Chapter 244: A Side Income
“There is no formation manual. Just a description of the place it'd protect. Everything else is up to you to figure out.”
Hearing that he was supposed to come up with the design himself, Liu Xiaolou froze a little. “Uh… haha… I’m afraid I might let you down…”
Diao Daoyi waved it off and encouraged him. “No need to panic. You’ve got the skills. Here, this fifth formation is meant to protect a manor. Take a look.”
Liu Xiaolou accepted the briefing. It was surprisingly detailed: the size and layout of the estate, its orientation, the flow of feng shui, even notes on a few key structures; halls, pavilions, waterside buildings that could affect the formation’s setup. With information like this, he could design the formation without even visiting the site.
“This is really thorough,” he said, impressed.
Diao Daoyi snorted. “Of course it is. It’s from Pingdu Eight Formations Gate. They’re nothing if not thorough.”
“They’re not doing it themselves?” Liu Xiaolou was surprised.
Diao Daoyi gave a cold little laugh. “Guess they’re swamped and had to dump it on us. And who knows how many hands took a cut along the way.”
It all made sense to Liu Xiaolou now. This last-minute wholesale job was passed down to them; who knew how many people had taken their cut already? It was all about speed. No wonder Diao Daoyi told him to just go for it. So long as the formation worked, the job was considered done. Whether the buyer was happy or how the formation was actually set up... that was Pingdu Eight Formations Gate’s problem, not Siming Mountain’s.
Well, if that’s the case, then time to be bold!
Liu Xiaolou excused himself and slipped out for a bit, heading to the teahouse to let Fang Bu’ai know the situation and ask him to wait patiently. Then he hurried back to the Siming Mountain shop and threw himself into crafting the formation disk.
The fifth disk was meant to protect a manor sitting on a mountaintop. Mountains surrounded it on all sides, with a single lonely peak rising in the middle. Kind of like the terrain on Xingde Mountain.
Following the notes in the briefing, Liu Xiaolou mapped out the Five Elements and Yin-Yang, set the flow directions, and factored in wind and moisture. With all that in mind, he designed a simple formation that combined an illusion array with a killing array.
He originally planned a formation disk using three jade pendants, but Diao Daoyi shot it down immediately. “Two jade pendants are plenty.”
Liu Xiaolou hesitated. “The effect might not be ideal…”
Diao Daoyi said, “We’re not doing charity here. Making three would cost us, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
So Liu Xiaolou simplified the design, cutting nearly forty percent of its power, and started engraving the talismans. Engraving was essentially drawing the blueprint of the formation, laying down its core structure. Diao Daoyi claimed he trusted Liu Xiaolou’s ability, but he still hovered nearby, clearly uneasy. It wasn’t until he watched Liu Xiaolou use the Heaven’s Origin, Beginning to End Method to inscribe the talismans in one smooth go that he finally relaxed.
Seven days later, both jade pendants were fully engraved. Diao Daoyi had also finished preparing the spirit liquid according to Liu Xiaolou’s design, using up a good amount of materials. They handed everything over to Diao Daoyi's junior brother, Gao Changjiang, to take from there.
Gao Changjiang, at the peak of the Qi Refinement stage, didn’t think much of it at first when he received the two jade pendants. But once he actually began infusing spirit liquid into the engraved channels, he noticed the talismanic pathways carried a subtle, elusive spiritual rhythm. Almost there, almost not, like something breathing beneath the surface.
He couldn’t help but praise, “Nice technique.” His view of the formation master his senior brother had brought in immediately rose a notch.
Uncle Luo, standing beside them, stroked his beard and nodded. “Daoyi, which sect is this young friend from?”
Daoyi replied, “He married into the Su family of Shenwu Mountain. Self-taught in formation path. Very gifted. He’s close to Green Bamboo and even received guidance from Grandmaster Tang. Two years ago, when I went to Jinting Mountain to participate in refining the Fangle Peak Grand Formation, Xiaolou was Grandmaster Tang’s assistant in charge of coordination. He did an excellent job.”
Uncle Luo chuckled. “The Su family has good fortune, then…”
Liu Xiaolou waved his hands. “Junior has already left Shenwu Mountain. Uh… the Su family divorced me, haha…”
Uncle Luo blinked, surprised, and glanced at Daoyi. This was news to Daoyi as well. “They cast you out? Why?”
Liu Xiaolou said, “I’m just a wandering cultivator from humble beginnings. I guess I don’t fit in too well with those grand sect families.”
Uncle Luo sighed. “A real pity… Xiaolou, take a look at the sixth formation disk as well.”
Liu Xiaolou grabbed the instructions and dove in, studying them closely as he racked his brain over the talisman designs. This formation disk had to protect a much larger area. It needed to seal off the entire mouth of a valley nearly a hundred zhang wide. So he planned to combine a trapping formation with an illusion formation, leaving out any killing components.
But the coverage area was so big that, no matter how he thought about it, two jade pendants wouldn’t be enough. After consulting Diao Daoyi, he got permission to design a composite formation disk using three jade pendants. They still needed to keep costs down overall, but things couldn’t look shoddy. The formation had to do its job properly.
After finishing the design and carving of the sixth formation disk, he immediately moved on to the seventh. He worked tirelessly for an entire month beside the earth-fire node in the Siming Sect’s workshop. At last, all seven formation disks were complete. He and several other formation masters inspected each one, corrected a few small mistakes, and delivered them all to the shopkeeper from the Pingdu Eight Formations Gate. Right on schedule.
Diao Daoyi handed Liu Xiaolou his payment. Five spirit stones. Not bad at all, actually. For comparison, when Tang Song commissioned the grand formation on Fangle Peak, ordinary formation masters only got twelve spirit stones for three months of work. That averaged out to about four a month.
So Liu Xiaolou was genuinely grateful. He promised over and over that if Senior Diao ever needed him again, he’d gladly throw himself into fire and water to help.
After seeing Liu Xiaolou off, the shop finally received a reply from Mount Siming. Uncle Luo shook the letter open and sighed. “We’ve confirmed it. The Su clan expelled him for ‘improper conduct.’”
Diao Daoyi blinked in surprise, reading over the letter and shaking his head. “I’ve met the kid twice, he seemed fine to me. Improper conduct? Huh… is this for real? They’re guessing he has a… preference for men? That’s nonsense. As far as I know, back on Fangle Peak he even dragged Liu Daoran down the mountain to the Jinting sect market just to visit a brothel. How could he possibly be into men?”
Gao Changjiang said, “Even if he is bent, so what? He’s talented in formation arts. As long as he doesn’t bother anyone, who cares?”
Diao Daoyi sighed. “Junior brother, it’s not that simple. Whatever the real reason, the Su clan’s evaluation of him was extremely harsh. It basically means his relationship with them has soured. If we take him in, even just as an outer disciple, the Su clan will take offense. We may be a major sect in Formation Path and not afraid of the Danxia Sect, but angering another great clan over one disciple? The elders won’t approve.”
Just then, an urgent message arrived. Uncle Luo opened it as usual. After scanning it, he was completely speechless. “Forget it, Daoyi. You can stop thinking about it. Do you know why we’ve been swamped these past few months? It’s all because of Wulong Mountain. A bunch of bandit cultivators there openly turned against Tianmu Mountain and started raiding the Lu clan’s industries. Every major aristocratic family in Jing-Xiang has been ordering defensive formations because of this mess.”
Diao Daoyi frowned. “And what does any of that have to do with Xiaolou?”
Uncle Luo handed him the letter. “See for yourself. After the Su clan expelled him, Liu Xiaolou settled on Wulong Mountain. Now Tianmu Mountain considers him one of the Wulong bandits. Even if he never took part in anything… Tianmu has already put a bounty on every cultivator from Wulong. We can’t recruit one disciple at the cost of offending two sects.”
Diao Daoyi let out a long sigh. “What a waste.”
Gao Changjiang said, “This Liu Xiaolou… he’s actually kind of interesting.”