Formation Complete

Mo Hua went back and tried drawing the array patterns several times as Instructor Yan had instructed. Sure enough, he felt as though the clouds had parted and the moon shone through.

That night, when he fell asleep and practiced on the stone tablet, his comprehension was noticeably faster as well.

For anything he did not understand, drawing it a few more times gradually revealed the key to it.

As long as the basic array patterns were firmly mastered, learning some variations was not overly difficult. The hard part was having no one to point the way. Mo Hua simply would not think in that direction, and no matter how he racked his brains, he would find no path forward.

After another day of familiarizing himself with them, Mo Hua began formally drawing the Earth Solidification Formation after class on the evening of the third day.

His first strokes did not go smoothly either, but after stumbling and fumbling through it, he finally managed to draw one. It just took rather a long time.

For the four-pattern Earth Solidification Formation, Mo Hua needed an hour and a half to finish drawing it. Once he was done, the excessive consumption of his divine sense required another hour of rest.

By the time Mo Hua finished the Earth Solidification Formation, it was already the Midnight Hour.

Mo Hua inspected it once and found that, as expected, he had made a mistake.

Mo Hua sighed.

He had only drawn one in an entire night, and it was wrong.

If he wanted to finish ten within five days, time was going to be very tight.

"What should I do?"

Mo Hua thought it over. In the end, with no other choice, he could only find a way to skip some cultivation classes.

He naturally could not skip subjects such as cultivation history and common knowledge. Those could broaden his horizons and increase his cultivation experience.

As for Alchemy and Talisman Making, they required Spirit Stones to buy herbs and talisman jade, as well as renting the sect's Alchemy Furnace. They were expensive to learn, so Mo Hua selectively skipped some classes.

After all, in these cultivation disciplines that devoured Spirit Stones, he was unlikely to have much of a future in this lifetime.

He could skip all the body tempering classes after that.

Cultivators used cultivation methods to cultivate Lingli, then used Dao Methods to wield that Lingli in attack.

Dao Methods were divided into two broad categories: spell-type Dao Methods, and martial-arts-type Dao Methods.

Spells used divine sense to control Lingli and condense it into techniques for attack, while martial arts used Lingli to awaken the body's latent potential and fight with the flesh.

Those who cultivated spells were called Spirit Cultivators, while those who cultivated martial arts were called Body Cultivators.

There were few Spirit Cultivators in the Qi Refining Stage and many Body Cultivators. This was especially true among the cultivators of Immortal City, most of whom made their living through Monster Hunting. Spirit Cultivators had weak bodies and were unsuited to hunting monsters, so most Rogue Cultivators followed the path of Body Cultivators.

For this reason, Immortal Gate had specifically opened a body tempering course, allowing its disciples to strengthen their bodies in advance.

But Mo Hua was destined to be unable to temper his body.

He had not inherited his father Mo Shan's talent for body tempering. Instead, like his mother Liu Ruhua, he had been somewhat frail since childhood—his constitution was even weaker than Liu Ruhua's.

According to Elder Feng, the Alchemist of Apricot Forest Hall, cultivators were born in accordance with the Heavenly Dao, and their divine sense and physical body were relatively balanced.

When Mo Hua was born, he carried memories from two lifetimes. His divine sense had been innately too strong, causing an imbalance between his divine sense and body. As one rose, the other fell; thus, Mo Hua had been weak and sickly from birth.

A hundred-kilogram stone tripod that others could lift with ease would not budge even when Mo Hua exerted every ounce of strength he had. Cultivators his age were generally a head taller than him and a full circle broader.

Though Mo Hua was thin and frail, he was fortunately handsome, with a gentle temperament, red lips, and white teeth. At ten years old, he was like a porcelain doll.

His looks were not bad, but Mo Hua still felt that a true man ought to be mighty and imposing.

Like his father—tall and powerfully built, with heroic features, looking every inch the formidable figure.

The Mo Hua of his dreams should have worn white robes, cultivated peerless techniques, thrust out a spear like a dragon, and held a pass alone against ten thousand foes.

Unfortunately, he could only see such scenes in his dreams.

"Oh, right."

Mo Hua remembered that after he fell asleep, his divine sense would automatically enter the Sea of Consciousness, so he could not dream at all...

The instructor who taught body tempering had originally wanted to be strict with Mo Hua. But after Mo Hua tried pushing the stone tripod several times without moving it in the slightest, only to wrench his own arm, the instructor became much more lenient with him.

Cultivation was like that. Sometimes, effort could not solve the problem.

The instructor understood Mo Hua very well, too.

When the Heavenly Dao closed a window for you, perhaps it wanted you to take another door instead, not bash your head against the wall until you died.

So Mo Hua selectively skipped those classes. With the time he squeezed out, he shut himself in his room and focused on drawing the Earth Solidification Formation.

When the ten-day break came five days later, Mo Hua had finally used up all ten sets of materials. Six of the ten formations had succeeded.

Not only had he not lost money, he had earned four Spirit Stones. Mo Hua was fairly satisfied.

Taking advantage of his day off during the ten-day break, Mo Hua went to Fate Pavilion on North Street and handed the completed Earth Solidification Formations to the Fat Manager.

The Fat Manager looked them over and said to Mo Hua, "Your elder brother's foundation in array techniques is truly rather poor, but he learns things quite quickly. These formations are visibly better one after another. It's just that..."

The manager then took out the first formation and criticized it again. "This formation looks like it was drawn by a beginner. Even some of the basic array patterns are drawn in a stumbling, halting manner..."

Mo Hua had long grown used to the manager's grumbling. It went in one ear and out the other.

Besides, the manager was talking about his elder brother. What did that have to do with him?

He did not even have an elder brother.

Mo Hua got straight to the point. "Can I exchange them for Spirit Stones?"

The manager rolled his eyes at Mo Hua, but still counted out four Spirit Stones for him. "Tell your elder brother to draw them better next time."

"Mhm, mhm." Having received the Spirit Stones, Mo Hua nodded repeatedly.

Mo Hua used all four Spirit Stones to buy pastries. He ate two himself, kept two, and gave the rest to Da Hu and the others.

When Da Hu and the other two saw so many pastries, they were deeply moved. They asked Mo Hua whether he wanted to eat meat, too. They had seen that an elder was raising a multicolored duck, fat and plump.

Mo Hua's head ached a little. He told them not to steal anymore, or if the sect notified their parents, they would be beaten so badly at home that they would be skinned alive.

Only then did Da Hu and the other two reluctantly abandon the idea.

After that, Mo Hua continued drawing Earth Solidification Formations for more than two months.

The more he drew, the more thoroughly he grasped them.

Previously, drawing one Earth Solidification Formation, including the time spent resting to recover his divine sense, took nearly three hours. Now, it only took an hour and a half.

First, practice made perfect. The deeper his mastery and understanding of the array patterns, the less time he needed to draw them. Second, through practicing array techniques day and night, continuously exhausting, recovering, and using his divine sense, he had imperceptibly strengthened it. His divine sense had become much more profound than before.

The benefits of powerful divine sense for drawing formations were extremely obvious.

His success rate for Earth Solidification Formations had reached eighty or ninety percent. Occasionally, all ten would succeed. Each formation earned two Spirit Stones, and over these two months, after deducting his usual food, clothing, and living expenses, Mo Hua had earned a full hundred Spirit Stones.

Mo Hua planned to save two hundred Spirit Stones, then go to the sect and choose a mid-grade lower-tier cultivation method.

He would tell his parents only after choosing it. Otherwise, they would surely say they would pay the Spirit Stones themselves, and that Mo Hua should keep his Spirit Stones for cultivation, or for marrying a Dao companion and buying a Cave Abode someday.