The Five Elements Ten-Thousand-Thunder Formation
It had been ten days since she’d locked herself in the alchemy room, clutching her Five Elements puppets. And finally, Baek Cheong had reached the realm she had only dreamed of: the simultaneous performance of alchemy via puppets and gallery-ing on the forum.
'This is what you call true efficiency.'
For the first few days, she’d been too busy managing the alchemy process while controlling five puppets to have any spare divine sense to send to Mumyungbang. But as she repeated the same pill-making process, she grew accustomed to the puppets' movements. By the tenth day, she could split her divine sense—allocating one part to the puppets and the other to Mumyungbang—without the alchemy faltering in the slightest.
'It was a good choice to stick to only making Spirit-Gathering Pills.'
Other pills required different processes, meaning she would have had to relearn the puppets' movements from scratch. The intensity of herb trimming, the delicate control of the furnace fire, the concentration of the essence—because every pill demanded a different process, proficiency in one didn't translate to the others. She didn't want to risk breaking a puppet out of greed and getting scolded by her uncle, so she planned to stick to Spirit-Gathering Pills for the time being.
As a result, the scene in the alchemy room had become quite bizarre. Baek Cheong was half-reclined on a wooden bed she’d dragged into a corner of the room. She looked like a complete layabout, idly fiddling with a jade bottle while lying there blankly.
"Hehehe."
In reality, she was giggling away while immersed in Mumyungbang, and right next to her, five puppets were moving incessantly. Cheongroe trimmed the herbs, Jeokroe stoked the furnace, Heukroe adjusted the heat, Geumroe stabilized the medicinal ingredients, and Baekroe filtered out the impurities.
"This is what you call cultivation."
It was a spectacle: an alchemist lying down, commanding five puppets to brew pills. The only saving grace was that no one was watching. If Yakseon had seen this, he would have been furious at such irreverence.
'As long as I don't get caught, it's fine.'
Baek Cheong simply enjoyed the efficiency and the forum.
A few more days passed. On the table, twenty jade bottles, each containing three Spirit-Gathering Pills, were lined up in a row. Baek Cheong nodded with satisfaction as she stacked the bottles into her storage pouch.
'With this, I can upload sixty image posts.'
Since the spiritual energy output of one Spirit-Gathering Pill was equivalent to the energy consumption of one image post, having a stockpile was always useful. Any energy deficit caused by the size of the image posts could be resolved by deploying a Spirit-Gathering Formation.
'Anyway, thanks to puppet alchemy, the bait posts just keep coming.'
Meanwhile, the aftermath of her puppet alchemy post was still raging on Mumyungbang. Even though days had passed since she uploaded the image post, related threads kept popping up.
"Oh?"
Baek Cheong sat up from the bed. DaoistFriend83.177's original post had been little more than a random hypothesis, but she thought it was a brilliant idea.
'Using the Five Elements puppets as formation eyes...'
The limitations of deploying formations using only the Five Elements Banner came to mind. The banner consisted of only five pieces of colored cloth. Source, Main Body, Boundary, Anchor. If she assigned those four roles to the five pieces of cloth, she only had one spare. She had felt there wasn't enough room to place the character-patterns, but if she utilized all five puppets as formation eyes, she would suddenly have five more spots to place them.
'Plus, puppets can move.'
Above all, DaoistFriend899.1's reply was the clincher. If the formation eyes weren't fixed but were instead moving puppets, she could move the formation more freely than with the banner. Furthermore, since it was a formation deployed via character-patterns, she could change the formation at will.
"I have to try this."
Baek Cheong logged off Mumyungbang and jumped off the bed. She extinguished the furnace fire and gathered the puppets. She was in the middle of alchemy, but they were just Spirit-Gathering Pills, so it wasn't a waste.
.
.
.
She arrived at the private training ground behind her residence. She took out the Five Elements Banner and the Five Elements puppets from her storage pouch. Cheongroe, Jeokroe, Geumroe, Baekroe, and Heukroe. She arranged the five puppets in a regular pentagon.
'First, let's try imbuing the puppets with character-patterns to make them formation eyes.'
She extended five strands of divine sense and connected them to the puppets. Then, she tried to assign the roles of the character-patterns.
"It's not working..."
The character-patterns wouldn't react. With the Five Elements Banner, she could inject energy directly into the cloth. If she sent the elemental energy and the directionality of the role into the colored cloth, the character-pattern would activate immediately. But she had no way to transmit that energy into the puppets.
'I didn't think of this.'
The puppets' bodies were made of elemental wood, so they could handle elemental energy on their own. But that was the puppets operating their inherent energy, which was different from her imbuing them with character-patterns. To activate a character-pattern, the elemental energy and the role's directionality had to be contained together, but she had no way to deliver such energy to the puppets, making it impossible to assign the patterns.
'I need a way to plant the character-patterns into the puppets.'
Baek Cheong examined the puppets, pondering a method. 'Can't I just carve them directly?' Even if she carved them, it would be meaningless if they didn't contain the energy. And it would be inefficient, as it would fix one character-pattern in place.
'What if I use talismans...'
The art of talisman-making was the technique of imbuing a brush tip with spiritual energy to carve patterns onto paper. It was the principle of fixing a form onto a material by containing energy within it. While formation character-patterns and talisman patterns were different systems, the core—trapping energy in a form to make it dwell within a material—was the same.
'What if I make the character-patterns like talismans using the art of talisman-making and stick them onto the puppets?'
She rummaged through her storage pouch and took out cinnabar and talisman paper. She used them often because she loved Purification Talismans. She laid out five sheets of talisman paper and dipped her brush into the cinnabar. Then, she recalled the character-patterns she had learned from the Formation Atlas.
She gathered wood-attribute energy at the tip of her brush and began drawing the character-pattern on the paper. The energy was supposed to flow without obstruction, permeating the paper along the lines of the cinnabar...
Slip.
Unlike regular talismans, formation character-patterns had complex designs, and since she had to include the directionality of the energy, she couldn't finish them with a single stroke. It was only on her fourth attempt that the character-pattern on the paper began to glow faintly.
"It works!"
She immediately finished the remaining four sheets in order. Main Body, Boundary, Anchor, Support. She inscribed each character-pattern to match the energy of the corresponding attribute. She stuck the talismans with the inscribed patterns onto the chests of the Five Elements puppets one by one. Cheongroe got Source, Jeokroe got Main Body, Geumroe got Boundary, Heukroe got Anchor, and Baekroe got Support.
'Now, if the puppets operate their elemental energy, the character-patterns on the talismans should awaken.'
She extended her divine sense and connected it to the five puppets. She commanded them to emit their respective elemental energies. A cyan light followed from Cheongroe's chest, a red light from Jeokroe, a golden light from Geumroe, a white light from Baekroe, and a black light from Heukroe. The energy from the puppets' elemental wood bodies flowed through the talisman paper, awakening the character-patterns.
The five puppets stood in place, each emitting its own attribute, building the foundation of a formation.
'They're functioning as formation eyes!'
The five puppets were deploying a Five Elements Formation. However, the limitations were also visible at the same time. The character-patterns inscribed on the talismans were fixed. Once she inscribed them, the roles were locked, so she couldn't change the formation with just the talismans.
'The puppets can only be the foundation of the formation.'
If so, she could just make the variations with the Five Elements Banner. The puppets would hold the foundation of the formation, and the banner would freely change the formation's effects.
'Let's do it right now.'
Baek Cheong picked up the Five Elements Banner she had placed on the ground. She sent the corresponding elemental energy and the directionality of the roles into each piece of colored cloth.
"Wow!"
As she organized a defensive formation based on the five elements, a colorful barrier unfolded. It felt as if she had deployed the Five Elements Shroud as a defensive formation.
'So far, so good.'
Baek Cheong focused on the white and black cloths of the Five Elements Banner. She recalled the shape of the lightning qi character-pattern she had learned from the Formation Atlas.
'Strip away the illusory form, preserve the essence.'
She imbued the white and black cloths of the banner with the logic of the lightning qi character-pattern. The metal-attribute energy cut through the space, drawing a thin line. The water-attribute energy poured into it along the line in an instant. The two energies collided at the center of the Five Elements Formation.
Crackle-!
A small bolt of lightning appeared and struck the middle of the training ground.
Rumble-!
Soon after, the sound of thunder followed the lightning.
"Wow..."
Baek Cheong opened her eyes wide in the corner of the training ground. For a while, she stared at the spot where the lightning had passed. There was a black scorched mark on the floor where the lightning had struck. The five puppets were standing in their places, and the talismans that had been stuck to their chests had burned to ash and were scattering in the wind.
"This actually works?"
She had succeeded in implementing a lightning qi character-pattern as a formation, something she hadn't been able to do before. Although it was pitifully weak compared to the heavenly tribulation lightning she had seen with her own eyes, and the nature of it was different, too.
"Heh... hehehe..."
But that didn't matter. She had created lightning with a formation. That fact alone was enough.
"The name is... Five Elements Ten-Thousand-Thunder Formation."
A formation that drops thunder with the power of the five elements. Since it was only one bolt of lightning, Single-Thunder Formation would have been more accurate, but...
'Ten-Thousand-Thunder sounds cooler, obviously.'
Pursuing coolness in naming was the true duty of a cultivator.
Just as she was feeling a sense of pride deep in her small chest and was about to try deploying the Five Elements Ten-Thousand-Thunder Formation again—
"Cheong!"
Her father's urgent voice came from outside the training ground. And she noticed the presence of a divine sense scanning her. It was possible because it was the divine sense of a Golden Core cultivator, and perhaps because of his vast divine sense, but that wasn't the important issue.
'I have to hide it!'
Baek Cheong quickly gathered the Five Elements puppets into her storage pouch and shoved the Five Elements Banner in as well. But there was no way to deal with the scorch marks on the floor.
"Cheong, are you alright?"
There was worry etched on Baek Mujin's face as he entered the training ground. The dignity of a clan head who had reached the Golden Core stage was nowhere to be found; it was the face of a father checking on his daughter's safety.
"Father, why?"
"Didn't you hear the sound of thunder nearby just now?"
Baek Cheong widened her eyes. "Thunder? I was practicing spells in the training ground... couldn't it have been from outside?"
"Practicing spells..."
Baek Mujin chewed on his daughter's words and looked around the training ground. The black scorched marks on the floor and the energy that hadn't yet dissipated. He couldn't deceive the senses of a Golden Core cultivator. It was faint, but it was undoubtedly lightning qi.
"Why are you like that?"
Baek Cheong tilted her head, wearing an expression of complete ignorance. However, he could see that her earlobes were slightly red. It was obvious that she was desperately trying to hide something. As a father, it was something he should interrogate her about. What it meant to handle lightning qi. Whether her Qi Refining body could handle it. But Baek Mujin swallowed his words and didn't press her.
"...I see."
"Yes?"
"It's nothing. It must have been a sound from outside."
Baek Mujin turned around and left the training ground.
'Phew, I somehow got away with it.'
Baek Cheong breathed a sigh of relief, happy that she had successfully deceived her father. And because she thought she had escaped a crisis, the corners of her mouth curled up slightly.
'Lightning qi...'
Meanwhile, Baek Mujin walked away with a complex expression on his face. There was a story the ancestor had told him long ago.
'It must be because of the unknown spiritual root that has taken root in Cheong's dantian.'
It could be dangerous if things went wrong, but he had no choice but to leave it be. He was only filled with worry at his own helplessness, even though he had reached the Golden Core stage. But it wasn't a hopeless situation.
'The ancestor and Muyeong might have been right.'
Because in a few days, a true great cultivator who was on the verge of the Transformation stage—the Pacheon Sword Sovereign—would be visiting.