Chapter 193: Interesting Isn’t All It’s Cracked up to Be
After dismissing his disciples, Benton spent the next hour hooking up the residences to the main power supply, and once done, he was pretty happy with his accomplishment getting so many places move-in ready. The area could house over three hundred people at full capacity, and he’d randomly tested many formations to make sure they operated as expected.
They all worked. Climate control, defensive shield, alarm, food preservation, and both water and sanitary all functioned correctly in every place he’d tried. If someone did happen to move into a place and there was a malfunction, he’d just have to wait until someone notified him of the problem and fix it then. Performing one hundred percent quality control just wasn’t efficient.
He mentally checked housing off his To Do List for sect move-in. Perfect.
His next task was a bit more tedious, but it was also more important. In addition to standard arrays for climate control and shields and the like, all the big structures he was using for his pavilions had complex custom formations for various functions. For example, the alchemy building had heating arrays for cauldrons and heat and smoke removal arrays for when experiments went awry. The martial building had all kinds of cool features for protecting people who were sparring and various illusionary opponents to practice against.
Benton had started the process of going through all of those arrays to make sure they worked and removing anything he thought might present a danger to his sect members. Which was more arrays than he thought he would encounter when he’d started. But upon reflection, the dangerous ones made sense. What might be deadly for the Qi Gathering cultivators who made up the majority of his sect was trivial for a Foundation Establishment cultivator to use.
He doubted that anyone below that realm had been allowed in some of the rooms without an escort when the building was in use by the Righteous Rain Sect. The Rising Tide Sect, in contrast, had no spare Foundation Establishment cultivators to employ for that purpose, so it was up to him to make everything safe enough for children … uh, young adult Qi Gathering cultivators.
The exploration wasn’t difficult, but it was tedious. Each building had so many rooms, and when walking into one, he never knew if he would encounter only the standard arrays and be able to leave in minutes or if he’d have to spend hours tracing formations rune by rune.
It was a relief, then, when he sensed a very fast-moving Foundation Establishment cultivator heading toward the village.
In the past, the fact that no other cultivator could sense Benton’s location was occasionally an annoyance. Instead of them heading directly to him at the sect grounds, a visitor would go where they sensed the largest concentration of cultivators, and Benton would have to Quickstep to them.
That bother was relegated to the past with the creation of his message technique. A moment of his time and a few qi later, and a paper dragon was on its way to Fatty Ren.
Benton watched through his spiritual sense, amused, as the big man halted for a moment and then changed course toward the sect grounds. A few minutes and a short Quickstep later, the two met.
“Fatty Ren, when you said you could move fast, I had no idea how truthful you were being. You know, Kang Lin uses lightning qi, and you would leave her in the dust. Well done!”