Chương 134: Create Life At The Qi Condensation Realm?

Asi I approached Elder Chen Yong's quarters, I could smell the distinct scent of his spiritual wine wafting around in the air everywhere. It wasn't surprising since I was pretty sure the elder's blood had to be at least fifty percent alcohol by this point. But what did end up surprising me was the excited squealing sound that suddenly erupted the second I knocked my fist on his door.

"Come in, come in!" Elder Chen's voice carried through the wooden panels, and it came along with the sound of several glass bottles being hastily shoved around the room.

"I've made the most fascinating discoveries!" I pushed the door open so I could walk inside and I found the elder bouncing up and down in his seat while he was surrounded by an impressive collection of empty wine bottles. His eyes were looking a little unfocused, but he still had this manic gleam shining in them that made me instinctively take a step backwards.

"Ah, my favorite test subject!" He gave me a massive smile while he somehow managed to pour more wine into his cup even though his hands were shaking from all his excitement.

"You won't believe what I ended up finding out about your energy!"

"Master," Azure's voice suddenly echoed inside my head, "his current blood-alcohol level suggests that a high-level cultivator should be unconscious now. I believe his cultivation method is actively converting all that alcohol into spiritual energy." Well, that explained a lot about how he always managed to function properly even though he was drunk all the time.

"Remember our agreement," I said to him, while I stood there eyeing how he was vibrating inside his chair like a meth addict.

"Lesson goes first, and the research comes second."

"But it's fascinating!" He waved his arms around with enthusiasm, and he nearly knocked over several of his bottles doing it.

"Your energy is only half of a complete system! There is supposed to be another part to it, like a counterbalance!" He took a quick pause to let out a loud hiccup, and then he added, "But I suppose you probably already knew about that, didn't you?" I made sure to keep my expression looking neutral though my heart skipped a beat. He was right.

The red sun and the blue sun were two halves of a system, with their energies naturally complementing and strengthening each other, except that wasn't something I wanted to discuss with anyone.

"What else did you manage to find out?" I asked him, trying my best to redirect his crazy enthusiasm.

"Oh! Oh!" He immediately grabbed onto another bottle that he somehow managed to extract out of thin air.

"The way it naturally generates life is almost artistic! It's like watching a real painter at work, except they are using energy instead of brushstrokes!" He went ahead and took a long drink from the bottle, and then he continued talking, "Most healing energy out there is boring and mechanical because it puts things back to where they're supposed to be. But yours? Yours is creative with it!" That was an interesting observation for him to make.

I already knew the Lightweavers used a different runic system whenever they were channeling the blue sun's energy, but I had no idea what the actual differences between them were supposed to be.

"You know what's interesting though? If you could manage to fully control this energy..." He leaned his body forward and nearly ended up falling out of his chair in the process of doing it.

"You might be able to create real life inside your inner realm!" He started excitedly waving his hands all around the place, illustrating his point by making these increasingly unsteady gestures.

"Think about it for a second, most cultivators can only achieve something like this when they reach the Life Realm. But this specific energy of yours has the potential to accomplish it whilst you are in the Qi Condensation Realm!" My eyes widened a little bit when he said that, I knew the blue life energy had strong life properties to it, but I didn't expect to have that kind of power anytime soon.

"Master, I think I know where we'll be heading the next time we enter the Two Sun's World…" Azure whispered. He was right about that, I had already spent more than enough time hanging around the Red Sun Academy anyway. If I could begin creating living lifeforms inside my inner world while I was at the Qi Condensation Realm, then that opportunity was too good for me to pass up. I wondered how different our experience was going to be when we finally got to the Blue Sun Academy...

"Show me the energy!" Elder Chen suddenly demanded from me, and his eyes started taking on this slightly desperate looking gleam that uncomfortably reminded me of a drug addict going through withdrawals.

"Give me a little taste of it! It's for my research!" I shook my head.

"The lesson comes first, remember? Because otherwise, you'll end up getting distracted by it and then we'll never manage to get to my formation training." He noticeably deflated a little bit, doing this weird pout in a way that no respectable elder should ever be doing.

"You're no fun at all. But..." he suddenly brightened back up, "you're right about that! I can't neglect my teaching duties. So! What kind of progress have you managed to make since last week?" I allowed myself to do a small smile.

"I created my own formation."

"Oh?" He didn't seem particularly impressed by that news.

"Which level one formation did you decide to modify?"

"Actually," I told him slowly, because I was enjoying the moment, "it's a level two formation." The dramatic change that appeared on his expression was worth waiting for. His eyes grew wider, and the drunken haze cleared away as he focused onto me with this sudden intense look.

"Show me." I quickly pulled my formation equipment out and knelt down on the wooden floor, so I could start drawing out the Symphony Shield. I didn't bother trying to explain what it was to him, because if he was half the formation master I suspected he was, he'd end up figuring it out soon enough anyway.

"That is an interesting foundation structure," he muttered while I was drawing the outer circle.

"Oh! A detection spiral, that is very elegant. But those curved lines... are those supposed to be energy distribution channels? Hmm, and having those octagonal chambers there... is that for resonance amplification?" I couldn't help being impressed while he perfectly broke down every component of the formation while I was drawing it out, he managed to identify not just what each part was supposed to do but how they all worked together. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Activate it," he said when I finally finished drawing the thing. The formation instantly came to life, and all of its lines started glowing with a nice steady white light. Elder Chen slowly circled around it, with his eyes narrowed as he carefully examined every tiny detail. Finally, he clapped his hands together.

"Impressive! I was worried you might have tried to plagiarize someone else's hard work, but this..." he gestured his hand at the formation, "this thing is genuinely original. The unique way you've managed to integrate multiple dynamic responses together while still maintaining its stability... it is very clever." I gave him a nod, happily accepting the praise while I silently acknowledged the fact that I never could have managed to do it without having Azure's help.

"What did you decide to name it?"

"The Symphony Shield, I thought it sounded appropriate."

"That is a good name." The elder gave a nod but then he ended up doing that particular smile that instantly made all my survival instincts start screaming at me.

"Of course, we'll need to test it out properly now."

"No, wait…" I started to protest, except reality was already twisting around us as he transported us back to the beast training grounds.

"I already tested it out this morning," I tried explaining to him.

"I tested it against a giant swarm of Voidneedle Wasps."

"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow up at me.

"What stage were they?"

"They were stages three and four, mostly," I admitted. He let out a loud laugh, and the sound ended up echoing all through the surrounding trees.

"A formation like this should easily be able to handle taking any attack below stage six if it is done properly. A few stage six strikes shouldn't manage to break it." His smile grew wider.

"Hong Yue! Come on out and say hello to our young formation master!" The ground started trembling while something massive began moving through the thick trees. I let out a sigh and knelt back down to begin drawing my pattern out again, resigning myself to having another crazy encounter with the world's most theatrical bear.

"You know," I muttered under my breath while I was working on the outer circle, "most normal sects test all their formations out against regular spiritual beasts. Or maybe they use formation-breaking arrays if they're feeling particularly fancy about it. Except no, we always have to use the giant bear."

"To be fair here," Azure chimed in, "Hong Yue does seem to be uniquely qualified to test out defensive formations. Her combination of having raw power and tactical creativity is a real challenge for any formation to face."

"You're just saying that because you enjoy watching me suffer." Before Azure could try to deny that truth, Hong Yue boldly emerged out from the trees. The massive bear was already grinning at me, which shouldn't have been physically possible for an ursine face to do but she somehow managed it anyway. When I finally finished drawing the formation, I looked up at her massive towering form.

"Stage six attacks only," I told her firmly.

"No cheating this time." Hong Yue instantly placed one of her massive paws against her chest, and her expression turned into this picture of wounded innocence. She then proceeded to act out this elaborate pantomime of someone being falsely accused of a crime, which came with dramatic hand gestures and what appeared to be some fake crying. Through our soul bond connection, I could actively feel Yggy stirring around restlessly.

The little vine conveyed this series of strong impressions that translated over into saying: "If the big furry thing tries to cheat, I'll go ahead and show her what real power looks like."

"I appreciate the thought," I sent back to it mentally, "but maybe let's not pick a fight with the giant bear who could probably use both of us as her toothpicks."

"Begin!" Elder Chen called out. Hong Yue didn't waste any time. One second she was standing there, and the next second she was charging at the barrier like she was a giant furry avalanche. Her massive paw ended up striking it with enough raw force to physically shake the ground beneath us, but the Symphony Shield held firm.

I felt the detection spiral registering the impact, and I watched how the curved channels redirected the power to the threatened area, while I sensed those resonance chambers naturally amplifying the defensive energy like they were designed to do. The massive bear's eyes narrowed. She began circling around the barrier, testing it out with quick jabs from a bunch of different angles.

Every time she hit it, the formation adapted, actively reinforcing wherever she struck while maintaining its minimal power everywhere else.

"The energy efficiency is very good," Elder Chen commented from somewhere behind me.

"There is no wastage on the areas that aren't actively being attacked." Hong Yue seemed to take his words as being a personal challenge. She reared up onto her hind legs, towering over the glowing barrier, and she brought both of her front paws crashing down in this massive overhead smash that would have flattened a small house. The impact made all the formation's lines flare up blindingly bright, but the Symphony Shield miraculously held on.

I couldn't stop myself from grinning when frustration started showing up on Hong Yue's furry face. The massive bear backed herself up for several paces, and her expression started shifting from looking annoyed into looking highly calculating in a way that actively made my smile fade away slightly. And then she opened her mouth and roared. The sound was a lot more than loud noise, it was a concentrated blast of pure spiritual energy that slammed into the barrier like it was a solid physical force.

For a brief moment, I felt the formation strain while it frantically tried to handle an attack that was above stage six, but those resonance chambers turned out to be perfect for dealing with sound-based attacks like that. They naturally caught the sonic energy and redirected it around, which ended up creating this harmonic loop that managed to strengthen the barrier instead.

When Hong Yue finally ran out of breath, the formation collapsed into nothing, but that was only because I'd purposely stopped channeling my qi to power it.

"Excellent!" Elder Chen clapped.

"Congratulations, you are officially a Level Two Formation Practitioner now!" Hong Yue went ahead and made this grudging gesture of congratulation toward me, though her attention quickly shifted away when Elder Chen pulled out the familiar looking jar of golden liquid. When he threw it over at her, I snatched it out of the air. The look that showed up on Hong Yue's face was priceless.

Her eyes locked onto the jar of spiritual honey in my hands with an intensity that would have been terrifying to see if it wasn't so incredibly funny. She started making a series of increasingly dramatic gestures that seemed like they were telling a sad story about a poor and hardworking bear being cruelly denied her rewards.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I told her, while pretending to carefully examine the jar.

"Did you want to have this? I thought maybe I'd earned it for myself, what with me successfully defending against all your attacks and all..." Hong Yue's expression shifted through several emotions in rapid succession, it went from sheer disbelief, into outrage, and then into the consideration of doing extreme violence, before it finally settled on something that looked suspiciously a lot like having respect for my audacity.

She then proceeded to act out this elaborate scene of a bear dying from suffering honey deprivation, which came complete with some tragic last words and a crazy death scene that would have put any professional actors to shame.

"Well, whenever you put it that way..." I went ahead and tossed her the jar. The sight of a ninth-stage spiritual beast making happy humming noises while she was happily licking honey off her sharp claws was something I'd probably never get used to seeing. Before I could appreciate the highly surreal scene, Elder Chen was already raising his hand up so he could transport us back to his quarters.

Reality twisted around us again, and suddenly we were standing back among his impressive collection of empty wine bottles. Except instead of settling himself back down into his comfortable chair, the elder headed for the front door.

"Wait, where are you going now?" I chased after him while he strode through the corridors. He glanced back at me flashing a huge grin that made me consider running off in the opposite direction.

"Why, to go get your new formation practitioner token, of course! It's finally time you officially joined the guild."

"The guild?"

"Oh yes!" His smile widened further.

"You didn't think formation masters worked independently from each other, did you? We have an organization set up! With rankings, challenges, annoying politics, and..." he ended up hiccuping slightly, "terrible long meetings that I try to sleep through whenever it is possible."