Vessel of Worlds

"Brother Zhao is the man who saved my life—what would Mengli have to distrust? And limited as our acquaintance is, I can see plainly that Brother Zhao values his word and is no cruel or savage man. Besides, Mengli carries no treasure that could tempt you. Of everything in that dwelling, apart from the Heart-Cleansing Pill, all of it is usable only by female cultivators. Even the method I'm asking you to retrieve is a technique for women alone—utterly useless to you. Mengli is entirely confident Brother Zhao would never turn on a defenseless girl over such things." The white-clad girl's eyes curved with her smile.

"Of course—had I failed to find Brother Zhao in time, Mengli would have had no choice but to seek another cultivator. But weighing all candidates, Brother Zhao, who came to the Star Sea from the distant mainland, is truly the ideal choice." She spoke with open honesty.

"Oh? So my background is already at Fairy Mengli's fingertips," Andy said, his smile not quite a smile.

"Heh—don't take offense, Brother Zhao. Mengli these days is a bird that startles at the twang of a bowstring, and this matter weighs heavy, so I made a few modest inquiries into your origins. I know only that Brother Zhao teleported to West Star Island from the mainland coast some twenty years ago and has no ties to any power in the Star Sea. Beyond that, Mengli knows nothing and will pry no further—it's enough that Brother Zhao is not one of my family's enemies. For the intrusion, this humble girl owes you an apology." She finished with a small bow of contrition.

Andy waved it away. "A perfectly natural precaution. In your place, I'd have done the same."

"Thank you for being so open-hearted." With that, the white-clad girl turned the conversation to matters of cultivation.

Andy had always cultivated alone in hardship, with rare chance to trade insights with anyone. She was a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator with a wealth of distinctive experience and views on the subject, and Andy was glad to listen.

For his part, having practiced two different Foundation Establishment techniques, Andy could compare them in ways that offered her genuine insight in return.

The conversation flowed warmly the whole way, and half a month later the three arrived at a desolate island several hundred kilometers across.

Andy looked around in puzzlement. A few low, barren hills, a scattering of scrub—not a wisp of spiritual energy to be sensed anywhere. A textbook example of an uninhabited island without a spirit vein, of which the Star Sea held countless thousands. Nothing about it looked special at all.

"This is truly the site of an ancient cultivator's dwelling? My eyes must be failing—I can't find a single seam," Andy said.

"The place is masked by a concealment formation of great sophistication—it is indeed nearly impossible to see through. Mengli has studied the formation path since childhood, and even I cannot place this array's origin. But it has endured so long that it has weakened considerably, and every few years it passes through a period of relative frailty. In that window, Mengli has means to find an opening at the formation's weakest point."

She produced a palm-sized white jade plate of exquisite workmanship, struck several seals into it, and added: "The formation's weakest period is still some days off. Let Mengli lay down an array, and the three of us can wait here in meditation, quite safe."

"Then I'll trouble you, Fairy Mengli." Andy nodded, walked alone to the foot of a hill, and sat down cross-legged.

The long flight had drained a good share of his spiritual power, and with no spirit vein here the ambient energy was vanishingly thin, so he took out several mid-grade spirit stones and slowly replenished himself.

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By Yun Mengli's account, he would enter the restriction alone to retrieve the treasure. It might prove utterly easy—or hold unknown dangers. But for the Heart-Cleansing Pill, he judged the risk worth running.

Never mind the flat ten percent it added to the odds of Core Formation—the pill's famed power to dispel inner demons alone set his heart racing.

His last brush with an inner demon invasion still chilled him in memory. The demons said to rise during the Core Formation attempt were dozens of times fiercer than what he had faced—not something to be fobbed off with one low-grade Buddhist artifact of modest protective virtue.

Even without the Heart-Cleansing Pill, he would have had to find some other means against inner demons; otherwise he would never dare attempt Core Formation at all.

The peak-grade pills enhanced by the small bowl gave enormous help at every bottleneck, so he was confident that mountains of peak-grade Essence-Congealing Powder would carry him through to late-stage Foundation Establishment. But for Core Formation itself, even with his many advantages, certainty still escaped him.

In such a position, every added measure meant added hope—and this was the Heart-Cleansing Pill, a medicine of towering repute. Some risk on its behalf was a fair price.

And it was only his considerable confidence in his own strength that let him accept at all. Twenty years ago, had the girl made this same proposal, he would have refused without a moment's thought.

Without strength enough, Andy dared not grasp even the opportunity standing before his eyes.

While Andy sat, the two young women moved lightly about, laying two layers of concealment formation around the three of them with practiced grace.

That done, they too settled into meditation.

Every few hours, the white-clad girl took out the white jade plate and studied it a while.

Several days later, she finally rose, delight in her voice. "It's time! Brother Zhao—I'll need your help for a moment. This ancient array is wondrously subtle; Mengli must break the formation with a formation. In a moment, please hold these two formation flags, and when you hear my signal, activate the one I name."

Andy caught the two chi-long triangular flags she tossed him and nodded his assent.

She handed the green-dressed Xiao Ying several deployment implements as well, with a few murmured instructions. The girl acknowledged them and crossed to the foot of a barren hill several kilometers off, where she began planting flags and setting formation pearls one by one.

The white-clad girl herself, expression grave, began laying out her array.

Breaking a formation with a formation—and an unnamed, wondrous array of high antiquity at that. Is this girl's attainment in formations truly so deep? Andy wondered. He knew little of the formation path, but he knew this much: only a master-rank formation practitioner could hope to grasp even fragments of such an ancient array, and unraveling one demanded nothing less than the legendary grandmaster rank. Even a master would need decades of bitter study. This girl was young—younger than he, most likely. Had she already touched the threshold of a formation grandmaster?

Of anyone else, Andy would never have believed it. But this girl was the sole heir of a renowned formation grandmaster—with talent that defied heaven, it was not impossible.

Andy watched in silence as she worked. The flags, pearls, and discs beyond counting went in with what looked like careless ease—a casual thrust here, a light placement there—yet every one landed precise to a hair, and the sequence itself was a study in rigor: which attribute deployed first, which after, in an order of perfect clarity. More than that, her movements were swift and sure, each placement final, never once adjusted. Andy was filled with admiration—and quiet shame. Set him to deploying even his most familiar small formation, and he could never match that effortless grace. There was something in the girl's formation-work that struck him almost as beauty.

Under his appreciative gaze, in a mere half hour the girl completed an enormous, intricately layered array of more than three hundred implements. Andy could only marvel, wonder and praise written openly on his face.

"Fairy Mengli is truly the heir of a formation grandmaster. I suspect it won't be long before the Star Sea counts you among its grandmasters as well!" he said with real feeling.

As though the words had touched some hidden corner of her heart, the girl trembled faintly. Only after a moment did she release a long sigh and murmur: "I have loved formations since I was small, and pestered my father endlessly to teach me. But Father always told me to work harder at the immortal arts and spend less time on the formation path. Only now do I understand his painstaking heart. What good is being a formation grandmaster? With cultivation too shallow, one is still trampled at others' pleasure. To become a grandmaster, Father poured his years into the study of formations and neglected his own cultivation, lingering at early-stage Core Formation far too long. Had it been otherwise—perhaps our Yun family would never have met with its calamity."