134 Parallel Arts

A complex combat formation lit up in front of Cha Ming, an array of green complementing an array of red. It conjured a living green flame that sought to consume and grow. This was a new type of formation to Cha Ming, one that he'd learned out of necessity. Learning formations was draining his ample coffers much more quickly than he found comfortable. He simply couldn't afford an extra set or two of sigil focuses, though this didn't really matter because no one would sell them to him. The only solution was to use two-element formations.

They had their advantages and disadvantages, of course. A Living Flame Combat Formation could not be countered with water or metal, since water fed the flame and metal was weakened by it. The downside was that it became somewhat vulnerable to flame, and its effectiveness against metal was decreased. Earth, however, could no longer absorb the heat that shattered through it using the wood element, so the flame was no longer at half strength but rather fifty percent more effective than a neutral formation. Everything was balanced.

Cha Ming withdrew the formation as quickly as he had formed it. In order to finance his increasing collection of formation flags and formation crystals, he had started painting talismans again. He was pleased to discover that the occupations were complementary. What would have taken a month before now took less than a week to learn, so Cha Ming was quickly able to paint lesser-grade talismans on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the amount of emotional depth he could infuse into his talismans increased with his qi capacity. His poetic talismans were now mid-grade ones. In addition, he was surprised to discover that any he had created previously could be augmented a single grade. They were unlike any other talisman he had ever seen. They grew with him.

Cha Ming's soul developed as he studied Jun Xiezi's painting. His knowledge of dual-element combat formations and both single- and dual-element standard formations grew exponentially. He started to sell lesser-grade talismans through the Alabaster Group to vetted buyers, funding his increasingly large collection of formation flags and formation stones.

One day as he was meditating, he recalled his first excursion outside the city. A small vial appeared in his hand with but a thought. It contained the golden liquid that resonated with the Clear Sky Brush. The resonating feeling appeared once more as he withdrew the vial.

What use could you have? he thought. People sometimes use evanescence to increase talisman grades, but the cost to benefit ratio is atrocious.

Sighing, he uncorked the cap and sucked it into the Clear Sky Brush. The brush passed emotions on to Cha Ming—pleasure and satisfaction. He sent his awareness into the Clear Sky Space and noticed that one-tenth of a jin evaporated into nothing. One-ninth, however, was deposited into its own small pool beside the pool of liquified elemental essence.

Things didn't stop there. Out of nowhere, a small channel appeared in the liquified elemental essence lake, leading it to the small pool of gold evanescence. Cha Ming didn't stop it, figuring that there must be a reason for this behavior.

Cha Ming looked on as the pool of evanescence diluted again and again. A ninth of a jin of evanescence was diluted into one hundred, then a thousand, then nine thousand jin of liquified elemental essence. The normally blue liquid was now light gold in color.

Is it just normal ink? he thought, summoning the light gold liquid to his brush. He infused gold qi into it and guided it with spiritual force. He tried it on a least-grade talisman. Unfortunately, something went wrong, and the talisman crumbled into nothing.

The ink is very different, he thought. It's like it has a completely different nature, and it's not compatible with my current painting technique. Then it dawned on him. He recalled the book he had studied previously, Five-Element Talisman Artistry—A Primer.

That's right, he thought. The light gold ink seems more aligned with nature. If that's the case, I should use a technique that's more in line with nature as well.

Cha Ming tried again. This time, instead of light slashes, he made bold, incisive strokes. At the same time, they were soft and malleable. It was a mystical brush technique, one that Cha Ming had greatly admired when he first read about it.

One by one, the brushstrokes laid runes and lines down onto the sheet of paper. It wasn't long before the paper turned light gold. Amazed at the success, he tried ten more times. One success piled up after another. Intrigued by this result, he moved onto a lesser-grade talisman of gold alignment. Here too, he met with great success. He didn't fail a single time as long as he utilized the Five-Element Talisman Artistry method, but he would invariably fail miserably if he used his previous method.

In fact, this familiar feeling reminded Cha Ming of formations. Formations naturally stabilized together because they were in harmony, both with themselves and with heaven and earth. His previous talismans had not been made using proper materials and the proper form, so they felt unnatural. Now that he had corrected his mistake, his talismans were automatically coming together without much strain on his part.

This was great news for the current Cha Ming, since he was low on funds. One more day generated enough income to buy the next set of evanescence. He returned to the Talisman Artist Guild and sold the talismans at nine-tenths their face value, a privilege that only master artists enjoyed. After eight more days, he had completed the cycle and purchased one jin of each element. He had even made a small profit.

The only thing that concerned Cha Ming now was how to remedy his problem with combat formations since he couldn't purchase more sigil focuses. That and stabilizing his cultivation. He could get the pills whenever he wanted, since his regular work with Mo Tianshen was proceeding smoothly, and the experiments were promising. Over the course of the past month, they had narrowed down the number of powder compounds to five and the number of rune materials to ten. The remaining experiments revolved around optimizing rune structure, dosages, and powder balance.

How to optimize my base sigils, Cha Ming thought. Sigil focuses were reusable, but he had tried to stick two different elements into a single sigil focus in the past. The results had been disastrous.

All I can do is upgrade them for the time being.

Unlike his foundation-establishment pillars, which only contained the barest stable sigil for each element, he could continue building onto the foundation of his sigil focuses. In fact, he didn't even have to completely reprogram the focus. Withdrawing one from the rosary on his wrist, he made a gesture that ripped out the existing sigil base. The multiple characters imbued inside the malleable blob remained, and they were still linked to the base sigil. Cha Ming opened his mind's eye as he used his newfound comprehension in talisman artistry to imagine the remaining structure. The outline of the full sigil of water became clear to him.

Cha Ming breathed deeply and summoned the dark-blue ink that had appeared when he mixed water evanescence with liquified elemental essence. His strokes were fluid but turbulent, showing resistance and momentum simultaneously. It wasn't long before the perfect water sigil snapped into place. After sending it back into the sigil focus, its effectiveness had increased by thirty percent. Further, retracting energy from the sigil focus led to a very minor loss in qi. Only a single point out of one hundred was lost. Having met with success, he repeated the same process for all hundred and eight sigils.

All in all, it was a very eventful week and a half. He had made great progress in terms of talisman arts, sigils, and formations. All he was missing now was time. And a solution to his combat-formation problem.

***

Boom.

Cha Ming was thrown back into a wall. For the twentieth time today, he had lost his formation battles against Lu Tianhao. "Let's stop here," the white-haired man said. "Do you know why you keep losing?"

"Because of the combat sigils," Cha Ming said.

"That's right," Lu Tianhao said. "While the dual-element formations have their advantages, it's simply impossible to fight me adequately with them. They aren't strong enough to take advantages of those instances where double effectiveness is desired instead of fifty percent greater. You've capped the power of your formations."

Cha Ming knew he was right, but he was helpless. "If I could get additional sigil focuses, I would. However, the embargo by the Wang family caught me where I'm weakest. I can buy formation flags just fine, but procuring focuses would take a three-week journey to another kingdom."

"It's only three weeks," Lu Tianhao said.

"To you it's only three weeks, but I have less than six weeks left," Cha Ming said. "I just don't have the time or the funds. I'm better off cultivating and learning more lesser-grade formations. Maybe I'll be able to scrounge enough funds to make more formation flags at the mid-grade level."

Lu Tianhao sighed. "I have a spare set of combat sigils, but you can't even use them. And I can't send someone in the Alabaster Group to purchase them on your behalf, because all of us have been embargoed."

"Sorry," Cha Ming said sheepishly.

"They'll get what's coming to them, don't you worry about that," Lu Tianhao replied. A cold gleam appeared in his eyes. "If I hadn't transcended, this would already be resolved. I absolutely hate it when people make good men suffer for the sake of petty political squabbles."

"I'll figure something out," Cha Ming said.

***

That night, Cha Ming sat on the cold stone floor of a practice room. It was a durable one, as Cha Ming wasn't sure what would happen when he tried his crazy idea. It would stretch the very limits of his capabilities. He summoned a water sigil like before, separating the sigil from the focus. It was in its perfect, upgraded form.

Instead of painting directly on it, he started creating another sigil. This time, he painted the full form of the wood sigil. Once this was complete, he followed up with the fire sigil, the earth sigil, and the gold sigil. All five floated before him in a neat circle. After resting, he continued by drawing the outer ring and inner star. He did this with pure liquified elemental essence, untainted by any elements. He didn't even use creation or destruction qi, as neither could be imbued into the liquified elemental essence.

The sigils snapped together into a stable formation once the last line was drawn. The liquified elemental essence turned white and black.

"Excellent," Cha Ming whispered. "Now fuse!" He motioned for the mutable sigil focus to combine with the five-sigil ring. Its liquidlike form began encapsulating the symbols, incorporating a quarter, then one half of it. But that was all.

Cha Ming frowned. Is it too large to fit into the sigil focus? Using his half-step resplendent soul, he began compressing the sigil. It shrunk by twenty percent, allowing the blob to incorporate slightly more of the combined matrix. A little more.

The formation began to shiver slightly as he compressed it further. The instability grew significantly, but the volume integrated into the blob only increased slightly.

Just a little more, he thought. He pressed the formation further and heard a loud snap. Suddenly, great destructive power rampaged through the room. Even the five sigils that made the formation were disrupted, resulting in an explosion of all five elements. Cha Ming quickly slapped an ice shield talisman on himself and protected his vitals with his qi.

The smoke cleared, and Cha Ming discovered that, aside from slight damage to his body, nothing else had happened. The room was very durable. What left him most surprised was that the sigil focus was unharmed save for the loss of the many runes that swam within it. It was now pure and unaligned.

The result, while devastating, was quite encouraging to Cha Ming. Although he had lost some elemental essence and a bit of time, he had proven that it was possible to link the sigils together, much like the foundation-establishment matrix in his dantian. Whether or not he could compress them enough was a different matter.

Perhaps it's a matter of luck.

Over the next week, there were many explosions in that same practice room. But there were no successes, only failures.

***

The deadline was approaching, and Cha Ming was beyond stressed. He had wasted an entire week. He would have been better off traveling to another kingdom, politics be damned.

Naturally, he decided to visit the art gallery for inspiration. The last time he had visited, he met Jun Xiezi, who had resolved his problem.

Who knows, Cha Ming thought. Maybe I'll meet another mystical character who can help me.

Instead of looking through paintings, Cha Ming decided to look at sculptures. He had always admired sculptors. The precision and the visualization in their work was mind-boggling. He had always wondered how someone could lay eyes on a piece of marble and say: This is definitely a man and a woman frolicking in the wilderness.

There were nude statues and clothed statues, statues of landscapes and statues of cities. Like the art gallery before, he started by looking at amateur works and proceeded to look at the works of great artists. There was something to appreciate in every piece.

After spending the whole day in the main gallery, he stopped by the premium sculpture exhibition. He walked in, and to his surprise, he saw Jun Xiezi once more. No one else was there, so he cracked a joke. "I don't suppose you sculpted this one as well?"

"Cha Ming?" Jun Xiezi said. "Gods no. It's hard enough to push your limits as a painter. How could I possibly think of taking up another equally difficult art form?"

"Equally difficult?" Cha Ming said. "But in art, there is so much depth of color. It is something statues can't hope to achieve."

"But what they lose in color, sculptures make up in their three-dimensional shape," Jun Xiezi replied. "Just think about it. Could you possibly imagine creating such a vivid sculpture?" he said, motioning to the large exposition in front of them. It was a single giant sculpture made of marble. There were twelve characters in the sculpture, all equally flawless and expressive.

"The hardest thing about sculpting," Jun Xiezi said, "is that you need to work with the material you're given. You can't just take a big block of marble and do whatever you like with it. A single wrong move and you could shatter the piece in half. You need to work with its nature, drawing out its potential into a sort of compromise between your will and the stone's. When I paint, I don't need to worry about all this."

Cha Ming nodded. "You mentioned before that you go look at paintings to relax. Why do you come look at sculptures?"

"For inspiration," Jun Xiezi replied. "Sometimes when you paint, you imitate three dimensions using two dimensions, shading, and color. It's very difficult, and sometimes looking at something in the proper three dimensions can help. I mean, look at this." He waved at the sculpture. "You have twelve people, but they aren't standing beside each other. Some are leaning over each other, while others are sleeping on one another. That lady there is seated on her husband while holding a baby. It's not just a matter of fitting twelve people together; it's a matter of meshing them together in a way that works for everyone while still maintaining the nature of the marble. It's a fascinating piece of work."

"You see here," Jun Xiezi started as he looked behind him. But Cha Ming had already disappeared. He had gotten the inspiration he needed, and he didn't want to let it slip through his fingers.