Since Benton made his decision to reset his morals back to Earth normal, he felt a lot better about things. No more wanton killing. That step would be one he'd take only if there were no other choice. He also felt good about his enhanced ability to defend his sect members no matter what his enemies brought against him.
Without a pressing need to exact more vengeance on the Jade Chameleons and having his main To Do item—increasing his power and the sect's defenses by advancing to Nascent Soul—removed, it was time for Benton to reassess his short-term goals.
He wasn't entirely through with defenses as he still thought rebuilding the towers was a good idea. That task had slid a bid down the priority list, though. A much more important project was creating tokens for all the sect members. Right now, no one but him could enter or exit the main sect grounds while the Grand Defensive Formation was active, which meant that, in practical terms, he couldn't leave the array running. Tokens would grant access rights to the wearers, allowing him to keep protection active at all times.
Another important problem that needed resolved was the fact that Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town and the branch of the Rising Tide Sect located there were basically undefended. All they had was Fatty Ren who, admittedly, could fight a bit above his realm. In the end, though, he was only a Golden Core in the first minor realm. His palace had some minor formations protecting it, but the city walls had nothing.
Benton really needed to install a Grand Defense Formation there as well.
Additionally, the need for Qi Condensing Pills was starting to grow. The sect had inducted a lot of members recently. Previously, the cost of one third of a Shop Point per pill hadn't seemed like all that much, but multiplying that fraction by hundreds added up fast. Benton had actually delayed using the pills on a couple of groups already because he hadn't wanted to spend the points.
It was time for him to stop spending a limited resource—Shop Points—on something that he could craft himself. Once he purchased the necessary techniques using Sect Points to get his Alchemy to Expert level, he'd be able to produce all the pills he needed simply by using spirit coins to buy the necessary herbs.
Thinking about techniques reminded him that he also needed to buy a new Aura so that he could test how two of them worked together. Of course, those planned purchases conflicted with his intention to shift his focus from building his own power. He felt that the upgrades were necessary, though. After all, it would be a long time before he could rely on anyone other than himself to keep his people safe.
Long term, building his sect members up so they could take on those kinds of roles was absolutely his most important objective, though. One step for facilitating that goal in the short term meant spending more effort guiding the pavilions. For example, it was way past time for him to teach the members of the Formations Pavilion how to handle maintenance tasks. Though that didn't seem like a priority at the moment, those members were basically spinning their wheels without a practical application to focus on.
He also needed to find Jin LiJuan and get her a cultivation method and techniques. She'd been instructed to come find him after finishing with the pills, but he'd been so busy that she might not have wanted to disturb him.
Even more important for powering up his sect was obtaining the necessary materials to create the qi sources as those would become a true game changer.
Thus, Benton created his new priority list.
The first step was to maximize his time. For thirty-two Sect Points, he purchased an Aura associated with his Time Concept. Then, since he was already dealing with System stuff, he went ahead and bought what he needed to make him an Expert Alchemist—Knowledge of Herbs, Knowledge of Pills, three ranks of alchemy knowledge, three ranks of herb preparation, and three ranks of pill creation.
All told, he spent sixty-eight points to give him the ability to create the Qi Condensing Pills. Which seemed like a lot compared to the benefit. In actuality, though, he didn't just gain the ability to create those pills but also minor and major Healing Pills and a variety of other useful medicines.
Definitely worth it.
As he had hoped, his Time Aura allowed him to easily slip into a timestream that was accelerated relative to the rest of the world, effectively letting him move and work ten times faster than he would have been able to otherwise. Which his technique would have also let him do. Using the Aura had benefits, though. The first was that it was more efficient in qi usage than the technique. With close to two hundred ninety million qi available, though, that wasn't a huge consideration.
The more important benefit was how little concentration was required. Using the Aura was like treating Time as if it was a highly competent subordinate like Sun Hua. Benton could say, "Hey, speed me up." And Time would just do it. In contrast, using a technique was like directing a recalcitrant teenager who had to be supervised every step of the way.
Benton had previously been limited in what he could do while accelerated due to the amount of focus that had been required. With his new Aura, that restriction, while not completely eliminated, was greatly reduced.
His first usage was the creation of the tokens. The process was multistep, and he initiated it be deciding to use silver as the material for the tokens as it conducted qi decently without being as expensive as some of the more exotic materials. That choice made, he teleported to the forge and melted down seven hundred taels, enough to create around two thousand tokens at about a third of a tael each.
The harder part of the process was to come up with a design. He brainstormed for a while about how to best represent a rising tide. His first thought was a wave, but that iconography didn't quite convey what he wanted. So he ended up going with a boat floating on a peaceful body of water.
With his control of Gravity, it was quite easy to create a stamp and impress the design into molten discs of silver. Soon enough, he had two thousand tokens ready to be inscribed.
Yes. Two thousand. That he had to inscribe. Each.
There were definitely things about the cultivation world that were as tedious as life on Earth. Ugh.
Luckily, the formations weren't too complex since he had to etch them so many times. In the future, he'd want to figure out a way to have the tokens track contribution points, but at the moment, their function was a lot simpler. They served two purposes. One, most importantly, to allow sect members access through the GDF. Two, tracking the connection to the person wearing it.
The second part made the formation a bit more complicated. He'd have to physically present each token to its respective sect member and tie their individual qi signature to it. Which would be a big pain in the butt.
The advantage was worth it, though. For one thing, the token would only work for the associated sect member. If someone else stole it from them, they would not be able to get through the GDF unless they could somehow also replicate the member's highly specific qi signature.
For another, if the token were separated from the sect member or if the sect member died, a stone monitoring device that he was installing in the Administrative Hall would flash a light next to the sect member's name. Benton or one of the disciples could then rush to find the sect member, hopefully in time to render lifesaving aid.
Separate simpler tokens would offer temporary, much more restricted access for visitors.
It took a subjective while to get everything finished, but eventually, he was able to check "make sect member tokens" off his list. Next was distribution, so he had Sun Hua schedule a meeting of the entire main branch of the sect for the next day. His best guess was that attuning a token to a sect member would take somewhere between one and ten seconds, so he should be able to do everyone in less than an hour.
His plan was to basically get everything absolutely necessary complete at the main sect by the end the next day before teleporting to Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town. The tokens were crucial because, without them, he would either have to leave the GDF down while he was away, or the sect members would be trapped in or out of the sect grounds, whichever location they happened to be when he left.
The next step was to get Jin LiJuan settled. He teleported to her, materializing behind her.
She immediately spun, and seeing who had just appeared, cupped her hands. "Greetings, Master."
Benton returned her greetings and checked her cultivation. As expected, her qi pool had expanded by around ten percent after she consumed the pills he gave her. "I don't detect any ill effects from expanding your qi, so you're good to go for continuing to advance."
"Gratitude, Master."
"Looks like you're at Small Success with both Quiet Mind and your sword technique. Hmm."
The girl had advanced so quickly that her techniques were really lagging behind. Ideally, she'd be at Large Success at a minimum before he gave her any more things to practice. Benton was also unsure how her not having a qi aspect would effect Foundational Establishment level techniques. He expressed those concerns to her.
"I understand, Master. What should I do?"
"First, you definitely need a cultivation method. Unlike with techniques, any method should be fine for you to use, considering that your actual advancement is controlled by your bond. Currently, I can give you any of the ones used by Yang Xiu, Yang Ru, or Kang Lin."
Before she could open her mouth to choose, he cut her off. "The problem with those three is they are all focused on Foundation, which is totally pointless for you. So is Ease, really. I was hoping to save a couple of points, but I think I'm going to have to make you a custom one. That's a minor bummer, but it's worth it to maximize your available qi."
She looked totally confused, but he ignored it, instead bringing up the appropriate System menus. For once, the decision for the distribution of categories was a no-brainer as he dumped all one hundred points into Power.
Qi Aspect was more difficult. His choices were to make this cultivation method available for anyone to use or to make it exclusive to Jin LiJuan. As far as he could tell, it didn't matter one way or the other for her, so the only consideration was making effective use of his Sect Points. The more expensive option was to make the cultivation method usable by anyone. The question was—would anyone else want a method that was one hundred percent devoted to increasing available qi?
Yeah. Probably. That option would be attractive to most of his sect members who didn't feel like reaching Golden Core was a real possibility. Of course, he wasn't sure how the existence of the Trial Pagoda would effect those types of decisions.
In the past, he'd mentally thought of the vast majority of his sect as being able to reach the mid to late range of Foundation Establishment as their top end. The Trial Pagoda totally changed their potential, though. Was there any reason that all of them couldn't reach Golden Core?
Benton didn't see why not. It literally cost them nothing besides a day's use of the Trial Pagoda for them to attempt to overcome a bottleneck. For reaching Golden Core, anyway. Obviously, getting to Nascent Soul at a cost of five hundred Sect Points was unsustainable for large numbers of people, but for any realm lower than that, there was no reason for any sect member who wanted to put in the effort not to reach that high.
That decision made a Power-focused Foundation Establishment level cultivation method less valuable, so Benton created one just for Jin LiJuan.
Cultivation Method creation confirmed.
Host has created the Null Aspect Infinite Progression Cultivation Method for Foundation Establishment realm cultivators.
Host has 1,403 Sect Points Available.