Wu Guang ended his walk and returned. He saw that dinner had not arrived yet, but several books were laying on the table near the entrance building entrance. After making a quick trip to his room and bringing the oil lamp, he examined the books.
There were two basic catalogs of common herbs which Wu Guang ignored, after all, he could discern any herb by relying on his memories.
He scanned the book about medicine passingly and found nothing of interest except the vague information about pills. In the end, it was mostly centered on herbs and mixtures. Such thing was not surprising, after all, he had studied this and other similar things during the years that he penned the treatises about lower planes, and so knew that pill masters were extremely rare on them.
The two books and a scroll about runes were the only ones that he was interested in. Although he had full knowledge of the runes as they were required for formations and were heavily used in weapon and pill refining, this world seemingly had no formations and he wanted to find why. It was of popular knowledge that all of the planes connected to the Astral Road used formations, while strangely he had only seen rune sets and combinations here.
He opened the first book and found it to be a compilation of all common runes and their usage. This wasn't something he did not know, but he decided to memorize the contents as worded inside. Both for the case if something differed from his more advanced view and to use the native explanations during the tests. Indeed he was right to do it, as several runes that he would expect to be common were considered advanced or of unknown effect at least for the author.
The second book was about the combinations that different runes could form and their effects. The effects for the missing or rare runes were reached by different combinations of the basic runes as well. Seeing this, Wu Guang thought that this was extremely bad. After all, any rune could be deducted by a rune-master, so doing it like this made it actually harder than mastering the advanced ones.
It took him only several minutes to scan and memorize the contents of both books and he even chuckled when he thought that he could actually memorize everything in the realm and become the most famous scholar just by relying on the cheat that his Saint realm consciousness granted him. Seeing that so little time had passed, he reached for the scroll.
When he scanned the scroll, for the first time he was surprised and had to carefully read a part twice to understand it.
The first part of the scroll wasn't really about runes, but about the rankings of the runemasters. That information wasn't interesting and could be surmised into Apprentice, Master, and Grandmaster.
To this, Wu Guang mentally added the fact that this three were only the basic level. In reality, the ranking should be the nine levels of a Rune Saint and the Astral Runemasters which were considered the peak. Experts like that were only seen in higher-level realms, so it was easy to guess why the information was unknown to the author.
What surprised him and even made him read twice was a small part at the bottom that was comprised of just two phrases and had a diagram of a simple formation drawn!
The first phrase was 'Runes are a part of a bigger path known as formations and the latter is the natural way' while the other was 'After the grand disaster that occurred during the war, no formations work as intended so we replace them with combinations'.
Wu Guang slowly mulled over these phases. "The first one is actually wrong. The runes are indeed something that formations and refining use. But they also have their own path, and an advanced runemaster can use them even in combat. That is why there are several Rune Saints between the immortals or even Divine cultivators".
For the second phrase, Wu Guang had read about the disaster in the history books, but it was actually only mentioned as a cataclysm that made demons appear. "I wonder what really is the cataclysm. If formations stopped working, it means that there is something that affects the qi balance and flow. Normally this would occur only when a wild portal opens in a plane. Still, after it's assimilated, the balance would restore itself. I will need to investigate this matter fully because if formations don't work at all the Astral gate will be inoperable. After all, without a control formation, it will not let me choose a destination or even worse, not open at all".
The wild portal that Wu Guang recalled as the only reason for something like this was a known occurrence on the Astral Road planes. If it didn't close itself almost instantly, the portal would get assimilated into the world in a few months. Depending on some factors it would become a normal Planar gate or a gate towards a single plane, the latter would be either a pocket realm or in very rare cases a normal plane. In any case, except the small contingent of scourges that appeared alongside the first time a portal opened and the several months that formations stopped working as intended, this was considered a lucky occurrence. Extra Planar gates meant bigger amounts of Astral Qi entering the world while a Pocket realm would mean rare resources. Connections with a single plane were extremely rare and occurred once several thousands of years. Although these ones could be dangerous because of the unknown natives from the other side, it still was beneficial as natives from both could travel without any restriction and the Laws of the planes would merge, strengthening both.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The Astral Scourges as they were called because of the lack of any better name were a strange race of immaterial and non-sentient beings that lived in the void. They would live forever while in this state and sometimes appear in the Astral paths. It was impossible to communicate with them and their strength while in the void was absolute.
Nobody could explain why and how wild portals appeared inside a plane, but some Scourges would always accompany the process. And when they absorbed the Earth and Heaven's qi that was created from Astral Qi entering a plane they would form bodies and gain different kinds of sentience, seemingly copying native creatures. In such a state they could be contacted or even tamed, while their strength would start from zero and grow only until it reached the peak of the plane. Wu Guang's memories had a lot of information about them as he researched and even interacted with some of the ones that gained full sentience.
Actually how Bai Qi had escaped assassination was by using a forbidden technique actually opposite of the Scourge immaterial form teleporting from the void and gaining bodies inside a plane, basically opening a small controlled portal into the void and by sensing the destination instantly teleport to it becoming immaterial and shedding body and consciousness. He had prepared his plan without expecting to use it, but in the end, it saved at least part of him. He had prepared the portal to appear near one of the planes that were not yet connected to the Astral Road. The part of his soul he managed to teleport stealthily, crammed with all his memories and without any real sentience had to simply drift in the void until the near Plane absorbed it. When it finally occurred he could not really guess how much time had passed, basically closing his eyes on Four Forests, he opened them on Blue Planet.
Remembering all of this took Wu Guang far from what he was thinking initially, but he quickly concentrated and returned to the question. "What really happened during the cataclysm? 87 years have passed judging from the historic records, so either the portal never got assimilated or it's something unknown. When in the sect I shall try to learn more, also practicing runes to actually try drawing a formation and sensing what's wrong should be a priority as well".
With these new goals, Wu Guang left the building and went towards the pavillion were as he expected the dinner was already served.
Quickly eating and going to sleep, Wu Guang's emptied his mind and concentrated only on the task at hand, which was to enter the sect.
***
The next morning after breakfast Wu Guang started training and only stopped once for the meal that a servant always left him at midday and three times to change weapons and recover qi. The previous day he had found out how to enter the state of weapon understanding each time he trained and also found a way to exit it right on the moment he reached his objectives. So this day was actually far more simple, and he indeed trained with four weapons in place of three.
The iron clubs except for being paired shared a lot of similarities with the hammer, like in that power was the main ingredient for their techniques. Although they had no head or spikes, they were fully made of raw iron and each weighed almost the same as the single hammer while being only two and a half feet in length. Thankfully after the other training, Wu Guang felt this weight to be far more manageable.
The big saber was an enormous curved blade. With a blade four feet in length and a weight of several dozens of pounds, it was meant to overpower defenses and hack through any opponent. For this reason, the edge was almost a finger in width, with the opposite side reaching half feet in width. The handle was also about a full foot in length, meant to mostly be used with both hands. It had a round guard, and the sparrow was engraved on the pommel weight as in the small saber.
The staff was six feet and made of cypress. The wood was aged perfectly and had the exact balance between flexibility and hardness. If not for the lack of decoration, strips or weights, and the simple polished finish it could actually be considered a good middle-quality weapon.
For the movements, it could be said to be a mix of the control that Wu Guang had understood during his training with the long spear, while the lack of point and emphasis on sweeps was similar to the short one.
The single ax was his last weapon to be trained this day. His current body had actually trained for it briefly while staying at the Boar Clan town. This was part of the general training that Shu Qiang asked for all his apprentices and even his son. The clan had accepted as the basic training was considered open for any person living in the Clan and would actually serve as an aptitude test. Shu Qiang did not intend to make them join the clans, but he thought that it would be a good way to make them mingle with children and teens near their age.
The ax he had bought was designed after the clan hunting ax. 18 inches hardwood handle crowned with an iron head. It had a curved blade occupying almost half of the handle length, while the other side was forged as a sharp spike. It had no point, but the lower part of the handle had a small metal pommel that could be used as a hammer.