Chapter 54: Insufficient cultivation, unable to break through to an Eighth-Rank Formation Master
[The numerous formation symbols sketched out one unfamiliar formation pattern after another, making it difficult for you to comprehend immediately.]
[You knew that with your current formation skills, it was impossible to fully understand this sealing formation.]
[Thus, you chose one of the countless interwoven formation patterns to begin analyzing.]
[You aimed to break it down piece by piece, progressing gradually.]
[But even so, as you continued to analyze, you felt as if your head was about to explode.]
[After half an hour, you couldn\'t hold on any longer and decided to take a break.]
[However, you didn\'t give up. After resting for half a day, you resumed analyzing that formation pattern.]
[This became your routine!][Every day, you intermittently analyzed and tried to understand the sealing formation.]
[By the fourth year, after an entire year, you had only managed to analyze a small part of that formation pattern.]
[Despite this, you felt that the continuous analysis had significantly improved your understanding of formations.]
[In the fifth year, you had analyzed half of that formation pattern, and you clearly felt a deeper understanding of formations.]
[In the sixth year, you continued to analyze that formation pattern.]
[By the eighth year, you finally completed the analysis of that formation pattern, greatly enhancing your knowledge of formations.]
[You felt quite pleased, but when you looked at the other formation patterns around you, your heart sank.]
[Just one formation pattern had taken you five years.]
[And there were hundreds of thousands of such formation patterns visible to the naked eye in this area alone.]
[The complete sealing formation didn\'t just cover this area; it enveloped the entire Southern Regions. How many more formation patterns must there be?]
[To fully analyze this sealing formation and understand its underlying logic, you needed to find a way to break it.]
[At your current rate of analysis, you couldn\'t imagine how much time it would take.]
["Ah, the road ahead is long and arduous," you sighed.]
[But this was something you had anticipated.]
[Your purpose in coming here was merely to improve your formation skills.]
[Once your Formation Dao improved further, you could attempt to repair the formation left by Senior Lu Wuya on Spine Mountain, which could resist Heavenly Thunder.]
[Everything you were doing now was just to increase your simulation duration and enhance your strength.]
[In the ninth year, you didn\'t analyze any new formation patterns.]
[Instead, you summarized your gains from the previous years. At this point, you felt that your understanding of formations had reached the level where you could set up an eighth-grade formation.]
[Without hesitation, you began to practice.]
[But as you were setting up the eighth-grade formation, you had only drawn five formation symbols, which couldn\'t even form a single pattern, before the spiritual energy in your Qi Sea was exhausted and couldn\'t sustain it.]
[You muttered to yourself, "So it is as I thought?"]
[You had anticipated this situation, but you couldn\'t resist trying.]
[Formation symbols are drawn with spiritual energy, and the higher the grade of the formation, the more spiritual energy each symbol requires.]
[Ordinarily, a cultivator at the Core Formation stage could at most set up a fourth-grade formation.]
[Some talented individuals with a strong foundation, more Golden Core patterns, a large Qi Sea, and abundant spiritual energy could set up fifth or even sixth-grade formations, which was already quite rare.]
[Due to your Divine Dao cultivation with a twelfth-grade Golden Core, you could convert primordial energy into spiritual energy; combined with a Qi Sea three times larger than ordinary cultivators, you could set up a seventh-grade formation.]
[But that was your limit. Attempting an eighth-grade formation was a bit too ambitious.]
[You shook your head but didn\'t feel discouraged.]
[Although you couldn\'t set up an eighth-grade formation, it wasn\'t due to a lack of formation skills but rather insufficient spiritual energy.]
[You believed that as your strength improved, you would soon be able to set up an eighth-grade formation.]
[Moreover, not being able to set up an eighth-grade formation didn\'t affect your purpose for coming here.]
[You originally intended to gain more understanding of formations here to repair the formation left by Lu Wuya.]
[Repairing a formation is different from setting one up; it doesn\'t necessarily require you to draw formation symbols. Perhaps you only need to guide the problematic areas.]
[You felt that this trip wasn\'t in vain.]
[In the tenth year, the Mystic Turtle took you out of the Endless Sea and revealed its purpose.]
[The Mystic Turtle told you that it was also a prisoner.]
[It warned you not to act recklessly when facing an unbeatable enemy and to assess the situation before taking action.]
[Only then did you realize that the Mystic Turtle\'s earlier threats to eat you were because it thought you were too reckless at first.]
[In the twelfth year, you returned to Green Hills City.]
[In the thirteenth year, a Shadowy Figure Immortal Slave descended, and you saw the Jiang Family\'s residence collapse with a single palm strike.]
[Afterward, your father, Jiang Fushan, arrived with reinforcements, killed the Shadowy Figure Immortal Slave, and evacuated the Jiang Family members.]
[You also appeared in time to leave with the others, heading to Spine Mountain.]
[After arriving at Spine Mountain, you didn\'t immediately request to see the formation left by Senior Lu Wuya.]
[Instead, you focused on cultivating here, occasionally showcasing your skills as a seventh-grade Formation Master.]
[In the fourteenth year, Old Li approached you, hoping you could set up some high-grade Gathering Spirit Arrays to accelerate the cultivation speed of the cultivators here.]
[Without hesitation, you agreed.]
[High-grade Gathering Spirit Arrays are seventh-grade formations, and due to your limited spiritual energy, setting them up wasn\'t quick.]
[Often, after setting up one high-grade Gathering Spirit Array, you needed to rest and recover for a while.]
[In the sixteenth year, after two full years, you had set up five high-grade Gathering Spirit Arrays on Spine Mountain.]
[At this point, from the outside, one could clearly sense a large amount of spiritual energy being gathered from afar by the high-grade Gathering Spirit Arrays.]
[In the seventeenth year, the cultivation environment on Spine Mountain noticeably improved. The cultivators here no longer needed to risk robbing Immortal Slaves for Spirit Stones, as they could now enhance their spiritual energy.]
[That year, you received numerous gifts from the cultivators.]
[The Spirit Stones alone amounted to over 900,000.]
[In the eighteenth year, you had gained considerable popularity on Spine Mountain, and everyone trusted you.]
[That year, you found Old Li and told him you wanted to observe the formation left by Senior Lu Wuya.]
[You hoped to gain some insights from it to further improve your Formation Dao skills.]