The Sect Leader System

With the siblings trailing right behind Benton, he raced at full speed toward the large source of qi. The journey took less than a minute, and he quickly stopped before entering the range of the mass of spirit beasts.

Most of the vegetation he’d encountered on his new planet so far looked strikingly similar to what grew on Earth. Not so for what lay before him.

The woods surrounding the overgrown path he traveled suddenly stopped, leaving a gap of twenty yards or so where nothing grew, literally down to brown dirt. On the other side, the trees were … different.

What struck him most were the colors. He’d been to New England in the fall. That display of nature had nothing on the one he was witnessing. Bright reds, brilliant yellows, beautiful blues.

Yes, blues. He’d never seen leaves that color. And all the hues existed on each of the trees in sight.

Another weird feature was that everything glowed with a weird vibrancy. The sight was so interesting and pretty and weird and almost overwhelming that it caused him to forget his mission for a moment.

As soon as he regathered his wits, he used his spirit sense to check on the harvesters. They hadn’t moved.

Ahead of him, the beasts were peppered throughout the area with little room between them, severely overlapping the distanced he understood to mark the territory of a single one.

That was a lot of spirit beasts.

Still, with him and the two siblings fighting at once, they should be able to handle the amount in any given area. The real danger was if the fighting attracted more beasts from further away, and the new ones arrived before they were properly finished with the originals.

“We’ll fight in a wedge formation,” Benton said. “I’ll take center forward. Yang Xiu, stay about ten feet to my left and twenty feet back. Yang Ru, you’re ten feet to my right but even with me. Understand?”

“Yes, Senior Brother Chao,” they chorused instantly.

“I have confidence that each of you can solo rank twos, but we’ll be facing so many beasts that the fights might not stay isolated. Be on guard against getting swarmed. If you’re getting overwhelmed, call out. I mean it, call out. Do not worry about some crap like you’ll be disappointing me if you can’t handle it. I may get overwhelmed, too. If so, I’ll call out. Understand?”

Again, the two siblings chorused their assent.

“Once someone calls out, we all group up and retreat together. The goal will be to gain distance from the threat. Most of the beasts will probably follow us, but not all will be as fast as others. Once we’ve thinned them out, we’ll reform and advance.” Benton paused. “This is going to be a tough fight, but you two have turned from mortal teenagers into spirit beast killing experts in the last few months. You can do this. We can do this.”

He pulled one of the mortal spears from his ring. A lot of them had broken in previous fights, and other than the one in his hand, he only had two left. Given the number of beasts ahead of him, that might not be enough, especially against two rank threes.

Benton considered taking Yang Ru’s spear as the better weapon would be more effective in more experienced hands, but that move would leave the boy almost useless for the fight. Better to have three competent fighters than to lose one of them from the start.

All in all, he was much more nervous about what they were about to do than he’d let on to the siblings. The twins really were lean, mean fighting machines after all their recent experience, but the situation ahead was a difficult one.

Shortly after Su had advanced to Foundation Establishment, he’d been asked to go on a mission for his sect to assist with a beast tide. At such a low level, he fortunately wasn’t asked to play a major role in the battle, being assigned mainly cleanup duty mopping up leakers and finishing off beasts wounded by higher leveled cultivators.

The whole situation had been chaotic. Cultivators had gotten isolated and surrounded. A pack of wolves working together had pulled down a golden core elder. Only the presence of healers and the availability of lots of pills had prevented fatalities.

While he didn’t expect a tide, the quantity his senses detected represented a true danger. Just because Benton and the siblings were experienced fighters did not mean they couldn’t be hurt. One wrong move could spell disaster even against rank two beasts. And they’d never faced a rank three, let alone two.

Not to mention the fact he was running low on spears. Benton could just see it. He was going to end up facing off against some ginormous rhino or something equally absurd with only a mortal knife.

Retreat. That was the answer. Frequent use of strategic withdrawal.

Yang Xiu’s entire body trembled with excitement. Her first big battle approached. Being able to move almost as fast as her master and easily slay anything they came across made her feel like a real cultivator. She hadn’t quite reached mastery with her bow, but she rarely missed a shot anymore. And she was so close to her next cultivation breakthrough that she could sense her dantian wanting to expand.

Her life had improved a thousand percent since meeting her master. She’d gained power and stability. He was generous and kind … but maybe too kind.

Obviously, he didn’t want to risk her and her brother even getting injured. Training had not been easy—they’d each spent hours and hours daily working for their advances—but it had been safe. Even fighting had been managed with her master increasing the difficulty in stages, and he’d always stayed nearby. Sure, he’d said that he would let the beasts kill her and her brother if they messed up, but it had quickly become apparent that he would barely let them even be scratched.

Cultivators in the stories were forged in the fire of combat. Real combat with death stakes, not training with their master standing watch over them.

“Look alive!” her master shouted. “Contact incoming.”

He had the strangest way of putting things, but she understood his meaning. Still running full out, she nocked an arrow.

She had grown so much. The ground sped by. Two months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to run that fast for more than a few steps. One month ago, she would have stumbled over a bush or collided with a tree. None of that worried her any longer.

Her master held up a closed fist and came to an abrupt stop. Well used to such a maneuver and ready for it, she halted, maintaining formation.

Five beasts burst from the foliage before them. In less than the time it would take to draw a breath, she’d loosed her first arrow at the one furthest to the left. She was already nocking the second arrow as the first one found a new home in the eye of a small bear, probably a rank two.

Her master had already killed the one in the middle, and Ru’er was about to stab the one farthest to the right.

She loosed her second arrow. Another kill.

Ru’er finished his off, and her master sliced the neck of the remaining one.

“More are incoming. Seven this time. Keep working the edges to the middle. Do not let them wrap us!”

The next few minutes passed in a frenzy. Another five waves of three to ten beasts attacked, including a swarm of agile squirrels.

Yang Xiu had no idea where her master had obtained the bow and arrows she used, but the equipment was incredibly accurate and durable. Over the last three months, Yang Xiu had killed literally hundreds of spirit beasts, all using the same arrows. The bow had a small scratch where she’d had to use it as a club to kill a horned goat, and a few barbs on some of the feathers had torn. Two shafts were slightly notched. The tips were all still sharp as razors, though.

She’d never needed more than the twenty-five that were in her quiver. Until that moment. With a wave finishing, she realized she only had three left.

“Senior Brother, I’m almost out of arrows.”

His response was to calmly summon a bundle of twenty-five more from his marvelous ring and toss it to her.

Her master truly was amazing. He never lost his calm and always knew exactly what to do.

Benton was freaking out.

The siblings were doing great. Yang Ru didn’t flag once, his spear cutting through each spirit beast in his path. Every one of Yang Xiu’s arrows seemed to find an eye.

The problem was that the beasts were coming in organized waves. That behavior was not normal. Instead, it was indicative of a beast tide.

Those occurred when one spirit beast established dominance over their lower ranked brethren in an area and, for whatever reason, decided to compel its subordinates to attack. Clearly, one or both rank threes had established their superiority and were directing the others to attack in an organized manner in response to the incursion of Benton and the siblings.

Tides were orders of magnitude more dangerous than simply wondering into the forest and hunting. During such an event, the beasts teamed up, fighting in organized waves, and had the potential to even employ actual combat tactics.

Fortunately, the one facing Benton seemed to be limited. There were less than fifty beasts remaining in the area, and from how some were scattered away from the others, it appeared that only forty or so were being dominated.

It also helped greatly that the top beast was only rank three. Intelligence increased drastically with rank. While a rank seven might be close to as smart as a relatively dumb human, Benton was only facing a creature with rudimentary cleverness, and even if it were able to come up with sound tactics, its rank one and two subordinates wouldn’t be smart enough to execute them.

No, about the worst thing that Benton realistically had to worry about was the beasts grouping up to attack. Which was exactly what they were doing. After a brief lull, the largest pack yet was heading toward him and the siblings.

“Get ready,” he called. “Thirty incoming. That’s too many to keep in front of us. We’ll execute a fighting retreat. Yang Xiu, team up with Yang Ru. Take out four or five immediately and then move back a couple of hundred yards at your best speed. I’ll follow. Keep doing that until I tell you to hold. At that point, resume the original formation.”

A horrible thought struck him. If the harvesters were going to ambush them, they wouldn’t find a better time. He reached back with his spirit sense. The men hadn’t moved.

One less worry at least, but he still had one or two rank three beasts to worry about along with the cannon fodder. He checked his spear. It had a long crack running down the shaft.

He discarded it and pulled another one from his ring, leaving only one remaining.