Chapter 179: Salt the Ground
Benton spent the night as a guest of the Poison Claw Sect, though he didn’t get much sleep. He had committed, after all, to create one thousand spirit coins to pay as a fine.
With his coin creation technique at Mastery, it cost him eleven thousand qi to create a ten thousand qi coin, so he spent the night converting batches of one hundred and eighty qi batteries before spending an hour using Meditation to restore his pool to nearly filled. So most of the night passed before he was finished with his task.
On the plus side, he was able to definitely cross that item off his To Do List, and he got some other good news the previous evening. Yang Ru must have done well with his trial because he advanced his Momentum Dissolution Shield to Large Success.
With the sun up and cultivators moving about the sect grounds, Benton ventured forth from his room. After a quick breakfast, he found Kang Ya-Ting and handed over the coins, the elder having been kind enough to offer to have one of the sect minions run them down to the city administration building to pay the fine.
The two friends talked for a while about relatively meaningless topics. Benton caught the elder up on the doings of his granddaughter and the Rising Tide Sect members that he was familiar with. Kang Ya-Ting reciprocated by expressing his condolences about Ye Zan, sharing stories that research had turned up about the guard captain that had led to him being hired.
“If only he was less competent,” Benton said. “You wouldn’t have hired him. He’d probably still be alive.”
“And you think he would have wanted that?”
“To still be alive? Who wouldn’t?”
Kang Ya-Ting’s expression mixed condemnation with compassion. “From what I knew of the boy, Ye Zan desired a life and a death that held meaning. Better he died protecting those he cared about than on a random battlefield fighting for a noble who had a grudge against another noble. That’s how most mercenaries die, and that was the path he was on.”
Benton knew all that information, but admitting it wasn’t good for the wallowing that he wanted to do. So he decided a change of subject would be a good idea. “Overall, how did yesterday go? Did I display the correct level of power? The City Lord didn’t seem pleased with me, but it sounded like he was letting the matter slide. The sect lady, though, really didn’t like me.”
“It is as you said. As long as you don’t cause any more problems in the city, Luo Quan will bear you no further malice. He’s as bureaucratic as they come. You broke the rules, which drew his ire, but you paid your penalty. My best guess is that, as far as he is concerned, you are no longer a problem.”
“Good,” Benton said. “And the Swift Blizzard Sect?”