The Sect Leader System-Chapter 241: Overblown Worries

On the morning that possibly would lead to the end of thousands of years spent challenging the heavens, Ye Zhengsheng rose after sunrise and had a quiet, leisurely breakfast. He and Yan Mingxia were in no hurry to depart for the small village holding the upstart Rising Tide Sect. The final end came for all those who failed to reach immortality, but there was no reason to rush toward it after so many millennia of desperately fighting to stave it off, after all.

Contrasting with his general malaise stemming from thoughts of his possible demise, a small bit of excitement was rising in him. He’d lived his life going from one challenging battle to the next, and it had been so, so long since he’d engaged with anyone truly capable of hurting him.

By all accounts, the sect leader, Chao Su, was formidable. If rumors were to be believed, he might have even reached a higher realm than Nascent Soul. If so, Ye Zhengsheng’s final battle would be something completely new for him, something that few cultivators have ever experienced—combat against a Nihility realm cultivator while a major realm below.

The thought was … exhilarating.

Of course, the sect leader, Chao Su, might not be as powerful as some believed him to be. Ye Zhengsheng’s and Yan Mingxia’s journeys might not end that day. But even should the two of them survive the battle, they were both on a clock, one that spanned mere decades instead of even centuries. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

It was nice to entertain the notion of the tall tale that Teng Wuying spun about a Trial Pagoda with such heavens defying power as to be able to propel even cultivators in the Nascent Soul level to a breakthrough, but such stories always turned out to be fiction. Ye Zhengsheng had used five or six such pagodas in his day and heard firsthand accounts of dozens of others. None had the powers Teng Wuying had claimed.

If one did have such an ability, the effects would be profound. All but a tiny, tiny percentage of cultivators bottlenecked before reaching immortality. The ability to simply enter a trial to breakthrough would be a boon beyond imagining for any of them.

Not a cultivator on the planet wouldn’t want to control such a treasure. Its mere presence might ignite a war that burned the entire planet. The strength required to hold such a thing didn’t even exist in legend. Forget Nihility. One would have to reach two full major realms above that to Half Step Immortal to have a chance of maintaining influence over an object so powerful.

There was absolutely no possible way a sect leader of a nothing sect had possession of a pagoda that could do anything like Teng Wuying believed. The boy’s eyes were filled with spirit coins. Ye Zhengsheng had seen many cultivators over the years inflicted with the same disease.

Such concerns were no longer his worry, though. He had one last mission to carry out for the sect. After taking a relaxing bath, dressing in his favorite combat robe, and calming his mind with an hour of meditation, he rose to go meet Yan Mingxia.

It was nearly noon when the two left the Jade Chameleon Sect. Being Nascent Soul cultivators, they no longer needed flying swords or any other device in order to fly. They simply willed themselves in the direction they wanted to go, and they were propelled forward.

When Ye Zhengsheng grew annoyed with the feel of wind whipping across his face and body, he simply willed it to stop, and a cocoon of qi blocked it. Many, many years had passed since he’d last flown, though—since he’d last left his cultivation chamber really—so when he discovered that he missed the sensation, a thought was all it took to allow the exact amount of wind he desired to hit him.

Being a Nascent Soul cultivator was a wondrous thing. With the end of his life approaching, he found himself appreciating the little things like effortless movement and the world responding to his will.

Another perk of traveling as a Nascent Soul was that it was fast. Very fast. Before much time at all had passed, they had transversed the long distance between their departure point and their target.

A man in a blue robe stood behind a wall between two towers. The wall was protected by a formation as impressive as the one surrounding the Jade Chameleon Sect, maybe even more impressive.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Ye Zhengsheng wasn’t a formation master as crafting had never been one of his interests. Instead, he found joy in the thrill of battle, facing a foe who wanted to kill him, lives hanging in the balance where a single mistake might mean the end of his struggle. What he saw, though, disappointed him.

The sect leader, Chao Su, wasn’t at a higher realm than Nascent Soul as some had posited. He hadn’t even reached that high. At best, he was at the peak of Golden Core.

Ye Zhengsheng understood the confusion. A myriad of qi elements wafted off the man, more than any cultivator should have access to, and as far as spiritual sense went, he might as well have been a mortal. He was certainly not simple.

But not being simple and being able to fight not one, but two, Nascent Soul cultivators were not the same thing. For one as experienced as Ye Zhengsheng, it was easy to tell at a glance that Chao Su simply was not what many suspected him of being. There would be no challenge that day.

A mass a people, both cultivators and mortals, were holed up inside many shields. It was clear that Chao Su sought to protect them to the greatest extent possible.

“Give up,” Ye Zhengsheng said. “If you surrender now, I swear that I will at least give your people a legitimate chance to escape. We have to kill some of them. Most of them. But if a few slip through the cracks, no one will fault us.”

Chao Su stared at them defiantly.

Ye Zhengsheng sighed. “If you resist even a little, I also swear that I will make it my mission for the remainder of my days to kill every single person you care about. Choose wisely.”

On one hand, Benton held a modicum of respect for the opposing Jade Chameleon Nascent Soul cultivator. The offer to spare a small number of the villagers and Rising Tide Sect members, from his perspective, was quite generous.

On the other, Benton was not swayed in the least. The thought of allowing anyone to hurt a single one of his people was a complete nonstarter, not to mention that, as soon as he was out of the picture, there would be no one capable of protecting any of them.

He glared defiantly at the man. There would be no surrender.

“So be it,” the man said and sent a spike of Fire qi toward the GDF.

The outermost shield attuned to that element caught the strike without so much as a flicker. If the guy wanted to penetrate Benton’s defenses, he would have to do a lot better than that.

As soon as the cultivator fired his first shot, two things happened. One, both towers targeted him. Like Benton expected, the qi blasts, even the Water aspected ones, didn’t do much. The aura the man emitted dampened the attacks so much that, even if the towers would have doubled the power expended, he would have barely noticed them.

The shots from the railgun were a different story. The supersonic rounds propelled by electricity hit like a truck. Well, not a truck because a Nascent Soul wouldn’t notice a truck hitting them any more than they noticed most qi attacks. More like … something that hit much harder than a truck.

The man, too arrogant to either dodge or repel a purely mundane munition, hadn’t even bothered to engage his personal shield, maybe figuring the harmless looking projectile was designed simply to bleed qi from him. He actually let out an oof when it hit.

The second thing that happened was that Benton triggered several techniques. First, Clone. The air filled with a thousand images of himself. Second, he switched places with one of the illusions, taking its place outside the GDF while it appeared where he had been standing. Third, Earth Shot. A hundred bullets of pure Earth qi appeared in the air around Benton.

That appearance obviously drew the attention of the enemy cultivators. The first was still dealing with a railgun that was trying to take his head off. The second, though, turned her attention to the clone who had launched the technique, blasting it with a massive strike of Water qi that dwarfed anything Benton’s Hydro Blast could put out by an order of magnitude.

She was too late, though. Benton had already switched to yet another clone, just after propelling the Earth bullets with one of his other new techniques. He was already really glad he’d come up with all the cool new ideas since they might just be the factor that saved him.

The swarm of Earth bullets dispersed into a wide pattern and rocketed toward the man. The tactic of scattering was nice in that the man was unable to dodge all the projectiles. The tactic of scattering was awful in that a lot of the projectiles whizzed past him without him being required to take any evasive action at all.

Still, dozens smashed his shield, and since they were Earth qi and his shield consisted of Fire, they all struck at the equivalent of double strength. Unfortunately, that was where the man’s aura shone. It wasn’t like the bullets did nothing, exactly, but whereas a Golden Core cultivator’s defense would have been shredded, his only flared slightly.

Still, with the opening salvos out of the way, Benton felt he was definitely on the way to gaining the upper hand. Neither of the enemies even knew where he was, much less had hit him. None of the shields had taken even a single hit hard enough to weaken them. The railguns were as much of a success as he could have hoped given the quality of his opponents. And Benton’s new techniques were as effective as he had anticipated.

If things kept going the way they currently were, he might just have to admit that his worries about the fight were overblown.