Chapter 272 – Punching Up

5/29/25 A/N: With this chapter, I finally, finally, finally caught up. I hate getting behind, and it took me a lot longer to get back on track than I hoped. On the plus side, I got there! My goal is to get a few chapters ahead to give me a little wiggle room. Wish me luck!

Benton re-activated his Time Aura. He didn’t have long before the kids were ready to depart for the expedition to the mountains, and he didn’t want to delay them. Before they arrived, he needed to check his gains since the last time he looked at his status and decide how best to upgrade himself.

In the last two weeks, twenty of his sect members had made a total of five advancements in Bronze Body Cultivation, gaining him one hundred Sect Points. Additionally, Wan Ai had figured out how to incorporate the herbs he’d purchased for the twins into baths about a week prior. They each gained him three bonus points upon reaching Silver and another four in making it to minor realm two, so fourteen points total. Testing had proven that Jin LiJuan could use any of the baths, and she had chosen to emulate her Senior Sister Yang Xiu. For no extra cost, the little girl got him another seven points.

Benton’s total gain for Body Cultivation over the time period was one hundred twenty-one points. Not bad.

He really liked Body Cultivation for the super consistent gains it provided while and the same time making his sect members that much stronger, faster, and more durable. And it wasn’t really that expensive. Even if they eventually ran low on beast cores, his ability to easily create mass quantities of greater spirit coins would offset the costs.

So worth it!

As profitable as Body Cultivation was, it just couldn’t hold a candle to Spiritual Cultivation, considering how rapidly he had expanded his sect. After all, the low minor realms were fast point earners. Unfortunately, he fully expected his current pace to slow greatly now that he’d made it to Nascent Soul.

The village was getting close to tapped out as a resource for new members, only having a few hundred who were un-inducted, and neither he nor Fatty Ren were too enthusiastic about adding random citizens from Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town.

Benton did have some thoughts about possibly adding people from the village where he found Xun Wu, though. That place was run down and barely hanging on. Those people were unlikely to have been approached by other factions to be spies and were likely to jump at the chance to improve their lot in life.

Sure, there were only one to two hundred people left there, but that was a lot of Sect Points when you extrapolated out to them reaching Foundation Establishment.

As for the actual points gain from Spiritual Cultivation, Mistress Zhong’s original eight orphans gained him eight points advancing all the way to Qi Gathering minor realm seven. It was hard to believe that those little guys and girls were getting so close to Foundation Establishment.

The third set of fifty villagers advanced to Qi Gathering minor realm five, making him a nice fifty points. That amount was eclipsed by the fourth set, who he missed getting pills to when they got to third minor realm—he really needed to keep a better watch on that or, even better, give the task to Sun Hua. Anyway, he did get them the Qi Condensing Pills in time to have them go from minor realm four to five, earning a cool one hundred points for him.

The fifth set of villagers was similar, but he got to them on time, advancing them from minor realm three to four for another one hundred fifty points. Both the sixth set of villagers, all seventy-five of them, and the seventh, the biggie totaling three hundred, all made it to Qi Gathering minor realm two. As did the one hundred Fatty Ren recently inducted.

All told, Benton gained a whopping seven hundred and eighty-three points from that Spiritual Cultivation.

Unfortunately, there was only so much time in a day, and he’d told his sect members to focus on Spiritual Cultivation first and techniques second. That left them little time for either Mind or Soul Cultivation, and no one advanced in either of the categories in the last couple of weeks.

Techniques were likewise very slow. Benton had underestimated just how much work it took to move through the stages of success. On the plus side, each level really upgraded the practitioner’s ability with the technique, making the hard work worth it.

From a Sect Point gain standpoint, however, techniques were almost chump change. He got twelve from people completing trials and another fifty-nine total counting everyone in his sect.

Still, seventy-one points were seventy-one points. Not that long ago, he’d have been overjoyed at gaining a fraction of that many in such a short time frame.

All told, his Sect Point total went up by nine hundred and seventy-five from all sources. Almost a thousand points. In two weeks.

Even anticipating that those totals would begin decreasing, he was very encouraged for the future, and he had a nice amount to work with—two thousand two hundred and ten. Which was a good thing because he had some purchases he really wanted to make.

To start with, he really liked his two Auras and saw no reason not to expand his abilities in that regard. Since his big four Concepts, as far as he was concerned, were Gravity, Time, Space, and Void, it was a no-brainer from him to purchase Auras for the two he was lacking.

There went sixty-four of those points getting Space and Void to Mastery.

He was less enthused about adding regular techniques, though. While he was sure that he could think of something to improve himself, he just didn’t see the need. His current combat build combined with his new Nascent Soul toughness and Auras should be enough to dominate anyone in his realm. His experience had taught him that, what he really needed, was the ability to punch up a major realm, and the techniques just weren’t well equipped to provide that functionality. Using them to that way was difficult at best and impossible at worst.

No, he needed different avenues to explore to possibly allow him to take on the equivalent of a Nihility realm cultivator. Fortunately, he had just the thing in mind—Mind. And Soul. Neither of which he’d really put any thought into since advancing both of them to the peak of the level he was currently allowed by the System.

Time to rectify that situation.

While advancing a major realm in Spiritual Cultivation resulting in a huge increase in power by opening up an entirely new type of technique, like Concepts at Golden Core and Auras for Nascent Soul, Mind Cultivation mostly led to the ability to enhance already existing techniques. On the plus side, the System gave him a discount since he’d already reached Mastery with them previously.

He upgraded all five of his Mind techniques. Dual Focus became Split Focus, allowing him to concentrate on twice as many things at once, four total. Mind Stun transformed into Mind Strike, a much more intense stunning effect. Mind Crush improved to Obliterate Mind, which caused enough damage in a single strike to impact even a Nascent Soul opponent.

The next technique, Telekinetic Push, had been quite disappointing for Benton. Even though he’d known its limitations, he’d kind of hoped for it to be useful as a limited form of true telekinesis. Instead, it was so weak he almost never used it, instead substituting manipulation of Gravity for the same effect. The upgrade was simply called Telekinesis, which excited him greatly.

The final one, Inflict Fear, might as well have been called Cause Unease for all the effect it had, but Benton expected the upgrade, Terrify, to be of much greater use.

His suspicion was that, like Nascent Souls could suppress a Golden Core’s Concepts, cultivators in the Nihility realm would have a way to counter a Nascent Soul’s Auras. Since people in that realm were almost mythical existences, the sects on this continent didn’t know much about them. If Benton hadn’t been a cheating cheater who cheats, he’d be left guessing on how to deal with such a powerful entity if he encountered a beast at that equivalent realm on the mountain.

Luckily, he had the System, and gladly used the four required points to purchase Knowledge of the Nihility Realm.

After the information eased into his Mind Cultivation enhanced brain, he reviewed what he’d learned. As he’d expected, Nihility cultivators could suppress Auras. The method they used was called a Domain, an area of space inside of which they were able to dominate all qi.

The realm also increased physical, mental, and soul strength but not nearly to the extent that the respective cultivation methods did. Benton would definitely have an advantage in each of those areas, and he was optimistic that his newly upgraded Mind techniques would be much more beneficial than the inferior versions had been against his Nascent Soul opponents.

Next, he reviewed the impact of his Soul Cultivation upgrade and discovered an interesting synergy between that upgrade and his new status as a Nascent Soul. Obviously, all people had a soul, and as a cultivator grew in power and realm, their soul strengthened. That strength allowed the soul to persist for a while after death, but it wasn’t like Benton had to worry about one of them coming back because an unembodied soul had no way to exert influence on the world.

Or more accurately, an unembodied soul that didn’t have access to at least the Nirvana realm of Soul Cultivation had no way to exert influence on the world.

At that realm, cultivators acquired just that ability. Given the proper techniques, Benton would actually be able to either take over an existing body or even build one for himself, making him much, much more difficult to kill and have it stick.

Needless, to say, pushing his sect members to advance in Soul Cultivation became a much greater priority. He also purchased four techniques for thirty-two points each—Soul Transference, granting him the ability to will his disembodied soul into a new vessel; Soul Sap, an attack that wore down an opponent’s soul for the purposes of allowing him to take over its body; Soul Material Manipulation, a completely soul-based telekinesis that allowed him to shape and reconstitute organic matter into a form his soul could occupy; and Soul Stun, a weak stun attack much like the previously upgraded Mind Stun.

With his upgraded Mind technique, he almost decided not to spend the points for that last one, but as his non-qi attack options were already limited, he decided that having an option just in case his enemy was resistant to Mind effects was probably a good idea.

All in all, he spent two hundred seventy-six of his new Sect Points, but he didn’t regret the expense even a little bit. For one thing, he was still left with a massive profit of six hundred ninety-nine points for the two-week period. For another, he felt much more prepared just in case he needed to punch above his realm again.

His safety and associated protection that provided to his sect members was well worth the cost.

As he reviewed the changes to his status, he grinned.