Chapter 109: Turning Green
Benton’s spiritual sense was unrivaled in detecting spirit beast intrusions, even to the extent of being able to determine rank at a great distance. It did not, however, operate independently. For it to be active, he had to concentrate on doing a sweep.
It was not possible for him to constantly monitor for beasts. For one, he had to sleep occasionally. For another, he simply could not focus on just that all the time.
As a compromise, he tried to do remember to sweep periodically, at least a couple of times an hour. Sometimes, he went for longer than that, especially when he was engaged in doing something else, like intensely planning for his future build.
Usually, that worked just fine. Even though his disciples who were most in the line of fire couldn’t damage a rank four beast, they were perfectly capable of defending against one until he could reach them. The twins, especially, he didn’t have to worry about.
His lack of attention was, for the first time, causing a real issue. When the gong rang, he quickly swept the area with his spiritual sense. Two rank fours were attacking the village. Yang Ru had one occupied, but the other was free to enter the village and cause havoc.
The scan revealed something even worse, though. A rank five. And Yang Xiu was close to it. Too close.
While a rank four was well within her capability to hold off, a rank five was much more dangerous. Too dangerous.
Traveling the two and a half miles to her location in a single step took over twenty thousand qi. Once he would have been apoplectic seeing that huge quantity. Now it was a tiny drop in the bucket of his ocean of qi.
An instant after forming his intent, he was standing in the forest near where he’d detected the two qi signatures. Yang Xiu was in a tree, her eyes focused on a spot in another tree. He didn’t see anything where she was looking, but his senses told him that was the location of the beast.
“Our first rank five,” he said. “Good job spotting it.”
With a thought, his bow was in his hand with an arrow nocked, but as he was about to shoot, he ran into a problem. Benton could sense the creature, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t even know what type it was for sure. Though from the length of the qi signature, he suspected it was a snake.
He didn’t have time to mess around with that beast. The village was in trouble. A miss would waste time. A hit that wasn’t a kill would waste time. And not being able to see the beast, he was sure that he would miss a lot as his arrows’ homing worked off his senses. If he couldn’t see the thing, the arrow couldn’t either.