Chapter 240: Preparing for War
The arrival of the Jade Chameleon Sect Nascent Souls might be days away, but Benton had to prepare as if it would come first thing the next morning, meaning he only had the rest of the evening and the whole of the night to get ready. Which was exactly what he planned to do. First and most importantly came his upgrades.
Ever since Kang Ya-Ting had told Benton about the expected imminent attack, his mind had gone into overdrive, thinking about what he could do to power up.
He already made use of the most powerful qi elements he could think of—Gravity, Time, Space, and Void—to create techniques. But it occurred to him that an increase in raw power wasn’t what he needed.
Well, such an increase would be nice, but he was at his wit’s end regarding how to make improvements in that regard. His opponents were going to be faster, tougher, and hit with far greater strength than he could muster no matter what.
No, he needed tricks, utility, and ways to leverage his advantages.
The first advantage that came to mind was his perk that hid his cultivation. Not only did it do its job well with no one being able to figure out his realm, but so far, it had completely concealed him from all cultivators’ spiritual senses. Even the vaunted Nascent Souls he was about to fight shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and a mere mortal.
In the confrontation against Teng Chun way back when they’d been returning from Sixth Flawless Flowing City, the only way Benton penetrated the illusion had been with his spiritual sense. When fighting Teng Chun’s father, Benton hadn’t been able to sense the man at all and had been forced to create a technique to be able to detect him.
But that concealment had come at a cost for Teng Jian. He would have had to spend both concentration and qi to keep his presence hidden from spiritual sense in addition to what it cost to create illusions to fool Benton’s sight, hearing, and smell.
Benton required no such expenditures to accomplish the same thing. He was undetectable to other cultivators’ spiritual sense with no effort on his part. An illusion technique to make him invisible would allow him to hide at a lower cost than other cultivators could.
That advantage was slight, but efficiencies like that added up during the course of a battle.
Playing on the same theme, replicating the technique that Teng Jian and his flunkies had used to create illusionary clones would be a nice touch. Not only was it a practical tactic that would frustrate opponents’ targeting, but Benton loved the idea of using the Jade Chameleon Sect’s own techniques against them. Only since his technique was System supplied, it would be much more powerful, more efficient, and harder to see through.
More importantly, it would be tricky, which was exactly what he was going for.