Lily rolled a slip of paper between her fingers, watching carefully as the runes she inscribed onto it passed between her fingers. They were dead, then— interacting with the qi of East Saffron only faintly. It would take something more than mere movement to trigger them into their active state— but it was a decently powerful formation, theoretically capable of melting metal after a few seconds of direct exposure. A remarkable amount of power for a mere mortal to gather from a slip of paper and a few careful brushstrokes.

  It was part of what had always drawn her to the formations art… but it was more than that. The discovery of it was important as well. The exhilarating rush of satisfaction she got from planning out a formation in her mind and then carefully scribing it down, drawing order from chaos and chaos from order. An ever-flowing, ever revolving unity, ever progressing…

  It’d been too long. She’d been so focused on her classes, her swordsmanship, her sight, that she’d neglected what made formations so interesting to her in the first place. There’s just… always been something else, there, more important than the formations art. Something that she needed to do, whereas making new formations had been all but irrelevant to her progress.

  No more. With the potential threat of another duel, and the general knowing that the world was far more dangerous than she’d thought to believe, she no longer had any excuse to avoid it; she had her excuse to dive straight in.

  She rolled the slip of paper through her fingers, once more, smiling briefly— and dove in.

  A spark, a wisp of qi, a shove the best she could do with her Shedding cultivation— and the talisman ignited, carried forth on her bloody qi and impacting the crucible filled with what few metallic materials from Mingtian’s training she’d yet retained. They resisted for a moment— but only for a moment, caught up in that blazing heat and slowly transforming, pooling, molten glowing with a fierce and incandescent heat that she could feel from across the room. The table beneath the crucible smoldered and— without warning— burst into flame, the wooden desk utterly insufficient to handle the heat of that small talisman.

  A little panicked, she hesitated— debating whether or not to break the little formation burning up in the air and stop the heat. She’d done her research, though, and that would certainly cause the qi-rich metal to lose a great deal of its potency— and that, she could not allow. Instead, after a moment of deliberation, she bit her finger and began to draw simple runes around the spreading burn. With a soft whoosh of evacuating air, the fires were snuffed in the space of a moment.

  …then she had to waste some time— and blood— writing in special conditions to the formation to make sure that the crucible was getting the right amount of oxygen for the reaction she’d read about, but that was kinda her fault for trying to melt metal on her desk. She was going to have to get a new desk…

  Sighing, as soon as the metal was properly liquid, she grabbed her ceramic stirring stick and mixed the metals together. Then, she activated the second of the talismans she’d prepared, and the metal leapt from the crucible, shooting into the air in a towering arc that just barely missed the ceiling. The alloy wasn’t a supremely ductile metal under normal conditions, but a bit of careful formations work bypassed that well enough. Plus, she’d very much needed the wire, if she wanted her project to work.

  After a bit more fiddling, she finally got a nice roll of wire. That, and one completely ruined desk, but that was neither here nor there. Picking up her tools and transitioning to the living room— getting only a slightly bemused look from Avyr for her troubles— she set down to the far more difficult task; actually making the proper formations.

  Writing was easy, most of the time. She’d been writing all her life. Even using a brush to scribe out the runes for various formations wasn’t too difficult, even if it hadn’t exactly been the easiest thing in the world to start out with. Wire, though? It was much more difficult to get it into the right shapes.

  Time really flew as she worked. At first, it was difficult just to get the proper angles. Bending wire into the three dimensional shape of a rune was certainly not an easy task, even with the right tools— and she did not have the right tools. No matter how much time she spent carefully planning things out, no matter how hard she tried, she kept making the stupidest of errors. It was frustrating, and after even Avyr had headed to sleep, she just smushed her incomplete work flat and went to bed with a scowl.

  The following day, after she’d finished up her classes and sword practice, she set back to work refreshed. More carefully, this time— and though it was just as difficult as it’d been the day prior, she persevered.

  Avyr came and watched for a bit as he did his own homework, but she was afraid she didn’t make all that great of a conversation partner. She was simply far too engrossed in her work— failure though it was…

  Slowly, she continued. And slowly, it began to take shape. From a frankly terrible mess of bent wires to something that captured— even if vaugely— the sweeping nature of natural runes, it slowly came together beneath her diligent gaze. What a beautiful thing it was, too… she’d vaguely seen three dimensional runes before, in the bordering posts amongst the high Dragonspine Mountains, in Mingtian’s careful creation… but, this, laid out before her and perfectly constructed, made by her own hand? It felt entirely different.

  And, it was only one rune of a planned several. The pattern continued much the same— classes, then swordsmanship, then runework— for a few days as she worked diligently on her little project. She really did learn a lot, frustrating as it could be at times. For one, after she’d thought she’d managed to make the whole rune perfectly, she’d learnt that— no, tying the wires together at junction points did not count, and would in fact ruin the rune completely. Figuring out how to weld the wires together without deforming the rest of the rune or leaving unsightly and inefficient blobs of molten metal had been… definitely very difficult. She’d ended up using a very, very intricate formation to gain the precision necessary, and following up with Mingtian’s carving tool to shave off the excess.

  Then she’d had to do that like a couple hundred more times, just to get that single rune working, but! But, it was worth it in the end. Sitting there, at last, the tiny little bundle of wire gently rested before her… she grinned, watching the way it flickered softly even in the attenuated ambient qi of their living room. “Avyr.” The big cat glanced up, blinking away his tiredness— it was kind of late, wasn’t it? “I did it.”

  “You finished?”

  “The first rune.” An evolution, in turn, of the first rune she’d ever seen, that glorious thing, the memory of which still burned in her mind as the wonder that had first set her down the path to this, so long ago… “still, it should work,” She marshaled her qi, from her core pulling forth just a wisp, but enough— “to make a little bit of—” light.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  She pushed forward only the tiniest iota of qi— not that little, given the limited control of a Shedding cultivator— but still a rather small amount.

  The rune burst into brilliance. A brand new dawn of human invention sparked to life in the living room, refulgent, alight and painting the whole room in shades of white and black and perfect darkness, and—

  A burning light. A terrible and glorious light/

  Yelping in startled surprise, she threw her hands up in front of her eyes and withdrew her qi, the three dimensional rune falling into gentle quiescence. After a few seconds— when she could no longer see the bones in her hand— she pulled back, grimacing at the phantom afterimages swimming in her mind. “I think,” she said with a grimace. “That I’m not going to do that again.”

  Avyr— considerably less ruffled by the sudden lightshow— nodded in agreement. “I think that would likely be wise. That was…”

  “Powerful.” More powerful than her usual formations, which was entirely the point of making the proper three-dimensional rune. The ambient qi of the room was all roiled up, shifting and seething as it sought to fill the sudden void that’d been created by the amount of qi it’d taken to power the rune.

  If the regular two-dimensional runes were mere attenuated forms of the three-dimensional ones, then the regular three-dimensional mapping of the actual three-dimensional runes were themselves attenuated forms of what lay on the table before her. It’d taken so much effort to make even that single light rune…

  Yet. Even still… Lily was not discouraged. The sheer power of it…

  It only made her want more. Once the formation she’d laid out was complete… “you can go to bed if you want, Avyr.” She sat back down, and grabbed her tools— “I’m going to keep working.”

  Until it was done, or they got off on their winter break and she was forced to stop—

  Until at last it was within her grasp—

  Until it was hers, that victory.

  ………

  Several all but sleepless nights and almost a week later, she put the finishing touches on the formation in its fullest form. It could scarcely be compared to her earlier work. She’d yet to set the protective plaster around the runes that’d allow her to carry it around, and she couldn’t help but think it would be almost a shame to do so.

  She leaned back, heaving a sigh, the shadow of her body blocking the living room’s light and leaving it illuminated only by the mix of quiet moonlight and what little bled around her. It slunk across those fine wires, twisting and gleaming, almost slick— adrift amongst an intricacy that defied easy description. A smile cracked across her face, weakly at first— then, broad, replete with all the weary completion of a task long coming, done at last.

  It was a response to her greatest shortcoming in the battle with Song Banwei— the way her attacks had been so easily disrupted. At first she’d just looked for something more powerful, and her new… not talisman, for it was certainly not a talisman; perhaps it was better called a spiritual implement— had that in droves. Yet, more than that, it had a solidity that her talismans had lacked. An inherent… immobility? No, not exactly, but the general concept was the same. In theory, there was an inertia to its formations that would be hard to disrupt. On top of the increased power…

  It should be enough. If someone attacked her again… so long as they weren’t in Opening, she should be able to deal with them. She got the idea that these sorts of formations weren’t something readily handed out to junior cultivators.

  Gingerly, she picked it up, careful not to do anything that might warp the delicate weave. It’d taken… she shivered. Far, far too long, to make everything fit together nicely. Luckily, her new perception allowed her to see the energy fluctuations of the runes— and, thereby, tweak them far more easily than she might have otherwise— or else the design she’d gone for might have been impossible after all.

  She passed Avyr’s room, as quietly as she could— careful lest she wake him. Then, further, through the back door and out to the riverside, over the railing and to where the rocks collided with the water. It was cold. Not a bitter cold, but nevertheless present all about her, rising up with the breath of the world—

  As the waves lapped, and the wind tussled over her hair, and the moonlight split and shattered into ten thousand scattered points of luminescence, all dancing on those sparkling waves—

  As she cradled it, her great work, more carefully, more prideful than anything else of her hands of any others—

  She called on her qi.

  At first, a tiny amount, then more— her spirit lurching as the activation node on the formation caught onto her qi, passed it back, and asked for more. Recognized, realized, suddenly and vivaciously caught up in the moment of its grand enactment— as the implement yielded its control over to her, recognizing her as its master and creator.

  She recognized it did not have that deep an intelligence, no more than the average house’s front door lock, but— but! Swept up in the furor of the moment, she could not help but think otherwise. The stars above pulsed with frenetic light, the sound— wind, ten thousand voices roaring, blood rushing, whirling and whirling and spinning in like mind to her cultivation—

  A good quarter of her qi was yanked out of her, and with deadly clarity she caught grasp of the enormous weight of the attack. Fire, but no mere fire— elegant in its simplicity, indomitable in its power— the small part of her qi that protected the attack and guided it, if guiding was even something that was in her authority to do, feeling itself the sole limb holding up an impossible weight.

  Every scant second that passed, the formation grew more and more violent, the qi twisting and roiling in her grasp as more and more of it was wrenched from the surrounding area. Merely as an aftershock of activating the spiritual implement the qi of the area was dragged inwards, and she couldn’t help but think a little wryly that was another very different way to make a qi gathering formation.

  She couldn’t hold forever. Every moment, her qi was closer and closer to being overwhelmed; every moment, she drew closer to the precipice where the formation would lose grasp over itself and all her hard work would amount to naught. Even as she held it, she could feel the sheer volume of qi rushing through its ever rune and twist and curve and—

  Laughing—

  Singing, in a language of energy and strange logic, and light—

  She let go, and once more there was light.

  A beam of searing energy erupted from in front of her, all the qi in a moment transformed from quiescent to active, worthfully striking the face of the river and erupting in an enormous fountain of steam. It was so bright the entire river seemed to be for a moment illuminated in its majesty. All the stars, all the moon, all aspects of night and city glow for that brief moment drowned out— caught, in that brilliant intensity. She couldn’t help but compare it to the most powerful attacks she’d ever seen— and find it not wanting.

  Laughing— still careful not to damage her hard work— she sat down, settling against the rocks still giggling at the euphoric success. Sure, it wasn’t comparable to Zhihu’s attack, or Qinfu’s attack, but, but… even against Ruqian’s massive gun, she’d say it was comparably powerful, and that had been a Foundation Establishment level attack. She laughed until she couldn’t laugh anymore, and then just sat there, smiling, staring out at the glittering river’s waves…

  Well, there was still work to be done, some finishing touches, a bit of some other stuff… but so it went.

  Victorious and a little tired, Lily pushed herself up and clambered back inside to get some sleep. She had a letter to send come morning…