58 Formation

A week passed, every two days Jim had been creating a new duplicate. Now with five Jims in his room, it was starting to get a little crowded. Working simultaneously on Formations, Pill Refining, Magic Circles, and Cultivation Techniques, Jim was focused entirely on research.

Jim's understanding of formations had increased greatly. 'Yeah, this should work.' Jim had been particularly studying formations with sealing effects. He hadn't been able to do anything about that hole leading to the void before. With the void treader having appeared before the hole opened, Jim figured these incidents wouldn't stop here. He couldn't really punch a hole to death after all.

During his practice, Jim had created a rather good Qi Gathering Formation and set it up to cover the house. Now with 30x the Qi density, Xia walked around the house looking constantly delighted. She had broken through the bottleneck she had faced for years.

His Pill Refining on the other hand wasn't going well, following the recipes stored in his mind was easy, but Jim was attempting to create a new pill. There was a beauty pill in his memory, but using it required an already strong body, a non-cultivator taking one of these pills would suffer extreme organ damage.

Jim was met with repeated failures while trying to make a gentler beauty pill, it always ended up completely ineffective or containing far too much energy. 'I don't think this will work...I need different materials.' Jim decided to head back to Bahn Tai, extremely expensive spirit herbs could be found growing all over the place while just walking around.

Xia was in the dining room, biting into a hamburger.

Xia: "This is really good! We don't have cuisine like this where I come from."

Olivia: "I'm glad you like it."

Jim: "Xia, we need to talk after you finish eating."

With her mouth stuffed and sauce on her face, Xia gave a muffled response. A couple minutes later, Xia sat ready to talk.

Jim: "What can you tell me about the areas around where we first met?"

Xia: "Hmm, there are three sects within short distance. Evil Frost Sect, Great Rock Sect, and Shining Moon Sect. There's a scattering of villages around the area too."

Jim: "What about Flowing Cloud Sect?"

Xia: "Flowing Cloud Sect? You didn't hear?"

Jim: "Hear what?"

Xia: "It was destroyed about a month ago. A fierce beast suddenly invaded and went on a rampage, nearly all of the disciples were killed. The stronger members of the sect slew the beast, but the sect's numbers were too low afterwards. They chose to disband before an invasion from another sect wiped them out."

Jim: "Something like that really happened...?"

Jim didn't really have fond memories of the sect, he was only there for about a day and nobody there really made an impression on him. But it was still the first cultivation sect he had ever visited, it was shocking that the place was gone now.

'Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.'

Jim: "Which of the three is the strongest?"

Xia: "I would say Evil Frost Sect, their sect head is at Middle Heavenly King realm. The other two only have Peak Sages. Evil Frost Sect doesn't move freely against them, though, as Great Rock and Shining Moon will temporarily join hands to fend off Evil Frost. Flowing Cloud generally kept out of the disputes between the three, but the region has been somewhat unstable with all three trying to claim lands that formally belonged to Flowing Cloud."

'Sixth and Seventh Realms, huh? Might be best not to confront them. Guess I should reach Fifth Realm before I head over.'

Olivia brought over a couple more hamburgers, Xia and Jim savored the meal together. Jim headed back to his room and called Sam.

Sam: "What is it? I'm busy."

Jim: "I think I've got a way to deal with that hole from before."

Sam: "Really? Hmm...Alright, I'll tell the observation team you're coming. Call me back with the results."

Jim: "Got it, I'll head over in about an hour."

After hanging up, Jim recalled the terrain of the site and began carving formation plates. 'Alright, this will do.' Teleporting over, Jim greeted the observation team and explained his plan.

Placing the 9 formation plates in a circle around the hole, Jim activated them simultaneously. A blue light stream of light began shining from each plate, stretching out and meeting with the lights from the other plates. After the lights met, they spread out and became a dome, forming over the hole.

Nodding at his work, Jim was reasonably sure that a void treader wouldn't be able to break through, judging by the strength of the last one. Heading back, Jim informed Sam of the success. The next day, Jim condensed a fifth duplicate, he took a quick nap to restore his qi, then began circulating Eternal Heavenly Art. His duplicates resumed researching while the main body cultivated.

The pounding his body took continued, but Jim was focused on his dantian. Although it seemed calm from the outside, the Qi within was surging, turbulent. Eventually, the Qi began condensing together into a sphere. The sphere took on a golden color and solidified, taking its place floating between his spirit roots. 'That's it, Golden Core Realm.'

Still with plenty of Qi remaining, Jim continued his cultivation. Middle Golden Core Realm, Late Golden Core Realm, Peak Golden Core Realm. Jim felt his Qi running low, so he stopped circulating. Five days had passed, Jim 3 had made a breakthrough in understanding Golden Sura Healing.

The patterns which appeared while using it could be utilized on formation plates, slow progress was made on understanding the exact usage of each pattern.

Jim's stomach was killing him, he absorbed the duplicants and teleported to the dining room to eat a large meal. 'Having a servant is so nice.'

While stuffing himself, Jim had the absorbed duplicants begin working together on using detection and parallel processing. He could now keep watch over a rather vast area with perfect clarity, nothing that happened in the city went unnoticed. Jim did feel a little bad at peeping on certain scenes, though.

He made a decision. With Jim's personality, if he was aware of everything, he would run around solving problems all day every day. He had to forcefully cut off his perception and leave things to the professionals.

After getting some sleep to restore his Qi, a call came in.