At the beginning of the next week, I was pulled into a private training room by Master Tan.

“You technically have a choice of which profession you wish to pursue. However, as you’ve already shown that you wish to become a formation specialist, we will skip some of the formalities.”

When did I do that? Wait, were we not starting with combat today? I was surprised, but spending time on formations instead of getting beat up was appealing.

“Are you ready?” I saw a look of eagerness in her eyes. Was she as happy to not be doing combat as I was?

“Yes,” I nodded.

Master Tan reached into a small storage bag on her hip, took out a small stone, and threw it at me.

I reached out to catch it, but when it was within an arm’s length of me, it exploded, sending a blast of qi directly at my chest.

I tried to react, but I was already too late. The wave of energy hit me and sent me sprawling.

“What are you doing?” Master Tan’s face was a mask of anger.

“What am I doing? What was that? I thought we were going to study formations.”

“Morning is combat training. Morning will always be combat training.”

I stood up and brushed myself off.

As soon as I regained my focus, without asking me again, Master Tan threw another stone at me.

This time, I didn’t try to catch it. I dodged to the side as quickly as I could.

The stone sailed through the air and landed on the ground with a dull plink.

“Why did you dodge?”

I looked at the woman and couldn’t help but feel annoyed.

“Because if I didn’t—”

“Wrong,” she cut me off. “You dodged because you weren’t using your qi vision properly. If you had, you would have seen that the stone didn’t have a formation on it. Now, let’s try this again.”

She didn’t go into long-winded explanations about what I should do. She knew what my capabilities were. At least, she partly knew about my capabilities. So instead of discussing further, she simply reached into her bag, pulled out another rock, and threw it at me.

This time I did as she told me to. I turned on my qi vision and saw that the stone was nearly bursting with energy.

I shifted my weight and dodged to my left as quickly as I could. I was a bit slow, and the burst of energy that came from the stone grazed me, but I was able to stabilize myself.

Master Tan didn’t wait for me to recover. The moment I stopped moving, she instantly threw another stone at me.

This time, I saw that it was filled with energy, but it wasn’t at the level of bursting.

As I was about to dodge, I understood what I was seeing. This stone did have a formation inside it, but it hadn’t been fully energized, so it wouldn’t explode.

I reached out and grabbed the stone. I was about to examine it when Master Tan threw another one at me.

This time I could see that it would explode, so I dodged to the right.

Next was a dud. I grabbed and pocketed it.

Then, she threw another dud.

After that, she threw an exploding stone, so I dodged.

I quickly regained my balance to prepare for what would be next, but I didn’t see anything else coming toward me. I let down my guard.

That was when a small stone made solid contact with my skull.

Reeling in pain, I could barely process Tan’s words.

“You became too reliant on qi vision. You stopped looking for normal physical objects and were only looking for balls of energy. That’s a quick way to get yourself killed.”

I sank to my knees. I knew I had to adjust to it, but I was annoyed by Tan’s teaching methodology: Make the student fail, then explain why they failed. Instructor Sun hadn’t been too different either, but when ‘failing’ meant getting knocked in the head with a rock, this method of learning started to grate on my nerves.

There had to be a better way to teach cultivators, but if this was the best academy on the continent, I shouldn’t expect to find anything better anywhere else. I would just have to learn to deal with it.

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After several hours of being tortured, I went to have lunch with my classmates. Their praise of their new masters’ teaching abilities left me stunned. When they described their training, and I found they had endured just as much punishment as I had, I could only shake my head.

Once our meal was finished, I returned to my private classroom to see over a dozen square granite blocks each the size of a sheet of paper laying on the floor.

“You wanted to practice formations, right?” Master Tan looked at me from across the room and gestured to the blocks as she spoke. “Well, get to practicing. Show me what formations you know how to create.”

I nodded and grinned. Crafting. I could do crafting.

I approached the first block and began making a basic Rank 1 Qi Gathering Formation.

Using my earth qi, I first carved a swirling vortex inscription that would allow the formation to pull energy from the environment. Then, I made a simple shielding inscription to trap qi. After that, I drew a line going into the vortex, through the shield, and off of the stone. Finally, I injected a bit of my own qi to start the process.

A trickle of qi was pulled into the formation and was forced into the vortex inscription. This accelerated the pull, and more energy was drawn in. Once the vortex was saturated, the excess qi flowed into the shield, and a weak, invisible energy started to form. After the shield inscription was saturated, the remaining energy flowed into the shielded area where it could be used to cultivate.

Master Tan nodded her head, but she didn’t show any reaction. Making a Qi Gathering Formation hadn’t surprised her.

“Make something else.” She pointed to the next block.

I considered my options and decided to make something simple.

Using the same base inscriptions as last time, I strengthened the shielding portion and diverted all the energy into it, letting none escape. This formed a basic barrier formation. My reason for choosing this was to show I understood a few intricacies related to using the same inscriptions for different tasks.

Master Tan glowered. “Make something different.”

The formations I was most comfortable with were the ones used in the assembly line of the pill factory I had made in the past. I thought through the Rank 1 formations involved and decided to display the trap formation we had used to hold the pills.

I started by carving the same vortex to gather energy. Then, I carved a detection inscription that would identify when something was above the formation and trigger the next stage. Lastly, I carved a dual-inscription combination that would bind the detected person or object in place. I made the binding force as strong as I could with the space and materials available.

“Another,” Master Tan commanded.

I made as many different formations as I could think of, from lighting formations to simple growing formations.

“Another.”

At this point, I was out of ideas. I looked at the granite block and needed to think. Every formation started with the vortex to pull in energy, so I went ahead and carved that. Once it was complete, I sat to think about how to proceed.

After a couple of minutes, I came up with an idea and moved to start carving.

“Stop.” Master Tan was looking at me with slightly narrowed eyes. “You just decided which formation you wanted to create. You made that vortex inscription first then sat to think about what you would draw. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

She reached into her storage bag, took out two stones, and threw them at me.

Having learned my lesson earlier in the morning, I quickly flipped on qi vision to look at them. One had a formation, but it wasn’t energized, so it wouldn’t explode. The other was just an ordinary rock.

I reached out and grabbed them.

Master Tan waved a hand. “Copy my formation onto the blank.”

I had been dodging these rocks all morning, but I hadn’t taken the time to study them. Now, looking at one carefully, I became a bit confused.

The formation wasn’t like anything I had seen before. The rock had a single opening on it for qi to enter. From there, the qi would travel down a pathway, wandering and meandering throughout the stone, until finally looping back to near where it entered and starting the circuit over again.

There was nothing like the careful, structured inscriptions I was used to. Just a messy line weaving throughout the rock. Trying to duplicate it precisely would be difficult if not impossible.

I reached into my storage bag and pulled out one of the stones I had stashed away during our earlier practice. Looking at it, I saw that it had the same type of messy loop inside of it, but the twists and turns were completely different.

I decided that this meant the exact shape didn’t matter. It only needed to be a loop. I took the blank stone and began carving it. When I was finished, I held it up for Master Tan’s inspection.

“Push your qi into it,” she commanded.

I narrowed my eyes but didn’t argue back. I let a trickle of qi enter the stone, not too much. If I overdid it, the stone would almost certainly explode like hers had.

I had only pushed a small amount of energy into it when I suddenly heard the stone pop.

Horrified, I could only look on, expecting to be hit by a full-force explosion. It was far too late to escape.

The stone simply crumbled to pieces in my palm.

Master Tan chuckled at my expression. “There are a few lessons you need to learn. First, every formation you demonstrated was based on continual input of qi from a vortex inscription. There are other types of formation.”

I had known that, but my focus had been on making formations that would last. I had ignored the ones that needed a user to insert their own qi.

“Aside from that, you need to understand your materials better. The Explosion Formation on my rocks is perfect for you to practice with. The diameter of the channel you create, the length of the loop, and its placement within the stone are all extremely important. The diameter and length will determine how much energy the formation can contain. The placement will determine how much energy the stone can contain. Both of these factors need to be balanced correctly for the proper result.”

She took out another stone and held it in her hand. “What would happen if I injected enough qi into this?”

“It would—” She cut me off.

“Explode, that’s right. So, assuming you had made that one correctly,” she waved at the stone fragments at my feet, “why the hell would you inject qi into it while you were holding it? You need to learn to send qi into a formation from a distance. As a Martial Disciple, your control over it will be terrible once it’s far enough away, but that doesn’t matter. For the Explosion Formation to work correctly, you just need to be able to inject energy into it, not control it.”

She dumped a pile of small stones onto the ground at her feet.

“You have a surprising level of accuracy when drawing inscriptions, but you need to work on drawing them faster, smaller, and with a better understanding of your materials. Each time you create a prototype stone, practice injecting your qi from a distance to make it go boom.”

Picking up a small rock, she tossed it up and down in her hand.

“If you run out of materials to practice with, go outside and gather some more.”