Chapter 293 - Procurement
With all the necessary materials in hand to create four of the now seven qi sources, Benton was pretty eager to get started crafting. Life experience was good for many things, and one of the hard lessons he’d learned over the years was that beginning a new project while fatigued was a bad idea. He’d put in a lot of work prior to the auction, and the event itself had been quite mentally stimulating.
No matter how much he wanted to throw himself into conquering the next item on his To Do List, he felt he’d be better off taking the rest of the evening and the night off. So that was what he did, even spending a few hours actually sleeping.
The next morning, his first action was to check in with Sun Hua. The girl seemed to be doing fine, and systems were nominal as far as the sect went. It was a big relief to know he had qualified subordinates to run things when needed.
His next task was to create the list of needed materials for Jia Xueqin to procure. Which promised to be a fun activity. First of all, the procurement was part of a mutually beneficial exchange, not at all like asking a favor of Kang Ya-Ting. Not only did Benton expect that whatever was on the list would be acquired at a reasonable price with no markup, but there was no social imbalance being created.
He was free to request anything he could think up.
At the same time, he had millions of greater spirit coins burning a hole in his spatial ring, so unless he started dreaming up really rare items, he could afford to buy anything and everything he wanted and/or needed for his sect.
Obviously, the two materials he lacked for the qi sources, not counting the one that Kang Ya-Ting would be finding and paying for, went at the top of the list with a star next to each one. After that, though, Benton decided his best bet was to go systematically through each pavilion, determining what merchandise might be beneficial.
First up was the Martial Pavilion, and figuring out the needs for that one was easy. They needed more training weapons. Benton would take care of all the sect’s needs for Foundation Establishment and higher—at least until Xun Wu and the other blacksmiths became proficient enough to take over—but his Qi Gathering sect members tended to go through common weapons pretty quickly.
He grinned. Weird that wailing on each other with bodies enhanced with additional strength and toughness from Body Cultivation would be so rough on the weapons.
They weren’t at the point of running out any time soon, but the current circumstances presented the perfect opportunity to acquire more spears, bows, arrows, daggers, hammers, and swords. Heck, why not throw in polearms and battle fans and gauntlets and a bunch of more exotic weapons, too. And for every weapon listed, he might as well request a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes, construction, and weights.