War Begins

The Arsenal worked overtime. By that afternoon, more than three hundred Explosive Stones intended for land mines had been delivered outside the village and buried near the traps.

Over the next few days, several thousand more Explosive Stones that ordinary people could use were delivered to the Ordinary Soldiers on the walls.

Lu Zeming, of course, did not need to worry about any of that.

He threw himself back into his research. Every second before the enemy arrived was precious. Each extra card up his sleeve meant a better chance of winning, and a better chance of winning meant fewer deaths.

This time, Lu Zeming wanted to study a large Rune formation.

If a Rune Circuit could run on its own on a tiny piece of bluestone, he reasoned, then enlarging that circuit and treating the earth itself as bluestone should work too.

Remembering The Relationship Between Runes and Formation Techniques, Lu Zeming felt the idea had real promise.

He did not dare use an explosive Rune Circuit again. He had no desire for his formation to send the whole village to meet their ancestors before the enemy even arrived.

Instead, he chose Runes for protection, defense, and hardening, then combined them with more than two hundred circuits derived from them.

His experience solving the Cursed Seal of Heaven's maze helped. Designing a new one came easily to him.

After two days and nights of design, deduction, and testing in his Inner Landscape, aided by the I Ching Bagua knowledge he had encountered while studying traditional Chinese medicine in his previous life, Lu Zeming finally made sixty-four formation stones.

He took the stones into the sky and looked down over the entire village.

To his eyes, it was no longer a village. It was an unfolded Bagua diagram.

Nestled between