Chapter 123: Formation is Programming
The thing about cultivation world libraries is that they're simultaneously more and less organized than you'd expect.
On one hand, everything is meticulously cataloged and preserved with spiritual techniques that would make museum curators weep with joy. On the other hand, the organization system seems to have been designed by someone who was high on enlightenment and decided that "logical progression" was too mundane a concept for their elevated consciousness.
After about an hour of searching (and one awkward incident where I accidentally activated a defensive formation on a restricted scroll), I'd managed to gather a decent collection of formation texts.
I wasn't surprised these books were freely available. As Elder Chen had implied, formations were one of those fields where having access to knowledge wasn't the same as being able to use it. You could memorize every word in a dictionary and still not be able to write poetry.
But instead of studying, I was absently tracing my finger along the grain of the wooden surface of the table, my mind still dwelling on yesterday's events with Wu Lihua and Wu Kangming.
"You're doing that thing again," Azure commented.
"What thing?"
"That thing where you stare into space and brood about problems you can't immediately solve."
I snorted. "I'm not brooding. I'm... contemplatively planning."