The Sect Leader System-Chapter 329 - Mitigation

Benton was torn. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or amused. In the end, he settled for a mixture of both.

The kid, Ren Ning, was entirely too earnest. He’d strode into the room like a man on a mission and practically thrown himself on the floor—Benton had winced when the boy’s forehead slammed against the floor—and confessed to losing his contingency ring.

“That is potentially an act of great carelessness,” Benton said. “Did you take it off and leave it somewhere?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

“Did you … lend it to a friend?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

“Did you … sell it at the market or use it for barter?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

“I know what it must be! You messed with the re-sizing function and make it so big that it fell off your finger unnoticed, didn’t you?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

Throughout the interrogation, the boy’s voice never grew the slightest bit heated. He didn’t lose the pure agony in his tone.

“Did you do anything to cause the ring to be lost?”

“No … I mean, yes… I mean…”

“Rise, please, Ren Ning.”

The boy did as ordered, his expression one of confusion mixed with fear and agony.

“The ring was stolen from you.”

Ren Ning’s face twisted into anger.

“When you entered the arena, there was a stealthed Golden Core from the Swift Blizzard Sect. He snuck his hand into your robe and took the ring. It was not your fault. There was no way you could have detected him.”

If not for a message from Zou Tian that had been passed to Benton from the Poison Claw Sect, he might not have noticed, either. The Golden Core was quite good.

“I was planning on telling you in a little while,” Benton said. “Honestly, I was still deciding how best to react to the situation.”

The boy stared blankly, obviously bewildered at the direction the conversation had taken.

“If I would have realized how worried you were, I would have come to you as soon as possible to ease your mind.” Benton cupped his hands. “Apologies.”

He’d hoped that expressing his regrets would have made the boy relax, but if anything, it only seemed to make him more agitated.

“I commend you for your action,” Benton said. “It couldn’t have been easy for you to come up here and metaphorically throw yourself on your sword. Your actions demonstrated both bravery and fine moral character. Be thinking about what kind of technique you most want when you advance to Foundation Establishment. Let me know, and I’ll give you one of your choice specifically attuned to your aspect.”

Benton cupped his hands again. “I believe the Rising Tide Sect will eventually be the best on the entire planet, and when that future comes to fruition, I’ll look back and know that ascension was all because of fine young people like you.”

Stunned.

That was the only way Ren Ning could describe how he felt. He’d gone to the sect leader’s office expecting to be cast out or, at the very least, to be sent to the Punishment Hall.

To then find out that he hadn’t been at fault and that a rival sect had stolen his ring—he was livid. And to use a Golden Core to do so. It was the height of shame to use such a high realmed cultivator to steal from a junior.

The Swift Blizzard Sect had no honor.

And to hear that the sect leader had planned to come to Ren Ning personally to assuade his guilt about losing the ring… That was amazing. Not many could boast that the literally most important person in the sect had made a personal visit to him.

Then, as if that revelation hadn’t been enough, Ren Ning had been praised and promised a future reward.

And, oh, what a reward! A Foundation Establishment realm technique attuned specifically to him? That cost ten thousand Contribution Points. Ten thousand. He had a bit over a thousand, just enough to buy himself a regular Nature aspected technique to go with the two standard ones he’d receive.

Instead of starting out his next major realm with three techniques that almost any of the villagers could use, he’d gain one tailored just for him, one to build his entire combat style around.

Ren Ning would no longer be average.

“I do have one request of you,” the sect leader said.

“Anything, Sect Leader.”

“Have you told anyone else that your ring was missing?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

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“Good. Don’t. Everything that I just told you is to be kept completely secret until we get back to the sect. I’ll tell the council, but I don’t want you speaking a word about it to anyone, understand?”

“Yes, Sect Leader.”

“Great. I’m proud of you. Your performance in the tournament was as good as I could have asked for, and your willingness to risk punishment to do the right thing is exactly the kind of behavior I want to see from my sect members.”

Ren Ning cupped his hands. From the depths of despair to being enthusiastically praised by the most important person on the entire continent in such a short amount of time, he’d experienced a bit of emotional whiplash, but having the chance to rise above the mean was completely worth it.

He left the sect leader’s office with a smile on his face.

Benton grinned as Ren Ning left. It was clear the kid was on cloud nine, both from the sincere praise and the reward.

Good. He deserved it.

The event that brought him to Benton’s office, though, had possibly severe ramifications. Obviously, as long as Benton continued to respond to contingency rings, the JCSB alliance could summon him into an ambush at will. And, honestly, his first reaction was, “Bring it. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, jerks.”

That was the attitude that had almost brought him low during the fight with the two Nascent Souls, however. Benton was strong, yes. Very strong. Able to handle a good number of enemies on his own, but he shouldn’t underestimate his opponents. Some of them had literally hundreds and even thousands of years of combat experience.

So, really, he should negate the possibility of walking into an ambush. Which was easy enough.

He sighed. Okay. Time to get crafting.

With that decision made, however, it brought up another concern. The formations laid in the square by the supposed master were not exactly the best crafted arrays Benton had ever seen, but they were created compently enough to raise some concerns. For instance, one array prevented Teleportation. Benton’s technique was of a high enough grade that, with his mastery, he could simply use a bit more qi to overcome the disruption if, for some reason, he couldn’t disable the formation first.

The kids, though, couldn’t do the same thing with their talismans. He hadn’t tested it, but he was almost positive that the array would simply stop the Teleportation effect from the cards, even the highest qi one.

That effect horrified Benton as the kids’ ability to escape at will was their best safety measure. More crafting would be required.

The problem was that he was reluctant to go heads down on a project while his sect members were exposed and vulnerable, which led him to reconsider the whole matter.

Past Benton probably would have decided that he was good enough to win without the extra crafting, that he and the kids would be just fine with the way things were. The Benton who’d barely survived against the Nascent Souls made a different choice—mitigation.

First, he fired off a message to Yuan Yaozu, followed by one to each of his council members present at the tournament asking them to meet him immediately after curfew.

Benton spent the interim period planning his crafting session, and by the time the council arrived, he had a solid idea of exactly what he needed to do.

“Greetings,” he said to his gathered members. “Tonight I will do something that I preferred not to do—leave all of you here at the tournament grounds while I return to the sect.”

None of the council—not a single one—showed a bit of concern. They placed way too much faith in his formations … and on his ability to return in a flash. Of course, none of them truly knew how long even a nanosecond was to a Nascent Soul attacker.

“I am taking the following precautions. One, the compound will be under a strict lockdown for the duration of my absence.” Benton met Huang Yimun’s eyes. “The guards will enforce that lockdown completely. No one in. No one out. Understood?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Two, I’ll have Yuan Yaozu take my place while I’m absent. Three, I will inform Kang Ya-Ting and ask him to have the Poison Claw Sect Nascent Souls ready if anything happens.”

No one said anything, but Yang Xiu wasn’t exactly one to keep her thoughts from showing on her face.

“Go ahead,” he told her.

“It’s just that it seems like those precautions might be a bit extreme, Master.”

“Honestly, it’s likely that absolutely nothing will happen in the short time that I’m gone. Probably, our enemies won’t even know that I’ve left. There are a couple of problems, though. One, I refuse to risk any of you getting harmed because I underestimated our enemies. And two, those enemies have proven themselves to be honorless curs. Going after juniors with Golden Cores is truly shameful, and if they’re willing to sink that low, what else are they willing to do?”

Yang Xiu looked like she wanted to say something else but instead cupped her hands.

“Gratitude, all. Please be diligent and observant while I’m away.”

“Yes, Master.”

Benton Teleported to the sect, Teleported Yuan Yaozu back to Benton’s office in the compound, and finally Teleported to the crafting area of the Administration Hall.

First order of business—new contingency rings for all the sect members at the tournament. The updated rings looked and functioned exactly like the old ones except for one crucial difference—a tiny modification to the signal’s spiritual frequency that it broadcast when popped.

It would take a Nascent Soul with a finely tuned sense to notice the difference, and even then, that person would have had to test both the new and the old ring in order to spot it.

Benton briefly considered replacing all the rings, not just the ones for the members in Sixth Flawless Flowing City, but determined that would be overkill. After all, he would sense if the signal came from the village or from the City. If the former, he’d just have to be on alert for a possible trap.

His second crafting task was two new talismans. The first featured a skill gained when he became a Formations Master—the ability to sense if a particular technique would be prevented by a currently active array. The second was a combination of techniques, a Quickstep followed by Teleportation.

The idea was for each of his sect members to be given plenty of the former talisman, so they could check for potential traps. If they discovered that Teleportation was hindered, they’d used the second talisman to Quickstep far enough from the array for the long range Teleportation to work.

Benton was almost positive that the double skill would do exactly what he wanted. He even set up a Teleportation blocking array based on the one in the square and tested it. And it did work.

But…

As a Nascent Soul Formations Master, Benton knew the exact limits of the blocking array, which made it a simple matter for him to Quickstep outside that boundary. His sect members wouldn’t have that same advantage.

Obviously, an easy solution to the new problem would be to simply create another new talisman that would sense the area covered by the array. Unfortunately, that kind of data being stuffed into a mind required either higher Spiritual Cultivation or higher Mind Cultivation than the kids possessed.

Instead, Benton had to go with Plan B—crafting pylons that created a qi shield that protected the user from attacks thrown even by Nascent Souls. He’d give each of the tournament goers four of the pylons, enough to surround them.

Sure, it would only hold up for two or three strikes, but that gave them, him, or their allies time to figure something out. Additionally, he made it to where the pylons were stackable, so that two sect members could stand together and double their protections or an entire team could create a large area.

None of the solutions he created provided absolutely perfect protection, but they did mitigate some of the problems that he could see arising. Overall, he hoped those measures would never be needed, but if they were, he knew he’d be forever grateful for having created them.