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Two weeks later, Bai li yue had lost her smile. It was replaced by a perpetual frown. fouteen spirit stones had seemed like a good idea then. She'd believed that they would be enough to make up for the inconvenience of not cultivating in the array she had built for her own use, but she'd been wrong. It pained her seeing grand elder Mu happily cultivating while she was forced to trudge into the forest. She consoled herself with the hought of the array dissipating by itself at the end of the month. Grand elder mu would be gone and she would be free to return to her cultivation. 

It actually wasn't Grand elder Mu's fault. She'd fully expected the old woman to be a nuisance whenever they met but her passion for cultivation was admirable. 

If i had half of her determination, i wouldn't find cultivating in the forest to be a chore. 

These days, the outer part of the forest was her stomping ground. She could find her way through it in her sleep. It was relatively safe because higher ranked savage beasts didn't venture to the edges of the forest. She had encountered a herd of red coat buffaloes a winged tiger but everyone mostly stayed out of everyone's way. 

She was spending most of the day in the bamboo grove; mainly to avoid grand elder mu. The sect protector was reaching the point of breakthrough to the sage realm. She knew the array wouldn't be able to provide an adequate influx of energy to push her through the threshold. 

Again this morning, grand elder Mu looked crestfallen and Bai li yue felt a twinge in her heart.

Was it sympathy? 

For those in higher ranked sects breaking through to the venerable or sage realms was a common thing. They had a wealth of resources to make the process easier. Unfortunately, the Thousand bamboo immortal sect no longer belonged to that category. A sect protector was important but not as important as the thousands of mouths it had to feed. 

Bail li yue was sure that the sect had not been stingy with providing cultivation resources for grand elder Mu. She'd seen her swallowing handfuls of pills to not be aware of that fact. They'd been enough to propel her to the realm of venerable. But the question was if what remained could take her all the way to the sage realm. Judging by the woman's demeanor, it wasn't. 

Is this what i'll also face when i reach the higher realms? It looks like pursuing cultivation is either for the incredibly wealthy who can cultivate with thinking about resources or adapt to a system of periods of cultivation interspersed with fallow periods for those who had to gather cultivation resources. Is that why teacher always warned me to be alert and chase money? Because cultivation is too expensive making cultivators ruthless and selfish?

She arrived at the grove just as the sun reached its zenith. It was a good time as any to eat her packed lunch. 

'Grand elder Mu's situation is really unfortunate!'

She sighed.

How many times had she heard or seen this happen? A talented person was forced by circumstances to give up their dream. It wasn't a question of talent. It wasn't about working hard. They simply didn't have a powerful backer. Grand elder Mu would have to spend years if not a decade slowly accumulating spirit energy to breakthrough because she didn't have a powerful sect supporting her.

Ahh! Just take it that you are doing a good deed. Teacher Chu considers them family so help her. It's not like you'd lose something by helping out.

She finally convinced herself. There was a lightness in her heart. She'd been too focused on not getting the short end of the stick that she'd forgotten that she didn't have to be like other people. There was no need to be ruthless if the situation doesn't call for it. 

After lunch, she found another secluded grove and built yet another spirit gathering array that she quickly cloaked. She had met a group of students on a mission in this part of the forest so one could not be too careful. 

She counted the realms on her fingers. Nine in all. If grand elder mu is breaking into the  sage realm then my array is truly insufficient. she needs about ten times more energy than she is currently receiving. She called to mind the poem summarising the realms of cultivation in the thousand auroras world. How did it go again?

To ascend the mountain: 

begin with the initiate, 

honour the master, 

then the lord, 

the king is a new beginning, 

venerables are few, 

But sages are fewer, 

And sovereigns stand above, 

the world belongs to emperors, 

while immortals dream of true ascension.

For the next few days Bai li yue scouted new locations to build arrays. Cloaking and linking the arrays into a network made the work more difficult than usual. She was effectively doing three times the work for one array. By the end of the week, when Bai li yue stumbled back into the sect, she was ready to change her mind about helping. It had taken too much effort because she was still an initiate. If she hadn't already invested a lot of work in the arrays, she would have called it quits. 

She fell into bed and slept through the day only waking up when night fell. The whole courtyard was silent except for the sound of crickets and a lone night bird. She cooked a lavish meal for herself and sat outside to savour it. She ended up wolfing it all down once the first bite of warm food landed in her stomach. 

No longer feeling sleepy, Bai li yue went over her plan. She had finished building, cloaking and linking five arrays so far. It fell short of the ten arrays by a wide margin, but her stay in the forest hadn't been for nothing. Casting many arrays was her only option because of her low realm, but it led to shoddy work because she was tinkering with and fitting together different arrays when one higher grade array would suffice. The patchwork of arrays was somethibg she couldn't avoid for now, but she could do her best to reduce the number of joints and moving parts. She had memorised countless array diagrams during her cultivation that she sometimes forgot what existed and what didn't, but it was easily remedied. She had to find a method that could slot into place. it was deep in the night when her eyes lit up. The amplification array wasn't something she could cast at the moment, but she found something just as good. 

The strengthening rune was the solution. It had taken her hours of testing the rune with a tiny spirit gathering array, then the spirit containment array to finally understand something.

First of all she was too weak, she couldn't continue to ignore her cultivation. Here she was spending her precious time and effort to help someone with theirs while ignoring her own cultivation.

Second, she was an idiot. Blind. Both! She hadn't even seen what was right in front of her nose. She'd been stuck on that page for months and she hadn't even noticed it. She was on the verge of grasping what Sovereign Han bei jie was reflecting on in the book. It had taken her multiple failures to understand that array diagrams were like prisons. They were a guide to the newly initiated, but at the end of the day, they were a fetter for the mind. 

'To break free, do i have to abandon diagrams?

No, that's not the answer either.'

She collected her thoughts and put them in order.  

What do i know about arrays? They are made up of runes and circles. 

She quickly drew a small circle and drew a simple rune signifying burn. A moment later, the piece of cloth dhe threw was reduced to ashes.

 

Hhaaaha! 

She quickly stifled her laughter when rang too loud in the silent night. 

Why did that never occur to me? Effect and space do indeed define the core of a formation. A rune and a circle. 

That's what he meant about diagrams being prisons of the mind.

She tried casting arrays with different runes to see the result, but it resulted in more questions about without answers. 

The fact that an array can have different runes means that efficiency is a problem. However if I can combine the strengthening rune with the containment rune, that would solve the problem. How great would that be? But that combining diferrent runes will destabilise the array. 

She finally understood why so many would choose the array diagram. it had already been tested. Pushing her excitement aside, she picked up the array booklet. 

I just grasped a part of the Sovereign's reflection, i must take the time to slowly ruminate on my discovery.

Her eyes stayed on each word for longer than usual. Each sentence was a new world that she could explore to discover if it matched what she understood. 

At dawn, she heard the flutter of clothes and opened her eyes as grand elder mu landed in the yard. 

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