Formations 101

James woke up ready to tackle the new day. He took a bath, grabbed the sword he kept at the end of the bed and headed outside to train with liz.

He worked up a sweat with Liz, going back and forth for hours, having a great time. James was becoming more and more familiar with his sword technique. With each day of sparring, the experience points next to it increased. With the rate of improvement, it will take only another month before James reaches the limit of experience.

Over the last 2 days of being back in the sect, James had neglected his fist technique as he was too concerned to use it against Liz in their sparring after witnessing its prowess in a real fight. He'd been training it with Liz before leaving for the tournament but he could no longer do it with peace of mind. What would happen if he accidentally used too much strength? He certainly didn't want what happened to the demonic cultivators to happen to Liz. So he put it on the back burner for now and decided to only train it in his free time when he was alone.

After finishing his morning training, James went to the sect's Scripture pavilion where all the manuals, records, techniques and other written information was stored. It was a tall building with 9 floors, each of which contained increasingly complex and secret information. The 1st through 3rd floors were accessible to Foundation Establishment cultivators. The 4th through 6th floors were accessible to Core Formation cultivators. The 7th through 9th floors were only accessible to the sect's Elder and above.

There was an Elder stationed within the pavilion who's job was to ensure disciples didn't try to access floors higher than they were allowed and to protect all the documents stored within. There was an exception to the rules though, as a Peak disciple, James was allowed to access the Core Formation floors as well. This was a privilege that all Peak disciples shared, though they rarely used as information from cultivation stages they had yet to reach was essentially useless.

James entered the Scripture pavilion and saw Elder Doloc sitting behind his desk on the first floor, reading a romance book.

"Ah James, back to read more about formations?"

"Yes Elder, i'm very interested in formations and hope to create my own very soon."

"Haha good good, our sect may not have extensive knowledge in the area but it should be more than enough for a beginner."

With a wave of his hand, James proceeded up the flight of stairs on the right. The manuals that introduced formations for beginners was located on the second floor. Although James could go higher in the pavilion, he had no reason to for now. He settled in at a table with the manual in hand and began his daily reading. He'd hoped to learn as much of the fundamentals as he could and his goal was to try making his first formation a week later.

He's been studying the Mana Gathering formation and set it as his first goal. It was a relatively simple formation and was commonly used by those new to creating formations. This formation only had 1 job which was to gather the mana in the surroundings, making the area directly above it filled with concentrated mana. This kind of formation can be found in every cultivator's dwelling throughout the world as mana is the basis of every aspect of cultivation.

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James spent the next week following this routine. He would train his sword technique with Liz in the morning, he would go to study formations in the afternoon and practice his fist technique before bed.

'Today is the day! I've made my preperations and learned the basics. After training with Liz today, instead of going to the Scripture pavilion i'm gonna try making my first formation.'

James was very excited and couldn't stop thinking about finally creating a formation. This caused him to be beaten and bruised by Liz throughout the sparring.

"You're distracted today, your movements are sloppy and you aren't reacting properly to my swings. What are you thinking about?"

"Sorry Senior sister, today is the day I finally try to create a formation so it's all i've been able to think about. Just think about it, formations are the basis of every advanced secondary profession. They're so cool! You can cast spells far stronger than you'd normally be able to cast. I may start with just gathering atmospheric mana for now but in the future I can set up an attacking array to create a fireball as big as the sun or a defensive barrier strong enough to withstand attacks from immortals…"

James began to go on and on about all of his ideas for formations he wants to create in the future. Liz was astonished, she'd never seen James so excited about something before.

'They're just formations, any self-respecting cultivator will know a few basic ones, why is he so excited? Haha, I almost forgot he was still only around 10 years old. It's normal for children to be excited about things, especially anything mana related. I guess he acts too mature all the time so I forgot he was still just a kid.'

Liz smiled and listened to James' rant. She liked talking with him normally because no matter what the subject was, he was able to follow the conversation like anyone else her age. But she found this childish side of him refreshing and a bit cute.

James went on for another couple minutes before slowly coming to a stop. He was slightly embarassed when he saw the look on Liz' face. With a quick goodbye, James slipped away and headed back to his house to take a bath. After eating lunch, he was finally ready to start.

James sat on his meditation mat, raised his hand and closed his eyes. Formations were both simple and complicated, they involved memorizing and clearly picturing the layout of the magic circle in your mind. You would then extend threads of mana outside the body and guide it to form the image. Once completed, the formation will need to be placed on a physical surface or object to remain intact or else the mana comprising it will slowly disperse. A good example of this would be Talismans, where the formation was placed on a sheet of paper.