Zhe An gathered her thoughts and said slowly, "Have any of you ever played, or heard of, a little game from our Profound Mist Mountain? It is called Black and White Matching Chess."
Qian Xin nodded without hesitation. "When I was cultivating in the past, the senior sisters of the Qian Tian Sect played it with me for a while during our leisure time. What does it have to do with the scene before us?"
The others all nodded as well. Though this game could not be considered wildly popular, nearly everyone in their circle of formation masters knew of it. It provided entertainment and relaxation, while also offering considerable benefit in improving one's control of spiritual energy during the early stages of cultivation.
"It has nothing to do with it," Zhe An said with a knowing smile. "But using it as an example will make things easier to understand."
As she spoke, she took two handfuls of sesame seeds from her storage artifact;
one handful white, the other black.
Then, using spiritual energy, she divided them into one hundred evenly sized balls of qi.
Each thumb-sized ball of qi contained a single sesame seed, their colors indistinct to the naked eye;
but when Zhe An gave a slight exertion and shattered the sesame seeds within, the spreading dust instantly dyed the countless qi balls, turning them into distinctly black and white spheres.
Under Zhe An's control, those qi balls arranged themselves in an orderly yet intermingled fashion into a ten-by-ten chessboard.
Once she had finished all this.
Zhe An unhurriedly explained to everyone, "The Officialdom Plum Blossom Array before us, thanks to the ingenious design of the one who laid it, bears some resemblance to this Black and White Matching Chess;"
"The formation patterns hidden within the water pillars