The Five Elements Banner and the Language of Formations
The user 33.3 had replied again. It was already his seventeenth time.
Baek Cheong lay half-reclined on her bed, watching with a satisfied grin. She had managed to keep him hooked for over half a shichen with just a single reply. Amidst the desperate comments from User(33.3), onlookers were excitedly jumping into the fray.
Some users even appeared claiming to be formation masters themselves.
Baek Cheong wiggled her feet under the blanket, feeling content. She was grateful that the users were using their own imaginations to blow things out of proportion. As she was enjoying this, a new reply from User(899.1) caught her eye.
'...The Five Elements Banner.'
She had completely forgotten something important. Her mind had been so occupied with refining Pill-script pills, getting caught up in the Wuming Pavilion auction chaos, and immersing herself in deciphering the Formation Atlas, that the existence of the Five Elements Banner, which she had shoved deep into her Storage Pouch, had evaporated from her mind entirely.
"This is no time for that."
Baek Cheong logged out of Moomyeongbang and jumped up from her bed. She pulled out the Five Elements Banner from her Storage Pouch. It looked just as unimpressive as it had a while ago—a worn wooden rod with faded, multicolored strips of cloth hanging from it.
"Surely..."
She placed the Five Elements Banner on her lap and laid the Formation Atlas next to it. Cyan cloth. Red cloth. Golden cloth. White cloth. Black cloth. Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water. The five colors of the cloth matched the five elements without a single discrepancy.
'If that's the case.'
The Character-patterns in the Formation Atlas only activate when you inject energy corresponding to their specific properties. Furthermore, each strip of the Five Elements Banner is divided by element.
'Could it be that each of the five colored cloths is responsible for a role in constructing the formation?'
The Source that draws in energy. The Main Body that carries the flow. The Boundary that confines the effect. The Anchor that fixes the structure. And an extra spot for auxiliary flow.
'It's highly likely.'
Baek Cheong’s eyes sparkled as she scanned the first page of the Formation Atlas. It was packed with countless Character-patterns, and the lines and dots within them were characters that embodied the principles of heaven and earth, each possessing specific properties.
'What if I tried injecting the energy matching each colored cloth while consciously focusing on the shape of the Character-patterns?'
Baek Cheong pictured the shapes of the Character-patterns that make up a Spirit-gathering formation in her mind. Holding the shapes firmly with her Divine Sense, she injected the corresponding elemental energy into each of the five colored cloths of the Five Elements Banner in sequence. The unimpressive cloths absorbed the energy and emitted a faint glow. However, they only glowed individually; there was no phenomenon of the energies fusing or extending. As a result, the formation failed to deploy and simply swirled within the banner before fading away.
'I definitely matched the attributes and focused on the shapes of the Character-patterns.'
Baek Cheong rested her chin in her hand and stared intently at the now-quiet Five Elements Banner. The Character-patterns had glowed, but the organic flow that connected them was missing. It was like having all the parts but no assembly manual.
'It's not connecting.'
The thought she had just had flashed through her mind. '...Even if the five colored cloths handle the roles, does just inscribing the Character-patterns not solve it?'
The role of Source required her to convey the flow of convergence—drawing in heavenly energy from outside and gathering it inside—by imbuing the energy with that very intent. Only then could each cloth recognize its role and interlock to form the shape of a formation. Knowing the outer shape or properties of a Character-pattern was a completely different dimension from intuitively understanding the essential meaning of which direction the energy should be guided within the formation structure and imbuing that into the energy.
'It's harder than I thought...'
This was the reason why, even if one memorized the Character-pattern tables by heart, one could never deploy a formation even after a lifetime of practice if they failed to grasp the principles of heaven and earth and the flow of roles contained within them.
'Well, it's not hard once you know the principle.'
Baek Cheong closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She slowly cleared her mind, steadied her Divine Sense, and raised her energy. Then, she began to blow fire-attribute energy into the red cloth. But this time, she didn't just imbue it with hot fire energy. She drew a three-dimensional image in her mind of the form of convergence—strongly pulling in energy from the outside and gathering it in one place—and imbued that into the fire energy as she flowed it into the red cloth. This time, it emitted a light completely different from before.
'Next is the Main Body.'
Without breaking the flow, Baek Cheong sent wood-attribute energy imbued with the role of the Main Body into the cyan cloth. Then, an invisible spiritual flow stretched taut between the red and cyan cloths, resonating with each other.
'Quickly, to the next...'
Gaining momentum, she poured energy and roles into the remaining cloths in sequence.
Flash!
The five colored cloths simultaneously erupted in a bright, dazzling five-colored light and fluttered brilliantly. The Character-patterns imbued in the Five Elements Banner awakened one by one and intertwined, and in an instant, a Spirit-gathering formation spread out from the wooden rod, encompassing the entire room.
"Ah..."
Baek Cheong couldn't speak for a while, her mouth hanging open. The power and scale were incomparable to the palm-sized formation she had barely managed to create by struggling with a brush and drawing Character-patterns on paper.
"This is the Five Elements Banner..."
With trembling hands, she withdrew her energy and deactivated the formation. The Five Elements Banner performed better than she had imagined. Since she could create a formation on the spot just by simply inserting Character-patterns, it could be called an artifact and a stroke of luck that defied imagination.
"No, wait."
It would have been impossible if she hadn't had the Formation Atlas, if she hadn't understood the Character-patterns, if she hadn't been able to handle them, if she hadn't noticed the language of formations, and if she hadn't realized how to use the Five Elements Banner.
"This is because I'm good at this."
Baek Cheong thought of it as an effort achieved through her own ability. Therefore, she couldn't acknowledge it as a stroke of luck. A true stroke of luck should allow for effortless gain.
"As expected of me."
She soon got a taste for deploying formations using the Five Elements Banner. So this time, she tried reversing the roles imbued in the cloths of the Five Elements Banner. She reversed the direction of the Source, changing it from a flow that gathers energy to a flow of repulsive force that strongly pushes it outward. The spiritual energy in the room gathered strongly around the Five Elements Banner, then pushed out, exerting pressure in all directions and pushing the space itself away. It had become a Repulsion formation that blocked external approach.
"Hehe..."
Baek Cheong spun the Five Elements Banner in her hand, her face full of joy as she withdrew her energy. There was no need to redraw the Formation Eye or draw the Character-patterns one by one. If she only combined the Character-patterns and roles to be imbued into the five colored cloths of the Five Elements Banner in her mind and blew them in with energy, the desired formation would deploy in a split second. She would need sufficient spiritual energy or Spirit Stones to maintain the formation for a long time, but she could freely control everything from the range to the intensity and even movement.
'But what do I do now?'
Even though she had gained a deep realization of formations, there was no place to use them. Simple formations like the Spirit-gathering formation or Repulsion formation weren't difficult, but she lacked the learned Character-patterns to handle complex formations like the illusion formation guarding the Yeonha Baek family.
"Ugh, I hate studying."
Baek Cheong felt her swelling little chest calm down. Just as she was about to sneak the Five Elements Banner and Formation Atlas into her Storage Pouch—
'These alone cost 11 Premium Spirit Stones...'
10 Premium Spirit Stones used to purchase the Five Elements Banner. 1 Premium Spirit Stone used to purchase the Formation Atlas. If she gave up on studying and left them as they were, they would be reduced to a portable Spirit-gathering formation flag and a book with a good thickness for propping up her head.
"......"
Baek Cheong stared back and forth between the quiet Five Elements Banner and the Formation Atlas for a long time, lost in agony. Even for her, she couldn't just throw away 11 Premium Spirit Stones.
"Sigh..."
Eventually, with a long sigh, she picked up the Formation Atlas irritably. She hated studying so much she wanted to tear it up right then and there, but she reluctantly began to learn the Character-patterns.