Ben Mason PoV
After the concert, I finally managed to separate from my sister. She'd spent the entire walk back to the mansion gushing about Emma Sullivan, analyzing every word of their conversation like some kind of sacred text. By the time I'd escaped to my room, my ears were ringing worse than they had during the actual performance.
I stood in the quiet of my bedroom, pulling out my identity token and staring at the new contact entry. Emma Sullivan. An actual celebrity had given me her information because my sister had bulldozed through every social boundary known to mankind.
'This is never going to go anywhere,' I thought, tucking the token away. 'She was just being polite because Christine put her on the spot.'
I teleported to the Core Region, materializing in the grand hall of my palace. The spiritual energy here wrapped around me like a warm blanket, denser than anywhere else in the world bead. Now that I'd finally reached Meridian Opening first layer, it was time to open the can of worms that was Alchemy.
I was really excited. Until I dug into Jihasti's memories.
The problem revealed itself immediately as I sorted through the knowledge. Pretty much all Alchemy requires a proper Cauldron. There were a few great cauldrons in my vault, but none of which I could use at my low cultivation level. The weakest one required Core Formation Realm just to activate its basic functions. The others demanded even higher realms, their intricate formations designed for immortal-level energy manipulation.
This basically meant before I could use Alchemy, I needed to learn Artifact Refining to create my own low quality spiritual cauldron.
Fine. I shifted my focus to Artifact Refining memories, expecting to find a straightforward path forward.
Then I ran into another hitch.
Just about all artifacts required inscriptions to be carved into them. Cauldron's were no exception. The metal work itself was only half the battle. Without proper inscriptions to direct energy flow, control temperature, and contain reactions, a cauldron was just an expensive metal box.
'Seriously?' I slumped against one of the crystal pillars in my palace. 'How many prerequisite skills do I need just to make one pill?'
I looked into the memories for inscriptions and finally, it was something I could learn right now.
Inscriptions were like a programming language that told the artifact how it worked. More specifically, they consisted of channels carved into the material that directed the flow of vital energy to perform a specific action. The patterns themselves were universal, drawing on fundamental laws of how energy moved and transformed. The easiest way to learn inscription was to carve them directly on crystals. They were the most common medium for inscriptions that were ready made, their natural structure perfectly suited for energy conduction.
I pulled a basic crystal from my storage ring. Just spiritual quartz. Literally just a quartz crystal, except it had been nourished in a spiritual energy rich environment. The piece was about the size of my thumb, clear and flawless, with natural facets that caught the light from my palace's glowing formations.
I sifted through the different inscriptions stored in Jihasti's memory until I found a simple one that merely made the crystal glow when you flowed vital energy into it. The pattern was straightforward, a basic circuit with an input channel, a conversion node, and an output dispersal array. In programming terms, it was the equivalent of a "Hello World" program.
I materialized a small engraving tool from my storage ring, a needle-thin implement with a diamond tip. The tool itself required no special power, just steady hands and patience.
Taking a deep breath, I positioned the crystal on a flat obsidian surface I'd created. This would be my first inscription done by myself, rather than with the Heavenly Dao's guidance.
The first line needed to be exactly point three millimeters deep, running along the crystal's natural grain to avoid fractures.
I pressed the tool against the smooth surface and began to carve.
The diamond tip bit into the crystal with a faint scraping sound. I moved slowly, keeping the pressure even as I followed the pattern burned into my mind from Jihasti's memories. The first channel needed to spiral inward from the edge, creating a funnel effect that would draw in vital energy.
My hand cramped after the first three centimeters. I paused, flexing my fingers. The channel looked clean enough, a hair-thin line that caught the light at a different angle than the rest of the crystal's surface. I resumed carving, working my way toward the center where the conversion node would sit.
The conversion node was the tricky part. It required six intersecting channels that met at precise angles, forming a three-dimensional pattern within the crystal's structure. Each channel had to be carved at a different depth, creating layers that would transform incoming vital energy into light.
I spent twenty minutes on that single node, double-checking each angle against the memory. The channels glittered in the palace light, forming a tiny star-burst pattern at the crystal's heart.
The output dispersal array came last. This part spread across the crystal's outer surface, a web of interconnected channels that would distribute the converted energy evenly. I carved each line with growing confidence, my hand steadying as I fell into the rhythm of the work.
After an hour, I set down the engraving tool and examined my work. The crystal now bore dozens of hair-thin lines, invisible unless you held it at just the right angle. The pattern looked identical to the one in Jihasti's memories.
I channeled a thread of vital energy into the input spiral.
The crystal warmed in my palm. Energy flowed through the carved channels, following the path I'd created. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the conversion node began to glow with a faint blue light.
The glow intensified, growing brighter than it should have. The crystal grew hot. Too hot.
A sharp crack split the air.
The crystal fractured down the middle, two perfect halves falling away from each other. The blue glow vanished instantly as all the vital energy dissipated into the surrounding air. The heat disappeared with it, leaving only two pieces of worthless quartz in my palm.
I stared at the fragments. My first attempt at inscription had lasted all of thirty seconds before catastrophic failure.
'What the hell happened?'
I set the broken pieces on the obsidian surface and leaned closer, examining the carved channels under the palace's bright spiritual lighting. The pattern looked correct at first glance. The spiral input, the conversion node, the dispersal array. All present and accounted for.
But something had gone wrong. Crystals didn't just crack from a trickle of vital energy. The inscription itself must have been flawed.
I picked up one of the halves and tilted it toward the light, studying each carved line with the enhanced vision my cultivation had granted me. The input spiral looked clean. The conversion node's six channels met at the proper angles. The dispersal array spread across the surface in the correct web pattern.
Then I saw it.
A tiny imperfection in one of the conversion node's channels, so small I'd missed it during my initial inspection. The depth varied by maybe a tenth of a millimeter over a two millimeter span. My hand must have wavered during the carving, creating an uneven section that disrupted the energy flow.
I traced the flaw with my fingertip, following the logic of what would happen when vital energy hit that section. Instead of flowing smoothly through the node toward the output array, the energy would encounter resistance. The uneven depth would create turbulence, causing some of the flow to reverse direction.
'A feedback loop.'
The backward-flowing energy would collide with the incoming stream in the input spiral. The two opposing flows would create pressure, generating heat as the vital energy compressed against itself. More energy flowing in, more pressure building, more heat accumulating.
Until the crystal couldn't take it anymore and cracked, releasing all that built-up pressure in one explosive moment.
I set down the broken crystal and pulled another piece of spiritual quartz from my storage ring. This one was slightly larger, giving me more surface area to work with. The clear facets gleamed in the palace light, unmarred and full of potential.
'Second attempt. Pay attention to depth consistency this time.'
I positioned the new crystal on the obsidian surface and picked up the engraving tool. The diamond tip felt familiar now, its weight balanced and precise in my grip. I'd learned from the first failure. This time, I'd move slower through the conversion node, double-checking the depth after every millimeter of progress.
The tool bit into the crystal's surface as I began the input spiral. The scraping sound was almost meditative, a steady rhythm that helped me focus. I kept the pressure even, maintaining the same angle as I worked my way toward the center.
The conversion node loomed ahead. Six channels, precise angles, multiple depths. This was where I'd failed before.
I took a deep breath and started carving, my full attention locked on keeping each stroke consistent.
The second attempt went smoother. I carved each channel of the conversion node with deliberate precision, pausing every few millimeters to check the depth against the pattern in my memory. The diamond tip moved through the crystal with steady pressure, creating clean lines that caught the light at identical angles.
When I finished the dispersal array an hour later, I held up the completed crystal. The web of channels glittered across its surface, forming an intricate pattern that looked far more professional than my first attempt. No visible flaws, no uneven depths that I could detect.
I channeled vital energy into the input spiral.
The crystal warmed in my palm. Energy flowed through the carved channels, following the path toward the conversion node. The node began to glow with soft blue light that spread through the dispersal array in rippling waves. The entire crystal lit up like a tiny star, casting azure shadows across the obsidian surface.
I held it there for a full minute, maintaining the energy flow. The light remained steady, no fluctuations or temperature spikes. The crystal stayed cool to the touch despite the brilliant illumination.
Perfect.
I pulled another piece of spiritual quartz from my storage ring and positioned it on the work surface. The pattern was fresh in my mind now, muscle memory already forming from the successful attempt. I picked up the engraving tool and began carving.
This time took forty minutes. My hand moved with more confidence, following the channels without constant second-guessing. The conversion node came together smoothly, each intersection meeting at the proper angle on the first try. When I tested it, the crystal glowed just as brightly as the previous one.
The fourth attempt took twenty-five minutes.
The fifth, eighteen.
By the tenth crystal, I was carving the complete inscription in under fifteen minutes, my hands moving almost automatically through the familiar motions. Each piece glowed when tested, their light steady and reliable.
I set down the engraving tool and examined the row of glowing crystals lined up on the obsidian surface. Ten perfect light sources, all created in the span of a few hours.
'Without Jihasti's memories, this would have taken months.'
The average person learning inscription started from scratch. They had to discover the proper depths through trial and error, figure out which angles worked and which caused failures, build up the muscle control needed for precise carving. Months of broken crystals and wasted materials before achieving their first successful piece.
I'd skipped all that. Jihasti's memories didn't just give me theoretical knowledge. They contained years of practical experience, thousands of inscriptions carved across centuries of practice. My hands already knew the proper pressure, the correct angles, the feel of a clean channel versus a flawed one. I only needed a little physical practice to translate that stored experience into actual skill.
A question surfaced as I studied the glowing crystals. If inscriptions were what you carved into artifacts, what about array formations? Chinese cultivation novels seemed to use the terms interchangeably, but were they actually the same thing?
I dove into Jihasti's memories, searching for information on arrays.
The answer came quickly. It seemed inscription was the correct term for when you engrave the program into a medium just as I did earlier.
In contrast, a Formation is when you arrange separate materials into a pattern somewhere like on the ground, then channel vital energy in the form of strings that flow between each material to perform similar programs as an inscription. The most notable reason for using a Formation would be to cover a vast area rather than effect a single crystal or artifact.
The more complex Formations will actually use materials with Inscriptions as well. In short, it seems that the Inscription is the foundation while Formations are the architecture built on top.
The word Arrays tends to be used interchangeably between both formations and inscriptions. In general, most people don't understand or want to understand the difference, so "Array" turns out to be the more generalized term used for both.