With the disappearance of Xukong, the courtyard returned to normalcy.
The Saintess sat at the table while Little Shrubby laid on it. The faint energy fluctuations of an incoming tribulation could be felt from him, while the clouds surrounding the courtyard held firm.
~huu~
The sound of a deep breath could be heard as Lin Mu, woke up from his state of trance. His eyes trembled and opened, obscure runes glowing within them for a moment before fading into the black pupils.
"The runes speak… The formations sing… The Arrays roar!" Lin Mu muttered and looked up into the sky.
The rusty colored sky that looked to be empty was no longer so. Instead, Lin Mu could now see a million runes flowing through the air, arranged into thousands of formations that all condensed into a great array.
The array that he was seeing no was none other than the grand array that covered the entire capital region of the Dao Wind empire. It was supposed to be invisible and yet it was now visible clearly to Lin Mu.
"So you can see them," The Saintess's voice drifted over.
She could already guess well enough what Lin Mu was seeing right now.
"I can… They are… Beautiful." Lin Mu replied, his hand reaching out for the sky.
~SHUA~
The air shook and qi soared, touching upon the arrays and calling to them. Lin Mu's eyes rapidly moved and tracked the fine movements of the formations, finding them to be relatively easy.
But then the deeper he looked, the more he could see.
There were formations hidden within formations, their layers forming a complex labyrinth.
"You should stop now." The Saintess ordered. "Any more and you'll alert the Formation Grand masters." She warned.
Lin Mu's fingers hesitated but he pulled his hand back. It felt strange to him, as if the runes were inviting him to touch them. He wished to know what they felt like and was now being denied.
But he also knew doing so would not be good.
He closed his eyes for a moment and calmed his mind before looking at the Saintess.
"So this is the Dao of Formations…" Lin Mu said and flipped his palm.
~SHUA~
Qi started to swirl around his arm before starting to gather. This was just spirit qi so it gathered rapidly. Lin Mu was already versed with the Immortal qi, thus extracting Spirit qi from the air was but a mere thought to him.
The qi gathered into faint sphere before starting to change shape.
The Saintess who was watching this was stunned.
'He's already making a Dao Shell?' She had expected him to do this of course, but not this early.
Within a minute, Lin Mu already had his Dao Shell outline ready and it was now starting to change its shape.
From its default spherical shape, it became rectangular before starting to elongate. In just a few minutes it took on a flat rectangular shape, with a slanted depression in it.
If one looked at it they wound find it to be similar to an Ink stone!
~SHUA~
Once the shape was confirmed, Lin Mu channeled all the spirit qi into it and allowed it to grow. The Dao Shell started to expand and after ten minutes, it was already ten meters in size.
"More." Lin Mu spread his immortal sense and pulled in more Spirit qi.
The Ink Stone shaped Dao Shell absorbed all of it and reached a size of twenty meters!
It floated above Lin Mu's head and hovered like a giant tablet.
With the Dao Shell completed, Lin Mu focused on the main part.
His eyes glimmered with runes, forcing them to materialize in the air. These were no normal runes either, but were the Dao Traces from the Dao of Formations!
The spun around the Dao Shell, trying to resist Lin Mu's control.
~CLANG~
But then Lin Mu slapped his hand onto the Dao Shell, making it ring like a bell. The wave of energy that spread from the Dao Shell seemingly tamed the Dao Traces, attaching them towards it.
Soon, they started to pour into the Dao Shell, taking the form of a small cloud.
"Form up!" Lin Mu commanded.
The cloud of Dao Traces tried to resist, but couldn't do so. Lin Mu exerted his power making them bend to his will and take a new shape. They first condensed and took and elongated shape.
It now looked like a long tube that had a small mass of clouds attached to it. Lin Mu made a pinching gesture towards the cloud, squeezing them together.
The clouds became tighter under his gesture before Lin Mu rolled his fingers. The clouds were twisted along, turning into thin strands. The strands floated freely, before being pulled towards the long tube.
Lin Mu now used both his hands to attach the two components, finalizing his work.
A new Dao Embryo now floated within the Dao Shell.
It had the shape of a formation brush that had a meter long shaft and soft bristles that formed its tip. They were formed from the Dao Traces and were very fine.
Each strand of the brush was like the finest beast hair, and shimmered like spider silk.
"Rune Shaping Brush!" Lin Mu called out to the Dao Embryo.
It quickly shrank to the size of a normal brush, along with the Dao Shell. It now looked like a set of Ink stone and writing brush.
They looked simple, but the power they held within them was great.
"So this is the Dao Embryo you birthed… It does match you the best." The Saintess spoke up seeing that the process was finished.
Lin Mu extended his hand towards the brush and picked it up with ease. With the second hand, he held the ink stone and then rubbed the brush on it.
Taking the qi as the ink, and the air as the paper, he let the brush flow in broad strokes, completing a talisman.
It was none other than the Diamond Mountain Talisman!
