Chapter 131: Picking Up a Thing or Two
Benton sat, recovering from his powerup. Well, he wasn’t sure if learning how to craft formations could rightfully be called much of a powerup, but he did spend lots of points? Anyway, once his head had stopped pounding quite so hard, he called for a council meeting.
Since there were no more beasts to worry about, he was no longer tied to guarding the Wood. It would have felt weird to have no one watching over the vulnerable cultivators, though, so he delegated that task to Huang Yimun, who had become Ye Zan’s right-hand man.
Another plus to the beasts leaving was that he could return to having his council meeting in the arena. There was no real need for him to relocate the gathering to that location as the mayor’s house worked just fine, but there was just something about utilizing his own building on his own land that was dedicated to the sect’s use that felt special to him.
Most of the council were gathered in the Wood, so getting the word to them didn’t take long. After a moment of deliberation, he also invited Kang Lin as the leader of a delegation from a friendly sect.
Interestingly, the girl seemed to be getting on quite well with Yang Ru suddenly. On the day of their walk, Benton had been sure that she was primed to reject any overtures the boy might make. Apparently, though, he was much better with the ladies than Benton had realized. All it had taken was that one outing for them to become thick as thieves.
The culture was obviously much different than the one Benton and his children grew up dating in. There was not even a hint of physical contact between the couple, not even something as innocuous as holding hands. They just seemed to be enjoying each other’s company a lot.
Speaking of which, of the council members, only Zou Tian and Wan Ai were in the village, and he popped over to tell them as well. Since they were the last ones, he went ahead and Quickstepped them over to the sect grounds, beating most of the rest who had to hoof it over from the Wood.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Benton said once everyone had gathered, “we’re in the home stretch. The withdrawal of the beasts means that we’re one to two weeks from the beast tide. Time for final preparations.”
He met the eyes of each one of the sixteen gathered with him in the arena. “This is the question for each of you—how can you best spend the remaining time to prepare yourself and/or the sect for the coming attack? I’ll start with Yang Xiu.”
“Practice, Master. I’m still not fast enough adding qi to my arrows, and my control over my shield is inadequate. I obviously won’t be able to reach Large Success in less than a couple of weeks, but I will get better and faster with both techniques.”
“That is acceptable. Yang Ru?”
“My use of my current two techniques is sufficient to do what I need with them, so it’s time for me to get a shield, Master. The goal is to reach Small Success with it before the tide.”