Spitting
The gate were formed by two halves. To each of these halves there were three "wells" each, and in the middle where both gate halves combined, there were three more.
Complex geometry made up the embroidered patterns between these wells and they looked like quite beautifully designed and structured artwork. Without knowing anything else about this Clan or Sect, their architecture alone was quite beautiful. Or at the very least, that was what others would see.
For Ryu, he saw something entirely different. The complex geometry wasn't just a beautiful design, it was a formation, an incomplete formation, at that. Opening the gates required sliding the formation into place and connected the nine "wells" which were really just formation cores.
'Is this a formation Sect, then? I can't imagine that a non-formation Sect would bother to care about this so much. But even so, that doesn't explain why this gate is closed…'