After he was done training the female warriors, Alex made his way over to the chief to give his report on how things went.
When he arrived at the chief’s place, he found himself rather surprised to find how the people around him were acting in his presence. Rona had to have told them every crazy thing he had done in the desert, which had made these people treat him much better than they had until now.
“If you say it’s good, then it’s good,” the chief said after Alex was done with a long explanation.
Alex narrowed his eyes. “You’re not listening. It’s a better formation, yes, but you will need to use it depending on the type of battle you are getting into. I am suggesting that you let the warriors choose what sort of formations they want to get into. Some might not like being just a distraction during battle.”
“Of course. What you’re saying is correct,” the chief said. “We will do just that.”
It didn’t take long for Alex to understand that things were going to change with the chief. He somewhat regretted doing that, but the result would have been the same had he let the rotting suspicion and delusion inside of Rona fester on for any longer than he had.
He would have had to kill him in the end, and that would just let all of these people know he was much stronger than him.
Alex went back to his place now that he had helped with the formation. There was still the matter of pastes which he hadn’t completed since yesterday, so he continued that.
It barely took him any time to complete them, so he had quite a lot of free time to do whatever he wished. So, he spent it all either training his Intent or trying to come up with an answer to the question that was the Blood techniques.
Alex received his first of many supplies of blood the next morning, brought over in a large water jar. Tala told him then that he would be supplying such a jar once a day or two for the pastes he made.
“Are you certain you don’t want beast cores and sunhearts?” Tala asked.
“It’s alright. Just keep bringing me the blood.”
A few days passed in a similar way with Alex spending most, if not all of the time focusing on the blood techniques. He knew a few days was no time to consider such a difficult question, but he still couldn’t help but be frustrated at not even seeing the first inkling of an answer.
What was it about the regular techniques that he could change so easily? What was different with the blood techniques that he couldn’t replicate the same level of ease?
After many days of failure to come up with anything, Alex finally stumbled upon something that could lead him to the answer he was looking for. It happened when he was trying to break down the regular techniques into their fundamental aspects and find the difference there.
All techniques were 3 things: Qi, a meridian pathway, and an Intent to use the technique.
Alex had known this for so long that it had become something he didn’t even have to think about, especially since it was such obvious knowledge to him after learning the Dao of Techniques.
However, it appeared that he had made a mistake. Or rather, he had taken something for granted with the regular techniques that was difficult to do with the other ones.
While the techniques were normally formed of 3 things, they were technically formed of 4 when one really thought about it.
Qi was obvious as it was the energy source. And the pathway through the meridian was the same as well.
However, there were 2 instances of Intent being used for every technique.
The Intent to use a technique could be further divided into two parts. The first was the Intent to turn Qi into another element. And the second was the Intent to pull the Qi through winding meridians in his body.
The second Intent, the Intent to pull Qi through specific meridians, was something that happened with the mere thought of using a technique, so Alex hadn’t even thought about it until now.
Since there were no pre-determined pathways like meridians for blood techniques, Alex hadn’t been using that part of the Intent when trying to change the techniques.
He quickly tried to use the Blood Armor technique and observed the various parts of the process.
The first part was his Intent to use his Blood Aura to manipulate blood into flowing out of his body. And the second part…
“Hmmm…” Alex noticed that there was no specific pathway the blood took at all. In fact, there was no Intent to bring out the blood aura in any specific manner.
However, there was a second Intent that he noticed.
Alex’s Intent was to place the blood around his body in a very specific way. At the end of shaping the blood into an armor, the blood aura did something to freeze the blood solid, forming the armor.
‘There it is,’ he thought. ‘The blood aura, it’s like… like…’
The closest thing Alex could compare it to was a formation. Similar to how formations shaped Qi in certain patterns and made them do something automatically even without the person’s Intent, the blood technique also didn’t need an Intent to make something happen.
The Intent was only required as far as it came to placing the blood energy in certain patterns. When it formed those patterns, and the blood energy was there, it did its work all on its own.
‘It’s not just formations,’ Alex thought. ‘Scripts, Qi lines, even Alchemy in a way functions under the same fundamental rule. As long as we use certain patterns or designs, we can make energy to do things all by itself.’
It was at that point that Alex realized that if he wanted to change the Blood Armor, he would have to create the pattern that would work for it.
And he hadn’t the first idea of where to start.