1126 The Many Formations
Alex looked around in the small room that was somehow being lit up even though there was no source of light. It was as if the walls themselves were emitting lights in small amounts, all of which together became enough to light up the room.
The room consisted of various formation flags laid all around it with a small elevated surface at the center. Alex looked at the number of formation flags and couldn't help but sigh. "I guess you need this many to run something like this tower," he thought.
He walked up slowly so as to not disturb something and arrived next to a formation flag. He looked at it for a moment and was slightly confused.
"Hmm?" he thought and walked over to another one, which also gave him the same result.
"Most of these formation flags are actually just Saint-ranked formations," he said. He had been expecting Immortal ranked formation, but to see that it was actually all Saint ranked, was surprising.
"Or maybe it shouldn't be," Alex thought. He looked around a bit and realized that he had still been making some mistakes in his assumptions about the tower.
The tower wasn't a massive building run by a formation. It was an artifact, and the most common way to add functionalities to an artifact was by using Qi lines.
"There are Qi lines in the walls, not formations," Alex thought. He looked back at the formation flags, "So that means they serve a different purpose from what it was intended for the tower."
He went back to one of the formations and looked at what it did. He noted down the formation patterns and found the other formation flags of the same formation. Once he was done noting down all the patterns, he drew a formation on a piece of paper and tried to figure out what it did.
There were between 4 and 6 base formations in each one of these Saint-ranked formations, so Alex had to find which of the base formations they were. Sometimes this task was easy, but most of the other times it felt impossible because the base formations would overlap each other, making it hard to discern whether there were strokes hidden in other strokes or not.
The first thing Alex did was search for the base formations that connected this formation to the main formation that was most likely outside of this building, possibly in the ground beneath where the Spirit vein was.
Once he was done, he then had to go through other base formation designs that could fit into the entire formation.
At least one good thing about base formations was that there was that one base formation could never be the subset of another base formation.
So Alex didn't have to worry about whether a formation could be this one or that one. He could easily figure it out all.
He worked on it for a few minutes and stopped. "Hmm, so this is the formation that is supplying the tower with constant Qi, huh?" he thought.
Since the tower was an artifact, it was technically supposed to be powered by an Immortal who owned it. However, since there was no one here to control it, the last owner had most likely set up a few formations to help the tower gain Qi from the spirit vein in the secret realm.
Next, Alex looked at another formation.
He took his time and came up with an answer for this one as well. This was a repairing formation that would help the tower repair any problem it came across, such as broken puppets or rooms. It didn't help much but was still better than nothing.
Especially for something that was supposed to be run with Immortal Qi.
He looked at the third formation and after a bit of research realized that it was a formation that blocked people's spiritual senses.
"Oh, this is the one," the thought. "Should I… stop this?"
There were so many people that were staying around on the first floor that would immediately know what was happening down there if he did that.
"No, let's send them all back first," he thought.
He walked over to the next set of formation flags, but along the way, he passed through the elevated floor. He looked at it in passing and stopped in his step when he saw something there.
Embedded onto the floor itself was a small hexagonal wooden plate with something carved onto the top. Alex tried to read what that said, but it didn't look like it was something that was meant to be read.
Given that it was in neither the human nor the demon language, Alex was sure this was just a design choice.
He tried to pick up the wooden plate, and it came off easily. There was a small hole at the top to put a small string through, and that made Alex wonder if this was some sort of necklace.
He tried pouring his Qi into it, but it didn't look like it was an artifact at all.
"Huh?" he thought. He placed it back where it was and continued.
The fourth formation seemed to be the one that was responsible for sending everyone out of this secret realm.
"Alright, let's do that."
He started pouring Qi into the formation and soon enough he felt the power of teleportation take over him. He was sure everyone else was feeling the same as well.
Alex poured out some of his own space aura and fought against the feeling. He continued pouring in the Qi for a while and finally stopped after a while.
The teleportation power disappeared and Alex didn't have to struggle anymore.
"Whisker," he called out.
Whisker came out of his space once again and looked at Alex for instruction. "Can you go up there and check if anyone is still is still in the tower?"
Whisker nodded and flew to the ceiling before diving into the stone. He made his way to the top and arrived on the first floor.
Alex looked through Whisker's eyes and saw that no one was there anymore.
He quickly walked over to the formation that was getting rid of his spiritual sense and knocked it down. As soon as that was down, the suppression of his spiritual sense lifted, and he could see everything with his senses once again.
He teleported out of the room back onto the first floor where he met up with the Spirit again.
"Master White Tiger, you did it!" the spirit said excitedly.
"Yeah, I did," Alex said. "Is everyone gone?"
"I'm not sure," the spirit said. "A few people had entered the rooms that I couldn't see in and haven't come back at all."
"Take Whisker here and make them return then," Alex said. "I need to go search for something."
"Okay," the spirit accepted the task and left with Whisker.
Alex returned back to the base floor where he spread his spiritual sense and started looking around for something.
The last formation in the room turned out to be something that was meant to make the tower inaccessible for a long period of time after it was opened once. It was attached to the formation that sent everyone out, so since Alex had activated that, the other formation had activated as well and no one could enter anymore.
Whisker and the spirit returned with the unfortunate news that the people that had entered had already died. Alex shrugged. He didn't know who they were, so he didn't feel bad at all.
"Are you done, master White Tiger?" the spirit asked.
"Not yet," Alex said with a slight frown on his face. "The formation I'm looking for isn't here. It must be somewhere outside the tower."
"What formation are you looking for, master Whiter Tiger?" the spirit asked.
"The Space stabilizing formation," Alex said.
"I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any such formations," the spirit said. "I barely only know that there are even formations on the base floor."
"Not your fault," Alex said and thought for a bit. "What are the chances that the space outside of this tower is a complete void?"
"You told me it was all void, didn't you?" the spirit asked.
"I did, but it can't all be void," Alex said. "At the very least, there should be some space where the spirit vein is still there, or the formations wouldn't work. There has to be some small bit of space before the void."
"Maybe," the spirit said. "But the space would still all be cracked, given how close they are to most of the rooms on the floor."
"Yes," Alex said. "But I only care about the small space. As long as I can get there and go down to where the formation is, I could find the problem and fix it."
"That's not a bad idea in of itself, but when you add the spatial cracks, there is a high chance you'll die," the spirit said.
"Well, thankfully we have someone here who can't," Alex said. "Whisker, come on. You have more job to do."
Whisker nodded.
"I didn't find any formation that is stopping you from entering. Are you sure you can't come along?" Alex asked.
The spirit tried and shook its head. "I can't."
"Well, we'll see more about it later then," Alex said and teleported down to the base floor again.
He used his spiritual sense, but of course, it couldn't penetrate the walls. Thankfully, Whisker could pass through it with his technique.
"Alright, go straight below us," Alex said. "I will guide you each step of the way."
