Chương 152: Chapter 151: Trickle or Tide

Yang took a deep breath as he stepped out into the same arena a couple of days later. It had only been a couple of days since the Defense Endurance event after the literal roasting that had come with it, he had developed a considerably healthier respect for what magic was capable of. He had gone home that day, crashed onto his bed, and slept like the dead until nearly midnight.

After that, apart from eating and sleeping and a few minutes each morning for taking care of the plants, his full concentration had been on talismans. He followed the file of disciples onto the platform and walked past many occupied stations before he finally found an empty one and took his place there. Today, he was taking part in the Offensive Breach event. The arena layout was different from the Defense Endurance event.

Instead of closed cubicles with their floating orbs, the platform was arranged with rows of empty doorframes at regular intervals, each one containing what looked like a film of fluttering energy where the door should have been. A faintly luminous grey veil that obscured whatever was on the other side. Trying to look through it was like looking through liquid frosted glass. According to the rules the elder had explained in the waiting room, the participants had fifteen minutes to create their talismans.

The extra time compared to the Defense Endurance event accounted for an additional challenge, because unlike the Defence event, where they had been given the opportunity to identify the type of attack before creating talismans, here, they were going in completely blind. They would not know what kind of barrier the doorway held until they began testing it with their talismans. Hence the extra time.

The event would be judged first on whoever breached their doorway the fastest, and in case of two or more participants breaching simultaneously, whoever had used fewer talismans would win. So instead of pacing himself like in the Defence Endurance, the best strategy would be to deal with the barrier as fast as possible. Yang had been thinking about it for the past few days. He did not know what the barrier was, but he did have some working assumptions. This was the beginner Foundation Establishment division.

Most of his fellow participants had barely seen a formation theory book, let alone had the ability to dismantle one, and from where Yang was standing, it seemed like formations was as good a guess as any. He would expect the barrier to be strong enough to provide meaningful resistance against basic talisman attacks, but it was unlikely to be anything too complicated or esoteric. After all, it needed to be solvable for fresh talisman crafters.

He was also aware that winning was not the objective for someone of his realm. The objective was to learn something, and this felt like a better gamble than throwing his strongest talismans at the barrier in hopes of doing some damage. He had an idea. Whether it would work was another matter entirely. Yang stood patiently as he ran his eyes over the crowd, finding his group of friends only because he saw Ye Xuan wildly waving his arms standing up to attract his attention.

Yang felt the corner of his lip rise at Ye Xuans ' antics. He thought, not for the first time, that he had made some good friends in the sect. He felt a movement in front of him and looked down as a lectern with talisman supplies on it rose from the platform floor in front of him, exactly the right height for writing while standing. He looked around and saw the exact same one in front of all the disciples. The starting chime rang.

Yang reached for the talisman brush, finding the best one and dipped it in ink as he quickly began inscribing the talisman. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. He had no illusions about breaking through the barrier through his rather underwhelming raw power. His qi output at the second stage of Qi Condensation was not going to overwhelm a barrier designed to test Foundation Establishment cultivators, even beginner ones. That approach was not viable for him.

What was probably possible was taking the power away from the barrier rather than overpowering it. He had decided to attempt another custom talisman; his previous one from the defence event, the containment bubble talisman, had proved itself useless, but that was no reason to stop experimenting. It's not like winning was a possibility anyway, so he might as well use it for what it could actually act as for him: a testing ground. Yang had barely gotten halfway into inscribing when the first chime rang.

He was making a qi absorption talisman. A modified one. He had worked through dozens of variants of the qi absorption inscriptions since he had started talisman practice. He had crafted shield talismans that absorbed attacking qi and deflected attacks. He had made a version in the Skill judgement event. He had watched the Unknown Inscription event show him an element-specific variant. And amongst all of them, the underlying principle was the same. These talismans drew in qi and held it or reflected it back.

But what if the talisman did not hold or deflect the drawn qi but passed it through to him instead? What if he used the talismans as a conduit between the barrier and himself, pulling or rather draining the barrier's own qi out to weaken it rather than attacking it from outside? His soul, or rather the bead, had drained through the crystal source in the mine like a cup of soft drink, so what's stopping it from doing the same to this barrier?

That was an ocean of energy; this was a mere Foundation Establishment grade testing barrier. The real question wasn't whether the bead could suck the barrier dry rather the real question was if Yang could design a conduit talisman that actually worked as intended in the small time frame he had. It's not the most conventional offence, but it should be well within the rules of the competition.

If this were not an actual competition with rules, he could have just touched the barrier and seen if the soul bead would absorb the energy, and while he was not allowed to touch the barrier himself or use any technique, there were no rules against slapping the talisman on the barrier itself and seeing if it drains its qi. The fourth chime had barely rang when he finished his first talisman and let out a smile as his impromptu design worked and the inscription gave a faint glow.

Yang set it aside and quickly grabbed another empty sheet and began making the next one. Same inscription again. If he was going to stake the event on a single idea, then he was going to have at least as many talismans to test it as possible. He worked quickly. His modified inscription design was close enough to the standard qi absorption talismans that the strokes came naturally to him. He finished talisman after talisman, setting each one aside.

Soon, the last chime rang, indicating the end of the talisman crafting period, and Yang gathered his talisman and stepped back as the lectern descended back into the floor without leaving a mark. Yang had by now lost some of his nervousness and was feeling a bit jittery in excitement as he would be testing a completely new type of talisman. The bell rang, indicating the start of the event, which will end once all the competitors ran out of talismans.

Around him, disciples began throwing talismans at their respective barriers like there is no tomorrow. Yang walked towards the doorframe instead. He felt the eyes on him increase as he was doing something different from the other participants. He paid others no mind as he reached the doorway. He looked down at his stack of talismans for a moment, considering. One at a time or all at once. He decided to go with the second choice as stacking them would likely reduce the strain on each individual talisman.

He aligned them carefully against each other until they formed a thick bundle. It probably looked ridiculous from the others' perspective. Once he had the now perfectly aligned stack in his hand, he took a deep breath, keeping his head clear and bracing himself as he slowly brought the stack towards the barrier, making sure to keep his own hand away and pressed the bundle of talismans firmly against the veil, making sure not to move his hand away. A trickle of qi entered him immediately. The bead flared.

The trickle thickened. Yang felt it before he could actually react. The absorption was accelerating as the trickle changed into a stream. Though the barrier didn't seem to be weakening. Instead, it was doing the opposite, pushing out larger and larger amounts of qi towards him and flooding his meridians until it was far beyond what he could manage or direct. He dropped to his knees, his hand still holding the talisman stack firmly against the barrier as the qi kept flooding him. He tried to pull away.

His hand would not come free. The white was coming in from the edges of his vision. A ringing in his ears rising as the pain in his meridians became unbearable, as the bead kept pulling in more and more qi, until his dantian was flooded in a tide of qi and the barrier kept feeding it until he knew no more.