat...
2024-10-21 10:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Benton looked at his eleven council members. Though they’d been talking for a while, none appeared fatigued by the marathon session. In fact, they were all engaged as far as he could tell. That, he supposed, was an advantage to founding a sect in a society in which it wasn’t a common experience to conduct a meeting to sch...
2024-10-20 15:24:36 +0000 UTC
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A much smaller group gathered with Benton the next morning in front of the gate. His council, with the addition finally of Zhong Wen and Wan Ai, numbered eleven, and for so few people, it was relatively easy for him and the twins to kill the spirit beasts en route to the sect grounds while Ye Zan and Hou Yazhu kept any leaker...
2024-10-20 03:21:38 +0000 UTC
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Benton started reading the new quests from the top. The first one didn’t seem too hard on the face of it. Getting one hundred members only required forty-five more, and he fully intended to induct fifty in the coming days. The part about loyalty, though…
“System,” he said internally, “what is my current averag...
2024-10-20 03:20:41 +0000 UTC
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As soon as everyone was organized for the trip back to the village, Benton scanned the area for any spirit beasts. There were none near.
Good. The twins and Ye Zan’s guards should be able to handle any that popped up.
Benton pulled up his status.
2024-10-20 01:56:49 +0000 UTC
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Wan Ai had just had the best three months of her life. Growing up in the orphanage, she’d mostly been praised by Mistress Zhong for being a helpful and obedient child.
Mostly.
When Wan Ai did get into trouble it was for hiding away from the other children in the house. It wasn’t that she was bullied or teased ...
2024-10-19 19:38:43 +0000 UTC
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Benton was so excited he could barely stand it. His goal was so, so close. He just had to wait for the official letter deeding the land, and he could found the sect and complete the quest.
The mayor was diligently working on the letter. That task shouldn’t take more than an hour tops.
Meanwhile, Benton was on hi...
2024-10-19 19:37:22 +0000 UTC
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There was absolutely nothing that affected Benton’s emotions more than a sick or injured child, and the sight of poor, suffering Jin LiJuan shivering under her covers hit him right in the heart.
“M-Master?” she said, waking as he entered the room. “Master! You’re back.”
“Shh. It’s okay. Just rest....
2024-10-19 17:57:05 +0000 UTC
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Considering how little time Benton had actually spent in the village, it felt strange for him to consider it home. The small, decrepit place filled with starving people besieged on all sides by spirit beasts was his future, though, and that made it home.
The amount of spirit beasts was a bit concerning, more so than he ...
2024-10-19 17:52:47 +0000 UTC
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Ye Zan crept through the woods behind Yang Xiu, trying to move as quietly as possible. Whatever he was doing wasn’t good enough for Senior Sister, who kept glaring and him and Huang Yimun, his fellow guard who was even worse about finding every dead leaf than Ye Zan was.
Less than a month and a half ago, he’d never ...
2024-10-19 17:49:51 +0000 UTC
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Starting in the early afternoon, Benton’s musings were interrupted by notifications. Not that he minded. Not for those kinds of notifications.

By the time the caravan stopped for the night, he’d received eight more of thos...
2024-10-19 17:46:08 +0000 UTC
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So far, Benton had come up with two techniques he definitely wanted—the one that layered void and variable aspected qi on a weapon tip and the one that made an arrow faster and/or homing.
What else?
The first thing that came to mind was some kind of area attack. All things were possible in a cultivation world, s...
2024-10-19 17:37:38 +0000 UTC
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The next morning as the wagon creaked along, Benton focused on what he wanted to do with his two free Sect Points.
When he’d first been isekaied to the cultivator world and selected the Sect Leader System, he had been more than a little naïve, thinking he’d simply recruit sect members who would do all the fighting ...
2024-10-19 14:58:57 +0000 UTC
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Benton wanted to get as far from the town as they could in the remaining daylight. With friendly relations established between him and Fatty Ren, there was no real fear of cultivators interfering with the caravan, but they were transporting lots of vulnerable kids and valuable goods.
It was best to get the wagons away f...
2024-10-19 14:24:56 +0000 UTC
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Benton woke feeling good. His efforts of the last few days had paid off with him being able to achieve all his tasks and then some. Best of all, his disciples should arrive no later than early evening, and they all could finally begin the last leg of the voyage to Prosperous Gray Forest Village.
In four weeks at the mos...
2024-10-19 14:18:03 +0000 UTC
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