Chapter 140: Good as New
The second wave passed in much the same manner as the first. About two-thirds as many beasts hurled themselves at the village wall. They were slightly more powerful than the previous attackers, but both the wall and the shield held. Increased toughness led to more arrows being required to take some of them down, and the injuries to the melee fighters were a bit more pronounced with scratches being more prevalent and some actual cuts appearing.
Overall, though, the defenders acquitted themselves well. Having proved they could do it once, even the least experienced carried themselves with more confidence.
During the consolidation of gains portion while waiting for the third wave, fourteen more sect members advanced techniques. Incredibly and unexpectedly, two sect members advanced to the next minor cultivation realm, achieving some form of enlightenment from the fight.
Interesting.
Benton couldn’t have been prouder.
The rank three spirit beasts took only a little over a half hour to reach the wall from when he first detected them. Which made sense. Some of those creatures were the equivalent of a peak Qi Gathering cultivator.
As a group, they were stronger, tougher, and faster not only than the previous waves but also than the vast majority of the defenders. The only saving grace was that there weren’t nearly as many of them.
Though Benton’s mind had been enhanced greatly by reaching the peak of Golden Core, he was still not able to get an accurate count on the teeming mass of fur. If he had a way to mark each one or to keep them all still—well, he could have used Gravity to do that, but that method would probably have killed a lot of the low ranked creatures and he still felt it important to leave that task to his sect members—he could have figured out the exact number.
Instead, he was left with having to estimate. As best he could figure, there were around a thousand spirit beasts attacking the wall. Though, if anything, that number was conservatively high.
Even more so than with human spiritual cultivators, beasts faced challenges to reach the upper ranks. Absorbing enough environmental qi could turn a mortal animal into a spirit beast, but once a core was formed, it was difficult to advance without consuming cores from other beasts. Which wasn’t an easy task, especially since beasts of a lower rank provided little benefit. And those gains decreased the higher one progressed.
Rank ones proliferated due to absorbing qi. Rank twos, to some extent, could advance by consuming rank ones. Rank threes, on the other hand, got almost nothing from rank two cores, making advancing much more of a challenge.
Basically, to reach rank three, one had to kill a lot of rank threes and higher and consume their cores. Given that there weren’t all that many to begin with and they were all tough, there definitely was a lack of the creatures compared to the other ranks.