I spent the next several weeks locked away in my alchemy lab.


    A few new clients came to discuss terms with me, but most seemed to be waiting for the results of my first discussions. Those representatives had yet to contact me again after our meetings, but that wasn’t too unusual. Even modest forces moved at slow timescales, and the elder councils that needed to approve any major decisions could spend weeks in discussion over the simplest matters.


    Likely, they weren’t fans of handing me copies of all their techniques, but at the same time, they knew lending me as many manuals as possible would get them countless free pills. This clash of priorities was probably the biggest cause of the delays.


    This didn’t bother me, though. I had plenty to keep me busy. After acquiring the herbs I wanted, I had many new avenues to study and explore.


    I wanted to focus on learning how to improve shoddy herbs, but lacking sample pills of secondary elements would hamper my business prospects, so I resolved to take care of that first.


    I had bought three of every Rank 3 herb the Blue Wind Merchant Exchange possessed, so I was well stocked to begin my explorations. I started by working through each of the recipes I had bought.


    Interestingly, this did not include the Shadowed Soul Pill I had needed to make during the registration exam, but that made sense. The exam would be significantly less effective if someone could just buy the recipes beforehand. Instead, it tested an alchemist''s ability to analyze herbs.


    The recipes included various types of pills, like a wind and thunder flashbang style pill and a temporary appearance-altering pill that combined light, dark, water, and wood herbs.


    One strange recipe created something I could barely call a pill. It combined light and fire herbs to create a light source. When squeezed, the ‘pill’ would begin emitting enough light to illuminate a decently sized room. I wasn’t sure how bright the light would be, or how long it would last, but this seemed like an almost criminal waste of Rank 3 herbs. While it was possible someone would use such a thing, I had to believe that it was a case of an alchemist stumbling upon a useless recipe and just selling it to anyone willing to pay for it. To me, this felt like the type of pill that would be labeled Rank 0.


    Whether the pills were useful or not, having the recipes and practicing with them gave me valuable insights into how the medicinal energy in these new herbs worked and how their effects could change when mixed with different ingredients. I made one pill based on each recipe, then I began studying the results.


    I wasn’t very happy with how most of them turned out. The medicinal energies didn’t mix properly. Part of this was a result of not having the affinities to properly manipulate them during the process, but another problem was that the secondary affinity pairs were resistant to being combined. This was where the catalyst I used in the exam came into play. It assisted in creating proper mixes, and without it, I was struggling.


    Such a catalyst might have been necessary, but my gut told me there should be a way to make these pills without it. I just needed understanding and practice.


    The weeks passed quickly, and I made significant progress, but when it was time for me to leave my workshop, I still wasn’t happy. There was more I could do, but it would take time.


    I took examples of the best pills I had managed to produce with the secondary elements and handed them over as samples to the Alchemy Office. I didn’t bother giving them anything else I had made since it wasn’t up to my quality standards, and I didn’t want to sell subpar products.


    I would spend more time in research later, but now it was time to learn formations.


    <hr>


    The ‘classroom’ I was taken to was a large open courtyard with a ground of packed dirt. Twenty small plinths were arranged in a four-by-five grid, and a slightly larger one was placed on a podium at the front. On top of each plinth was a large slab of granite that had been neatly cut into a block with smooth sides and perfect edges.


    I was the eleventh person to arrive, so I had a chance to check out my fellow classmates as I waited.


    Without exception, they were all earth qi cultivators, which made sense. They were also all Martial Disciples, and while their cultivation bases varied in quality, they were all relatively good, though far from being perfect. They all had to be using Peak Yellow cultivation techniques, but small deficiencies in their qi filters kept them from reaching the perfect qi purity they should have had.


    As the start of the class approached, more students filtered in, and they were almost all roughly similar to the students who had been here when I entered. The only ones that stood out were two young men who entered together. Instead of cultivating earth qi, they were metal qi cultivators.


    When the metal cultivators reached their plinths, they lifted the granite slabs and set them off to the side. Then, they each took a large metal sheet out of their storage bags and placed them where the stone had originally sat. Instead of stone, they worked with metal.


    After all the students had entered and prepared, a middle-aged man wearing a rich brown hanfu walked in and took up a position on the podium.


    “Welcome, everyone,” he began. “My name is Hu JianGuo. I am an outer elder of the Earth City Hu family and a Master Formation Specialist. Today, I will teach you the very basics of formations.”


    Saying this, he propped up the granite block on his plinth and placed it so that the largest face was visible to us. He held his hand over the top right of the block and channeled his qi. I tried to watch exactly what was happening, but I didn’t have the best vantage point. All I could see was small bits dropping away from where he placed his hand.


    When his hand was removed, two palm-sized inscriptions were visible. The inscription on the left was somewhat complicated, but the one on the right was a deceivingly simple-looking spiral. A thin channel ran from the formation on the left, through the spiral, and off the top of the block into empty air. Both inscriptions existed in three dimensions. The left one had channels that ran into and out of the stone block, and the spiral on the right appeared to deepen near the center.


    “These are the two most foundational formation inscriptions for you to learn. This one,” the instructor tapped the complex inscription on the left, “is a version of a qi filter you could find in a Low-Yellow cultivation manual, while this one,” he tapped the spiral, “is an inscription to create a qi vortex similar to how a Martial Disciple cultivates. This is the most basic way of pulling in qi to empower a formation.”


    The instructor channeled his qi into the spiral. It circled around the inscription then passed through the block and dispersed into the environment. As his qi circled, though, environmental qi began to gather around the stone block. It was pulled in through the inscribed filter, and somewhat pure earth qi began filling the inscribed channel. It passed through the center of the spiral and out the other side, finally dispersing back into the environment when the channel ended.


    When the instructor stopped sending his qi into the spiral, the flow of qi into the filter and through the channel ceased.


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    “This is the simplest formation you can make. It requires active qi input and doesn’t do anything with the energy it gathers. This will be your starting point for today.”


    The instructor nodded at a younger man who had entered from the side holding a stack of papers. At the nod, the younger man began handing them out to the various students.


    “This has the two inscriptions I used. You all should have access to better qi filters from your cultivation techniques but start with this one. Filters need to be adapted to work properly with formations, and it’s best to start with the simplest designs until you have more practice. You may come up and look at the formation I created more closely, and as you work, my assistant and I will walk around to assist you.”


    With that, he stepped down from the podium and gestured for us to begin.


    Instead of beginning immediately, I watched as other students raced to begin working. Several of them appeared to be quite skilled already, which made me wonder why they were in the class. Was it to catch the attention of the teacher?


    At any rate, their motives didn’t matter to me. They provided me with exceptional examples of what could go wrong if a formation was made too hastily and had errors. The simplest of these failures was the walls of the formation stone collapsing, rendering the entire thing inoperable, but one young man had a build-up of qi that resulted in a minor explosion.


    I considered my situation. How should I create a formation? Earth qi was being used because stone provided a hard base layer on which to inscribe, and earth qi was good for carving it. I didn’t have earth qi, but I did have access to wood qi. Earth qi manipulated earth easily, but earth was weak to wood, so wood qi should be even better for carving.


    I fixed the filter inscription we had been provided in my mind and began to work. I wasn’t familiar with this particular filter, so I didn’t hit all the angles correctly, but my qi control was enough to create a close facsimile of what it was supposed to be. After the filter was complete, I moved on and swiftly completed the spiral and channel. My wood qi made short work of the granite, and I was quickly finished.


    I was about to inject qi into the spiral to test my creation, but I had a sudden thought. The qi type in the spiral shouldn’t matter. It will condense all the types of qi in the environment, and the filter handles separating out the earth element. If I used wood qi in the spiral, though, it might begin degrading the granite. It would be better to use fire qi which might help strengthen the stone as it passes through.


    I began channeling, and the spiral seemed to function correctly. Qi gathered around the block and began passing through the filter. Only a moment later, though, the entire thing collapsed. The stone couldn’t bear the strain of the qi passing through it. I frowned. Even if I made a mistake, it shouldn’t have collapsed so easily.


    I looked around to see if the examples provided by the other students could shed any light on what went wrong, but there wasn’t much to see. The most interesting were the two metal qi cultivators. They solved the problem of having the wrong element by changing the medium they used, but carving inscriptions into metal appeared far more difficult. Would it be a good idea to use metal as a base and carve with fire qi? That would allow me to start with a stronger material and may help avoid a collapse.


    As I stood pondering, the teacher’s assistant approached me and looked at my failed formation.


    “What did you do?” he asked in a scornful voice. He picked up some of the crumbled remains of my formation and looked at them dismissively. “Wood qi? You tried to use wood qi to create a formation? What are you, an idiot?”


    The man’s voice cut through the courtyard. Several of the other students stopped working to look at the commotion. The instructor also noticed what was happening, and when he did, his eyes widened in terror.


    The assistant didn’t notice and continued berating. “If you don’t have the proper qi to create formations, why did you even come here? You’re just wasting everyone’s time. Go learn herbalism like a good little flower boy.”


    The instructor rushed over and pushed his assistant away. He looked at me with a pained expression. “I’m sorry,” he began, but before he could say more, the assistant continued for him.


    “No need to be sorry for this fool. We can just throw him out. Want me to go get the guards?”


    The instructor’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “Quiet!” he said to the younger man in a rush. “Alchemist Su, I’m sorry.”


    “Alchemist?” laughed the younger man, “Uncle, he’s no alchemist. He’s a flower boy.”


    The instructor turned around and slapped the young man hard, knocking him to the floor.


    “Uncle! What are you doing?”


    “Shut up! Get out of here. Stop bothering Mister Su!”


    “Uncle! But he’s—”


    “Now! Leave!”


    The instructor looked back at me with a pleading expression. The young man slowly stood with a contrite expression, but when his uncle turned back to me, the younger man shot me a venomous glare before walking away.


    “Alchemist Su, I truly apologize. My nephew isn’t sensible. Please, let me help you with your formation.”


    I chuckled internally. At this point, I was no longer willing to accept the explanations of these old foxes.


    Most likely, he knew exactly what kind of person his nephew was and even encouraged him to act this way. He set this whole thing up to try to get closer to me. By showing me he was ‘on my side,’ he could try to quickly ingratiate himself.


    The other option was that he had no idea how his nephew would act. This, in my opinion, was much worse because it would mean there was an uncontrollable element at play that could pose a risk to me.


    Either way, it didn’t change what I needed to do. I was here to learn formations, and if he was willing to teach, I was willing to learn.


    “Thank you, Teacher Hu,” I said with a nod. “I am not sure why my attempt collapsed like it did.”


    The instructor picked up some of the remains and rolled them between his fingers.


    “You used wood qi to carve it?” he asked after some thought. “You must have quite the talent to be so skilled in two elements.”


    He examined it for several more seconds before rendering his verdict.


    “I don’t know how well your formation was constructed, but it wouldn’t matter. It was destined to collapse the moment you began.”


    I looked at him with interest.


    “Wood qi is great for cutting apart the stone, but there’s a reason no wood cultivators are here. When you do that, it denatures the walls of the channels you carve. Look closely at this stone,” he said, holding up a small pebble. “On the right, you can see what natural granite should look like, but on the left, you can see where your wood qi began breaking down its structure. Even if your qi control were to be beyond anything I’ve ever seen before, I know of no way you could carve with wood qi and not damage the surrounding stone.”


    I looked at what he was holding and thought about the problem. It made sense, and I should have realized it earlier. Suddenly, I had an idea.


    “What if I carve the inscription with wood qi and then go back over it with fire qi? The fire should help stabilize the stone, right?”


    The instructor shook his head. “I’ve seen experiments at doing that before, but it doesn’t work very well. Think of it like this. Using wood qi is like taking a sword and bending the blade 90 degrees, doing incredible damage to the metal. Going back over it with fire qi is like bending the blade back to its original position. It looks like a blade again and can be used for a period, but the bending back and forth introduced fatal flaws into its structure.”


    I considered what he said. There should be a way to solve the issue, but this wasn’t the place.


    “What about using a different material?” I gestured to the metal cultivators. “If I inscribed on wood, that should work, right?”


    Again, the instructor shook his head. “Wood is an organic material. It’s not suitable for holding formations. Good rock has a very uniform crystal pattern, and well-treated metal is nearly as good. Wood, though, has a far more complex structure which can cause problems with formations.”


    He tapped the plinth a couple of times before continuing. “Not to say it couldn’t be done, mind you. My family has been conducting experiments on using wood in formations for years, but it has to be used in specialized settings for unique purposes, not in standard formations.”


    “Thank you, Teacher Hu. I will consider what you’ve said."


    If I wanted to create formations, I still had the option of using my spiritual fire to do so, but I didn’t want to show my skill with it in this setting. I would need to do those experiments in private.


    “Of course, Alchemist Su.”


    The class continued, and I spent my time focused on learning from the examples of others instead of practicing myself. I wanted to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of everyone’s approach so that I could better adapt it to my own pursuits, and I relied on my purchased enhanced comprehension to assist me with that.


    After the allotted hour ended, the instructor dismissed us for the week and said his goodbyes. As I was beginning to leave, though, he called me over.


    “Alchemist Su, if you are interested in learning more about formations, the Hu family would be happy to share its knowledge with you.”


    “Thank you, Teacher Hu, I’m very interested. Should we discuss the arrangements now?”


    “Unfortunately, that is not within my purview,” he said with a sad expression. “The elders have heard of the unique offer you have made through the Pavilion, but they have some concerns about it. They would like to send a representative to discuss them with you.”


    “Of course,” I said with a nod. “I welcome any discussion with the Hu Clan.”


    “Excellent,” the instructor said beaming, “I will inform them immediately. Good day, Alchemist Su.”


    “Good day.”