Yang Ru couldn’t believe it. Kang Lin was dead.

It didn’t make sense. Just a few minutes earlier, she’d been living and breathing, activating talismans. She couldn’t be gone. Not Kang Lin.

He didn’t want her to be gone.

As reality set in, his stomach gurgled, and he dashed a few feet from the body, throwing up blood.

There was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do. Bringing someone back from the dead was impossible.

His eyes went wide at the thought. He knew of one person who made the impossible seem routine. Death was death, though, so he didn’t want to get his hopes up. But he had to try.

Yang Ru popped his contingency ring.

Benton literally couldn’t do anything. With nine Nascent Souls suppressing him, he couldn’t even access his qi. His Auras were also of no help. When used to actively contest an enemy, they were quite useful. Once the other side won… Not so much.

Not even his talismans could be used under the intense wave of pressure weighing down all qi near him. His only possible move was to attack one of them physically, but without qi, such an strike would have been less than useless.

When the kids sent a volley against his captors, he thought it was a sweet thought but an ultimately pointless one even if it did draw off three of his enemies. In practice, six cultivators suppressing him were no different than nine.

But Yuan Yaozu, heavens bless him, showed up right on the heels of the attack launching. Five cultivators were a world of difference away from six.

Sure, Benton was still eighty percent suppressed, but twenty percent of his power was still better than most cultivators. He also hadn’t been completely idle while under the influence of all those restrictive Auras. It turned out that his qi still regenerated and that he could use Meditation to increase that amount.

Even with all the qi he’d spent to kill the four JCSB cultivators, he still had more than sixty thousand left, and with Meditation active, he regenerated close the thirty thousand per second.

“System,” he said internally, “how much qi do I have at the moment?”

164,116

The quantity wasn’t much compared to having his pool be topped up, but it was enough.

Yuan Yaozu looked at him, his expression asking, “Was killing that guy enough? Can you fight?”

Benton grinned in response and began building up Void qi. With his oppressors’ attention on Yuan Yaozu and worried about the second attack from the talismans that was incoming, none even noticed.

Too easy.

He just needed to pick a target. The three better dressed and better trained Nascent Souls probably represented organizations that could give him trouble down the road. Sure, those three had come after him, so he was completely justified in killing them. Cultivators were a prickly bunch, though. Killing one of them might just result in another blood feud, which meant he’d have to end up destroying yet another sect.

His main goal in wiping out everyone who came after him was deterrence. If killing resulted in more hassle, it wasn’t worth it. Not that he’d let them off scot-free or that they’d necessarily survive to the end of the battle—that outcome depended entirely on their actions going forward. But, for the moment, he decided that the noticeably less affluent targets were probably a better bet.

The one farthest from him used a shield that was primarily Wood aspected, so Benton finished his preparation by adding in Fire qi. He waved cheerfully at the guy before unleashing the strike.

The guy’s eyes went wide, but there was really nothing he could do considering that mere feet separated the two of them. His shield was already at maximum as he prepared for the kids’ volley.

Benton’s sphere struck, and the Fire burned through the shield in an instant, leaving Void to do what it did best, destroy stuff utterly and completely. Which it did.

He hummed, “Another one down, another one down…”

The battle had started out sixteen against one. Benton had since killed six, Yuan Yaozu two, and one had fled. Only seven remained. More importantly, with that few against him and having an ally, it would be very difficult for them to have six of them attack him with Auras at once, especially since the rest of the Poison Claw Sect allies were on the way.

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Benton’s side had already won. He just wasn’t sure if the enemy realized it yet. To drive the point home, he attacked the final mercenary left on the roof, killing him, too.

The woman who’d commanded the others glanced at her cohorts.

Perhaps being around the twins and their nonverbal communication had done Benton good because he knew exactly what she was telling them.

“Don’t even try to run,” he said. “If you do, I will hunt each of you down.”

The woman gathered qi.

He didn’t know if she intended an attack or to use a technique to flee, but he said, “I swear I will kill you beyond any hope of reconstitution if I have to come after you.”

Purple lightning flashed. The three cultivators looked at each other again, clearly defeated, and the woman let the qi dissipate.

“We surrender,” she said.

As Benton was just about to accept their defeat graciously, a beacon went off. Nearby. He scanned the area.

The three remaining mercenary Nascent Souls were scattering, so they were no longer a threat, just something he’d have to deal with later. A Golden Core, the angry, annoying woman from the Swift Blizzard Sect raced toward him on her flying sword. No worry there.

The Poison Claw Sect reinforcements were almost to the square. Great timing. Not.

That left Yang Ru all alone on the far side of the building he’d been on. He appeared to be moving, so it wasn’t immediately clear what the issue was.

Still, Rising Tide Sect members were trained to use their contingency rings only when necessary, so there was no question that Benton would go to the boy.

“I have to take care of something right quick,” he told the captured Nascent Souls. “Don’t make me hunt you.”

He Teleported to Yang Ru. The boy was crouched over a corpse, crying. Kang Lin’s corpse.

“Can you save her, Master? Please tell me you can save her.”

The Benton back on Earth could have done nothing. Neither would Golden Core Benton. Nascent Soul Benton was a completely different story, though.

“Of course. Give me a moment.”

Her body showed massive damage from Water qi, probably struck by a mercenary Nascent Soul, and Benton made a mental note to take extra time making that one suffer once he’d hunted the guy down.

Considering how torn up she was, it was quite probable that the attack had killed her. If not, then she absolutely had no chance after the fall. When she landed, her head had impacted the ground. Hard. Her skull was cracked and part of her brain smushed.

That would do it. Instant death.

Running his sense through her body, he detected numerous other issues, some minor and a lot that would have eventually been fatal all on their own. Neither a fall from a five story building nor taking the brunt of a Nascent Soul’s attack was good for one’s health.

There was nothing that couldn’t be fixed, though, and at least there wasn’t anything missing because the first step in reviving her was to repair the damage.

He activated Soul Material Manipulation and began slowly and meticulously reforming her body.

Kang Lin looked down on her body from above. Or, more accurately, she watched Yang Ru crouched over her body, mourning.

She felt bad for him and a little bit for herself. If she hadn’t wasted so much time being an idiot, their relationship could have been in such a different place by that point.

If she would have possessed lungs or any of the other necessary biological equipment, she would have sighed. Things seemed so much clearer to her now that she was dead.

Yang Ru was a good, good man. He wasn’t perfect, of course, but he was strong and hardworking and dedicated, worthy of not just being a husband but of being loved. Any girl would be lucky to have him, and she fervently hoped that he found one who would truly appreciate him.

He was lacking, however, in some crucial aspects that would be needed for someone who was destined to become a force in cultivator society. She wouldn’t call him simple, per se, as the connotation of that description made him sound stupid. And he wasn’t. At all.

Still, he viewed the world through the lens of a man from a small town. Maybe unsophisticated was a good way to portray him. He definitely didn’t have much in the way of the kind of political and social instincts that he’d need.

She could have really helped him in those areas. In fact, the value she brought in those ways would have compensated a lot for the difference in talent.

Why didn’t she realize that a long time ago? It would have saved so, so much trouble and pain.

Again, she wished she could sigh.

Yang Ru did something strange that took her mind off her regrets. He popped his contingency ring.

What? Why? There were no other cultivators around. In fact, Master had already accepted the surrender of the remaining enemies who hadn’t fled.

Time was starting to lose meaning for Kang Lin as her soul continued to drift away from her body, but at some point thereafter, Master appeared. The two spoke, though Kang Lin didn’t know what they said as she had no ears to hear them.

Then again, she didn’t have eyes, either, but she saw them. Being a disembodied soul was weird.

Then, Master started repairing her body.

That was nice of him. Master was such a kind person. She hoped he wouldn’t be too sad at losing her. Grandfather, too.

Having her body appear presentable would help, hopefully, make the funeral more palatable. She hated the thought of Grandfather seeing her destroyed like that. Better that he see her posed peacefully like she’d just gone to sleep.

A thought struck her. How was Master doing that? Healing didn’t work on dead people. Like when Yang Ru tried to stick a healing pill in her mouth and nothing happened. That qi element simply didn’t affect corpses.

Impossible or not, Master did it anyway. Which shouldn’t have surprised her. He never had seemed limited by what anyone else thought was doable.

Soon—or maybe a long time later; time was starting to really get weird—her body was fixed completely. Not even a bruise. The blood would need to be scrubbed off her, but otherwise, the servants tasked with preparing her for burial should have an easy job.

Kang Lin was glad. She hated to be a burden to anyone.

Then, the weirdest, most improbable, impossible thing yet happened. Master reached out with his qi and grabbed her soul.