1

Kang Ya-Ting slowly sipped his tea as he sat across from Chao Su.

The man was as inscrutable as ever. Though he would not admit to his cultivation level, his access to high level treasures, demonstrated combat prowess, and the inability of anyone in the Golden Core realm to sense him proved he was at least Nascent Soul. The fact that he didn't fear the strongest cultivators on the continent lent credence to the suspicion that he was even higher.

Kang Ya-Ting sighed, wishing he had more information. In the end, though, all he could do was base his decisions on the best data he had. If Chao Su thought he could defend himself from whatever forces were arrayed against him, then that was what they had to plan on.

That decision didn't mean that they shouldn't minimize the amount of enemies as much as possible, though. Sending a gift to the Swift Blizzard Sect should keep them neutral for the moment, and a properly worded apology to the City Lord giving him face would go a long way to preventing a response that was too severe.

On the other hand, Kang Ya-Ting had to also think about what actions would most benefit the Poison Claw Sect. If Chao Su really did destroy the Jade Chameleon Sect in the city, that would seriously impact that sect's prominence, turning the big three instantly into the big two.

Or back into the big three with the Rising Tide Sect ascending.

An all-out war in which Chao Su destroyed the emperor and both the other sects completely would make the Poison Claw Sect … subordinate to the man.

Even if Chao Su didn't desire that level of control, he would be granted it regardless as the winner. No one would consider the Poison Claw Sect as anything except a dog licking at its master's heels.

No. It would be better for Chao Su's true power to remain as hidden as possible. A big three featuring the neutral Swift Blizzard Sect, the small and somewhat subordinate Rising Tide Sect, and their strong ally, the ascendent Poison Claw Sect, would be perfect.

"This is what we should do…" Kang Ya-Ting said.

###

Benton quickly fired off two missives. The first one, addressed to the City Lord, apologized for Benton's actions, laid out his case for the destruction of Jade Chameleon branch, and promised to appear in person at the City Lord's palace as soon as the grounds had been destroyed. The second one, addressed to the Swift Blizzard Sect, introduced Benton to the sect leader, repeated the case for the destruction of the Jade Chameleon branch, and included a bribe to remain in his favor, a top heaven ranked cultivation method for ice aspected Foundation Establishment realm cultivators with ice aspected qi.

He almost laughed as he spent the forty Sect Points necessary to create the jade slip. At one point, he would have been apoplectic at the thought of losing that many points with little hope of regaining most of them. Looking at the nearly eight hundred points he retained, however, he just wasn't worried about it.

"You really think this will work? An apology and a bribe?" Benton said.

"The messages and the gift are just a way to give face to the two factions," Kang Ya-Ting said. "There is much politicking to be done before we can say which way either of them will go. All this does is let them know that you're willing to be reasonable and give them a reason to take a neutral position until they have more information. A lot of their response is going to be dictated by how overpowering your attack on the Jade Chameleon branch is."

"Then I should really go all out?"

"No! If you're too strong and make them fear you too much, they'll start taking extraordinary measures to protect themselves, like reaching out to larger sects on other continents to bring in someone close to your level or acquiring a treasure that would trouble even you."

That advice was the exact opposite of what Benton had expected the man to say. In a might makes right cultivation world, power was everything. It seemed really counter intuitive to hold back. Kang Ya-Ting's logic did seem to make sense, though.

"You're saying that I need to be overwhelming but not too overwhelming?" Benton said.

"Exactly."

Actually, that worked out pretty well. Since Benton didn't have access to an aura, he'd be able to play off not using one to Kang Ya-Ting as trying not to be too overwhelming. Perfect.

"I'll do my best," Benton said.

###

Standing atop the allure, Yang Xiu wiped a tear from her eye. She couldn't stop thinking about Ye Zan. The captain had died saving her. Had thrown himself in front of blades meant for her.

Her mind kept going back to that moment, and she asked herself if she could have done anything differently. If she hadn't shot those arrows and instead jumped down off the wall, Ye Zan might still be alive.

But maybe someone else would be dead.

And she couldn't help but think that her actions were correct. Standing bravely in the face of sure defeat and death was exactly what a cultivator should do.

Right?

Not in every situation, of course. Master was clear that his disciples should seek to save their own lives when possible. But she hadn't been trying to save face. She'd been trying to keep the superior cultivator's attention on her as long as possible to preserve what lives she could.

She had acted to protect the good and the innocent, exactly as Master had taught. Ye Zan, too, had acted correctly, judging his sacrifice to be for the good of the sect.

The two absolutely correct actions, though, had resulted in tragedy, so how could they be right?

She glanced down at the spot where his body had lain. The mayor had arranged for it to be taken away and prepared for burial, but the dirt was still rust colored from the blood that was spilt.

That blood. His loss. The ceremony that they'd be having once Master returned. Saying goodbye to a good man and trusted friend. None of it was because either of them had acted wrong. No. All that was solely because they were not strong enough.

"Huang Yimun," she called.

The man was sitting on the ground near where Ye Zan had been slain. "Yes, Senior Sister?"

"In Master's absence, I'm appointing you interim Guard Captain. I want a council meeting. Gather everyone and have them meet me in the arena."

In other circumstances, she supposed it would have given her some sort of thrill to make such an appointment or to call a meeting on her own. Instead, she felt numb, able to recognize what she should feel but unable to muster the proper emotions.

She dashed to the arena and waited for the others to arrive.

In relatively short order, they began to trickle in, her brother and Kang Lin first. Eventually, they all came, even the mayor and the old wood harvester. Yang Xiu hadn't been positive they would obey a summons that didn't come from Master.

"We're not strong enough," she said. "I'm not strong enough. What can we do?"

Her brother and Kang Lin shared a glance, but it was the mayor who spoke.

"There will always be someone more powerful."

"I know," Yang Xiu said, "but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be doing everything I can to grow."

"There is a resource we're not properly exploiting," Zou Tian said. "The Trials Pagoda. You're the only one who has used it at all."

"You're right," she said. "Someone should be using it daily."

Peng Zhen shook his head. "We need Master's permission."

"The Trials Pagoda seeks his permission after the trial taker makes a selection," Yang Xiu said. "I doubt he'll allow us to change our aspect or improve our spiritual roots, but he should be fine with us working on techniques or our cultivation."

"Maybe not the cultivation," Kang Lin said. "My understanding is that treasures like the Trials Pagoda can give your cultivation a huge boost, but there are dangers of accelerating too fast. Barring a bottleneck, no one in the village besides Master is qualified to tell us when such a boost would be beneficial."

"Fine. We can at least use it for techniques, correct?"

No one objected.

"Who will use it today?" Yang Xiu said.

"Me," Yang Ru said.

"Your shield?"

Her brother grunted.

"Fine," Yang Xiu said. "Peng Zhen, please make sure that someone is using it daily. If no one else wants to, find me near the end of the day and either I or Yang Ru will."

"Yes, Senior Sister."

"Any other thoughts on how we can get stronger?" she said.

"People have only been sporadically using the Wood for cultivating," Zou Tian said. "People having been sparring as much. It was fine for everyone to take a little break after the stress of the beast tide, but it would be appropriate to return to more structured training."

"Good," Yang Xiu said. "Yang Ru and I will work out a schedule that includes weapons training and cultivating for all the members of the Martial Pavilion. I expect all the other pavilion heads to do the same."

"Yes, Senior Sister."

The Rising Tide Sect needed to rise. Quickly. So that no one else had to die like Ye Zan had.

Chapter 176

The fact that destroying the Jade Chameleon Sect branch in Sixth Flawless Flowing City might result in the Rising Tide Sect gaining the enmity of not only that sect but the Swift Blizzard Sect and the Emperor as well gave Benton pause. On one hand, following through with his threat risked his sect members. On the other, showing weakness by not following through garnered just as much risk.

Besides, his cause was righteous. He had warned the Jade Chameleons to leave his people out of any pursuit of vengeance, and what had they done? Attacked his people.

Not only that, but they'd rubbed the fact that they were making the attack in his face.

Logically, it made sense for all three of them to face him first, removing the true deterrent before moving on to killing the innocents. But that wasn't what they did.

Instead, they sent one of the trio ahead to the village.

They knew he valued his people and wanted him to suffer, knowing that his disciples and sect members were dying as he failed to defend them.

Regardless of whether the trio had acted on their own or with the blessing of their elders, the sect deserved punishment. For a cultivator of any realm, no matter how low, one's actions reflect back on the sect. Period. For a cultivator as highly realmed as Golden Core, that fact held doubly true.

The Jade Chameleon Sect deserved punishment, and Ye Zan deserved to have his death avenged.

Benton's threats were fair and measured as far as he was concerned. If anything, he was being too lenient. A real Nihility realm cultivator would have simply wiped the branch off the map with no warning whatsoever.

"Well, Friend Kang," Benton said, "we've enacted the proper mitigating measures, and I do believe that the deadline I gave for evacuating the sect grounds has passed. It's time for me to become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Kang Ya-Ting gave a funny look for a moment, probably due to the, to him, odd turn of a phrase. "Do you mind, Friend Su, if I and one other were to observe the spectacle? For purposes of serving as witnesses for the City Lord, of course."

If not for the seriousness of what was about to happen, Benton would have chuckled. The elder obviously just wanted to satisfy his curiosity. There was no harm in that, though.

Unless Benton fell flat on his face, of course. That would be both embarrassing and deadly. He hoped he wasn't overestimating his own prowess.

By that point, though, he'd already placed his bets, so to speak, so it was in for a penny, in for a pound time.

"No problem," Benton said. "That way you can tell me afterward if I dialed my power back enough."

The elder cupped his hands in gratitude and nodded.

Soon, Benton was flying above the city with Kang Ya-Ting and an elder he'd introduced as Dai Shuren following behind him.

Honestly, Benton's greatest worry wasn't that he would fail to destroy the sect or even that he would die. It was that the sect hadn't listened to him about the evacuation, and he'd be forced to kill a bunch of mortals and teenager cultivators. With the death of Ye Zan weighing on him, he'd come to terms with the fact that he would be killing more people, but the mass slaughter of relative innocents wasn't something he wanted on his conscience.

Could he even bring himself to kill the Jade Chameleon Sect equivalents of Yang Xiu and Yang Ru and Zou Tian and Wan Ai and Kang Lin and all the others? Bright diligent young minds who just wanted a chance to find their own place in the world? How could he snuff out those lights so early?

No. There was no way. He'd have to find some alternative.

Luckily, when he approached closely enough for the sect branch to be in range of his spiritual sense, there were only a small number of Golden Core cultivators present.

Perfect. He'd probably be in for a fight, but he found that he didn't mind that at all.

Just before he entered what he suspected was the range of his opponents' senses—suddenly relevant considering the two cultivators following him—he got a popup notification and quickly paused his progress, hovering to read the prompt.

""Host's disciple, Yang Ru, requests to use the Trial Pagoda:

Requested Trial: Advance Cultivation or

Technique

Requested Technique: Momentum

Dissolution Shield

Allow Trial: Y/N""

With the Foundation Establishment cultivators on missions to retrieve beast corpses and no clear plan for how, or which, Qi Gathering cultivators should use the pagoda, access to it had fallen by the wayside since Yang Xiu's successful completion. It was good that his disciples were taking advantage of the resource and following the guidelines he'd given.

And Yang Ru advancing his shield was a good choice. Getting the technique to Large Success would be a huge improvement to the boy's power set, and it seemed like all three of his Foundation Establishment disciples had difficulty learning their shields.

The Momentum Dissolution aspect was quite interesting as well. Once Yang Ru attained Mastery, anything that hit it with Momentum would find that Momentum just … gone.

Powerful indeed.

Benton selected yes.

As he glanced back, Kang Ya-Ting arched his eyebrows.

"Just needed a second to take care of something," Benton said. "I'm ready now. Let's proceed."

Seconds later, Benton reached the sect grounds and stopped just outside the wall. No less than fifteen Golden Core cultivators floated opposite them. Kang Ya-Ting and the other elder quickly retreated to a position out of easy striking distance.

"Any of you who leave now will not be harmed," Benton said, using his new booming voice technique despite the nearness of his audience. "All who remain will die."

He almost got goosebumps with how dark he sounded. The thing was, though… he wasn't playing. There was no acting. No games. Every word had been completely serious.

The part of him that had been a grandfather back on Earth and who had suffered no true evil at the hands of others hoped that all fifteen of the Jade Chameleon cultivators would simply leave so he wouldn't have to kill them. The part of him who had seen Ye Zan's body, on the other hand, prayed to the heavens that they wouldn't.

That second part of him had his wish granted.

"Advance one inch past this wall or take any aggressive action, and it will be you who dies this day," the lead cultivator, a woman with a stern visage and who held a sword, said.

Benton had put a lot of effort into coming up with his ultimate juggernaut combat build. He figured it was time to put it to the test.

Channeling a single qi into a lightning bolt, he tossed it toward the lead cultivator. It was intercepted by a dome shield extending above the wall, an earth qi aspected shield.

Interesting. Lightning qi was weak against earth. He was willing to bet that the Jade Chameleon Sect, having experienced his lightning attack previously, assumed that was his sole qi aspect and tuned their defenses against it.

That mistake would be their undoing.

Well, part of their undoing. The first, most crucial, part had been attacking his sect members.

"System," he said internally, "please create a technique that blasts a high-pressure stream of water and buy it to Mastery."

""Technique creation confirmed.

Host has learned the technique, Hydro

Blast - Mastery.

Host has 790 Sect Points available.""

Nice. Since the shield was attuned to earth, the water would blast right through it, fifty percent more efficiently than a neutral aspect and two hundred percent better than lightning.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Benton said. "That was an aggressive act. Show me what you've got."

The fifteen had been hesitating, clearly unsure how to respond to such a tepid little shock that wouldn't have hurt any of them even had it gotten through the shield. His taunt got them moving, though, and all of them launched attacks almost as one.

Strike after strike hit his shield, which activated only when it was struck and only in the area in which it was struck and countered each strike with the most efficient aspect that he had a Concept for.

After several minutes, only a few hundred thousand qi had been drained. The shield had performed as well as he'd hoped. Better even. It was perfect.

"If that's all you've got," Benton's voice boomed, "then it's my turn."

He charged a full one million qi into his hydro blast, which turned out to be overkill as the dome shield barely held for an instant against the onslaught. The cultivator's individual qi shields performed a little better. But only a little.

One by one, he directed the blast at them until they were each overcome.

The high-pressure water did a number of each of them, but Golden Core cultivators' bodies were too tough to be killed by just that amount of force. They immediately tried to flee.

A Gravity burst stopped them, causing them to sink toward the ground and holding them in place.

Benton removed his bow from his storage ring and used a quarter of a million qi to power his signature attack, aimed at the lead cultivator. The shield breaker didn't have a lot of work left to do after the damage done from the hydro blast and thus ended up taking out most of her chest. The Void finisher made the rest of her torso disappear.

As Benton charged the second arrow, he realized he felt no pleasure for executing the cultivators. It was a duty. Nothing more. His sole purpose was to avenge Ye Zan and protect his sect members.

Arrow after arrow fell. Cultivator after cultivator died.

By the tenth one, the Jade Chameleons realized their fate. The eleventh stood there atop his hobbled flying sword, resigned, as the arrow hit him.

Same for the twelfth.

The thirteenth jumped to the ground and kowtowed. The force of the Gravity technique buried his face in the dirt. His two remaining compatriots quickly matched his cowardice.

Presented with his first true quandary, Benton winced. It was one thing to kill a foe, however underpowered, in battle. It was quite another to execute someone who surrendered.

How could he look his disciples in the eye if he killed these three cultivators in cold blood? But how could he not follow through? He'd specifically told them that any who remained were dead.

And if he did decide to let them live, what the heck was he supposed to do with them? Imprison them? Three Golden Core Cultivators? How?

See if Kang Ya-Ting could take them? But that was too big of an ask. The problem was Benton's, and he needed to deal with it.

"System," he said internally, "can you create a technique to destroy someone's cultivation base?"

""Tribulation aspected qi could theoretically destroy a cultivator's core, and since Host is in possession of a Concept for Anti-Tribulation qi, it is also theoretically possible for Host to also gain possession of Tribulation qi.""

That was one of the most reluctantly worded notifications Benton had ever received from the System, and considering some of the stuff he'd pulled in bending the System to do what he wanted, that was saying something. Regardless, Tribulation aspected qi sounded like exactly what he needed.

"System, please purchase a Concept for Tribulation qi to be the antithesis of cultivation and create a technique that allows me to fire a bolt of Tribulation Lightning at a cultivator's core in order to destroy it utterly and completely. Please purchase that technique to Mastery."

""Concept creation purchase confirmed.

Technique creation confirmed.

Host has learned the technique, Power of the Heavens - Mastery.

Host has 766 Sect Points available.""

Benton let out a sharp breath. The title of his new technique was more than a little ominous, and he briefly considered if he should be wielding power that maybe should remain the domain of the heavens.

Then again, if he really wasn't supposed to have it, the System wouldn't allow the purchase, right?

It would be fine. Probably.

"You shall live," Benton said coldly, "but you will no longer be cultivators."

Before his statement had a chance to sink in, he released his Gravity burst and fired a small bolt of Tribulation lightning at each of the three Golden Core cultivators.

Shortly after the bolts hit, the three were more accurately referred to as the three former Golden Core cultivators. The lightning had only been slightly hindered by their qi shields and penetrated their bodies, destroying meridians and their cores as it ravaged their bodies.

They'd live.

Well, if they found healing quickly enough, anyway. That wasn't his problem, though.

They would not, however, ever cultivate again.

That was a more than satisfactory solution to him.

"Friend Kang," Benton said, "would you please remove this trash from the grounds so that I can destroy this branch completely?"