“What are you doing?” Lily eeped in surprise as she heard the soft thump of the inner disciple landing behind her. “Why’d you… did you rip up Zhihu’s notebook?” Oh. Oh, right— that wasn’t her notebook. Her eyes widened in horrified realization as she realized all the paper she’d torn out for talismans… oh no.

Compared to just an hour earlier, the island had been transformed. Not that it’d all that special in the first place— pretty much just a rock out on the waters with some hardy grass on it, but still! It hadn’t taken much effort to make a talisman that could cut down the grass and flatten the earth, though it had been considerably trying to create an array of talismans to bake the earth of her new disk-shaped yard and make it more than just a circle of denuded earth.

The inner disciple strode across the length of the circle, carefully, almost painstakingly examining each and every aspect of it, from the hardened earth to the sole, gnarled tree that’d forced her to built it slightly off the true center of the island, to all the small paper talismans she’d started to pin down across the disk for her current project, transmuting the earth to stone.

After a second, he gently knelt down beside one running a finger across it— but, thankfully, knowing better than to try and move it. “Did you… use a ballpoint pen to draw talismans?

” Yeah, that was pretty hard, but with a judicious use of supporting runes and the occasional kludged-together binding function, ultimately doable. “I really can’t believe Zhihu was lucky enough to…” he sighed, the rest of his sentence caught by the lake winds and blown away. “Frankly, I don’t know what this is doing, so I’m just going to put my stuff… over there.”

With a clank, a whole pile of stuff settled down in the grass off to the side. The huge cauldron was the most obvious of the implements— a giant cauldron wrought of some sort of obviously spiritual steel, given that it looked almost like some strange mix between iron and flesh. How very on brand for a cultivator of the Bloody Saffron Sect… though, it was not the only implement Suli had brought, not even close— he’d stuffed the cauldron full of different things, measuring devices and knives and cutting boards and smaller vessels, jade boxes and… son on and so forth. That wasn’t even to mention the massive cabinetand table he’d brought, standing slightly askew on the soft earth beside the cauldron and filled with so many tiny cubbies and marked drawers… the sheer fortune of ingredients represented by that chest almost made her lightheaded.

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She focused back on her talismans. That, at least, was something she knew she could do… “I plan on transforming the surface of the earth into stone.”

“Ah… interesting.” Then he jumped into the air, some strange technique pulling higher with a massive gust of wind— setting him afloat for a good half minute before he gently descended to land gracefully on the earth once more. “Very interesting. I see the layout of it now, but it’s unlike any transmutation formation I’ve ever seen before.”

“You’ve seen transmutation formations?”

He snorted, and nodded. “Of course. If it exists, there’s a good chance I’ve seen it sometime in the Bloody Saffron Sect. We are, after all, the greatest center of cultivation on Ca Cao.” There was a distinct pride to his voice at that— and why wouldn’t there be? Everyone knew it, and it was still impressive.

They used their heaven-defying powers so casually… and to think, Foundation Establishment wasn’t even close to the upper echelons of power. She frowned, carefully refocusing on the talisman in front of her just long enough to complete its final few strokes. That had been the last of them… “Why’s it so different?” She didn’t even wait for a response, weaving through the invisible lines of power and making her way to the final emplacement— to start the transmutation. A first step.

“It’s too… mundane. You have to understand that formations are, as with many aspects of cultivation, first and foremost a combat art. Even I have the strength of cultivation to fight amongst the very peak of Foundation Establishment cultivators, despite receiving my promotion to inner disciple through my alchemy skill more than anything…” he was silent for a long moment, gathering his thoughts before he continued. “What I meant was… not many would make an eighty-one point transmutation to turn earth to stone.”

“Why not? It’s simple.”

“Simple, she says…” he chuckled, watching intently as she placed the final talisman, and said nothing further. Sure, it was inefficient, but so it went when she had only an hour to think up a design on the fly. It was never going to be a masterwork…

She got the impression, for whatever reason, that she wasn’t really picking up what Suli was putting down. Whatever.