As soon as everyone exited Benton’s office, he got right to work. He’d given himself a week to get everything on his list accomplished, which would have been impossible without his ability to manipulate time. With his new Aura, though…

Well, he had no idea. It all depended on how long certain elements took and if he got sidetracked and various other unknowns. He might finish with days to spare or seconds from his self-imposed deadline.

The first item on the list was rebuilding the towers, which he had to do from scratch. Parts of the process were easier on the second go around since experience had taught him the most efficient methods for inscribing the particular arrays he used, but one aspect was a major headache—both the towers had been sheered into two pieces just below the ground level. And while it was tempting to use a combination of alchemy, formations, and good old construction knowhow to simply rebuild atop the old foundation, the fact was that there was no way to make the new joint as strong as when the trunk had been a single log.

Benton had no choice but to demo the entire foundation and start over from scratch.

Making judicious use of his Time Aura, he worked through the night digging, getting rid of the old structure, and building back up to level with the surface. As the sun crested the horizon, his sect members from the Formations Pavilion showed up to watch, seeing two bare logs sticking up out of the ground.

Benton slowed way down for a while and explained all his actions—how and why he was inscribing so many different paths for the qi to travel, the purpose of the sticks jutting from divots in the base’s surface, all the arrays he used on each rock. He even let them practice those arrays, though he didn’t dare use them on the tower. They just weren’t up to the standard needed to protect the sect.

Once he was sure that they all understood the what, why, and how, he utilized his Time Aura once again to finish the tedious part of layering the rocks all the way up the tower. Eventually, they reached the main weapon array and the turret, and he again went into instructor mode, using his Gravity Aura to levitate them up to the top of tower to watch him inscribe those arrays as well.

Those guys and gal might not have been the most accomplished of his sect members so far, but they showed true dedication in spending the entire day watching him zoom around rapidly finishing the tower. And by sunset, he scratched that item off his To Do list.

His next task was to create contingency rings. He wanted to make sure that every person on the council, at the very least, got one. Other than that, he really didn’t have a plan on who to distribute them to or how many to make.

The thing about manipulating time the way that he did was that, while he might look like he was moving faster than a speeding locomotive from the outside, on the inside of the bubble he was moving at his subjectively normal speed. Meaning that he couldn’t just blow through chores. He got to experience each and every tedious second.

Joy.

After the pure boredom caused by most of the individual parts of constructing the towers, he was in exactly no mood to forge and inscribe nearly a thousand rings. Though his eventual goal was for each member to have one, there was no burning need for that to happen that night. Or even in the next day, month, or even year.

Benton settled on making one hundred new rings. That would get a decent chunk, ten percent, of his eventual goal taken care of and would ensure that everyone who really needed one immediately should be able to get it. For the distribution, he’d just hand out several to all the council members and tell them to give it to the sect members they felt most needed or deserved it.

Nice. Delegating would give the kiddos something to do, and it solved a problem for him. Win-win.

The rings didn’t take much objective time, and since he didn’t want to show up at Fatty Ren’s palace in the middle of the night, Benton decided that the productive thing to do would be to make greater spirit coins. Those were so useful for feeding minor and major formations around the sect, replenishing qi pools, and as a form of cultivator currency. It was one of those things he could never realistically have enough of. Even better, creating them didn’t take much concentration at all. He couldn’t read or anything while doing it unless he wanted to use Dual Mind, but he definitely could somewhat veg and let his brain mostly turn off.

The next morning, he sent off a few messages. He notified Yuan Yaozu and Sun Hua that he’d be away from the sect for one to three days, the former so he would be prepared to be the sect’s sole high realmed defender while the sect leader was away and the latter so she’d know she was well and truly on her on and in charge. Benton also left her a bag full of rings along with instructions on what to do with them.

His final message was to Fatty Ren, giving him advance notice—albeit very short notice—to expect the imminent arrival of his sect leader. About five minutes after the paper dragon reached the palace, Benton teleported.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Fatty Ren! Great to see you again.”

Since the big man had been given a heads up, he wasn’t nearly as surprised as he might otherwise have been. Which, on the one hand, wasn’t much fun but, on the other, was a much more considerate and polite way of doing things.

The Town Lord cupped his hands. “Greetings, Friend Su.”

Though his tone was light, it was clear from his tone that he was curious as to the reason for the visit. Benton’s message had been terse, stating only that he would be arriving soon.

“Just stopping by to construct the Grand Defensive Formation for your palace,” Benton said.

Instead of being happy to have his protection finally being put in place, the man seemed a bit disappointed.

“What’s wrong?” Benton said.

The big man sighed. “It’s just that our sect members here haven’t seen much of you, Friend Su. The newest inductees haven’t met you at all.”

Fair enough. Benton hadn’t exactly been giving the branch sect much attention. Of course, it was something of a tricky situation to navigate. Fatty Ren was the clear head of the branch sect, and though everyone knew that the sect leader was above him, Benton didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

He’d been on both sides of such situations back on Earth. There was nothing worse than leading a team and having the boss come down from on high and contradict everything you’ve been telling your people. Conversely, it was difficult as the more experienced person to see someone making mistakes and keep your mouth shut.

Fatty Ren’s other concern was that, since he inducted so many new people that he hadn’t had a chance to properly vet, he feared the other factions might have snuck in some spies.

Benton shrugged. “That would be unfortunate, but there’s a limited amount they can discover here at the branch sect. Definitely investigate thoroughly anyone who might want to move to the main sect.”

“How should I handle any traitors, Friend Su?”

Benton didn’t care all that much. He would probably expel them from the sect, maybe put them in some kind of jail for a while. Or try to exact a penance from whatever organization backed them. But he didn’t want to dictate too much of the minutia of running things. “Whatever you think is best.”

There was also the twofold issue of having a lot of work to do to create a complicated custom formation around the palace and not wanting to show his true strength. As such, he planned to limit himself to using his Time Manipulation technique in lieu of his more powerful, less concentration intensive Aura.

Benton ended up spending three entire days in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town completing the task he went there to accomplish and spending time with the new members, personally presenting each of them with their sect token that would get them through the palace’s GDF. By playing the unfathomable ancient master role, he also dispensed the occasional nugget of wisdom without impugning on Fatty Ren’s authority.

When Benton finally returned to the main branch, he was glad for making the effort to get to know the new people. While there were no outstanding talents, there were quite a few craftspeople that were sure to aid in the burgeoning pavilions. The first batch would be hitting minor realm four while he was on his expedition, and since he’d been otherwise occupied when the first batch had advanced to minor realm three, he gave Fatty Ren enough Qi Condensing Pills for all of them to immediately step up to minor realm five upon reaching the lesser milestone.

Benton made a mental note to return after the auction to start the process of transporting some of the more promising craftspeople to the main branch. While they could simply learn the necessary techniques at the palace, he really felt that being in an environment with others practicing the same craft would speed their progress.

With the GDF creation crossed off his list, he was left with two tasks—creating custom weapons to trade to the Poison Claw elders and upgrading his personal power. Two days. Two tasks. Not bad.

The first item, the Poison-aspected sword, was easy. There were no major differences between it and the ones he’d already made. And he had enough starsteel remaining to make it.

The second weapon, though…

First of all, he was faced with a major decision. A glaive was a polearm, basically a head containing a blade attached to a long pole. Which led to the obvious question—should the pole be made of starsteel or Orange Vigor Spirit Wood?

Benton’s sect had a monopoly on the production of the wood. The more he spread around its use, the better from his sect. But there were problems.

For one thing, enhanced starsteel was simply stronger and conducted qi better than the wood. The main benefit of the latter was that it was cheaper and was almost as durable and nearly as good a conductor. Almost wasn’t good enough, though, when making a masterwork.

The problem was that he didn’t have enough ingots left for both the oversized head and the pole. And when it came to the crafts he’d mastered, a sense of perfectionism made it difficult for him to cut corners, so he ended up buying more ingots from Kang Ya-Ting.

His test version of the weapon—he’d bought plenty of metal to serve his needs for the foreseeable future—was … an abject failure. His Swordsmith Mastery really helped him a lot with making swords. Not so much with polearms.

It was so bad that he didn’t even consider giving the result away to a junior. Instead, he destroyed it with Void so that no one would ever see it.

He was honestly tempted to spend the points needed to become a master of creating polearms as well.

Benton didn’t normally think of himself as stubborn, but sometimes, certain things stuck in his craw. He was a Master Blacksmith. That meant something on this world. He possessed all the skill he needed to create a perfect glaive. All he needed was a little practice.

More like a lot of practice.

He kept hitting snags where he couldn’t get the weapon quite right and even had to call Xun Wu, who had made a few polearms in his day, over for advice. Even with Benton using his Aura, nearly two full days had passed by the time he completed the work to his satisfaction.

Just in time. It was nearly morning, and he and his disciples would be leaving for their expedition at dawn. If he stretched the moment, he should be able to complete his powerup without them having to wait on him.