Chapter 266: Should I Stay, or Should I Go?
The first thing Benton did upon teleporting back to his office was to send out messages to his entire council calling for a meeting in three hours. As it was shortly after lunch, that would give everyone enough time to settle whatever they were working on, attend the meeting, and finish up in time for dinner.
His second action was to send an additional message to Yuan Yaozu, asking the Nascent Soul to come to the Administration Hall as quickly as possible. The man quickly complied, and the two of them settled into a conversation over a cup of tea. Benton started things off by explaining the situation with the tournament invitation and the context provided by the Poison Claw Sect elders.
“To be as forthright as possible, I need someone to run my thoughts past,” Benton said. “You’re not here as a disciple or a subordinate. You’re here because you’re the most knowledgeable person I have available that I can trust.”
“Understood. I’ll dispense with the formalities during this talk, then?”
In a deliberately ironic display, Benton cupped his hands in response, and the other Nascent Soul grinned.
“My immediate inclination is to refuse the invitation,” Benton said. “Purely looking at it from a risk versus gain standpoint, there is definitely some risk, and honestly, I don’t see the gain. Give me and my sect a hundred years, and the recognition from other sects will be meaningless as we’ll be way too powerful for anyone to ignore.”
He sighed. “On the other hand, my recent experience might be coloring my decision making. I did, after all, almost get everyone killed because I let my pride overrule my judgment.”
“Which I’m guessing is why I’m here,” Yuan Yaozu said. “To provide a check to make sure you’re not going too far in the opposite direction.”
“Got it in one.”
“I’ll start by evaluating the risk, then,” Yuan Yaozu said. “You told me that you’re comfortable with your sect members performance during official fights, and I’ll agree that there should be minimal danger on that front, especially given your mastery of formations. It occurs to me that the real threat comes from an ambush targeting you and/or your sect members.”
Benton was about to speak to those concerns, but the other man held up a finger.
“You almost lost the fight with Ye Zhengsheng and Yan Mingxia,” Yuan Yaozu said. “But you told me you fought them as a Golden Core. Now, you’re a Nascent Soul, and your Aura technique is likely to give you an enormous advantage. Still, it’s hard for me to evaluate how you’ll perform against as many Nascent Souls as your enemies might be able to field, especially since they’ll choose the battlefield and not let you prepare any formations nearby. So the question I need answered truthfully is—how strong are you?”