Upon returning to the Academy, Instructor Yuan took us each into a room individually for private discussions.


    After I sat down across from her, she took out an affinity testing orb and placed it on the table between us. Without needing any guidance, I placed my hand on it and inserted my qi. Once she tapped it with her finger, the chaotic lines resolved into the exact same nine images as the last time I had been tested.


    “You weren’t able to raise your earth affinity to five-star?” She raised an eyebrow as she looked at the orb. “This is going to be a problem. If you couldn’t even succeed at the Earth Peak Trial, it’s going to be impossible for you to raise an affinity with a qi type that you’re not cultivating.”


    Her face took on a grim cast, and her tone turned severe.


    “JiaQi and LiTing had their own rude awakenings and are currently in the process of deciding if they want to switch to dual-element cultivation techniques, but they at least already have their primary affinities high enough. If you couldn’t get past the tenth stage of the trial on this attempt, then you’re going to need at least three or four more just to raise your earth affinity sufficiently. If you want to raise a second affinity, it’ll take at least two or three times as many attempts.”


    I wanted to justify my efforts. “Once I cultivate further into the Master realm, it will get easier. I was held back by my lack of meridians. The early stages would be much easier if I could pull qi from everywhere in my body.”


    She snorted rudely. “The Trial gets harder as your cultivation increases. With a higher level, yes, you would be more powerful. It would help you, but you should only expect an increased cultivation level to help you complete a few more stages at best.”


    The instructor’s assessment struck me hard. I wanted to continue studying my current cultivation technique, but destroying my prospects in this life might not be worth it. However, one thing she said stuck out to me.


    “Tenth stage?”


    “Yes. To raise your affinity from peak six-star to low five-star takes the total essence you would gather from stages one to ten. To achieve mid five-star, it will take the total essence from stages one to thirty. If you leave the trial earlier, that essence stays with you, so you won’t lose anything, but leaving early means it will take more total trips. If you can only get to stage six, it’ll take you two trips just to break through to low five, and if you want to get to mid five, it’ll take at least half a dozen more.”


    I tried to make sense of what she was telling me. “So, if I had beaten the tenth stage, I should have gotten enough essence for a low five-star affinity?”


    “Yes.” Her eyes narrowed, and she took on a vaguely threatening posture.


    I sat there and quickly drummed my fingers on the table. If the essence hadn’t improved my earth affinity, what had it done? Was it still usable in some way?


    I had to ask the instructor. “Have you ever heard of a cultivation technique that absorbs essence?”


    The arms of her chair creaked ominously as she squeezed them.


    “That’s why your technique is so strange? It’s a godsdamned essence cultivation technique?”


    I looked at her with hope. “Do you know about them?”


    “I have never seen one… I had never seen one. But of course I have heard of them. It’s just that no one in the sect is dumb enough to use them.”


    A trace of worry shot across my face.


    “It’s not that bad.” She sighed and shook her head. “You just need to stop using it and get a new technique. I believe you still have some Rank 1 tokens for the library left. Use them to get yourself a decent cultivation technique.”


    I nodded but wanted to know more. “What’s wrong with it?”


    “They’re good if you’re out in the wilderness where there’s free essence everywhere. Cultivation techniques with essence filters will let you cultivate normally while also slowly increasing your affinity over time. For a lot of people on the continent, that kind of technique would be a godsend. But you are in the Academy and should be joining the sect in the future. You don’t need to rely on slowly cultivating wild essence to improve your affinity.”


    “It would still help though, wouldn’t it?”


    She seemed amused at the question.


    “The key word was ‘slowly.’ For whatever reason, if you cultivate essence, it takes ten times as much of the stuff to raise an affinity. The amount of essence you get for beating each stage increases the higher you go, but if you want to get a low five-star affinity while cultivating essence instead of simply absorbing it, you will have to reach at least stage 60. Simply put, not only are you weaker than someone with a cultivation technique more focused on improving their qi in some way, but you will also have to consume far more resources to advance. Get yourself a better technique. Preferably a two- or three-element one.”


    “I… I will consider it…”


    I did not want to change my technique. I needed to keep cultivating essence. If it took ten times as much energy to raise my affinities as normal, what did that mean? It shouldn’t make them better in any way, right? The instructor would have mentioned it.


    Ten times the cost when cultivating essence instead of absorbing it normally. Would that make the improvements permanent? I had to know. Asking the System only got me a demand for an outrageous number of credits, so if I wanted an answer, I would have to figure it out myself.


    <hr>


    After everyone’s debriefing with Instructor Yuan, we gathered together without her to discuss how we should prepare for future Trials.


    “Weapons.” Shi YuLong patted his new hammer. “You all need to get yourselves some weapons. You wouldn’t believe how much of a difference a good hammer can make for breaking apart stone.”


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    I looked around at the group. “Does anyone know what the rules are for taking weapons into the Trial? We couldn’t take our storage bags, but would weapons be allowed?”


    Zhuge Yan nodded. “I asked the elder at my Trial. Anything we make can be taken inside, but it has to be made by someone in our class. No outside pills, weapons, or armor will be permitted.”


    No one wanted to put Lin LiTing on the spot, her profession was officially a secret, but it had been obvious for years.


    She squirmed in the silence that filled the room as we considered how to proceed.


    “Maybe I could—”


    “No.” Zhuge Yan cut her off sharply. “If all of us show up to the next Trial with refined weapons, it will be obvious to everyone what happened. If we want weapons, we should try to earn them through the Trials openly. If anyone has an affinity above mid five-star, it might be worth using your next attempt to pick up equipment from that Trial.”


    LiTing sunk down in her chair.


    “What about regular, mortal weapons?” I asked. “Do we have to make those ourselves, and if we do, will doing so be problematic?”


    Yan looked frustrated. “Yes, we do. As for whether they will cause similar problems, it’s hard to say, but I would lean toward being more cautious than not. How many people would easily accept that a cultivator is just a mortal weapon smith?”


    I didn’t want LiTing to worry too much about the situation, so I changed the topic.


    “What did you two face in your Trials?” I asked Yan and JiaQi. “You haven’t told us yet. We had to fight those damn rock monsters at the Earth Peak, but maybe another Trial would be easier without a weapon.”


    “I had to cut things,” JiaQi grumbled. “Nothing to fight against. Well, nothing to fight against in the stages I was able to get through. Just cutting. I was able to use a water blade to get the job done early on, but once I was out of qi, I was finished.”


    “Illusions,” responded Yan. “The first ten stages were all about escaping through various illusions. Since no one was controlling them, I’m guessing they were created by formations, but that knowledge didn’t help me much. I was able to struggle through to the tenth stage, but then I started getting attacked by enemies I couldn’t see, so I had to retreat.”


    It was good intel, but what could we do with it?


    “I can work to create some formations,” I offered. “We can all take them inside with us during the next Trial, but it will take time to design something that can help us. I know you all don’t like talking about your professions, but…”


    LiTing sunk back a little further, having already gotten a response to any offer she could make.


    JiaQi was the first to volunteer an idea. “I’m studying taming, but there is very little I can do at this point, so don’t expect me to gift you your own flame tiger or anything. I might be able to get us some small animals to help detect hidden opponents. I don’t know if they will be able to see through illusions, though. I’ll have to look into it.”


    Yan shook his head. “I’m studying to be an illusionist. We might be able to work together to design some formations in the future, but I don’t have the skill to do much yet, and there is nothing I can provide others with.”


    YuLong smiled. “Fang already had formations covered, so I didn’t need to think about that. I’m more of a fighter anyway, so I wanted one of the secondary professions. Went with talisman artist, not that it will help. I barely qualify to make Rank 1 talismans, and those won’t do much for us.”


    Zhuge Yan put both hands flat on the table and looked at us. “Alright. Our profession lessons are starting back up tomorrow. We can discuss this with our teachers and see if they can offer any insights. If they aren’t willing to say anything directly, try to focus on topics that you think will help. And remember, even if something doesn’t seem valuable now, it might help in a different element’s Trial.


    <hr>


    As we were preparing for profession training, Instructor Yuan informed us that, as Masters, we would need to begin specializing.


    Instead of simply studying general knowledge of formations, I was supposed to pick a subtopic to focus on, such as permanent formations, disposable formations, or grand formations. I would still learn the basics of everything, but my true depth would be in my chosen specialty.


    I wanted to choose spatial bags as my specialization. That was by far the most important topic to me. However, I was informed that ‘spatial bags’ was considered a rather low-class specialization. There simply wasn’t much depth required to master it.


    At the instructor’s urging, and with my need to create something useful for our trials, I went with specializing in disposable formations. Master Tan’s explosive formations had left an impact on me, and if I could create something even more powerful, passing through the Trial would be simple.


    Still, since mastering spatial bags was supposed to be ‘easy,’ I asked Instructor Yuan to arrange a few lessons with a formation teacher who specialized in it so that I could find out what I needed to know. She wasn’t happy about it, but she begrudgingly agreed to do so ‘later.’


    My first lesson on Rank 2 formations was with Grandmaster Qin, and it was to cover the topic of disposable formations in more detail. I had thought about our conversation for ideas that could help us during the Trial and wanted his help to learn how to implement them.


    “So, my idea is to have a prepared formation stone containing the earth wall technique that I can throw out to create a quick staircase. That’s just an example, but it’s the essence of what I want to accomplish. Encasing techniques into formations that I can throw out during a fight.”


    Grandmaster Qin smiled at my description. “That is the essence of the disposable formation specialty, but you have to understand its limits. If you want to have a formation create a staircase, you will need a filter so that it only collects earth qi, a way to target different parts of the ground in a specific order, a variable method for controlling power output toward different targets, and several more components. This can be done, but it will be an exceedingly complex formation.”


    He took out a fist-sized carved stone and placed it in front of me. “This is an Earth Spike Formation. Throw it out and it creates a spike of earth wherever it lands. It’s simple. Disposable formations are a lot like talismans. Use them once and then they’re gone. You don’t want to spend days working on a one-time-use formation. Usually, at least.”


    I thought about it, but I liked my idea. Maybe it was just that ‘disposable formations’ wasn’t the right specialty for me. “I can still make something like that and just pick it up after so that it’s not a one-time-use item. It would still be useful.”


    “You can, and it might be a good idea to keep something like that with you in the future, but you are looking to pass the Earth Peak Trial, right? That kind of formation will be difficult to take with you. That formation, with all the parts it would require, would need a large chunk of stone, and that’s something you don’t want to be carrying around without a storage bag if you don’t have to. Better to just use some Earth Spike Formations at different power levels and learn to jump between them.”


    He tossed out a small rock, and when it hit the ground, a spike of earth burst forth.


    “The advantage disposable formations have over talismans is that as long as you only inject a small amount of energy into one, the formation will not be destroyed, so you can use it again. The formation stone will only shatter if you use it at full strength. The drawback to this is that disposable formations have a lower peak output than an equivalent talisman.”


    “That… could work.” I considered the option. It still had one big problem, though. “What about different Trials? If I go to the Fire Peak Trial, there won’t be any earth qi for the formation to draw upon.”


    A look of chagrin crossed the Grandmaster’s face. “With your wide array of affinities, you have a few advantages in that regard that the rest of us don’t. I can teach you to translate martial techniques into formations, but you will have to then use that knowledge to take techniques of other elements and create new formations out of them yourself.”


    This… This could be the excuse I needed to check out the other libraries without raising suspicion.


    “When do we start?”