The young master watched with interest at how this seemingly weak cultivator used his wits to save his life. It had been a long time since he witnessed people actually using their brains, as in the realm he lived in, most were powerful enough to change fate itself, and would not think twice about escaping in favor of fighting. But this child, used his head and kept a cool leveled mindset, and managed to find the optimal solution to his problem.
Not that he would ever admit it, the young man was impressed and found it difficult to survive in the same circumstance as that plagued child, unless he uses some of his treasures, he would have definitely ended up dead there if he was in the same cultivation level of the plagued child.
The young master watched as this plagued child sat down on one of the many villas of the Forbidden Celestial City, and began meditating to recuperate, then, the plagued child pulled out a brush, a few tools and began repairing his puppet.
This was yet another amazing thing to see, as the puppet, this child was repairing, he did so with finesse and dedication that cannot be seen by someone who doesn't have a full understanding of what they were doing. This man, against what the Young Master had thought, didn't receive this puppet as a gift, but it seems that he was the creature of such a puppet.
Though this young man was tempted to inspect this puppet using his divine sense, he knew better not to use his divine sense now, since the sword seemed pretty adamant on considering a divine sense as an attempt to escape his imprisonment.
So he had to make do with just watching as the plagued child began writing new inscriptions on his own puppet, and implemented new rounds of small projectiles and cannisters full of explosive poison within his puppet. He was re-supplying the lost materials.
Soon after that, the plagued child pulled out a furnace and began doing Receptarism…
Hang on, that's not right, the young master was fully interested now. That's true Receptarism, how come a man from a backwatered planet be using Receptarism? Could he have knowledge of the upper realms? But if so, he wouldn't have the necessary Qi to do Receptarism? He should only be able to do basic Alchemy.
But this was clearly Receptarism, he was using his own Qi to quench and extract poisonous substances from within the plants in his hand and the cauldron he had was only there to contain the essences of the materials not to actually be used in anything else but a container and an impurity extraction tool.
Though a true Receptarier wouldn't need such a tool to extract the impurities, that would only be the case if the Receptarier had a true Heart Flame, but apparently this child doesn't have it, if he did, he would have been able to do everything without ever needing a cauldron.
Now that the young master was thinking about it, the Poison God was also a magnificent alchemist, even the young master had to pull a lot of favors to get a few of the Poison God's pills. But he clearly remembered that even the Poison God, with all of his amazing skillfulness in the domain of Receptarism, he occasionally used a cauldron.
Too many questions began popping in the young man's head, but he had no way to answer them. He just watched, and saw what the child was going to do.
***
"Alright, this should be enough."
I pulled the pills from within the cauldron and pocketed them. These were mostly Soul invigorating pills, as I'll need a lot of them to mend my mental health once I tackle the next hurdle. So far, my cultivation level is still early Core formation, and it's really not enough to save my ass against that silver back ape. I'll need to be able to understand these Formations, and with my current mental health, I'll probably suffer a lot without these pills.
If I was at least a Soul Formation, no, even a Nascent Soul level, I would have had better chances at tackling these Formations, but now, I'll have to drag myself up to try and understand them.
First thing first, I categorized the formations to have three different levels.
The lowest level of the formation was in the extremities of this city, all the formations there were rather weak, or had suffered the passage of time making them obsolete. Though they could still easily kill a cultivator below the Soul Formation level if they were triggered, it seems that it's been so long since they were functioning that just the fact of them turning fully on and functional was a miracle.
But that miracle thankfully saved my life, both because they were slowly inactivating, and allowed me to go into the city, and because they actually activated and managed to create distance between me and the ape.
The second type of formation was way more complex, it had several layers of inscriptions written atop each other, and they were all over the inner city, they were on buildings, on walls and rooftops, everywhere, heck there were even blades of grass that had these formations written on them.
This was not good, because even where I'm right now if I were to take a wandering step and trigger a formation here, I'll end up dying without knowing how.
Lastly, the most fearsome of these formations. The ones on the innermost palace, the palace was huge, and it was no problem with understanding how a palace like this would need to be protected, but the sheer number of formations was so staggering, the tools required to build them, the Spirit Stones and the massive loads upon loads of Saint Qi required to have this deadly formation active, and remain active, for eons of time was just mind-boggling.
Unlike the rest of the city where the formations were dormant until I and that sad silverback ape barged in before they were active, the ones on the palace seemed to have been active since the beginning of time, and are still standing strong without a single hitch.
For now, I had no will to try and understand the inscriptions on the main palace, it's like trying to teach a blind toddler quantum physics using hand signs, just impossible, at least for my current level so I won't bother. Especially since unlike the rest of the formations here that I could actually understand if I deduce and corroborate my understanding and pit it against these inscriptions, the ones on the palace were all made of Saint Qi, and I don't even have a spec of a shard of Saint Qi to base the premise of these inscriptions and the logic behind them to even begin understanding how they function.
Let's start with the basic formations first.
I looked around the garden until I found one blade of grass with a half-completed formation. It was apparent that whoever created this inscription here, thought of it as a failed attempt and didn't continue on it. This is a good formation to use and start working on.
I began by writing the various inscriptions on this blade and attempted to deduce every inscription and its function, I used a spirit stone and a piece of Meteorite Steel and began writing. With each new inscription I learned, I attempted to use and see how it can function in alignment with my old inscriptions.
Days went by, though the sun never set, weeks, months even.
I felt the silverback ape finally waking and trying to break through the formations to get to me, but that didn't bother me in the least right now, as the formations here had already been fully active and would now be far more difficult for the ape to break.
I continued studying that blade of grass until I fully understood the premise behind these inscriptions, unlike what I used to do, where I used spirit stones to power my inscriptions to create certain effects. These inscriptions here were rather…audacious to say the least.
The inscriptions made by this mad man, the one who was dedicated enough to even inscribe the grass were so 'arrogant' that they commanded the laws of the world to bend.
They didn't need to be powered by spirit stones, and actually stole energy from the heavens, they actually willed the world's energy to bend to their purpose and empower them to their objective.
After three months of study, I barely was able to understand how these inscriptions work, but just because I understand how they work doesn't mean I could replicate them. Simply because, these inscriptions aren't just words, but the experience and dedication of a man who understood heavenly Laws. So, unless I understand Law, I cannot use these inscriptions, however, I can very well disable them or alter them.
I was pretty lucky, but luck itself wasn't the only factor, it was days of dedicated hard work and deduction. And thanks to that incomplete blade of grass I understood many things, the origin of this formation, and actually the way to disable them. All of it was in that tiny piece of grass.
These inscriptions that made the formations are based on law, and if I were to add a foreign inscription to them, it will clash with their purpose and will easily destroy the whole formation. This was what went wrong with that piece of grass, the maker actually tried to add another piece of fractural inscription, something that inherently clashed with the inscription's purpose, and caused the whole thing to break, laws that clashed against each other disabled each other. Simple but effective. However, there is a small issue.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I took a deep breath, this was a pain in the ass.
To actually interfere with these Formations would pretty much mean that I'll have to plant a type of Virus into its source code, it's not easy to do, and the 'Virus' needs to be damn powerful to sustain the inscription's might and be able to alter its commands, but the moment I'll try to inject the Virus, I'll be attacked by the formation.
The formation will not just watch as I try to destroy it by writing the 'virus' command.
This is damn hard, I have a solution, but don't have the ability to implement it.
I sighed as I was inspecting the piece of grass in my hand then just placed it back on the ground to study it more later.
But at that moment, I was hit with a wave of comprehension and an epiphany.
"This could actually work!" I said as I grabbed the grass blade in my hand smiling like a wicked villain.