187 Bargain (2/2)

”Lead my guests to my manor. If anything is to happen to them, I will eradicate everyone in the entire Black Iron Fortress as a tribute to their souls, innocent or not!” Wan Qiang warned the servant, but his words were mainly directed at the elders.

What they heard made their faces twitch, and they did not know exactly how to react, but the threat was very effective. None of them dared to move even an inch.

Like that, the group settled into Wan Qiang's manor. Although they had a room each, all next to one another, they gathered in Xue Wei's room to discuss what had happened.

”It is indeed odd,” Wang Xiaoyun said with a frown on her face. ”That man has absolutely no reason to treat you the way he does, but he still acts as if you were his own son or disciple. He is even willing to massacre a whole town to keep us safe, or rather, you, Wei.”

”I told you from the start that he seems to have some sort of goodwill towards me, but I am rather uncomfortable because of this,” Xue Wei admitted. ”I don't know what he wants from me, but an expert of his strength cannot simply accept me for who I am when he does not know me. Although we are to stay here for a week, we will leave as soon as the week is over.”

”It is not as bad as you might think,” Bai Tianyi suddenly said from the sideline. ”I would suggest you spend this time creating some formations. We can sell some of the formations on our way towards the center of the continent, and others we can use when we encounter trouble. Formations have always sold well. Even if their price is not outstanding, they could always bring in some money.”

”That sounds good!” Xue Wei instantly agreed. He knew that although they had some wealth now thanks to the tournament and the ring he had looted from the Moon Prince, he had to provide for four people and their cultivation. This was truly a bottomless pit that he had to fill.

Xue Wei instantly sat down and scoured his memories for any worthwhile formations. He finally decided on offensive formations that could be used in battles.

He scribbled them down on formation paper. He had found a lot of paper made especially for formations in the Moon Prince's storage ring. He began to inscribe his spiritual energy onto the papers.

Formations did not require any sort of materials. They could be inscribed on everything, but usually, for offensive formations, the things that they were inscribed on would break after the formation had been used.

Since this was the case, one had to be careful with what they inscribed the formation on. They also had to ensure that the surface was large enough to contain the entire formation.

Every formation was an entangled mess of runes that entwined into one another and looked like snakes and mazes.

Each and every rune was imbued with spiritual energy, and as long as someone had enough spiritual energy, they could create formations. However, the formations were in no way easy to make.

Xue Wei soon found that he could quite easily make the Spiritual Energy Bombs, so he quit after counting fifty. Fifty was without a doubt a good amount, and he did not think he would need more than that.

After that, he began inscribing the Paralyzing Formation, a formation that when activated with Qi would stun one's target for a moment. However, in a life-and-death battle, a moment could easily be the difference between winning and losing.

When he began inscribing this formation, Xue Wei was leisurely and did not think it would become too much of an issue. Just as he thought it was going too well, things took a turn for the worse. As he inscribed the fifth rune, he found that his spiritual energy was being drained at a rapid speed.

He managed to get halfway through the formation when he realized that all his Spiritual Energy had been drained. The formation was now useless as only half of it had been inscribed, and there was no 'finishing it later' when it came to formations.

Xue Wei finally learned that although he could handle the Spiritual Energy Bomb easily, the other formations were not as easy. He sat down, closed his eyes, and began to rest his mind, replenishing his spiritual energy.

After an hour, he had recovered his spiritual energy. He began inscribing the Paralyzation Formation on a piece of formation paper again.

Formation paper was a bit thicker than normal paper and it was yellow. It resembled a paper talisman in many ways. However, instead of being rectangular, the formation papers were square or round depending on the kind of formation that was placed upon it.

Seeing that Xue Wei had focused fully on the formations, Wang Xiaoyun, Hei Gou, and Bai Tianyi returned to their own rooms and tended to their own devices.

They could not waste any time whatsoever. All of them understood that they were from the outskirts of the continent. Even if they were considered geniuses there, they knew that the geniuses from the outskirts were as common as stars in the sky at the center of the continent. They were nothing special, so they would only suffer terribly later on if they slacked now.

While Xue Wei had fully diverted his focus to the inscriptions he was making, his body continued to cultivate by itself, refining the heaven-and-earth essence into Qi. The cumulative effect caused his control over his spiritual energy to increase rapidly.

Not only was his control increasing, the amount of spiritual energy he could command was also increasing. However, he had not had his breakthrough yet, but he had an idea that when he did, he would be able to gain strength like nothing he had wielded before.