A/N 3/22/25: Oops. I made not one, not two, but three mistakes in this chapter. I had to take it down and re-upload it. Apologies if you happened on it before the corrected version went up.
Benton had spent a lot of time coming up with a design for the towers. The formation capable of killing a Nascent Soul cultivator would go at the very ...
2025-03-22 17:10:14 +0000 UTC View PostBenton fretted about his decision for most of the afternoon, going back and forth in his head. One minute, he leaned on letting the twins go to Sixth Flawless Flowing City. The next, he changed his mind.
Ugh. The choice wasn’t complicated. On the “let them go” side, he had the benefit to the sect in allowing the pursuit of the two mo...
2025-03-21 01:12:29 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 3/19/25: Bonus chapter 2 of 2. Thank you all so much for your support!
Fu Qingshan sat in his hiding spot near the road outside the main entrance to Sixth Flawless Flowing City. He’d meticulously pulled branches and leaves around himself, and the technique he used to mask his qi was at Mastery. Additionally, his sect supplied a treas...
2025-03-20 03:02:46 +0000 UTC View Post4/13/25 A/N: Uploaded this chapter with a later version. Most of the stuff was clarity/typo related. However, I did retcon a couple of things about the trap to better match future events.
IIn preparation for the big reveal of an important sect secret, Benton paused to figure out how best to tell the council in a way that sounded believable...
2025-03-19 02:42:50 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 3/17/25: Bonus chapter time. I'm actually way behind on these, so this is the first of two upcoming.
Benton braced from the massive infusion of knowledge he’d just purchased, and the System soon crammed it into his brain. Despite the onslaught of information, he didn’t feel overwhelmed. Nor underwhelmed; the download was one of his...
2025-03-18 02:36:39 +0000 UTC View PostThe twins’ birthday party turned out to be one of the best nights of Benton’s new life. He liked that the sect members and villagers seemed to appreciate the experience of the new dessert he served them even if the icing was a bit much for them. Watching Yang Xiu swoop around fearlessly on the glider and Yang Ru take a much more tentative ap...
2025-03-17 02:58:45 +0000 UTC View PostYang Xiu’s eyes widened at the sight of the beauty before her. She wasn’t sure exactly what device did, but it certainly looked interesting. And considering that Master made it, the treasure surely was unfathomable.
He was smirking at her, meaning that he expected her to ask him how to use the treasure. When she opened her mouth to do ...
2025-03-16 20:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostBenton’s heart broke for Li’er. The girl had been through so much. He couldn’t even imagine the impact that watching spirit beasts kill one’s family would have on a person. It was said that children tended to be resilient, but there was a limit to what anyone could endure.
On one level, he had realized that her life hadn’t been e...
2025-03-16 03:57:58 +0000 UTC View PostYang Xiu’s eyes were wide when she walked into the amphitheater. Hundreds of orbs, each a different color, floated above the open-air stadium. She’d never seen anything like it. She’d never even dreamed of anything like it.
Reaching out with her spiritual sense, she determined the orbs to be made of glass, but the light was produced ...
2025-03-15 03:03:08 +0000 UTC View PostBenton threw all the orbs and the cake into his spatial ring and Quickstepped into the amphitheater, ready to start decorating. Just after he distributed all the colored lights in the air and readied the cake on a giant slab of wood that he fashioned into a table, he realized he hadn’t got the kids gifts yet. And he was running out of time! 2025-03-14 03:06:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Yang Xiu waited until her brother stepped heavily forward on his right foot. That was his biggest flaw in using his technique. He always, always triggered it after one certain movement with that foot.
She dodged right.
He transferred all his gathered Momentum into his strike, but it was too late. She’s already moved too far away. A...
2025-03-13 16:09:00 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Benton left the Alchemy Pavilion, he spent most of the rest of the day working on designs for his grand formation that would protect the sect from all enemies. Obviously, those plans couldn’t be implemented for another almost two weeks, when the wall was completed and installed, but he wanted to be ready for when he could start creating ...
2025-03-11 03:08:58 +0000 UTC View PostBenton’s attention had been drawn to two people running from the residential neighborhood to the Central Business District by the noise their churning legs and hard footfalls made. He flared his spiritual sense and determined that the two were Zou Tian and Wan Ai.
Obviously, their actions made Benton curious, but the fact that he could u...
2025-03-10 02:32:29 +0000 UTC View PostWan Ai woke with a start.
Of course. The answer was so obvious. How could she have missed it?
She rose from her bed, quickly dressed on a sect robe, rushed to Zou Tian’s door, and knocked softly.
In her excitement, she’d almost banged on the door, but her boyfriend—and how weird was it still for her to think of someone us...
2025-03-09 04:48:44 +0000 UTC View Post
A/N 3/5/25 Missed three points when doing the numbers for this chapter. Added those with the appropriate explanation.
Benton’s impression of Fatty Ren kept getting revised upward. The first meeting with the big guy wasn’t all that great as he appeared to be lazy, sitting in his palace eating while someone else ran the town he was respo...
2025-03-05 03:23:03 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 3/3/25: That moment when you're trying to get a chapter posted and you keep adding and changing and deleting and revising...
Fatty Ren balanced awkwardly on the flying sword—his flying sword—as he made his way straight toward Sixth Flawless Flowing City, thanking his lucky stars that Sect Leader Chao Su had sought a consultation fo...
2025-03-04 01:49:40 +0000 UTC View PostAs an extrovert, Benton had always liked people, and he’d had a variety of relationships throughout his life on Earth. He’d been married, raised children, spoiled grandchildren, been taught and taught others in turn, mentored proteges, and so on. All in all, he felt he had a pretty good handle on human nature.
Sometimes, though, someon...
2025-03-02 16:36:57 +0000 UTC View PostJin LiJuan swallowed her pride, relying instead of the kindness of a relative stranger. “Senior Brother, will you help me with my spirit beast bond?”
“Of course, Junior Sister,” Pan Jiang said. “Though I certainly do not claim to be an expert of the subject, it’s likely that I know more about a typical sect’s beast pavilion t...
2025-03-01 16:42:17 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 2/27/25: I added a status screen to Chapter 196. Just an FYI if you've been missing them.
The wolf cub followed Jin LiJuan into the Martial Pavilion. At rank two, it was the size of medium dog and continued to grow in size and strength each day after she fed it a rank one core.
In a way, it disgusted her. Beasts like it had kill...
2025-02-28 02:50:48 +0000 UTC View PostYang Xiu was practically bouncing up and down as Master escorted her, Kang Lin, and Yang Ru into the Martial Pavilion. Kang Lin had been telling stories about the one at the Poison Claw Sect, and if the one Master procured could do half those things, Yang Xiu was going to be so happy.
From the outside, it was perfect. At five stories, it w...
2025-02-26 04:03:56 +0000 UTC View PostHuang Yimun was pretty far down the priority list. He had E- spirit roots even after the upgrade and was only at the fifth minor realm of Qi Gathering. Up until very recently he would never have even believed that him becoming a member of the council was remotely possible.
He still couldn’t fathom the fact that he’d been appointed guar...
2025-02-25 04:37:54 +0000 UTC View PostZou Tian had no desire to look at houses. He really had no desire to go with Wan Ai to look at houses. All such an activity would do was bring up very uncomfortable subjects.
If she wanted a place with a single bedroom, did that mean she wanted to live by herself or that they should escalate their relationship? Did she want marriage? Were ...
2025-02-23 17:21:41 +0000 UTC View PostSun Hua’s heart rose to her throat as she stood outside the door leading to what the sect leader called his “office.” The mayor’s house was large enough to hold a similar room, but he called it a “study.” She was fairly sure that the sect would use the former term going forward based on the sect leader’s preference, so she made a p...
2025-02-22 18:49:20 +0000 UTC View PostTeng Wuying was equally parts pleased and anxious. By benefit of his brother’s not so untimely death, he was now the sole inheritor of his family’s resources. And he was still alive, which would have been a much more difficult feat to pull off had he remained in Sixth Flawless Flowing City.
On the other hand, he was standing in front o...
2025-02-22 00:07:54 +0000 UTC View PostEmperor Han Shu was not sure if the information contained in the report he just read represented a good thing or a bad thing to his faction. Peace had existed between his empire and the sects for more than a century, but a single cultivator seeking advantage could change that status at any time.
For as long as anyone could remember, three ...
2025-02-21 02:59:20 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 2/18/25: This is Monday's post. Now, assuming that I get Wednesday's post up sometime tomorrow, I should be able to get back on track for posting on time starting Friday. Thanks for bearing with me.
The moment of silence was the end of Ye Zan’s memorial service, but with the entire sect present, Benton needed to take a few moments to...
2025-02-19 00:00:50 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 2/27/25: This is Sunday's chapter. I'll post Monday's chapter tomorrow, getting us caught up. Again, apologies for the delay.
With the preparations for move-in complete, Benton moved on to a much less pleasant task—getting ready for Ye Zan’s memorial service. The first order of business was to determine where the guard captain woul...
2025-02-18 02:05:51 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 2/16/25 - I'm behind. Sorry. This should have been posted yesterday morning. I got stuck on this chapter. On the plus side, I got to reference both Star Trek II and Lost in Space, so there's that. I kind of ended up going down a wrong path, and it took me a while to see that I had to course correct. I think this version is much better. Look ...
2025-02-16 22:52:23 +0000 UTC View PostA/N 2/26/25 - Status screen added today. Note that I found two small mistakes prior to this chapter. The numbers in this chapter and going forward should be correct.
Benton was happy with the techniques he’d given Fatty Ren. The flying sword technique would allow the big guy to travel between Vermilion Incomparable Rain Town and the vill...
2025-02-14 15:53:20 +0000 UTC View PostOther than sleeping for a couple of hours, Benton worked through the night, making good progress. He felt confident that, with another eight to ten hours of labor, he’d have all the building interior arrays completely analyzed and safed off where necessary, assuming he didn’t hit any major snags. The final piece after finishing the work on t...
2025-02-12 15:27:01 +0000 UTC View Post