Chapter 18: Soul Harvest Formation (2)
As Lan Xiaohui draws the formation, by using me as her brush and the forest floor as her paper, my excitement only grows. The prospect of using this formation, not only to feed my hunger, but later to use my [Critical Analysis] ability on will surely prove to be fruitful. There are many things I stand to learn from the flow of Qi, consumption of the soul and the interaction of ambient Qi flow when modified by this array.
Knowledge makes me happy, too. Knowledge, after all, is the foremost tool of becoming useful. Feed a man a fish, or teach him how to fish.
But Lan Xiaohui also surprises me. Her understanding of this Dao is not so shallow as she led me to believe. I only had to explain to her once how deep her strokes need to be, how wide, and how long. After that, she builds the Qi channels almost without requiring my input.
It seems she also understands or perceives, to some extent, the predominant Qi in the environment and acts accordingly to balance the forces.
My input, for the most part, is to tell her how much of each energy each side of the Eight Trigrams needs. And to orient it properly, of course.
But it is not a simple, easy, or quick process. Covering a circle with a radius of 100 meters in Trigrams, arrays and symbols is a lot of work.
My hardness and sharpness makes it easy for her if she has to carve me through stone or wood and the wood here is very tough but there is simply so much work to do.
Perhaps it is also because of her cultivator nature; even so diminished from what her peak once was, she can exert this effort unceasingly. I know she is not indefatigable which only reinforces my belief that she understands how important this task is.
Even though she doesnt understand the true nature of it.
By the time she has completed one half of the grand formation, the sun had already set. Even with only one half of the formation, the Yin energy strongest at night becomes magnitudes more powerful than before.
Perhaps, it occurs to me, it is related to his third eye. From what I remember, I only saw one other monkey with such an eye, but that one did not seem to have the same ability or perhaps it was still too early in its cultivation.
Either way, I am glad that it has turned out this way instead. I cannot with any certainty claim that the monkeys would permit us to draw this formation without interference if they knew our intentions. But I think it is just as likely that they would help us.
After all, they kowtow to me and respect me, as if I am their leader.
Naturally, I do not share such social connection with the monkeys, or acknowledge their hypothetical hierarchy. We are not the same. I cannot be their leader that would require me to be their equal, up to some point. We are not equal.
They are food.
Lan Xiaohui could be their leader. She is closest to them in terms of potential, future, strength and biological function. Which makes this thought of hierarchy all the more confusing. If the monkeys are too below me for me to be their leader, and Lan Xiaohui is low enough for her to be their leader, but she is my so-called leader then this gets really complicated, really fast.
I dont want to think about it.
I just want to eat.
This side needs a stronger presence of water Qi, I tell her.
She purses her lips, thoughtfully, then nods. Ill see what I can do.This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.