Chapter 349 - Summons
Benton was quite pleased when Kang Lin lost her match, and no, that emotion didn’t reflect any residual animosity toward the girl. Instead, it was an attestation of the emotion he’d seen reflected on her face—pure happiness.
She earned her top four finish, but she wasn’t quite good enough to reach the finals. And from her expression, she realized both her accomplishment and her limitations.
Good for her. That was the exact attitude he’d wished for his disciples and sect members to have regarding participation in the tournament.
Perhaps she hadn’t quite emerged from whatever personal trial she was undergoing, but he felt confident that she’d at least turned the corner. The end was in sight, and he felt confident that she would come out the other side having learned something important about herself.
How she’d go about fixing the errors she’d committed along the way was still in question, but as long as she was okay, everything else could be figured out somehow.
Yang Xiu’s victory concerned Benton much more. Or, more specifically, her reaction to that victory.
She had been on the path to becoming something of a battle maniac. Of all his sect members, she had most embraced a love of fighting and the overall culture, both good and bad, that came with being a cultivator.
Above all, she’d been a joyful, exuberant person, the opposite of what he’d just witnessed. The girl who had won the fight against the boy from the Swift Blizzard Sect had been completely emotionless. Defeating him had meant as much to her as stepping on a blade of grass. Her eyes were dead. She cared about nothing.
Seeing that change in her broke his heart.
He needed to do something about it, but he didn’t know what. Neither his experience from a full life lived on Earth nor the knowledge gained by the previous occupant of his body nor all the secrets of the universe crammed into his mind from the System offered him much of a clue.
There were potential solutions, of course. One was to reset the twin’s cultivation and have them start over. Which was a terrible idea. It would kill all the momentum—and Momentum—that they’d gained thus far and might not even work. Such a setback might even cause one or both of them to develop a heart demon.
Another was to purchase a Mind technique that he could use to heal their psyche. The problem was that their affliction wasn’t mental or physical. It had to do with their qi aspect, the core of who they were.