Chương 156: Rouqi Gathering Circle

The Ancestor and Sect Master exchanged a look with each other the moment I brought up formations, and I could see the hope drain out of their faces in real time.

"This junior has some knowledge of formations," the Ancestor said, and he was being careful about how he phrased it.

"Though it cannot compare to senior's profound understanding of the subject." The Sect Master nodded in agreement, though I caught the way his eyes had narrowed while he was doing it. The Ancestor was disappointed and was not hiding it well, but Li Jie seemed to be turning the implications over in his head rather than reacting to the surface of what had been said.

"You seem disappointed," I said, and I let a small amount of amusement come through in my voice.

"Were you perhaps hoping for insights into reaching Tier 3? Tier 4? Maybe even Tier 5?" Their expressions answered that question without either of them needing to say a word. Of course that was what they wanted, the dream of advancement was worth more than almost anything else to cultivators in their position.

"I could share those kinds of insights," I continued, and I watched their faces lift with hope, "but they would be useless to you." And like that the hope was gone again.

"The core problem is not your technique or your understanding of cultivation principles, it is that there is not enough rouqi left in this world to make any of it matter." The Sect Master's shoulders dropped a little at that.

"Senior speaks the truth," he admitted.

"Even maintaining our current cultivation levels grows harder every year that passes. The amount of resources it requires to stay in place..."

"Which is the reason why formations are more valuable than any profound wisdom I could offer you," I cut in.

"A formation can gather and concentrate whatever small amount of energy still remains in the environment and make it usable in ways that would not be possible otherwise." I could see the moment it clicked for the Ancestor, he straightened up in his seat and the disappointment that had been on his face was replaced by interest.

"Would senior be willing to demonstrate this?" the Sect Master asked, picking his words carefully. I gestured toward the empty floor space in front of us.

"Bring out your formation tools." The Sect Master reached into his storage ring without any hesitation and produced a set of tools that were better quality than what I had been working with earlier in the day, the brushes were finer, the measurement calipers were more precise, and the array anchors had been enhanced with additional smaller formations worked into them.

While I was looking over the tools, my mind drifted back to the Rouqi Gathering Circle I had constructed before and how it had performed better than I had expected it to, the energy concentration it achieved had exceeded my own projections by a margin.

I wanted to give the sect something valuable enough that they would want to keep cooperating with me going forward, but I could not give them something so powerful that it would accelerate their development to a point where it caused problems for Han Renyi after I left.

"Azure," I thought, "if we removed the compression matrix but kept the resonance chambers intact, what would the effect be?"

"The gathering efficiency would drop by 45 percent," he replied after running through the calculations.

"Still better than anything they have access to, but not strong enough to trigger breakthroughs in their cultivation." That was what I needed. I started laying the formation tools out in their correct positions and took my time doing it because if I was going to teach them this, I wanted them to understand what they were looking at.

"The first principle of energy gathering," I said, picking up the primary scribing brush, "is understanding that rouqi moves in natural patterns. Most formation masters try to force it into whatever shape they want, but you cannot force a river to change course by pushing against it with your hands. You have to work with the direction it wants to move, guide it rather than fight it."

I began drawing the foundational pattern, nested circles with spiral arms turning inward, and the Sect Master leaned forward with his eyes following every movement of the brush across the floor. Even the Ancestor who had seemed skeptical when this exercise started was watching now with hawk-like focus.

"Notice how each spiral arm keeps a ratio to the ones beside it," I said, adding the first resonance chambers to the pattern.

"That is not for the look of it. The spacing creates harmonics in the energy flow so each wave that moves through the formation reinforces the ones around it."

"But would that not create instability?" the Sect Master asked.

"The feedback from multiple resonance points interacting with each other..." I smiled under my hood at that. He was doing more than watching and memorizing, he was engaging with the underlying principles.

"In a formation that concern would be valid," I said.

"Which is why we place these stabilization arrays here and here." I drew two more patterns and connected them to the main spiral arms.

"They function as dampers and prevent the resonance from building past the point where it would become dangerous." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The Ancestor stroked his beard and was quiet for a moment.

"I can recognize parts of the Traditional Gathering Array in what you're drawing," he said slowly, "but these modifications are something I have not seen before..." He trailed off without finishing the thought, working through how all the pieces connected to each other.

"The traditional array was built for a world that was dense with energy," I explained.

"What we need now is something built for different conditions, something that can find and hold every trace of energy available in the environment rather than just scooping up what is already abundant." I kept drawing and added layer after layer of connected patterns onto the floor, each line measured and flowing into the next one naturally. I was not only trying to produce a functional result, I wanted them to be able to look at this later and understand how to reproduce it themselves.

"The core of it," I said while I worked, "is that you are not trying to pull energy in from outside. You are trying to create a space where energy naturally wants to accumulate on its own. You are working with the way energy behaves rather than against it."

"Is that the reason the spacing between the spiral arms is so much wider than what we use?" the Sect Master asked.

"Because the ambient energy is so much thinner now?" I nodded, pleased that he had picked up on that.

"Exactly. If the world still had dense energy concentrations, you could pack the lines much closer together. But here you need to cast a much wider net to gather anything meaningful." As I added the final details to the pattern, I could feel the anticipation coming off both of them, they might not be able to follow every technical aspect of what I was doing, but they could sense that this was well beyond anything in their current formation library.

"Watch the activation sequence carefully," I said, straightening up.

"The order in which you activate it matters as much as the pattern itself does." I channeled a small and controlled amount of energy into the primary activation point of the formation. For a moment nothing happened. Then starting from the outermost edge of the pattern, the lines began to glow with a soft green light that spiraled inward following the path I had drawn, and each resonance chamber lit up in sequence as the energy reached it.

The visual effect was beautiful but the light itself was not the important part.

"By the Celestial Sovereign..." the Ancestor whispered and his eyes had grown wide as he felt what was happening in the air around them. The rouqi density in the room had risen and created a pocket of concentrated energy that would have been unremarkable in the era when cultivation was still flourishing, but in the state of the world it was more than either of them had felt in a long time. The Sect Master took a small step back, overwhelmed by the shift in the energy available to him.

"This is... this is incredible. With this level of concentration..."

"I might be able to maintain my cultivation," the Ancestor finished, and the relief in his voice was real and unguarded in a way his earlier words had not been.

"Maybe even make progress again."

"Tier 3 might not be impossible anymore," the Sect Master said quietly, mostly to himself, with this distant look in his eyes like he was already imagining everything that seemed possible. I smiled behind my hood even though neither of them could see it.

"Are you satisfied with the exchange?" The Sect Master laughed and it was a genuine laugh.

"Satisfied? Senior, I wish I had more techniques in our archives worth trading away! This formation alone is worth more than everything else we have stored combined." He was not exaggerating. Techniques and insights were ultimately worth nothing if you did not have the energy to put them into practice. This formation would not fix everything they were facing, but it gave them a foothold where before there had been none.

"I have more descendants," the Ancestor said, in a tone that was too casual for someone who was offering up members of his own family.

"In case senior's disciple requires more training experience." I did not answer right away, partly because I was not sure how you were supposed to respond to that and partly because I was trying to follow the internal logic of it. In the cultivation world, the philosophy that power superseded everything else was so embedded that things like family and decency was treated as secondary concerns at best, but I had never been able to make that logic feel like it added up even after everything I had seen.

What was the point of accumulating power if the things that made it worth having were already gone?

"Master," Han Renyi's voice pulled me out of my own thoughts.

"The sun is starting to come up. We should head back before my family starts to worry." I looked toward the window and was surprised to see the first light of dawn starting to color the sky outside. The night had passed without me noticing. More practically, I did not want Han Zhongwei to wake up and find his son missing after the events of the day. The thought of someone waiting and worrying about where I was felt strange to me but also oddly meaningful, it reminded me of my childhood.

"Master," Azure said, choosing that moment to check in, "I have finished gathering and analyzing all the relevant data from their archives." Good timing. I turned back to the Ancestor and Sect Master who were both still staring at the active formation like they could not believe it was real.

"I'll be taking my leave now," I said.

"Expect my disciple to begin his formal training soon." The relief they both felt at hearing that was visible, though they did their best to cover it with expressions of respect. I did not hold it against them, having someone they believed was a Tier 5 cultivator present for a period was not great for anyone's nerves. They insisted on escorting me out personally which I suspected was at least partly to confirm I was leaving.

When we passed by the Ancestor's Tree on the way out, one of its lower branches dipped and a root moved across the ground and tried to curl around my ankle, like something reaching out to make sure it had my attention before I disappeared. I reached out and set my hand against the nearest branch and felt it shiver at the contact.

"Don't worry," I told it quietly.

"I'll come back. There's something about you that I need to understand and I have not figured it out yet." The branches moved slowly even though there was no wind, and I felt something stir in response, a kind of resonance that made the Genesis Seed react with interest. This was definitely no ordinary tree.

"Master, we need to leave," Han Renyi said, "my father will send people out looking for me." I gave the branch one last pat.

"We'll continue this later," I said to the tree, then turned and walked away.