SCRATCH SCRATCH
Alex used part of his sword to carve away the land underneath him. There were 5 formation flags stuck on 5 different locations next to him.
With the formation flags, the formation would work just fine. However, Alex wasn't used to making formations, so he wanted to make sure the flags were in the correct place by carving away a physical path and see how straight his lines were.
As expected, the resulting path was very crooked. The formation wasn't as symmetric as he wanted to make it. So, once he was done. He removed the formation flags from their original location and replaced them on the ground a little left of it.
He did the same with 2 other flags and once he was done, he started carving away the ground once more. All the while, he had his Qi on the flags, and would something happen, he would immediately pull back the flags towards himself.
He was really worried about space shifting on him while he was trying this out and losing his formation flags.
The formation was a simple Qi Gathering formation that required 5 spirit stones to function and would gather Qi from the surrounding and the spirit stones into the formation.
He had bought it back in the capital on his first day and hadn't had the chance to check it out until now.
Alex didn't want to use it to get more Qi during his cultivation, although he wouldn't reject that. He simply just wanted to see if he could have a formation work.
Once he was sure the formation flags were at the best place he could manage, for now, he placed a spirit stone each next to the 5 formation flags and walked into the middle.
"So, what do I do to activate it?" he thought and checked the instructions. "Once I am done preparing the formation, just pour Qi into one of the formation flags. I see."
Alex put away the instruction and sent out Qi towards one of the flags. The Qi entered the flag and suddenly, the flag started buzzing. The spirit stone next to it lit up slightly as well.
As soon as that happened, the rest of the flags started buzzing and the spirit stones started glowing as well. Alex could feel a slight disturbance in the Qi around him as the density of it started getting higher.
"It's working," he said in both shock and amazement. He had failed his first alchemy but somehow managed to make a formation work on the first time.
'Sigh, that's probably because I am using flags instead of making my own formation,' Ning thought to himself. He wasn't sure how sects taught formation, but it was unlikely they taught the students to use flags from the get-go.
It was like maths. You didn't teach a kid to use a calculator at the start. They had to start with learning the numbers and adding them up in their fingers.
"I guess I will have to meet some people with actual formation knowledge and ask them these questions," he thought.
Suddenly, the space twisted, and he was in someplace else.
"Sigh, I was afraid this would happen. At least I was done with it," Alex thought.
Now that he knew he could make formations work, it was time for him to do the actual thing he was planning on doing. He was going to carve away metal plates so that he could make a formation it and convert it into a fire lantern, just like the one he used to practice within the outer sect mountain of Hong Wu Sect.
There were too many problems and too many hopes with this endeavor of his.
First of all, he didn't know if the shape of the carvings he remembered was all that it was to the formation. He didn't have any blueprints on common rank fire formations that only he could activate with his Common Qi. Thus, he had no way of telling what was important and what was not.
Secondly, different metals were required for different formations. He had a few metal plates in his storage bag thanks to Zexi, but none of them were carved and he didn't know if they were the right metals.
Lastly, Alex had no idea what it used as an energy source.
Still, he had hoped. He remembered the shape of the carvings quite clearly, so if that was all there was to it, he could successfully carve it onto the metal plate.
He also remembered the color of the metal plate and thus was quite confident that this was the same metal. From his information, this metal was used in a lot of formations, so he was quite hopeful because of that too.
Finally, he remembered that the formation in the lanterns was powered by the sect running formation, which was powered by the spirit vein underneath the Hong Wu Sect.
Since Spirit Veins were what eventually became spirit stone caves, he was pretty sure he could substitute the energy source with spirit stone.
Once he thought of all of this, he brought out a metal plate and started cutting it. He placed his steel sword in between in feet and started using it to cut the plate into a circular shape.
The plate came out to be with rough edges which he smoothed out as much as he could. After that, he picked up the sword and used it as a carving pen. He slowly started etching in the pattern.
He didn't have the same error-finding ability that he had with alchemy one he had a recipe with him. Heck, he didn't even have a blueprint for what he was doing, so he never knew if he had made a mistake.
Also, there was no way of undoing erroneous carvings with the metal plates, unlike the flags which he could just reposition.
Still, he kept on carving away and in the end, it came out looking fine. He placed it on top of two spirit stones, and once everything was ready, he poured Qi into it.
