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Chapter 213 – A Big Change
🕑 Added 2025-03-11 03:08:58 +0000 UTCAfter Benton left the Alchemy Pavilion, he spent most of the rest of the day working on designs for his grand formation that would protect the sect from all enemies. Obviously, those plans couldn’t be implemented for another almost two weeks, when the wall was completed and installed, but he wanted to be ready for when he could start creating the sect’s main defense.
Inscribing an array that created a shield to protect against one threat, be it a beast or qi or a cultivator or whatever, was relatively simple for an expert with the knowledge the System had granted him. Protecting against two threats, however, didn’t mean simply creating two separate arrays. It was almost impossible to get two shields to overlap without interfering with each other.
Well, it was possible to separate the shields by enough physical distance to avoid such interference, but any visitors with any degree of expertise would think him a complete amateur if he solved the conflict between the shields in that manner. Real Formations Masters combined all the functions of a shield into a single array.
But it wasn’t a point of pride that made him want to do it the proper way.
Well, it wasn’t just a point of pride.
The correct method provided distinct advantages in both efficiency and strength. A well-made formation that incorporated multiple shield types used qi more efficiently for a couple of reasons. One, each shield consumed a small amount of qi in order to check for a potential attack. Multiple shields meant multiple detection pulses.
Of course, eliminating that duplication resulted in only a minor increase in efficiency. The second reason was much more important—a single large conduit served all the shields at once. If he were creating formations the easy way, say he wanted one shield to protect against beasts and another to protect against qi, he’d need two conduits. To feed ten thousand qi per second into each shield, he’d need to be able to supply that rate to each conduit, meaning he’d need to supply a total of twenty thousand qi per second.
Obviously, in that case, only one of the shields would be attacked at a time as the other shield would let through the force it wasn’t protecting against, but both conduits still had to continuously circulate ten thousand qi per second. And no conduit was one hundred percent efficient. Each of them would lose a tiny amount every second, so having two conduits lost twice as much qi as having one. When you started layering four or five or ten or twenty different shields, that loss grew to be significant.
Consuming less qi was important, of course, but honestly, Benton could supply an awful lot of spirit coins that cost him no more than a bit of his time and the use of his qi pool. Much more important to him was the increase in strength using a single formation provided.
All materials, even a high-quality one like Orange Vigor Spirit Wood, had a maximum amount of qi that could flow through channels inscribed in them at once. If he were to create multiple shield arrays, the maximum qi flow for each, assuming he kept them all equal, was the maximum flow rate for the material divided by the number of arrays.
In contrast, a multi-shield formation’s maximum flow rate equaled the maximum flow rate the material could accommodate.
There was a minor downside to that, of course, in that, if an attack of one type overwhelmed the array, attacks of all types would then be able to penetrate. That downside was balanced against it being much easier to overpower one array out of many.
In Benton’s mind, the correct way was clearly superior.
There were other considerations as well. A cultivator seeing an amateur formation protecting a sect would have a lower opinion of the sect, which would potentially impact relations negatively with that cultivator in multiple ways. Conversely, a cultivator seeing a well-designed and executed array created by a Formations Master might just decide not to attack due to the sheer intimidation factor.
Another huge factor in Benton’s decision was that he planned on creating automated qi turrets. The goal would be to create towers that could provide a burst of weaponized qi strong enough and fast enough to give a Nascent Soul pause. It would be idiotic, obviously, to place those structures outside the protection of the wall. Which meant that the shield had to be designed to let those qi bursts through from the inside. Which would be easy if he wanted his shields to only protect against non-aspected qi in general or if he wanted his bursts to only use a single type of qi.
Neither of those conditions was true. Ideally, he’d have one qi shield for each of the primary qi elements and all the most widely used secondary elements along with one that protected from just qi. And he wanted his turrets to fire whichever qi type would be most effective against the enemy.
Meaning if he were building multiple arrays, he’d have to individually program the gap for the tower bursts into each of them instead of doing it only once for the multi-shield formation.
That aspect of his plan clearly indicated another clear win for the correct way of designing the shield.
Even if none of those positives were present, Benton probably would have gone with the correct method anyway for one simple reason—the thought of inscribing twenty or more arrays into more than a third of a mile of wall was a much more daunting prospect than doing the same for a single array, no matter how complicated.
Which brought him to the huge downside of the correct method—it was complex. Intricate. Difficult. Tricky. Sophisticated. The design process wasn’t, “Okay, let's figure out all the shields and combine them into one formation and I’m done.”
No. The process was iterative, involving much trial and error. Many iterations. Much, much trial and error.
By the end of the day, he was about ready to tear his hair out, and he didn’t feel like he’d made much progress at all.
He did, mainly as a way of taking a break, arrange for a woodworker to create two heating plates, and boy, did they come out looking much better than Benton ever would have been able to produce. The coin slot integrated perfectly with the plate, and the worker had even included a small pullout drawer to store spirit coins. It was a device Benton was proud to bestow upon his disciples.
Both Wan Ai and Bai Xinyi loved them.
Benton also assigned Peng Hanying to the Trials Pagoda, and the little guy had no trouble advancing his weapon technique. Good for him!
The next day saw Benton still working hard on designing his master shielding formation. By noon, he’d actually started making a little progress, mainly due to his Myriad realm Mind Cultivation technique that allowed him to split his focus. Being able to think about two things at once was a huge boon.
Still, though, it was difficult to keep his concentration centered on such a complex subject, so he took frequent breaks. During one of those, he happened to start fooling around with the [Sect] portion of his System menu.
Benton was initially curious about how the System assigned sect members to pavilions, so he did an experiment. He considered one of the newest sect members from the last batch inducted from the village, Shen Rong. The kid was definitely suited for the Martial Pavilion as he liked to fight more than anyone Benton had ever met.
He already knew that, if he told the System to assign Shen Rong to the Martial Pavilion, he would show up on the list under that pavilion. Instead, Benton wanted to see what happened if he messaged one of the pavilion co-leaders, Yang Xiu, to evaluate Shen Rong and extend an invite to join if she found him acceptable.
So Benton sent off a message to Yang Xiu asking her to consider Shen Rong for the position.
As soon as the origami dragon departed, Benton pulled up the Martial Pavilion list to make sure Shen Rong hadn’t automatically been added just from Benton considering him a member.
The kid’s name wasn’t on the list. Something else stood out to Benton when he looked at it, though.
There was a change to the status of his pavilion co-leaders. A big change. The last time he’d examined either of them, they’d been only fifteen years old, not sixteen.
The twins had a birthday!
Comments
BWFoster78 Last
Correct. Thanks! Progression is Small Success -> Large Success -> Mastery
fity0208
And I here I thought it might have been a typo lol makes sense
Onean
It likely references the amount their skill has progressed: SS meaning Small Success and M meaning Mastery.
fity0208
Does that SS mean that xiu is more talented with the spear and ru with the bow?
