Chapter 181: Condition of Membership
With the recent tragedy a little way in the rearview mirror and the unpleasantness in Sixth Flawless Flowing City dealt with, Benton could actually enjoy flying on a sword. It was as neat as he’d hoped. The wind whipping through his hair. The sheer exhilaration of hurdling over the land at speed.
If anything back on Earth compared to the experience, he didn’t know what it was. Obviously, he’d flown before. Many times. But being crammed into a packed airplane was not nearly the same thing as standing on a flat piece of metal not much wider than his feet and just … moving. Flying. Maybe hang gliding or parasailing or something like that would have come close to making him feel the same way, but he’d never done any of those things.
To be honest, he had been a bit … cautious in his old life. Death defying risks hadn’t exactly been something he would have embraced.
Being isekai’d to a new world was very liberating in that sense. That he had been given an opportunity of a brand-new start was already beyond anything he’d expected. That fact combined with the feeling that he’d already lived one full life made it a lot easier than he would have thought to risk himself battling fearsome cultivators and wild beasts.
His lack of regard for his personal safety made flying so, so fast hundreds of yards above the ground with nothing separating him from the ground other than a thin strip of metal exciting instead of terrifying. Well, that lack and the fact that, with his Body Cultivation and high Spiritual Cultivation realm, a fall even from that height at that speed wasn’t likely to even hurt all that much.
Honestly, flying was a practical as it was fun, requiring less effort, less qi, and less concentration than Quickstepping. He also suspected that the flying sword was also, in a way, faster than the movement technique for long distances.
Benton couldn’t help but remember how bored he’d been the last time he’d made the journey between the city and Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town. How slowly the wagons had moved. How long the trip had taken.
With his new flying sword, he reached his destination in way less than an hour. As he approached the orphanage, he began to feel a little bad. In the two months since he’d last visited, he’d barely even given the place a single thought.
He had, of course, provided them plenty of funds for food and clothes and asked Fatty Ren to look out for them, but the town surely had some number of beasts attack it during the tide. There was no guarantee than none of the creatures got inside the walls, meaning there was no guarantee that the orphanage survived unscathed.
It looked fine from the outside, though. No damage. No sign of recent construction or repairs. And kids were playing happily.
Good. They had apparently come through the tide just fine.
Even though he was only visiting for the third time and those visits were really spread out, the kids knew exactly who he was. Apparently, the street vendor meals he’d fed them previously had been a huge hit because they surrounded him as soon as he walked close enough.