The Sect Leader System-Chapter 245: Mutually Assured Destruction?

Benton fell on his butt as soon as he materialized in one of his bunkers. At least he wasn’t so zonked out by his injuries that he couldn’t think. Better than last time anyway.

Reaching out with his spiritual senses, he discovered a Nascent Soul above the sect. One. His attack had been successful.

Finally, a part of his plan had gone correctly. Benton’s relief was palpable. If the woman had somehow survived the towers’ devastating attack, he didn’t know what he would have done.

His senses also found three unknown Golden Cores at the edge of his detection range. More attackers? Observers? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t worry about them at the moment. There were more important issues needing his attention. Or rather, a more important issue.

He immediately initiated Time Manipulation followed by a Light orb and activating his Healing technique. A Major Healing Pill appeared in his mouth from his spatial ring, and as soon as he’d downed it, he followed it with ten greater spirit coins.

With his body repairing itself, he considered the previous fights, what had gone right and what had gone wrong. On the plus side, he wasn’t dead, and one of his opponents was. But those were about the only good things.

Getting the woman into the trap had been much more difficult than he’d expected, and he’d nearly been killed twice. Neither his time as a cultivator nor a lifetime spent as a middle manager, father, and husband had prepared him for losing limbs in combat, and he found that he didn’t enjoy the experience. At all.

In fact, he’d prefer to avoid it happening again no matter what achieving that outcome required. But the only way to do that was to not fight. Which he had to admit sounded more appealing than he would have thought.

Part of him really wanted to quit. To just hide out in the bunker until the bad man went away. But the adult part of Benton knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t do that. In fact, the sooner he exited the bunker, the better. As soon as the man finished destroying the towers, he’d start on the shields protecting the amphitheater.

With the twins, Kang Lin, and Kang Ya-Ting feeding their own qi into the formation, the Chameleon Jade cultivator would find it a tougher nut to crack than he probably expected, but he would penetrate it eventually. The tyranny of realm was real. There was nothing even Kang Ya-Ting could do against a Nascent Soul.

Benton would just have to grit his teeth and do what he needed to do whatever it took. Determined as he was, though, he still had a major problem. When he’d first contemplated the battle, he’d figured that killing one of the attacking cultivators with the towers would be easy, and defeating the second one on one wouldn’t be any more difficult than the fight against the cyclops.

That idea was wrong. Very wrong. Both the cultivators were more powerful and much more intelligent that the beast had been. The comparison was night and day.

Benton truly didn’t know if anything he did would let him defeat that man.

Maybe surrendering was the best option. If Benton gave himself up, maybe…

No. That was stupid. The Jade Chameleon Sect would never let his sect members live. He had to fight, and he had to win.

But how?

He did have two big advantages. One, as long as he didn’t use any qi, his opponent had no way of sensing him. Two, Benton’s teleportation worked like a dream, instantaneously transporting him wherever he wanted to go.

There were also techniques that he was underusing that could help him as well as one that he hadn’t used at all that he’d meant to try.

As his legs finished forming, Benton sat and schemed.

When Benton was finally fully healed and had finished topping off his qi pool, his senses indicated that the male Nascent Soul was finished destroying the towers and the shields protecting the sect grounds. The only thing protecting his kids was the shield around the amphitheater.

No time to lose.

Benton readied a massive Earth bullet, charging it with three million qi, half Earth and half Void, and activated Dual Mind. After popping a stack of greater spirit coins into his mouth, he teleported himself and the bullet to within a yard of the Jade Chameleon’s back.

Upon materializing, Benton hit the man with Mind Stun and let loose with the bullet.

The stun worked. The man faltered, clearly disoriented. And the bullet flew straight and true, crashing into its target and blowing through the man’s shield. It penetrated deep into the flesh of the small of his back.

Void qi ate skin, muscles, and bone, leaving a huge crater in the high realmed cultivator’s incredibly tough body.

Benton was actually quite impressed. His Earth bullet didn’t have a System-bought schematic backing it up. It was made purely from his Golden Core qi. Between the weakening caused by the Aura and the natural enhancements the target’s body had gained upon reaching the Nascent Soul realm, he’d half expected his attack to do little actual damage.

Nothing beat Void for destroying living tissue.

The man spun, Fire already forming in his hands, but Benton had already teleported to a bunker.

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He’d done it. He’d injured the man. And escaped unscathed.

Benton activated Time Manipulation and dissolved more greater spirit coins in his mouth. If he could keep pressure, he just might win.

The problem was that Nascent Souls regenerated like nobody’s business. Benton truly didn’t know if he could damage the man fast enough to overcome that regeneration rate. Another issue was that he’d be expecting a surprise attack next time, and Benton suspected that the Mind Stun would be less effective upon its second application.

Without any healing to take care of, Benton quickly replenished his pool, but he had a big decision to make. On one hand, he felt it was unlikely that the same ambush with a supercharged Earth bullet approach would work twice. On the other, he’d learned from watching many a football game that you have to keep running the same play until the other team showed you they could stop it.

Meaning he should charge as much qi as possible into his second attack.

It was hard to argue with advice that sounded so reasonable. Of course, basing his actions in a life and death situation on the expert wisdom of the television analysts for a sport that didn’t even exist on his current planet didn’t seem particularly smart.

He was also feeling a lot of pressure to get back up there. He needed to see if the man’s injuries had healed yet. And every second not spent attacking was a second the man could be spending hurting the kids.

Benton decided on a halfway approach. He charged an Earth bullet but with only a million qi, again half Earth and half Void. Thus prepared, he teleported back to the surface.

Ye Zhengsheng couldn’t believe that a mere Golden Core had killed Yan Mingxia and injured him. The former of those accomplishments was somewhat excusable as Chao Su had used formations to accomplish the task. Everyone knew that taking on a Formations Master on prepared ground was dangerous.

In fact, that part of the disaster was clearly not Ye Zhengsheng’s fault. No one had warned him that Chao Su was Formations Master. Someone’s head should roll for that lack of intelligence.

Chao Su’s second achievement was an unforgivable failure on Ye Zhengsheng’s part. The man had caused a grievous injury with nothing more than his own qi. Even weakened as it was by an Aura, the attack had been devastating. Not only that, but whatever stunning technique the man had used was something unknown to Ye Zhengsheng.

He was in shock, both because of the sudden injury and the knowledge of who had inflicted it.

Regardless of the unexpectedness of his opponent’s successes, Ye Zhengsheng was no stranger to battle. He’d fought hundreds of times and been injured thousands. And he was a Nascent Soul.

Whatever discomfit he felt, he ignored, instead taking stock of himself. His lower spine had been destroyed, leaving his legs unresponsive. He felt the bone and tissue regrowing, though, and being airborne meant that his legs served no combat purpose. The wounds were not fatal.

It would be several minutes before he was adequately healed, however. During which time, he’d be vulnerable to another hit. If his bottom half were completely separated from the rest of his body, regeneration would be more problematic.

His qi level was fine. He still hadn’t used more than he regenerated in a minute or two. Though that rate would be slowed while his body healed.

More concerning was the fact that he didn’t know how to stop further attacks. His opponent moved around effortlessly and was apparently undetectable until he actually charged up an attack.

Ye Zhengsheng had a concerning thought—should he flee?

He was dead soon either way, but how embarrassing would it be to end up the victim of a cultivator an entire major realm lower than him? Then again, running away from a cultivator an entire major realm lower than him wouldn’t be any less humiliating.

As he was still ruminating on how his life had come to such an inglorious end, he sensed Earth qi behind him. A stun technique hit his mind.

He was ready for the attempted mind shock, though. All parts of him, even his brain, were hardened by his advancement to Nascent Soul. Without the disadvantage of surprise, he was able to ignore the technique.

With a mere effort of will, he made himself move a dozen yards to the side.

An Earth bullet whizzed past the space he’d just vacated.

He spun to attack Chao Su, but the man had already teleported away.

Benton was really glad he hadn’t wasted even more qi on the second bullet because, as he’d expected, his opponent had been more than up to the challenge. For Benton to win the fight, he would have to come up with a new trick.

As he activated Time Manipulation and began consuming greater spirit coins to replenish his qi supply, he had a thought. Something fresh. Something innovative. Something he was pretty sure he’d read in a comic book when he was a kid. Which as a source for inspiration for winning a life and death contest seemed just as stupid as the wisdom of television analysts back on Earth.

Then again…

He shrugged. Why not try it? At this point in the battle, it was more important to attempt new things and keep up the pressure on his opponent than it was to wait to find the perfect attack.

Benton waffled on how much of his pool he should put into the technique, though. The more he had to regenerate, the longer it took. Which gave his opponent more time to heal and to attack the amphitheater.

On the other hand, just like with the first Earth bullet attack that landed, his new idea was much more likely to work the first time than on any subsequent attempt. His opponent was too experienced not to learn from a single failure. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

Fine. Might as well go all out. Benton shoved four million qi into the bullet, one million Earth—more than enough to break through the shield—and the rest Void.

Here goes nothing!

He teleported back to the surface, taking the place of a clone a hundred yards behind the enemy cultivator.

The Nascent Soul spun.

Benton used his projectile enhancement technique on the bullet and let it loose. Charged with Momentum, Force, and Poison, the bullet rocketed toward the enemy cultivator almost faster than even Benton’s enhanced eyesight could follow. At the same time, the Nascent Soul unleased a powerful attack of his own at Benton.

Instead of immediately returning to a bunker, Benton teleported … the bullet. It blinked out of existence and immediately reappeared a foot behind its target.

The man, clearly able to track the projectile’s trajectory with his superior physical senses, probably thought he had ages to dodge and was much more focused on delivering his strike perfectly.

Even the inhumanly fast Nascent Soul wasn’t able to dodge an enhanced bullet suddenly coming at him from point blank range. It impacted.

Benton couldn’t focus on how much damage was done as he had his own problems. Though he tried to teleport, he couldn’t execute the technique fast enough to avoid the enemy’s attack. The best he could do was try to dodge.

He wasn’t entirely successful.

The Fire qi blast took him in the shoulder again, the right one. Benton had left himself around a million qi in reserve, and most of that was available to feed his qi shield.

It wasn’t enough to deflect a full-powered attack from a Nascent Soul cultivator. Not nearly enough.

The right half of his body was torn to pieces. He lost an entire arm. Again.

Benton immediately focused on activating his Healing technique and tried to pull another Major Healing Pill from his ring.

He failed. The ring was on his right hand. The one that was falling toward the ground.

Oops.