Chapter 229
Yang Xiu didn't even have time to flinch. After burying an arrow in the chest of one of the two Jade Chameleon Foundation Establishment cultivators charging her, the other swung a sword at her neck.
The blade glowed with white light, signifying that it was imbued with Wind qi. That element was strong against her Ice element, meaning it would hit with up to twice the force of a neutral qi aspect.
As the radiant metal sliced through the air toward her, she was at peace. Unworried. Either the qi shield technique that Master had given her would protect her, or she'd be decapitated. She was betting everything on the fact that Master would not let her down.
Swish!
Thunk!
The blade hit. Qi flashed as Wind-infused metal met a small patch of thick shield made of pure Ice. The sword bounced back.
Yang Xiu was fine. Not even bruised, much less cut. She hadn't even felt the blow. Her qi reserves barely even moved.
Her brother was already on his way, building Momentum as he ran toward the lone uninjured enemy combatant. The swordman could swing away at her all he wanted. There was no way he was breaching her shield before Yang Ru sent him crashing into the side of the auction house.
"Enough!" the leader of the Jade Chameleon squad, a cultivator in the Golden Core realm, shouted. "Regroup."
Yang Xiu glanced at Kang Lin, who was still fingering her contingency ring. The other girl shrugged as if to say, "Let's see where he's going with this."
As the Jade Chameleons heeded the call of their leader by jogging toward the wall to regroup, Yang Ru finished his sprint and stood next to his sister. The trio waited to see what would happen next.
###
Kang Lin wasn't surprised that the Golden Core cultivator had called for a retreat. Of his five juniors, two had almost been killed and the other two still had arrows sticking out of various appendages. Only one was unscathed, and none of them has so much put a scratch on either of the twins.
Of course, he called for a retreat.
At least, that was what she had thought he was doing. But he'd specifically said "regroup," not retreat. And as he was distributing healing pills, he didn't appear to be making any move to leave.
Was it possible that he planned to heal up his juniors and have them try again? If so, that was a horrible idea for a couple of reasons. One, the most likely outcome of another round was exactly what happened in the first, only the twins would not take such care to avoid killing. Two, it would be a horrendous loss of face for the Jade Chameleon Sect.
From his actions, though, it appeared that ordering another attack was exactly his plan.
"What do you hope to accomplish?" Kang Lin said.
"You do not show me proper respect, either, Poison Claw Sect whelp?" the Golden Core cultivator said.
Technically, he was right. It was one thing for Yang Xiu, a combatant, to blatantly ignore calling him by title, but Kang Lin was officially a neutral party. She should have referred to him as "Esteemed" at the very least.
At that point, though, she really had no choice but to forge ahead.
"Do you deserve my respect or are you planning on having your juniors attack again?" Kang Lin said.
"Who are you, little girl, to decide if a cultivator more than a major realm and a half above you is worthy?"
"No member of a righteous sect can respect someone who would be so craven as to interfere in a matter between juniors like you appear to be preparing to do," Kang Lin said. "If I am wrong about your intentions, I will gladly kowtow before you for my insolence."
The man scoffed. "You will kowtow before me regardless, or you will not be leaving this courtyard alive."
Kang Lin was more than a little taken aback to have someone who could crush her like a bug threaten her death, but she strove not to show it. She didn't so much as blink. "You seek the enmity of the Poison Claw Sect as well as the Rising Tide Sect? Have your elders sanctioned your actions?"
She was almost positive that the man had to have been given strict orders not to take things too far. Besides, if worst came to worst, she had the ring.
"My orders are none of your business, little girl. Kowtow or else."
Decision time. Truthfully, she had no business talking to the man that way. Regardless of the way he was acting, he was her senior, and her sect was not on a war footing with his.
She opened her mouth, unsure of exactly what she would say.
###
Yang Xiu had never been so proud of her hopefully future sister. Talking back to a Golden Core cultivator like that! Who would have thought she had it in her?
But she was clearly in trouble. To kowtow to the man would destroy all the confidence she was building, but if she didn't, the man might strike too fast for help to arrive.
Yang Xiu had to distract him. Fortunately, she didn't think the task would be too difficult.
"Can we get on with the fighting?" she said. "My brother and I already beat your trash sect once. I can't wait to do it again and without holding back this time."
The man looked at her and practically snarled. "I will end you myself."
He pulled a sword from his spatial ring and raised it into ready position.
Yang Xiu grimaced and prepared to trigger her ring. Bringing Master to the city to kill another Jade Chameleon cultivator would only make things worse, perhaps antagonizing the City Lord. Again. But he'd ordered them to sound the alert if their lives were on the line.
With a Golden Core cultivator about to attack, Yang Xiu saw no choice but to send the signal but held her finger for the last possible instant.
###
Kang Lin was almost positive she would have ended up capitulating to the Golden Core cultivator. She'd been raised to be respectful and cautious, completely the opposite of Sect Master Chao Su and his disciples.
It wasn't that they were discourteous. No one in the sect would go out of their way to be rude to anyone, not even a peasant. But they were not encouraged to follow the etiquette that was ingrained into the very being of most sect members.
So, yes, she would have given in. Kowtowed. It would have felt terrible, but she would have done it.
Yang Xiu, however, was having none of it, inserting herself into the conversation. She was nothing if not brave. Almost brash. But her heart was in the right place.
If the situation hadn't been so serious, Kang Lin would have snorted at the look on the man's face. Such a bold insult, calling not just the juniors trash but the entire sect. She would have never had the gall to say such a thing.
The comment had done its work, though. The man's attention was fully on Yang Xiu. But it had backfired. Rather than sending his juniors back into the fight, the man decided to end it himself.
They were either all about to die or to have to call Master. Kang Lin couldn't let either of those things happened without trying one to turn things around.
"With all the people at the auction house watching?" she said.
The man's hands clenched tightly around the hilt of his sword. His pride and anger were clearly warring with prudence. The auction house, while not strong enough to be called a faction in its own right, was not weak. They had Golden Core cultivators of their own. They had to just to keep order during auctions.
The man dared not, and maybe could not, destroy all the witnesses. If he personally defeated three Foundation Establishment cultivators when his juniors couldn't, the loss of face would be catastrophic. Kang Lin hoped for all their sakes that he possessed enough wisdom to reign in his arrogance.
He glanced back at his juniors. The one who Yang Ru had launched into a wall was fully healed. That one and the unhurt one were helping the others remove the arrows that were imbedded in their flesh.
All in all, they made a sorry sight, definitely not a group that would inspire either confidence in their allies or fear in their enemies. The main emotions Kang Lin felt toward them were disdain and pity.
The entire group, including the Golden Core cultivator, had brought more scorn upon their sect, and nothing that could possibly occur in that courtyard from that point on would change that. Nor improve it. Further actions were likely only to bring about an even greater loss of face.
From the man's expression, he finally came to realize that fact.
"Do not let me see any of the three of you ever again," he said. "If I do, things will end quite differently."
He practically threw his juniors onto the sled and flew away.
"Hmm," Yang Xiu said, probably before he was even out of earshot. "I think that went well."
Kang Lin at first, naturally, thought the other girl was being facetious. No one in their right mind could possibly think that barely surviving being killed by a cultivator so much higher realmed than them was a good thing. From the expression on Yang Xiu's face, though, she seemed to genuinely have meant what she said.
Incredulous, Kang Lin looked to Yang Ru for help. He just shrugged.
There was nothing for her to do but shake her head.
Chapter 230
Kang Lin and the others visited Ma An at the Heavenly Transit Mercantile Association the afternoon after the fight with the Jade Chameleons. The trader, obviously desirous of keeping good relations with the supplier of the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, was quite polite and promised to keep a look out for any of the materials they desired, but he didn't have any immediate leads.
With the danger of a second attack being non-trivial, the trio had headed back to the sect for the evening and set up an appointment with Grandfather for the following morning. The rest of the evening and night was uneventful, and after breakfasting, they all gathered in the elder's study.
"You three acquitted yourselves, well," Grandfather said before turning to the twins. "I was impressed at how easily you two beat those juniors. They weren't exactly the elite of the sect, but they weren't trash, either. You two made them look like it, though."
The twins each cupped their hands. "Gratitude, Elder."
"Nonsense, you earned the praise." Grandfather eyed Kang Lin. "You did well, too. Though not exactly employing an orthodox strategy, your words caused Fang Changming to retreat without involving himself. And don't think I didn't notice how you, Yang Xiu, backed up my granddaughter." He cupped his hands. "Gratitude."
Yang Xiu shrugged. "She's my sister." She grinned. "Well, almost."
"The Esteemed Elder knows a lot of details about the fight," Yang Ru said. "It almost sounds like you witnessed it."
Kang Lin found the comment to be shocking, not the least of which because of who it came from. Her maybe future intended didn't talk much, but she'd come to learn that his silence hid a quick mind. She just wished he wasn't using it to challenge a man who was not only her grandfather but was also a Golden Core cultivator and an elder of their allied sect.
She never would have dared challenge a senior, much less an elder, in a similar situation. Hopefully, those habits didn't end up getting her talented friends killed.
Her grandfather could have chosen to rebuke Yang Ru or even have him banned from the sect grounds for such an insult, but when Grandfather spoke, he was instead gracious.
"My granddaughter's life was at stake. Do you think I wasn't watching?"
Kang Lin hadn't thought that he was at all. She'd been taught from an early age that sect members learned on their own and lived and died on their own. The best they could expect was, if they perished at the hands of someone outside the sect, for them to be avenged.
That her grandfather had been watching and apparently willing to step in either meant that what she thought she knew was completely wrong or her grandfather cared about her a lot more than she believed he did.
Maybe he and her sect were much more like the Rising Tide Sect than she had believed.
Yang Ru, unbelievably, simply grunted. Kang Lin wanted to rub her glabella and only held off because she didn't what to show a visible sign of her frustration in front of Grandfather.
"Regardless," Grandfather said, "I think the three of you have done all you can for the moment to acquire the materials Chao Su requires. It's probably best if you head back to the Rising Tide Sect."
Kang Lin wasn't really surprised by being included in the direction to return to the village. She was, after all, in charge of the juniors still there. More importantly, she was gaining so much from her master that it would be silly for her to be anywhere else.
The only caveat to that was the possibility of an attack from the Jade Chameleon Sect. If that happened, the destruction would be indiscriminate if the attackers got past the sect leader, meaning her life and the lives of the juniors were in danger just from being there.
She and her grandfather hadn't discussed the matter, but he must have decided that the gains outweighed the risks.
"You all are, of course, welcome to stay here at the sect for as long as you like," Grandfather said, "but the risks of being out in the city are too high. Fang Changming is surely incensed, and you're fair game if he catches you out again. You might be highly talented for your realm, but a large enough number of Foundation Establishment cultivators would overwhelm even you, especially since he'll be sure to include ranged fighters next time."
"We'll leave, Esteemed Elder," Yang Xiu said.
Kang Lin nodded her agreement. There was no reason to stay any longer. "What is the safest method for us to leave the city?"
"In this case, speed equals safety," Grandfather said. "I've arranged special dispensation from the City Lord for the three of you to fly inside the walls this one time despite the fact that you're still in the Foundation Establishment realm. He was most impressed that you managed the combat with little damage to the surroundings. The auction house didn't even complain about the minor repairs to the wall and trees that they had to effect."
The trio cupped their hands in gratitude one last time, followed by the twins leaving the room to give the two relatives privacy to say their goodbyes.
"Gratitude for all your assistance, Grandfather, and for looking out for me."
"It was my pleasure, Granddaughter. This old man is proud of you. There is danger that comes with your association with Chao Su, but your progress is astounding. If I were you, I would latch yourself to him for as long as he'll have you and hold on tight."
"Of course, Grandfather."
"My belief is not universally held, but I believe that our sect will come out much stronger for our association with him. In my mind, your actions benefit the entire sect, not just yourself."
It was good to hear him say that.
His tone lightened. "I couldn't help but observe that you feel some affection for the young man. If not, he wouldn't have exasperated you so."
Kang Lin felt heat rise to her face.
"I am not your father to arrange a match for you, but he listens to me. My inclination is to advise him to write to Sect Leader Chao Su with haste before someone else places a claim on his star pupils." Grandfather sighed. "But then again, your father is a cautious man. Maybe too cautious. He will probably wait to see how the situation with the Jade Chameleon Sect plays out before being willing to make a move."
Kang Lin agreed with her grandfather about her father's temperament, and she was very glad of that thoughtful nature. While she was somewhat fond of Yang Ru and understood it was her duty to both her family and her sect to find a good match, she couldn't help but be reluctant to take that final step. The longer the situation with the Jade Chameleons took to resolve, the better.
"Understood, Grandfather."
"Take care, little one, or, I guess, not so little one anymore. Seize those opportunities but try to be safe."
It genuinely touched her that Grandfather was showing so much concern. She'd always known she had his favor but not to the extent he showed today.
"I will, Grandfather. If it helps, I truly believe that Master is more protective of his disciples than any cultivator I've seen, especially his favorites. And I appear to be one of his favorites."
"It would help more this old man worry less if one of his favorites hadn't already been killed, but yes, it does ease my concern an iota to know that someone else is looking out for you."
With him expressing those sentiments, there wasn't much more to say, and Kang Lin soon took her leave, joining the twins outside. The three walked to the very edge of the sect branch grounds.
"Ready?" Kang Lin said.
"Ready," Yang Xiu said, speaking, as usual, for both the twins.
"Let's go."
The three pulled their gliders from their respective spatial rings, hopped on, and quickly accelerated to top speed toward the Rising Tide Sect. Their devices were obviously not as fast as a flying sword, but that limitation was why they'd done their best to minimize the time an enemy cultivator would have to prepare for their departure.
Either the surprise factor worked, or the Jade Chameleon Sect wasn't prepared to fight them again because they encountered no resistance in the little less than three and a half hours it took them to reach their destination.
When they arrived, they thought they would need to go to the Administration Hall to report to Master. Instead, they found him working in the area he'd reserved for the main gate. There were all manner of materials strown about—huge piles of small rocks, even bigger piles of large stones, two eighty-foot-long logs, and several big piles of branches.
Master was in a hole that was at least forty feet deep, one of two that marred the grounds at that location, but as soon as the trio landed, he Quickstepped up to the surface.
"Master," each of the three cupped their hands.
"Is there anything we can do to help, Master?" Yang Xiu said.
He looked back at the mess lying around. "No. Not really. This is all stuff you'd need technique to help with. Besides, your time is better spent getting stronger. Your trip to Sixth Flawless Flowing City has probably already been enough of a distraction. Tell me what you found."
Kang Lin stepped forward, told him about Grandfather's contacts for the materials, and handed over the metals.
Master looked them over from a moment. "These should work. You've done well. I'm stoked about the cauldron. I really didn't think you'd be able to even get me a lead on one, and finding three of the materials for trade is a lot better than I had thought you'd accomplish."
Kang Lin let out a relieved sigh and cupped her hands. The twins followed her lead.
"Did you run into any trouble?" Master said.
Yang Xiu caught Kang Lin's eye, and she nodded.
"Five Foundation Establishment cultivators from the Jade Chameleon Sect attacked us," Yang Xiu said, "but they were trash. Yang Ru and I beat them without suffering a scratch."
Master grinned. "Excellent. Sounds like you three did great. I'll have to think of a suitable reward. For now, tell Peng Zhen that you each earned ten thousand Contribution Points."
The twins were much more excited to receive the praise and the promise of a suitable reward than they did the award of so many Contribution Points, but Kang Lin knew much better about how the economies of sects worked. At the moment, those points were only starting to hold value, but as the sect grew, that form of wealth would become as precious as spirit coins.
She was excited about all three.
Chapter 231
Benton was pleased with the kids' progress in obtaining the materials he needed for the qi sources, but of the six he wanted to make, he was only somewhat close with Fire. Once he traded five Orange Vigor Spirit Wood kernels for five fire stones from the Poison Claw Sect elder, he'd have the mineral requirement taken care of, and he already owned a Fire-aspected core from the rank ten Cyclops he'd killed at the end of the beast tide. Combined with the metals his disciples brought back, all he needed was an appropriate plant material to create qi source for Fire.
Still, he had no idea where to find that plant material, and really, the qi sources were more of a long-term project, anyway. He'd keep his eye out for any materials—attending that auction in six weeks sounded like a no-brainer—but for the moment, his priority was to shore up the sect's defenses.
Which was exactly what he was doing.
While the twins and Kang Lin were away, he'd been a busy, busy little sect leader. Every single stick and large stone in the piles near him had been inscribed with either channels or both channels and formations, and he'd dug two large holes and compacted the dirt underneath as densely as his strength and skills would allow. When he hadn't been working on either of those activities, he'd made spirit coins. A lot of spirit coins.
Even with how fast he could inscribe with his superhuman reflexes and techniques at Mastery, there were just so, so many sticks and so, so many stones.
Heh. He'd should be able to break lots of bones.
Anyway, the only way he could finish those tasks and create the thousands of greater spirit coins his towers would need was to use time dilation.
The kids had been gone a little over two days. To him, close to twenty had passed. He'd even had to enclose the tree trunks with his Time Manipulation to finish off their curing after he'd completed his prep work.
Of course, a lot of that work hadn't been the grind of repetitively inscribing the same channels on sticks or the same set of arrays on stone. No, quite a bit of it had been planning and executing his masterwork—the two tree trunks.
They were the core of his entire plan. He was going to armor them, of course, but he expected attacks from Nascent Soul cultivators. Withstanding that kind of force required multiple layers of defense.
The first layer was the natural toughness of a several-foot-thick trunk of Orange Vigor Spirit Wood enhanced by an alchemical process developed by Master Alchemists for just that purpose. Benton, with his peak Golden Core strength combined with his Gold Body Cultivation, could break the log, but it wouldn't have been easy, especially since it maintained its latent flexibility.
On top of that brute toughness, Benton meticulously added arrays for defense. Since the trunks were to be encased tightly in stone, he couldn't add a qi shield, but he could add separate arrays for increasing strength, toughness, and structural integrity as well as one that dispersed any attack that hit the wood to impact a wide area instead of a narrow point.
The logs served two primary purposes. The first was simply to be a strong base foundation for each tower. The second was to transfer qi from the thousands of greater spirit coins that would be located in a secure spot in the ground to where it was needed to power the many formations attached to the trunk.
The key to providing that second use was redundancy. And more redundancy. And once he thought he had enough redundancy, he doubled it. If ten pathways were damaged, dozens more would carry the load. Each point where qi was transferred from the trunk to be delivered to another spot was fed by at least ten channels. And that was for the minor ones. The qi traveling to the main weapon had over a hundred paths it could take.
All that work was behind him, though. The next part was going to be a bit tricky.
Each stick had four qi channels, each running from the base to the tip and separated around the circumference by ninety degrees. Their purpose was simple. Qi traveled up to trunk and through the branch. Which in turn powered whatever array that touched the stick that needed the qi.
Stones were great for inscribing formations on. They were naturally strong against attacks and sturdy enough to handle large quantities of qi without any alchemical treatment needed. Benton had layered each with much the same formations as the main trunk—increased strength, toughness, and structural integrity.
There were two crucial differences, though. First, since some, most, or all of the stones, depending on the circumstances, would at some point be on the exterior of the tower, each stone got a qi shield that activated for any portion of it not touching another piece of rock.
The second added formation made him feel like a freaking genius. The entire purpose of the stones was to protect the main trunk, right? Well, what if, instead of a stone transmitting the energy of an attack to the stone below it and then the stone below that one and so on and so forth until reaching the core layers, the rock absorbed as much energy as it could?
Nice right? A lot of energy that would have gone to destroying the base would instead be wasted. It was an awesome defense.
The final array did just that. Any force of qi impacting the stone would be absorbed by the formation.
There was a minor tiny little flaw, though. If the force was more than the array could handle, the energy had to go somewhere. And he didn't want it transmitted toward the core, right? So he made the array channel all that energy into exploding the rock outward from the tower.
Okay, so important safety notice—no sect members were allowed anywhere near the towers while under attack.
The end result, though, was thousands of rocks that basically functioned like circuit breakers. A Nascent Soul's attack would destroy dozens at once, but that result was still far better than all that energy being used to damage the core.
The real problem was that he needed to get qi to each of the stones to power the defensive formations. Hence, the sticks.
So the next step in the process of constructing the tower was to sink one of the ninety-foot-tall logs vertically ten-feet deep into the bottom of one of the forty-foot holes he'd dug. That was enough to keep it standing while he worked on it, drilling small holes into the trunk, attaching a branch, and adhering the two together with a small, quick formation.
Easy peasy. Except that he had a lot of sticks to attach. And each had to be precisely placed where he'd joined a nexus of at least ten channels on the main trunk. And he had to be careful to place the longer branches on the bottom. And then he had to do the entire thing all over again with the next log.
One good thing was that only the forty feet of the log that stuck out above the hole had branches attached, so really, he was doing less than half of each long. Still, just that task took him the entire rest of the day and into the night.
The next stage was less tedious but still fairly time consuming due to the amount of concentration required to manipulate so many techniques at once. It involved making the base as stable as he could possibly think of how to make it.
If one had ever pushed a stick into the dirt and pressed against the top, one knew that the stick would simply topple right over, pushing up through the dirt that buried it. The solution to that problem was to bury the stick really deep.
Easy enough except when one had to plan for defending against Nascent Soul cultivators. The amount of strength one of those could bring to bear was enormous. Simply unimaginable. No matter how deeply Benton buried the log, one of them could either just topple it or pull it out.
That vulnerability was unacceptable.
In a move that he fervently hoped was way overdesigning, he wanted to coat the portion of the log in the hole in a cone of molten lava, which, when cooled into igneous rock, would provide quite the ballast. Before he'd inscribed the formations on the trunk, he'd scored the entire bottom half with thousands of small indentations. The goal was for the lava to seep into those cuts and harden, essentially creating a bond between rock and wood.
The process of actually accomplishing that feat was not easy, however. First, he had to melt the pebbles of to form lava. Next, he used his Mastery of Telekinetic Push to move the lava where it needed to go to flow down over the wood.
Of course, therein arose an issue. Lava was hot. Really hot. Wood, even supernaturally strong spirit wood that was alchemically treated, burned. The two coming into contact with each other would normally be a Bad Thing.
Benton had to manually make sure the combination was not a bad thing. While still controlling the lava flow with telekinesis, he used Dual Focus and Extreme Area Temperature Manipulation to keep the lava flowing and the wood from burning. Which was not easy. Not easy at all.
Once the trunk was fully coated with a thick layer from the bottom up, the job grew much easier. The cooled igneous rock insulated the trunk from burning, so all he had to do was heap more and more lava onto the base until he got the huge hulking mass that he desired.
A final touch was to inscribe a formation around the circumference of the rock base that increased the Gravity pulling on it. Benton didn't know how strong a Nascent Soul cultivator was in comparison to him, but even with his Body Cultivation, he couldn't budge the log with its giant ballast.
Satisfied that he'd done all he could, he repeated the process for the second tower.
It was nearly noon the next day before he finished.
The third step, at least, was truly easy. He simply had to cover what remained of the hole with dirt and compact it. No problem. That was the work of less than an hour.
The fourth step was the most time consuming of them all—placing the stones. Each had to fit perfectly, from aligning with the stones around it in a structurally sound manner to contacting with at least one branch so that its defensive formations could draw the qi they needed. Even more time consuming was that it was impossible to simply line up the arrays of the individual rock with the channel on the stick. Instead, he had to inscribe a new channel on the stone from a linking point in the arrays to the qi source.
Finally, in lieu of using some form of weak mortar to hold the rocks together, he created a binding formation for each stone for each point where it contacted another one. There were a lot of points of contact. A lot.
Repeating that entire procedure thousands of times took hours and hours. More than a day and a half had passed by the time he finished. And he'd never been so glad to have been complete with a task in his life.
The only thing that got him through the tedium was looking forward to the next task. Benton Quickstepped to the Blacksmith Pavilion.
"Are they finished?" he said.
Xun Wu didn't so much as flinch at the interruption. "Right over there, Sect Leader."
After Quickstepping across the room, Benton examined two massive pieces of forged iron. Turrets. And they were both perfect. Exactly what he'd wanted. He'd forgive the blacksmith for not being entertaining since he did such excellent work.
Benton cupped his hands. "Gratitude."
Not waiting for a reply, he Quickstepped back to the future gate area. The turrets were not quite finished as he still had to do his part, inscribing. They got the same defensive formations as the wood and the stones as well as a qi shield. Additionally, a set of three metal bars extruding from each of the cardinal directions got formations that made them capable of firing pure elemental qi of any of the five primary elements.
The fourth and final bar for each set rods was much longer and was hollow to boot. And he bet that those would take more time to inscribe than all the other work on the turrets put together.
Benton needed something that one might reasonably think would provide a danger to a Nascent Soul cultivator. But what? After all, their auras dampened the effectiveness of any qi attacks launched at them. Of any qi use at all anywhere near them. So how did one overcome that defense?
His great idea was to not use a qi attack. What if, instead, he could use a small amount of qi to launch something at immense speed? If the object were dense enough and struck with enough velocity, the force created might even be enough to make a Nascent Soul feel it.
Obviously, what Benton needed was a railgun.
One minor problem—he'd been a middle manager back on Earth. He had some peripheral knowledge of engineering involved in construction just from running a few projects involving building campuses for his corporation, but the company did nothing with military contracts. Other than knowing about the existence of railguns, he couldn't tell you how to make one to save his life.
Had he discovered the fatal flaw in his plan?
Chapter 232
Benton was just about ready to install the turrets on his two towers, but there was a problem. His plan was to have four separate weapon arrays located in four groups dispersed equally around the circumference, the idea being that when one set was damaged or destroyed, the turret would rotate the next set to engage the target.
Three of the four weapon arrays were simple affairs, each blasting an enemy with a burst of pure elemental qi. Honestly, they weren't all that impressive unless the enemies were Foundation Establishment and below. A Golden Core's shield would shrug off the attacks as nothing more dangerous that a mosquito bite.
The fourth array was supposed to make up for the lack by providing a weapon that might be considered strong enough to at least make a Nascent Soul hesitate. Maybe. If they didn't have enough defensive techniques to deflect a purely mortal slug of metal hurtling toward them at supersonic speeds.
Hey, it could happen.
Basically, Benton was trying to build a railgun, but he had little to no idea how to do it. And the System was no help when it came to technology. The Shop wouldn't let him purchase any weapon not common to the medieval level of development that was characteristic of his new world, and neither could he buy the direct knowledge of how to build a railgun or laser or any other type of modern weaponry.
In the case of transplanting technology from Earth, the System helped he who helped himself. From vague recollections from scifi novels, Benton knew that a railgun used electricity to create magnets or something, and those magnets somehow accelerated a munition to really high speeds. Which wasn't exactly all he needed to know to build one.
His memory, however, did give him all the clues he needed to make the System provide him with knowledge he required.
First, the System absolutely would not provide him with any information about electricity, but since Lightning was a natural occurring type of electricity and a secondary qi element, it had no qualms about selling him Mastery of knowledge of that element for four Sect Points. The technique didn't tell him how to create a motor or anything like that, but that lack was okay. He didn't need a turbine or whatever was used to create electricity on Earth. A Lightning spirit coin provided the exact source he needed. Neither did he need copper wire as his inscribed channels performed that function.
Magnetism was even easier. Since it was also a natural phenomenon and, it turned out, also a secondary qi element, the System easily let him buy knowledge of it and, once he'd studied determined exactly what he needed, a Concept as well.
It turned out the device was actually pretty simply, though he had to scrap the hollow metal tube he'd had Xun Wu make since iron wasn't nearly as conductive as he needed it to be. Instead, Benton used two ingots of one of the metals the kids had brought back from Sixth Flawless Flowing City to construct two rails and another tube, all five feet long. Importantly, he placed the two conductive strips parallel but opposite each other such that the positive end of one corresponded to the placement of the negative end of the other. The tube went between the two strips. A projectile, a large chunk of a different, more dense, conductive metal, was positioned at the start inside the tube.
The Lightning qi ran up one strip, through the tube, and back down the other strip, creating a circuit. The Lightning running through the metal created a magnetic field which created a force that pushed the projectile. More qi meant a faster and, thus, more powerful attack.
When Benton tested it, there was a loud crack of lightning, followed by a boom as the projectile broke the speed of sound. All in all, the display was pretty darn impressive. If a spy were watching, that spy might reasonably believe that Benton expected his railgun to be able to hurt a Nascent Soul cultivator.
The spy would, of course, be wrong, but he couldn't be blamed for believing Benton's deliberate campaign of false information.
With the decoy main weapon figured out, Benton finished up the two turrets and installed them on the top of their respective towers. By the time he was done, it was mid-morning, and he was fairly satisfied with his progress. The wall would be ready for installation the next day, giving him well over twenty hours to complete his construction of a trap and the actual main weapon.
Honestly, the railgun was the best attack that Benton could come up with on his own. If he was very fortunate, a Nascent Soul who was caught off guard might be hit once by a projectile, but it definitely wouldn't cause enough damage to kill one of them. Which wasn't nearly good enough. Benton needed something that was guaranteed to kill one.
Luckily, he was a cheating cheater who cheats. He purchased a template for a very powerful variable qi element beam that the System assured him would blow through a Nascent Soul like a BB through a paper target.
The problem was the eye-watering cost. The two schematics, one for a trap and one for the weapon, cost a combined two hundred fifty Shop Points. He only had three hundred sixty total, and the sole reason the number he had was that high was because he behaved like a miser, buying only what was absolutely necessary.
Needs must, though. The formation was crucial for defending his sect members, and they were more important than an infinite number of Shop Points. Grimacing while he did it, he pulled the trigger on the purchase, bringing him down to one hundred ten points.
As he had expected, the Primary Array Weapon was quite complex and required a lot of qi, over five million per shot. That meant a single shot required a minimum of five hundred greater spirit coins, which took him around two had a half hours' worth of work to create. Again, that was for a single shot. One.
He prayed to the heavens that he never missed because that enormous expenditure for nothing would probably make him cry.
Luckily, he'd been prepared to deliver that much qi or even more, and he'd left a spot near the top of the tower to install the formation. Unlike the very visible and inviting target that was the turret, the PAW was hidden, the area where it was installed looking exactly like the stones that surrounded it in every way because it was actually underneath several of the stones.
Of course, the concealment had to be ejected out of the way simultaneously with the activation of the PAW, meaning the weapon would become a target after the first time it was fired. And it wasn't mobile, either. The PAW on each tower was aimed to hit one place, exactly where the hidden trap was to hold the target stationary.
For his plan to work, the Nascent Soul would have to be forced in the vicinity of the trap, fall victim to it, and the PAWs be triggered in the very brief moment of time before the cultivator broke out of the hold.
Benton had confidence that he could handle a single Nascent Soul cultivator in a one-on-one fight. A scenario involving multiple enemies in that realm grew trickier. He figured, though, that he'd be able to manage all the necessary conditions to set up the PAW to kill at least one of them.
The first part would be the most difficult—getting one of the enemy cultivators to the spot where the trap would activate. Either trickery or force would be required. After that step, the rest should be easy. He could remotely trigger the trap, which would be connected to the PAWs so that the activation of both was simultaneous.
Basically, slam the Nascent Soul with an attack to force them to the correct location and activate a remote device that triggered both the trap and both PAWs simultaneously. A big beam that essentially ignored aura would lance out and disintegrate most of the target's body.
Perfect.
If Benton was absent from the sect, however, and one the sect members was forced to use the towers for defense against a Nascent Soul… Well, there was some chance they could manage that first critical step. A tiny, miniscule, almost infinitesimal chance, but a chance. And that was better than nothing.
Inscribing the PAWs and the trap took the rest of the day and into the night, but once finished, he was left with only one task—installing and concealing the power sources. Wanting to start with as many spirit coins as possible, he used his Time Manipulation for several hours, creating a lot more of them.
When done, he tunneled underneath the towers using his excavation technique, installed the source, surrounded it with concealment arrays to hide the massive amount of buried qi, and filled the tunnels back up with dirt. No one but him would be able to replenish the source when it ran out, but that was okay. The extra security made the inconvenience worth it.
Finally, the towers were complete, making him feel a lot better about the defense of his sect. By that time, the wall pieces were ready, so he began the long process of digging footings, installing the prebuild sections, and connecting them together.
His superhuman strength, speed, and endurance combined with techniques that would have been the equivalent of magic on Earth allowed him to enclose the entire five acres of the sect in under a day. Even with that major accomplishment done, he didn't let up. He had no way of knowing if an attack was imminent, so he would not let himself rest until the sect's Grand Defensive Formation was complete as well.
Unlike the construction of the wall, the GDF was not simple. First, there were nearly two thousand linear feet of surface that had to be covered, and unlike with the one he did for the village, he was not inscribing a simple array to keep out one type of threat. No, the GDF was a complex interwoven set of formations that was both more versatile and more powerful than the one he'd used for the beast tide.
By the time he'd finished, a whopping ten days had passed, but with the combination of the two towers and the GDF, he felt he actually had a chance of defending his sect from an attack by multiple Nascent Soul enemies.
He hoped, anyway.