Chapter 289: Formation Mod
Wood Xiang Yu stood at the center of his flourishing garden within the spirit vein, looking at his herb collection with a satisfied smile. Business was booming.
Though the herbs in this main garden were now noticeably fewer in number. This was because he had moved all the lower-level herbs (9-7) to the other garden outside the spirit vein. Those relocated plants were still thriving magnificently and could be harvested multiple times throughout the day.
He had assigned the farming students to take care of the external garden, figuring they might even gain valuable insights into farming through hands-on experience. Still, the sheer volume of herbs was overwhelming, and the available students were far too few to handle everything efficiently.
Xiang Yu decided there should be another recruitment event for the secondary professions pavilion. His teacher profession was also steadily improving, so having a few extra students wouldn’t be a big deal. He needed every class to have at least a hundred or so students to truly maximize the pavilion’s potential.
As he was contemplating this, he suddenly felt the spiritual qi concentration in the environment jump, multiplying several times over in mere moments. The sect-wide formations had been successfully upgraded. He smiled with satisfaction, then blew air from his mouth to push away the dense qi that was beginning to accumulate like thick fog around him.
Xiang Yu wondered if, once they reached first grade formations, the entire sect would become a massive dome completely filled with fog made out of pure qi. The thought made him slightly concerned, although the qi in the air wasn’t particularly harmful to people under normal circumstances, in such enormous quantities it might start leading to qi poisoning among the weaker disciples and mortal workers.
But he didn’t want to eliminate the entire formation system as a whole, so he decided to find another method to prevent potential problems. The light clone would work on this.
In the meantime, Wood Xiang Yu decided it was the perfect time to test out his newly upgraded Growth Booster 4.0.
He applied the technique to both the spirit animals and the herbs throughout the garden. As always, he was particularly interested in observing the effects on the various herbs than the spirit animals.
He had acquired quite a substantial amount of fourth grade herbs after the recent resource exchange with the five major sects. He hadn’t kept many of them in storage since he didn’t have any immediate use for them. Instead, he had planted large quantities of them throughout the spirit vein. These herbs now received a hundred percent growth boost from his booster technique.
With the increase in spiritual energy concentration throughout the sect, combined with the recent upgrade of the spirit vein, he could realistically expect these fourth grade herbs to be ready for harvest once every two to three weeks. Though it wasn’t the fastest time, he didn’t mind the wait since he would continue cutting that duration shorter and shorter as he upgraded his farming profession, enhanced the spirit vein further, and installed even more powerful qi gathering formations.
For the fifth grade herbs, they were now receiving a two hundred percent boost and he could expect to harvest them every one or two days.
For the sixth grade herbs, they were now receiving a four hundred percent boost, allowing them to be harvested multiple times throughout the day.
As for the lower-level herbs in the external garden, there was no need to worry about them since they could already be harvested multiple times daily even without the enhanced booster. Still, he would continue applying the booster to them anyway.
...
Light clone Xiang Yu was in deep thought.
Throughout several minutes, he carefully considered multiple approaches to solving the qi problem and their potential consequences.
Finally, he opened his eyes, a satisfied smile spreading across his face. "I’ve figured it out," he thought aloud.
He thought to himself that he absolutely didn’t want to dismantle or weaken the formations. And he didn’t need to...
After extensive deliberation, he had come up with another solution. He was going to create a custom fork of the OG qi gathering formation. This fork would work exactly like the OG qi gathering formation in terms of collecting and concentrating spiritual energy from the surrounding environment.
However, when it came to qi distribution, it would operate differently. Instead of spreading the concentrated energy evenly across the entire area, the modified formation would be directly connected to a network of specialized outlet formations that would act as controlled release points.
The main formation would dump all the gathered spiritual qi through these carefully positioned outlets instead of distributing it freely throughout the sect. These outlet formations would be placed in special locations he had already chosen, and they would be used to create concentrated spirit pools that disciples could access by redeeming their accumulated sect points.
He felt that this solution was quite nice as it would also prevent disciples from simply being lazy and leeching off the qi throughout the sect without contributing any meaningful work or effort to earn such benefits. This merit-based system would encourage greater participation in sect activities and missions.
Still, it probably wouldn’t completely solve the laziness problem since he was planning to leave the existing third grade formation working normally as it was the one without significant risk of qi poisoning.
As for the second grade and higher formations, they were the ones that would use the modified outlet version. Disciples who wanted an extra cultivation boost beyond the base level could redeem their sect points for access to these second grade spirit pools for a limited amount of time. (they could also pay 9.99 a month to gain access to higher level spirit pools and extend the time limit)
Since he did not destroy previous formations when building newer ones, it meant that he could eventually have multiple tiers of spirit pools available - second grade pools, first grade pools, heavenly grade pools, and even immortal grade pools in the future. Each tier would offer progressively more potent qi concentrations for correspondingly higher sect point costs.
Xiang Yu didn’t waste any time implementing this plan. The earth clone and lightning clone immediately got to work on modding the qi gathering formation blueprints and designing the necessary runes to accompany it.
...
Inside the demon sealing tower,
The demon god sat in meditation. The gaping hole that was previously his chest seemed to have completely closed up.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open.
"Hm? That’s strange, I can’t access the demonic energy anymore," he thought as he rose to his feet, his gaze shifting upward to examine the sect-wide formation that surrounded the tower.
He stretched his hand outward, attempting to draw the demonic energy that lay beyond the barrier just like before. But this time, his call went completely unanswered.
"The formation was actually upgraded?" he spoke aloud in shock. "That fast?"
He couldn’t believe it. Although he wasn’t completely awake yet at the time, he distinctly remembered that the third grade formation had just been installed not even a week ago. How could it have possibly been upgraded to second grade so quickly? Did high grade formations start growing on trees over the period he was asleep?
He sighed.
"Well, no matter. I’ve already recovered up to void realm strength. This should be enough to complete the mission and go after that beauty over there."
His expression shifted to a menacing smile as his gaze drifted toward the dark lotus flower that bloomed in the distance.