The Sect Leader System

Benton enjoyed his encounters with Kang Ya-Ting. The man was a cultivator elder through and through, always working the angles and trying to find advantages for himself, his family, and his sect. Typically, that trait would be one that Benton could understand but not really respect.

The way Kang Ya-Ting went about it was refreshing, though, bringing a level of openness to their dealings. Benton couldn’t help but wonder if the man was just less inclined to be sneaky than others in his position or if he was simply not very good at hiding his intentions. Either way, Benton had no problem with someone who looked out for their own self interests as long as they weren’t duplicitous. Like Kang Ya-Ting’s “ten percent commission.” The overcharging was so obvious that it had to be meant for Benton to see.

With their business finished, he said his goodbyes and teleported back to his sect, arriving in the Alchemy Pavilion in lieu of his office. His next task, after all, was the creation of pills. A lot of pills. Thousands.

In preparation for that task, he’d purchased three ranks of techniques each for Alchemy knowledge, herb preparation, and pill creation. Mastery of the first rank brought him to Apprentice as an alchemist, the second to Journeyman, and the third to Expert.

Though he didn’t have a way to recoup those Sect Points, producing the pills himself would save him hundreds of Shop Points in the short term and thousands or tens of thousands or more in the long term. Since the latter was so much harder to acquire than the former, he felt that the expenditure was well justified.

There was one problem with his plan, though—pill toxicity. The ones purchased from the System were one hundred percent pure, meaning they possessed zero toxins. In contrast, an average low level pill like Minor Healing or Qi Condensing produced by a Journeyman would have a purity percentage in the low eighties. An Expert Alchemist would normally produce similar pills in the ninety-five to ninety-nine percent range, occasionally achieved perfect purity.

Benton would prefer not to have his sect members consume any pills that weren’t one hundred percent pure. His hope was that, since System purchased techniques were simply better than the techniques used by most sects and factions, he’d be able to consistently make perfect pills.

He wouldn’t truly know until he tried, however.

The room he’d popped into was one of the single-person labs, and he made sure to secure the door before beginning work. Not that anyone would intentionally disturb him, but teleporting to random locations did come with the unfortunate side effect of people not knowing that the sect leader was making use of that location. A simple unintended interruption at the wrong time could cause an alchemist to mess up an entire batch, which was why the room’s doors had locking and silencing arrays built into them.

After a bit of consideration, Benton decided to start with creating the Minor Healing Pills. They were a bit more complex to make than the Qi Condensing Pills and an order of magnitude easier than the Major Healing Pills. He was positive, however, that his first few batches, at the very least, would be his worst in terms of purity, and he wasn’t nearly as opposed to letting a sect member use a medicinal pill with a bit of toxicity than one intended to help with cultivation.

By starting with the Minor Healing Pills—five hundred of them!—he hoped to gain the experience needed to hone his purchased Mastery of the techniques. Thus, by the time he got to the Qi Condensing Pills, producing high-quality ones should be easy as pie.

Hopefully.