Chapter 130: Time and Tide Wait for No Man
Beast tides had a number of distinct phases. Following the quick escalation in quantity and quality of beasts in an area, the next step was a complete withdrawal. The number of beasts would keep increasing until suddenly all would quickly vanish.
Benton suspected that time was getting close.
Four days later, he was guarding the sect members cultivating in the Wood when it happened. All the spirit beasts in range of his spiritual sense ran back toward the mountain. The process took a while with some of the creatures faster than others, but within a couple of hours, none were left.
Rank ones, twos, all the way up to sixes. It didn’t matter. They were all just gone.
The pressure on him and the sect to finish up preparations intensified greatly. They had a week, two at the most, before the tide hit.
Oh well. They’d known it was coming. Now, they were out of time. At least, they wouldn’t have to wait much longer with the pall of it hanging over them.
What to do? What to do?
Benton started with consolidating the gains he’d gotten over the last several days.
Since he’d last checked his status, Only Yang Xiu had made any progress on her techniques, finally advancing her shield to Small Success. The failure of the others made sense, though. Most everyone was working on trying to get to Large Success by that point. To reach that level could take months and rarely less than weeks.
His other two sources of points yielded much better news. The third set of fifty villagers had all advanced from minor realm one to minor realm two, giving him fifty points.
Body Cultivation gave him an even higher total with the twins and Zou Tian reaching Bronze minor realm eight, ten members of the martial pavilion and the twenty village guards making minor realm five, and thirty other volunteers attaining minor realm two. All told, his increasingly physically imposing sect members gained him sixty-three points.
Combined, he’d increased his Sect Points by one hundred fourteen in those four days.