The next day, Liu Fen and Ma Rong returned, carrying the items Arthur had requested. At his instruction, they spread the massive canvas across his chamber. Furniture was shifted aside, the floor cleared, and the thick roll of moonsteel-threaded fabric unrolled until it covered nearly every inch of the room.
Arthur reached for his spirit stone pouch, intending to pay them for their labor, but the two guards raised their hands and refused. This time, no matter how he insisted, they would not accept a single spirit stone.
Arthur narrowed his eyes slightly, but said nothing.
Unbeknownst to him, Liu Fen and Ma Rong already harbored dangerous thoughts. If not for the Heavenly Oaths they had taken, binding them to the Alchemy Pavilion, they might have pledged their loyalty to him this very day.
For them, Arthur was the most generous and decisive man they had ever met — yet the irony burned. He was no man at all, but still a boy.
Such was the world of Tianyu. A world where cruelty ran deeper than the marrow of heaven and earth.
When the work was finished, Arthur dismissed them and stood before the inscription canvas. Its surface gleamed with his reflection, as if awaiting the task of bearing the secrets which he would etch. He reached into his sleeve and withdrew an object, his Inscription Etcher.
Arthur could start; the sharp tip could carve runes. But this time, Arthur knew well that runes alone were not enough. Sometimes inscriptions required a medium, a living essence to anchor a specific power, or else they would collapse as nothing but dead lines upon dead canvas. The Heart Withering Venom inside the Venom Thread Seal served that purpose, and now there was a different requirement.
With a practiced twist, he unlocked the lower half of the etcher. A small, hidden mechanism slid open, revealing a hollow reservoir within. Arthur reached for the vial beside him — the blood of the Charred Earth Wyvern. Thick and dark, it seemed to burn faintly even as it sloshed. Removing the stopper, he dipped the etcher's tip into the vial. The tool drank deeply, the reservoir filling with the beast's scorching essence.
"Preparations complete," Arthur murmured.
He inhaled slowly, then strode toward the far corner of the canvas. He bent down and pressed the etcher's blood-soaked tip to the fabric. The first stroke was long, deliberate, and curved into a perfect arc. From there, the formation began to take shape.
At the outer edge, Arthur traced many rings of runes. There were a hundred evenly spaced depressions carved into place. Each depression was for a stone slot. The number itself was bold, audacious. For most inscriptionists, ten or twenty slots were already courting disaster. Arthur, however, drew without hesitation.
Inside that outer ring, his hand shifted into a swifter, more intricate rhythm. He began weaving the flow channels, dozens upon dozens of fine lines connecting every stone slot to the heart of the formation. These rune paths were the veins of the array, meant to guide rivers of Qi from the stones without distortion or overflow. Arthur knew well that the result would be catastrophic if even one channel was imbalanced. An unstable line could burst, sending raw Qi surging in all directions, incinerating the cultivator at the center before they had a chance to scream.
But Arthur's hand did not tremble. He had carved the Venom Thread Seal. It required etching many hair-thin rune balances. Compared to that torment, balancing these channels was almost soothing. His wrist moved as if following decades of memories.
At the very center, he carved the Core Seat. A complex weave of binding sigils shaped like an overlapping lotus. It was here that the cultivator would sit, at the eye of the storm, with rivers of Qi spiraling inward. The core runes served as anchors, forcefully binding the incoming energy into the cultivator's meridians, making what was normally impossible… possible.
Zi Yan came to his door at midday, her soft voice carrying through the wood.
"Young Master, it is time for lunch."
Arthur's response was brief. "Tell my parents I am studying a recipe. I will not leave my chamber until I finish."
Again at nightfall, she knocked. "Dinner, Young Master."
"Not today. Leave it."
For hours he worked, sweat rolling down his temples, breath measured, body aching from crouching. Whenever a bead threatened to drop, Arthur would catch it with his
sleeve; he would not allow a single imperfection to taint this design.
Finally, after twelve shichens, he finished the formation.
There was one final step left.
He pressed his hand against the edge of the array and slowly infused a trickle of Qi.
The reaction was immediate.
A violent pull surged through the canvas, the lines devouring his energy instantly. Arthur's body trembled as the array tried to suck him dry. His eyes flashed, and with a sharp breath, he severed the flow.
The formation quieted, its bloody strokes now hardened into permanence, sealed by the sacrifice of both beast and cultivator.
The lines he carved glowed a dark crimson, pulsating faintly as though alive.
There was a reason he had demanded this blood.
Inscriptions of this magnitude required a medium to carry the flow of energy; different inks or beast blood had various uses, and Dragon blood was supreme in its capability to channel Qi with near-perfect efficiency. But dragons did not exist in Tianyu — or at least, none had been recorded in a thousand centuries. Wyverns were the closest kin. Their blood retained a fragment of that draconic property, allowing Qi to be conducted. This particular wyvern blood yielded an efficiency of about sixty percent.
It was far from perfect… yet still, what the formation would allow was leagues above anything ordinary cultivators could dream of.
Arthur sat back and exhaled. Every muscle in him trembled. Before him lay his masterpiece. If anyone knew what it was, that alone would put Arthur's life in danger.
A spirit stone was nothing more than an empty vessel filled with the universal Qi that cultivators themselves infused into it. For all their lives, normal cultivators believed spirit stones to be vessels of Qi that could be drawn upon in cultivation. A Whiteflare Bloom Stone contained the Universal Qi of the Whiteflare Bloom realm individuals. But if so, why could a lower realm cultivator not simply use these stones to vault into power?
Because the body had its limits. Meridians, dantian, energy centers, all were shaped by one's cultivation base. To draw from a higher realm's stones was to invite death, as uncontrolled Qi tore through channels unfit to contain it.
So, most cultivators used it as something with monetary value. If they wanted to cultivate, they could exchange it for the Spirit stone of their level.
Usually, that is the case.
Unless one was an inscriptionist who could cheat heaven itself.
Arthur had just crafted that very cheat. The formation in front of him was called a Spirit-Blood Convergence Array. An inscription that would allow him to stabilize, channel, and harness the energy of stones beyond his realm. The material he used for the formation was not only capable of letting him channel power from Whiteflare Bloom Stones efficiently, but he could also use Azure Corona Realm Stones if he had them on him.
He brushed his fingers along the outer ring, a faint smile touching his lips.
"This much is enough," he whispered. "Uncle… your pill will not fail."
His masterpiece was complete.