The Sect Leader System-Chapter 317: Delegating Ultimate Responsibility?
As Benton grew to trust his sect members’ abilities more and more, he got a lot better about delegating. It was the night before he was to Teleport the entire contingent to Sixth Flawless Flowing City, and he didn’t have a single thing he needed to do. Yang Xiu, with copious help from Sun Hua, had the logistics well in hand.
As was becoming one of his occasional habits, he summoned Yuan Yaozu for a chat. The Nascent Soul was the only person around he could really talk to, someone who understood the burdens of leadership and the lure of power. Someone with experience who came from having lived a long life.
Benton chuckled. He was actually the spring chicken compared to that old man.
Their conversation ambled from topic to topic for a while before Yuan Yaozu brought up the subject Benton had been expecting.
“You should take me with you.”
“Who would guard the sect?”
“No one. It doesn’t matter,” Yuan Yaozu said. “You’re the target.”
Benton sighed. “I don’t want to risk it. I don’t even like leaving the branch sect with only Fatty Ren to protect them.” Benton sighed. “I should have extracted a promise like yours from Duan Lan.”
“You’re unbelievable! If she were available, you’d have her sitting in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town, wouldn’t you?”
Benton shrugged.
“All the information we have, the information Zou Tian dug up for us,” Yuan Yaozu said, “tells us that the Swift Blizzard Sect is fully allied with the Jade Chameleons. You know what that means.”
“More people that I have to kill.” Benton let a bit more frustration seep into his tone than he intended.
“The Jade Chameleons have two Nascent Souls. The Swift Blizzards have four. Granted, my sect has six, but I’m apparently stuck here babysitting, and one is in seclusion. With you, that’s six of them versus only five on your side, and that’s best case scenario. When they ambush you, it’ll be six on one. If you let me go, I’ll stick to your side like glue.”
“You’re just eager for your first fight as a Nascent Soul.”
Yuan Yaozu glared at him.
“I get it,” Benton said. “You really are worried. But you shouldn’t be. How easily do I handle you when we spar?”
“When you suppress my Aura? I might as well be a baby. But can you suppress six at once?”
That was actually a good question. He only had the four Auras, and he’d never tested if he could use a single one of them to suppress multiple opponents simultaneously. For that matter, he’d never tested if he could use multiple Auras at once.
Definitely something he needed to do that night, the latter part, anyway. He’d Teleport somewhere isolated and try to use two and then three and finally four at the same time. Being able to handle four, however, might not prove anything since he could split his mind four times. Depending on how the testing went, he’d possibly need to a fifth one, which meant buying at least one more.
“I’ll think on that,” Benton said.
“Think fast. You’re leaving tomorrow, and if you get ambushed, I’m hours away even if you can get a message off.”
Benton laughed. “Actually, there’s no reason for you not to be mere seconds away.” He pulled a handfull of one hundred thousand qi Teleport talismans from his ring. “Take these. I’ll have one of the kids come get you if I encounter trouble. Would that make you feel better?”
Yuan Yaozu cupped his hands. “It would, Sect Leader. Gratitude.”
Once the man eventually left, Benton recalled that it had been a long, long time since he’d checked his gains, over two and a half months, in fact.
Body Cultivation was a consistent performer as always, gaining him four hundred ninety-four points over the last seventy-seven days. Five hundred of those came from sect members in the Qi Gathering Realm working on Bronze ranks. With the twins and Jin LiJuan having already reached the peak of Silver and Zou Tian leaving right after he reached Foundation Establishment, there was only one sect member actively pursuing Silver—Peng Hanying, the Time aspected young man. The little guy earned fourteen points getting all the way to minor realm seven but his technique, specialized for him, cost twenty.
Spiritual Cultivation earned Benton a truly ridiculous number of points over the period. Most significant from a building the sect’s strength perspective were those cultivators using the Time dilation rooms. The twins and Kang Lin reached the peak of the third minor realm of Foundation Establishment, limiting themselves to that level due to tournament considerations. Wan Ai sped herself to the peak of Qi Gathering, also stopping there in deference to the category she planned to compete in.
Well, really in deference to Yang Xiu who coerced the girl into not advancing further since stopping would improve her chances in the tournament. Shi Long and Xun Wu also cultivated only to that mark for the same reason.
The star earner among the individuals who accelerated their cultivation was Peng Hanying. Since he had no intention of participating in the tournament, he wasn’t limited by a category. After seeing the stress it put on the others, Benton did limit the young man to only five ten-hour sessions per objective day, though. Still, he blew all the way up to the third minor realm of Foundation Establishment, equaling the twins and Kang Lin.
Though significant in power, they added only a paltry thirty points. Benton didn’t particularly mind, though, given his other massive gains.
One such source came from a large contingent of Nature aspected villagers who were a part of the Martial Pavilion. With Yang Xiu’s endorsement, they made good use of Time dilation rooms and qualified to attend the tournament. Thirty members who were in the first group of fifty inducted and twenty-seven who were in the second all advanced from the fifth minor realm all the way to the peak, earning another two hundred twenty-eight points for Benton.
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Jin LiJuan got him sixteen points all by herself as she skyrocketed all the way to the peak of Foundation Establishment under the guidance of the enthusiastic Leizhenzi. Benton grinned, anticipating everyone’s reaction when she showed up.
A number of cultivators reached Qi Gathering minor realm seven, including Huang Yimun and his fifteen guards; Xun Wu’s family; Zi Delan, his crew, and the orphans from Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town; the Healing Pavilion leader, Pan Xiaolian; and the six wood harvesters. Those forty-three points only felt insignificant in comparison to those that came after them.
A huge quantity of sect members advanced to Qi Gathering minor realm five, including the seventy-five former villagers in the sixth set of inductees, three hundred in the seventh set, the one hundred in the eighth set, and one hundred in the ninth set. The one hundred people Fatty Ren had recruited for his second set and the eight members of Benton’s new acting troupe all reached that mark as well.
All told, sect members reaching the fifth minor realm gained him a massive one thousand three hundred seven Sect Points. Which was completely, insanely awesome.
Finally, the tenth set of inducted villagers, the most recent one hundred, went all the way from joining the sect to minor realm four, amassing four hundred points for Benton.
Prosperous Gray Forest Village had certainly made him prosperous. He was actually kind of sad that almost all the people were already sect members. Only one hundred seventy-four remained to be added.
Overall, Spiritual Cultivation had added a whopping two thousand twenty-four points to Benton’s ever growing bottom line.
Since Qi Gathering minor realm four was the point at which the sect allowed members to learn techniques, Benton decided that minor realm five would be the point where they were encouraged to start cultivating either their Mind or their Soul. Ninety-five percent of members took him up on that endorsement, two hundred twenty-one choosing the former type and three hundred thirty-one the latter. Unfortunately, he hadn’t made that decision too long ago, so none of them reached minor realm two yet.
Of course, five hundred fifty-two points was nothing to sneeze at, and he was guaranteed to get a similar quantity next time he reviewed his status. Add that to the two hundred sixty-two points he’d gotten for the more experienced members reaching minor realm four with their respective methods, and the total for Mind and Soul Cultivation was a respectable eight hundred fourteen.
Finally, he looked at techniques. His sect members were still doing pretty darn awesome with the Trials Pagoda, though there were some failures that time around. Which was to be expected. Not everyone excelled at the kind of outside the box thinking that the pagoda required. Still, he gained a nice seventy-four points from that source.
Making it still a huge point loser compared to the one thousand he’d spent so far getting Poison Claw Sect Golden Cores past their bottlenecks. Oh well. At least he was getting something back.
Interestingly, his distribution of the manuals had a much bigger impact on his members improving their skills than he would have ever imagined. Three times as many advanced their techniques than calculations based on past performance would have predicted, giving him another two hundred sixty-one points.
The biggest gain came from all the members going to the tournament who made copious use of the non-aspected Time dilation rooms, which were always in use. The twins and Kang Lin, after maxing their cultivation, also used the Time dilation rooms to bring all their techniques to Mastery. The rank and file combined with the Foundation Establishment disciples gained him one hundred eighty-six points.
All told, the category added a very nice four hundred seventy-one points after subtracting out the cost for various new techniques Yang Xiu had convinced him the kids absolutely had to have for the tournament.
When he added everything up, he’d increased his bank of Sect Points by a stupendous three thousand eight hundred and three.
Of course, some of that was offset by additional spends. He’d bought six different acting related techniques for the troupe… Well, acting and film-related qi technology related techniques, anyway. That cost him twenty-four. And still needed to buy at least one Aura…
Benton decided to get that decision out of the way and Teleported to a remote area. Two simultaneous Auras were, as far as he could tell, impossible without using his Split Focus technique. Using that, though, he could use all four at once.
From his experiment, he realized two things. One, unless he had a specific purpose for advancing a Concept into an Aura, there was no reason to buy a fifth. He couldn’t use that many at once until he advanced to Nihility and was allowed to upgrade his Mind Cultivation. Two, he still had no idea if he could suppress multiple Nascent Souls with a single Aura.
Bummer. He’d need the Jade Chameleon Sect’s help for that one. Not that asking for such a minor favor was a big deal. They owed him. Hugely.
Even if he couldn’t subdue more than one per Aura, that still didn’t seem like an issue. He would only neutralize four out of the six enemies. So what? He would simply tank hits from one, kill the other, and then kill the other unsuppressed one. Easy Peasy.
Benton pulled up the changes in his status:
Sect Members:1,317Disciples:57Sect Points:7,001Shop Points:765
He sure had a massive total of Sect Points, and his sect was thriving. His only regret at the moment was how he was keeping the branch sect at arm’s length. Fatty Ren and he had talked about sending crafters to the main grounds, but Benton had always pulled back on it at the last minute.
The Town Lord probably thought Benton didn’t appreciate those members, but that wasn’t the reason. He was trying to keep them safe. His thinking was that, if everyone thought he didn’t care about those members, no one would target them.
Hopefully, the Jade Chameleons would go through with the ambush against him, and Benton could finally put the matter of the sect war to rest. Then, he wouldn’t have to worry about attacks and could finally integrate the two parts into a whole.
That left only one big concern for the future. Well, both a hope and a concern, really—with the Trials Pagoda, any of his sect members could presumably advance as high as cultivation went.
That realization was great from the standpoint of his sect members leading long and prosperous lives. He and the sect would have truly made a huge difference to each of them. Imagine, the weakest F- Qi Gathering minor realm one cultivator who joined the sect next month had a real shot of becoming a Celestial Being.
No one in the Big Three, or the formerly Big Four, even counting the Emperor’s faction as well, had reached even Nihility in recorded history. That rank was reserved for myths and legends who lived on far shores over treacherous seas.
The thought of elevating what all those stodgy sect cultivators considered to be talentless trash to the very pinnacle of cultivation felt like a valid use of his second life.
That was the hope portion of his realization, which left the concern.
The only problem imagining making thousands and thousands of his sect members into Celestial Beings was that overcoming every single bottleneck cost points. Just getting from the peak of Golden Core to Nascent Soul cost five hundred. What about minor realms in Nascent Soul? How much would the price escalate to reach Nihility?
He hadn’t done the math, but he was almost positive that very few of his sect members could earn him enough Sect Points to pay for all their future bottlenecks. Even the twins might need help just getting to Nascent Soul.
Essentially, every point he spent meant that one of his sect members might not reach quite as high later.
It was great that so many more of them would experience long, long lives, but at the same time, his management of points being the reason for any of them not reaching higher was a bit of a bummer.
Hmm. Maybe there was a way to put Sun Hua in charge of points spending…
