Wilderness near an Immortal spirit stone mine

Glen Island realm

Myriad Heavens chaosverse

In the middle of a forested wilderness, a relatively small area had been carefully cleared of trees and levelled. Although Feng wasn’t really an expert in Earth techniques at his cultivation level, he could probably have smoothed and compressed the dirt into a concrete-like substance just by thinking intensely about it.

After getting the terrain properly level, Feng covered it smoothly with molten metal he poured out of a spatial artefact. The metal was nothing special, just an alloy of spiritual steel that wouldn’t rust, but it served as a practical and straightforward base for formations to be drawn, carved and etched upon.

Although it was not, strictly speaking, necessary to go to this much trouble when establishing quick and easy defensive formations, Feng intended for this to be a building block that would last. Plus, Feng was never slapdash when it came to formations. 

---

Much later, Feng looked over his work. He spent the last two months working on concealment and defence formations. There were presently thousands of such formations weaved into complicated and interlinking structures that would beguile and potentially kill even a lone Immortal level cultivator, even one that had some attainments in formations.  

Feng was currently finishing the last bits of an emplaced spatial formation that he intended to serve as the end-point for teleportation. 

This formation could actually serve as either the sending or receiving end for teleportation. Still, there was definitely insufficient power to establish a formation that could warp space all the way back to the Sect. 

The side initiating a teleport had to provide all the power, after all. The teleportation formations at the Sect were specifically designed not just for security but also for high qi throughput. Each utilised hundreds of auxiliary capacitance formations that collected heaven and earth energy and held it ready to quickly dump into the main spatial formation power loop during long-range teleportations. The capacitors had to be designed correctly, timed to release all the energy into the formation in a very small period of time, and this limitation effectively made every grand teleportation formation a unique, hand-crafted product due to the minute differences and usually required several additional testing and adjustment phases before it would work properly.

Feng clucked his tongue and considered. He could use this formation to teleport directly to two nearby cities in range, but that would be very foolish. Those are public utilities, and every coming and going is both logged officially by the city and provincial government and observed privately by any number of parties. 

Although this end-point is locked, and someone would not be able to initiate a teleport to it without a supplied cryptographic sub-formation plate, just observing either end in operation while teleporting somewhere provides too much information. The glyphs and numbers that make up a teleportation formation might seem random, but the truth was that you could not fold space to make two points congruent without a lot of information about both ends. Anyone with sufficient attainment in the Dao of Spacetime would be able to infer the location of both sides of a spatial formation by merely seeing one side in operation, sending or receiving.

It was similar to how Feng could immediately tell the dimensions, unique characteristics and often time the contents of anyone’s spatial storage artefact just by seeing them take something out or put something in. And even without seeing the operation of a teleportation formation, if he looked at the public logs of teleportation gates, he could derive the general area of the unknown side using the known location of the public side and spherical trigonometry. Of course, that was something even clever mortals could do if they were scholars, and there were a lot of those around. 

Feng hoped he never met a man who attained immortality following the path of the Dao of Mathematics; such an entity would be terrifying. Would such a man even think like a man? Or would he be some sort of unfeeling min-maximiser, like an out of control artificial spirit? If you set him to the task of increasing cabbage yields, perhaps he’d decide to kill everyone in a country was the ideal solution, as people took up a lot of lands that could be utilised for agriculture with living and other pursuits.

Every so often, an artificial spirit a cultivator created for the purposes of things like administering inheritance sites, libraries and the like went crazy if left unattended too long. Still, nobody really considered that a problem as such entities were limited in scope and capabilities. But if that same mentality appeared in a cultivator, who had unlimited future potential? Dangerous.

Feng’s mind often wandered to outlandish ideas while working on monotonous projects, or also when he was avoiding work and just staring off into space, if he was honest. But thankfully, he could think about multiple things simultaneously, so his current workmanship wasn’t compromised.

A mental alert brought him out of his reverie. One of the contingency formations had activated and was working on a solution. This surveillance-type formation fed its output into a centralised array of computational and monitoring formations. 

It was possible to perform mathematical operations using formations. Beginning books and treatises on formations were full of these types of artifice, actually. For example, a formation that was supposed to perform an arbitrary multiplication operation took virtually zero qi to make or operate and gave a definitive answer as to whether or not they were correctly constructed as there is, generally, only one correct answer in mathematics. It was a low-cost, low-risk way to teach the beginnings of the Dao of Formations, or at least the technical aspects a novice might need to know.

Feng was one of only a handful of Formation Masters that revived these types of teaching formations for practical use, and he was almost sure he was the only person in this realm who had. Thus, although Feng felt both his cultivation and character might be lacking, he did have a lot of pride in his attainment in formations. 

People who did not know any better, which is to say everyone essentially, called this type of formation a pseudo-spirit because it seemed possible to create a formation that responded differently based on any number of factors as if it was making decisions on its own. Therefore, it was considered one of the heights of the Dao of Formation, but it was ultimately all just arithmetic.

Through the process of miniaturisation and compression, it was possible to create tens of thousands of interconnected arithmetic formations that took specific inputs from auxiliary formations, usually always either sensing or timekeeping formations, and create different effects based on a set of decision trees only the maker of the formation really understood. It could get so complicated with a virtually unlimited combination of circumstances triggering many different pre-calculated decisions that it might appear to be a spirit, Feng supposed.

The only person who had understood Feng when he talked about this subject was a mortal scholar who visited the Sect several thousand years ago. That reminded Feng that he kept meaning to kidnap several scholars and forc… ask them to teach the Outer Sect brats algebra. Still, this branch of mathematics was seen as an esoteric branch of study even for the rich navel-gazing scholars.

Or maybe it would be easier to take over a school that taught the scholars in the first place and force them all to cultivate when they were still young? Who cares if they didn’t have a talent for cultivation, Feng was rich and could utilise treasures and cultivation resources that would turn even a completely untalented person into at least an average cultivator. Plus, a talent for mathematics was a lot harder to find than talent in cultivation, in his opinion. Computational formations did not need much cultivation to make, and they were pretty useful — they’d make good assistants to actual formation masters in the Sect.

Ding!

It had been less than a second, but the computation formation had already analysed input from various sensing and surveillance formations and made a decision. Feng looked up from his work to see which decision tree was activated and why. 

Oh. This wasn’t good.

—-

Four distinguished-looking cultivators were speeding through the wilderness. Although they were wearing high-quality robes, if all of different designs, they had the faces of determined rough men ready to commit violence.

One of them growled, “Stop! I sense the edge of a formation array ahead. Little Chu, I thought you said the old geezer couldn’t have been here for very long?”

The one called Chu frowned, “He shouldn’t have been. He left the Sect nine weeks ago and travelled overland. We know he didn’t teleport to any nearby city like we did. It should have taken him close to 7 to 8 weeks travelling as fast as a peak Sacred Lord level cultivator can move to get here. Brother Chang, can you take a look at this formation?”

The man named Chang had a slightly bookish look to him, which might seem a bit incongruent to his overall rough character. However, he was their group’s expert on formations. In addition, he had a rural accent that was entirely incongruent with the scholarly clothes he was wearing, “It looks like a combination concealment and misdirectin’ formation. Pretty good quality, but with this kind ya need a few other types of befuddlement formations workin’ together which ain’t here — maybe he workin’ on those right now?”

Chu nodded, “Yeah, that sounds about right. This old-timer may be approaching the end of his lifespan, but he’s still a renowned formations master. So we should bypass this formation as quickly as possible and interrupt him before he manages to finish some killing formation.”

The four men glanced at each other and nodded. Chang took the lead in disrupting the formation, “Had he got the other parts of this workin’, it would have taken much longer, assumin’ we noticed the formation at all!”

It took them working together several hours to crack the formation from the outside. As soon as they did, they sped off together through the forest. Arriving quickly at an area of the forest where there was a smooth area of polished granite between the trees, with an old man working in the centre painting and carving runes on the soft stone. He looked sort of surprised when the four men appeared but got into a defensive position quickly.

The man named Chu was wearing similar robes to the older man and tried to put him at ease, “Grand Elder! The Sect Leader sent me, along with our new allies, to reinforce and help you here.”

The old man named Feng narrowed his eyes, sighed and shook his head, “Yeah, I doubt that. For one, you’re a nobody… if you’ve said two words to the Sect Leader, I will eat my hat. And I don’t wear hats. Secondly, even if the Sect Leader decided to rope some other sects in, it wouldn’t have been any of these three who have been giving us hungry eyes for the past thousand years...” Feng trailed off and dusted his robes off before declaring decisively, “It’s treason, then.”

Chu stopped walking towards Feng; the fake smile on his face froze before turning into a grim expression. The other three joined him, each wearing the robes of a Sect that has historically been competitors of the Pure Life Spiritual Sect. The Pure Life Spiritual Sect was one of the main hegemons of this realm, but those directly underneath an undisputed hegemon would rarely feel content about it. The truth was that these three Sects had been plotting to take down their common competitor for a while, and this new Immortal spirit stone mine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. If they let the Pure Life Spiritual Sect swallow this pie, then how would they ever, even together, face them in the future?

The expression on the man named Chu’s face was more akin to gleeful hatred now, “I’m going to have to ask you to surrender to us, old man. There is no reason to lose your life here, what little of it you have left. By the time any of us get back, the Sect will have fallen, and Master Jiang will be in charge of what’s left. You can’t fight against us four; two of us are Sacred Lord cultivators also.”

Feng merely raised an eyebrow, “Elder Jiang? That dumb kid running the Punishment Hall? Really, one must truly be wary of cops, huh? I’m afraid I just don’t see how even the combined forces of three Sects can attack the Sect. Even with two or three True Immortals... The Grand Mountain formation is a Divine level formation, and with the Sect Leader running it, he’d squash you all flat. All we have to do is turtle in the Sect for a while and then kill you guys at our leisure later. Are you guys dumb?”

The four men started putting some distance from each other, getting in a more or less semi-circle surrounding the old man. The rough-looking formations master called Chang wore the robes of the Five Poison Palace laughed, “Ya Sect Leader is probably already dead, ya old fool! In ‘change for a Draught of Mortality crafted by the Poison Master ya Elder… no ya Sect Leader Jiang offered this here spirit stone mine. We throwin’ in helping him slaughter all the rebels, like you, for free!”

The expression on the old man’s face fell away, revealing nothing but an emotionless mask. “I see. Well, that is all I need to know, then.” Feng waved a hand.

Chu blinked as he heard three thumps from either side of him. He glanced with his eyes and divine sense and couldn’t believe what he saw. The three men he had been travelling with for the past month were all dead — each missing their head. They hadn’t had a chance to blink, “H-how.. what the fuck?!” This must be an illusion; we clearly didn’t wholly bypass this formation, he thought to himself.

The old man twitched another finger, and it felt like gravity; the very pressure of the air increased a hundred or a thousand-fold. Chu could barely move and was brought to his knees. Feng answered what was probably a rhetorical question, “A lot of people really underestimate the capability of spatial techniques to be used offensively. Most people can’t survive if you teleport their heads to the void between worlds, for example. Indeed, even people who have no attainment in the Dao of Spacetime could easily guard against this… but you all are idiots. Yeah, I’m an old geezer… I admit that.”

Feng narrowed his eyes, and his voice dropped to somewhere close to absolute zero, “I’m an old man walking down a path where most die young… I am not a fucking chicken you can wring the neck of for dinner…. fucking morons.”

Chu was sweating and terrified. Fuck, I’m going to die. That’s all he could keep thinking.

Feng sighed, “As for you. I think I’ll leave you here, for now. You are, after all, a member of my Sect, even if you are a traitor. With this suppression formation, you probably feel weaker than a mortal, and that’s cause you are. I have to go back to Sect now, but someone will come for you later. I hope you have enough food. I’m not going to kill you; I don’t believe in revenge after all.”

Chu blinked; the surroundings shifted and blurred. The old man and the formations he was working on blurred and vanished. The only thing left was the corpses of the three others and the trees, but he felt intense relief. He could barely move, but at least he wouldn’t be killed out of hand like these three. How the fuck did that old bastard get so strong? 

Chu would have to figure out a way to get away with this. He thought it likely that that old man was going off to his death, so it would be no matter. But if the worst came to worst, Chu would say that Jiang brainwashed him. He felt he could fake the signs of the Human Puppetry technique well enough to pass a cursory inspection. If Master Jiang lost, well then Chu would just be one more victim of that evil man, right?

——

Far away in the actual centre of the formation, Feng had not moved at all. He had intended to let the illusion run quite a bit longer to see if he could learn more of the traitors and their allies, but he felt that the mention of the Draught of Mortality was not a bluff.

The Draught of Mortality was an odourless, colourless, tasteless and spiritually non-reactive poison made to temporarily reduce the cultivation of anyone below the Divine realm. It wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a poison but more like a medication. Its primary use was therapeutic as a treatment for rampant Qi deviancy and was used diluted as an antidote to some other natural or synthetic poisons. The version that would affect Immortals was scarce and expensive to produce. But if a traitor managed to expose the Sect Leader to it, then that would be really bad. 

With Feng gone, Little Chen was the only Immortal level cultivator in the Sect and the Grand Mountain Formation required at least that level of cultivator to utilise its fullest extent. If Little Chen was either dead or incapacitated, it might very well be possible for the three Sects to win. So he had to get back to the Sect.

Feng finished a mental conversation with a spiritual beast living in the forest. This forest was home to a nest of a type of spiritual arachnid called Executioner Spiders. Really, they were considered quite malevolent and a pest to be eradicated most of the time. They would eat anything, but their preferred prey was fully developed souls like humans or highly cultivated spiritual beasts.

These spiders were considered malevolent because they tended to keep their prey alive a long time while slowly eating them, body and soul, which was a rather painful process. Therefore, they were called Executioner Spiders because they were much better than even the best human torturer at keeping someone alive and conscious.

Feng directed them to the area of the forest that held that brat Chu.

Feng was a liar, after all.