The plate surprisingly accepted his Qi. "It's working," he said excitedly. Although he had done the best he could, he still knew that it was far from being decent.
He waited for the fire to light up, but for some reason, nothing happened. No spark, no shine, or any other sign aside from the fact that it graciously accepted his Qi.
"Did something go wrong?" Alex wondered. "It's working for sure… but it's not producing fire. Is the efficiency too low?"
But that didn't make sense. From what he understood regarding formations, even when they had terrible efficiency, they would at the very least work, albeit horribly.
"Then does that mean the formation was never meant to light a fire? No, it did make fire," Alex thought. "Am I missing something?"
He started thinking. The formation plate looked like a worse version of the plate in the sect. It had too many rough edges and the circle wasn't very good looking either. But none of those should have ever been a problem.
After a few minutes of thinking, he remembered something that he had overlooked in his initial assumption. "This formation doesn't just light fire, it communicates to the sect running formation on when to light up and when to shut down."
"Meaning, there is a sort of message receiving formation etched on here as well," Alex thought. "That means the fire-producing formation is only part of it, and I need to find it."
Of the 20 or so formation blueprint he had with him, only one of them had anything to do with communications. There was also another one that produced fire amongst other things.
They were True Rank formations, so it was useless for him right now. However, he could cross-check these two to figure out what pattern helped in creating fire and what helped in communicating.
So, he got to work. He spent the next dozens of minutes thinking about how those two formations worked. He made a mental image of the patterns and tried to see what lines overlapped and wrote that into a new piece of paper.
He found a part of a pattern from the communication formation that matched part of this formation, and he also found a part of a pattern from the fire formation that matched part of this formation.
When he put those two patterns side by side, they were completely different. When put together, they made 95% of the original pattern. There were some additional lines here and there to make the pattern work together.
"So, if I just take this portion of the formation, it can work?" he wondered.
He brought out another plate of the same kind and started cutting it with his sword to make it a circle. The space shifted, but he didn't let that bother him.
After a few minutes, he managed to make the plate a much better circle than the previous one. He then started carving out the new pattern. It took him a while, but he managed to make a somewhat decent pattern with his sword.
"Phew! I hope this one works."
He put the plate on top of two-spirit stones and took a deep breath before sending in some Qi to activate it. He could tell that his Qi was filling the gap made due to the pattern and once all of the gaps were filled, a spark appeared.
Suddenly, the spark changed into a small ember which turned bigger and bigger until it was a massive ball of flame around the size of a baseball.
The light from the fire reflected in his eyes, but it couldn't outshine the happiness that was gleaming in his eyes.
"YES! I did it! Hahaha. I did it," he started shouting into the night.
Not only had he make a working formation, he actually made it by understanding patterns and extrapolating information from other formations.
There was no way he wouldn't be very happy after that.
"I wonder how good it is. High Mortal Grade? Mid Earth Grade? I can't believe I actually made it, Haha," he jumped up and down with giddiness.
Finally, he calmed down and looked at the flame. Did nothing but wait now. Around 2 hours went by and finally, the flame started dying, before completely extinguishing in a couple of minutes.
"Hmm… so it's 1 hour per spirit stone?" Alex wondered. He picked up the plate and looked at the dull spirit stones underneath. They were completely empty.
"Let's try making a pill now," Alex thought. That was the entire reason he made that formation in the first place. He dug up a small hole and placed some spirit stones on it.
Then, he placed the plate on top of it. Finally, he put the cauldron on top of the hole. Once everything was set, he put Qi into the formation and started it.
The formation started burning at a steady rate. Although the fire wasn't the hottest he had seen, Alex could work with that. He decided to make a simple pill that replenished one's Qi.
Once the cauldron was hot and ready, he put in the ingredients and started making the pill. Just as he put the first ingredient, the space shifted.
"Oh No!" he thought. However, for some reason, the cauldron and the fire didn't disappear. It was as if instead of him, that specific land was shifted.
He wanted to learn why but had no time right now. He focused on the pill and added the required ingredients. After 20 or so minutes, he finished making the pill.
When the pill came out, he was happy to see that he had successfully managed to make a 41% pill with neutral energy despite the current situation.
"Once I get used to the place, I should be able to make better pills," he thought and got cooking.
Over the course of the night, he switched the spirit stones twice before he was done making pills and it was time to log out to go to his classes.
