Blue Phoenix

Hui Yue's eyes shone with excitement as his hands gently set down the booklet containing information about the Blazing Tiger formation.

Of all the formations this was the first one he decided to learn. He lifted his hand, and the booklets vanished as he stored them away. Letting them lay around the room where he was going to be playing with fire was a bad idea especially because they cost so many Worldpower Stones.

Taking a deep breath and calming himself, Hui Yue called forth the ten seals and started arranging them in order to call forth the Blazing Tiger.

Hui Yue focused all his energy on placing the seals in the right places, but when he started pouring his soulforce into the seals, they exploded.

At the start as soon as the energy entered the first seal an explosion would sound out, but as time went on, he managed to reach the second and then the third seal.

The entire room was filled with fire energy, the walls were black from the soot, and even Hui Yue was in disarray. His white clothes were no longer white, and his hair had strands that were burnt off.

It would have been easy for him to clean up everything with a wisp of Ancestral Worldpower. He would even be able to regrow his hair grow back to how it was, but considering how far he was from fully grasping how to perfectly align the seals and inject energy into them, it seemed like a waste of energy to clean himself up.

As the first day went by, Hui Yue had managed to grasp the first four seals. The more seals he successfully passed energy through the more damage he received from the backlash when failing, and thus he needed to rest after each attempt and allow for his body heal.

But despite his failures, he did not give up. Hui Yue continued to arrange the seals and add his soulforce to them, and as the third day came to a close, he had managed to perfect seven of the ten seals.

It was not before now that he finally understood that the clerk within the Formation Palace had been correct. Some things could definitely not be rushed!

He had wished to finish all of the formations within these seven days, but as six days had come to a close, he had only managed to perfect nine seals much less even one full formation!

On the seventh day, he finally understood how to make his seals sit an exact distance from one another, and he figured out the precise amount of soulforce to push through the seals to not overload them. When he finished the tenth seal, a booming tiger's roar exploded within the room as a massive blazing tiger appeared.

The tiger was massive. It filled up the entire chamber and stood a full ten meters tall and twenty meters long. Its body blazed with flames, and its eyes were dark red as it observed its surroundings. Though when it realized it was within a small room, it stopped moving and laid down on the ground.

As it laid down, Hui Yue felt the entire room shake, and he knew that it had shaken the entire building! This tiger was simply too terrifying!

Releasing his soulforce that had been gathered in the soul seals the blazing tiger slowly vanished once more, and the room very slowly cooled back to its normal temperature.

Having succeeded, Hui Yue summoned the tiger three more times, and he had success each time. Afterwards, he finally used his Ancestral Worldpower to clean himself, his hair, and the chamber.

After cleaning himself and the chamber, Hui Yue wasted no more time and went downstairs. He handed the key to the clerk from days before and left the room, but instead of moving straight to the mountain belonging to his father, Hui Yue went to the training ground. Once more he found a dummy which was not occupied by others.

Although this blazing tiger seemed fearsome and powerful, Hui Yue was unaware of whether or not it was actually a useful attack when fighting and thus he had no other option than to test its effectiveness.

He summoned forth his seals, arranged them neatly, and poured his soulforce into them. Then he watched as a massive blazing tiger was summoned forth in front of him. It only took a brief moment to summon now that Hui Yue knew exactly how to do so. But even so, it would be quite hard to summon this tiger during a fight unless he was prepared in advance.

The moment the tiger appeared it instantly attacked the dummy, Hui Yue's target, and it attacked with all its power.

It was not before now that Hui Yue was capable of seeing exactly what kind of strength this tiger had.

Previously he had used the windblades to cleanly slice open these dummies, and he had known that his ability to control the windblades were quite astonishing but the blazing tiger was incapable of completely destroying the dummy, all it could do was severely damage it.

From this Hui Yue could see that the blazing tiger alone was not that strong, but thinking about the fact that it was one of the weakest formations, he realized that he should not have expected too much.

"I wonder what will happen if I boost its flames," Hui Yue mumbled to himself as he reached out to the dao of inferno. Every single flame on the body of the blazing tiger suddenly became ferocious. They flared up and seemed as if they were trying to devour anything in their path. The dummy became the target of all the fierce flames and the dummy which before had been impossible to break now melted almost instantly under the sudden influx of scorching heat. Even before the flames touched the dummy, it had already started melting.

Hui Yue was shocked to see the difference in the blazing tiger’s power now. Although he had to use both soulforce and Ancestral Worldpower to sustain it, he had more than tripled the damage output of the formation. But using it this way, it really did consume almost all his Ancestral Worldpower, and he could not keep it up for long. Therefore, he instantly waved his hand causing the ten seals vanished into thin air. As the seals vanished the blazing tiger also slowly disappeared.

As it all stopped, Hui Yue felt proud of what he had done and very satisfied with his recent achievement. As he turned around, Hui Yue noticed that there were quite a few people who had gathered around the training ground. They looked at him with a mixture of confusion and admiration on their faces.

There were a few who were still filled with hostility and jealousy, but most were awed by the formation Hui Yue had just shown.

It had to be known that formation specialists were incredibly rare as they relied on soulforce, and even a sect such as the Celestial Sword Sect only had a few such experts. All of whom were greatly valued.

In this dog eat dog world, being strong was the only thing which got one respect, and Hui Yue had displayed enough strength to receive respect from the majority of the sect’s members.

Some did not respect this junior at all. Some because the strength he had shown was not even close to their level while others because Hui Yue was someone they felt jealous of or even someone whom they could not accept. But most, after hearing and seeing him, felt that he was definitely no ordinary cultivator. They felt that looking back it was not a bad decision to allow him entry into the sect. Especially now they knew that he was a Formation Master.

No one said anything when Hui Yue turned around, but, suddenly, they were all busy looking every other place than at Hui Yue. Some looked into the sky seemingly contemplating the meaning of life, while others gazed at the ground below. Some started chatting with their neighbor, and others were caught unaware and had their eyes darting from side to side.

Hui Yue did not expect that his small formation would cause such a commotion, but since it did, he could do nothing about it. Instead, he flew towards the mountain top belonging to his father.

Although he still had a few formations he needed to learn how to fully control for now he understood that he was at his limit. The more seals he could control, the easier it would be for him to control the formations, and he could not continue to waste his Worldpower Stones on the meditation room.

He needed to get his hands on contribution points, but to do so, he needed to finish missions. Some missions were simple while others were hard. He did not yet have the qualifications to leave the Celestial Sword World and do missions outside of the sect as he was not yet an Immortal of Creation.

Most of the missions in the Celestial Sword Sect World were to hunt down criminals; this could be both mortal or immortal ones. Anyone who disrupted the peace of the world, or if someone had committed a heinous crime, would be placed on the blacklist.

"I need time," Hui Yue sighed to himself. "All I need is time. There is so much I have to do. Missions, formations, absorbing Ancestral Worldpower, daos, and even inscriptions and alchemy. How can I have time to do all of it?"

'You have plenty of time,' Lan Feng comforted him. 'Look at all you have managed up until now,' he continued in a steady voice. ‘Considering how much you have done in less than fifty years, I have faith in you to be able to manage the rest too."

"I see," Hui Yue did not sound as confident as Lan Feng, but hearing the words of the phoenix was enough to make him feel less dejected.

'I know you want to create bodies for me and Wang Ju Long as soon as possible,' Lan Feng sighed. 'But we need to be realistic. You need to become strong enough before we head out to search for the Alchemist God or we will just die trying to find him like your predecessor.'

'I also know that you are eager to get rid of An He for me, but don't worry too much about him. My enmity with him is more than four thousand years old. I can easily wait another thousand years before we get our vengeance.'

'The most important thing, for now, is for you to focus on getting stronger. You need to get stronger, and as soon as you are strong enough, we will be able to get vengeance. We will also be able to get our own bodies. Everything will be possible with your strength!'

Hui Yue said nothing. He knew that Lan Feng was correct and that there really was nothing to say. In this world where only the strong reigned, Hui Yue wished to be the strongest! Only then could he protect and defend the ones he loved.

"Speaking about Wang Ju Long," Hui Yue said with a sigh as he returned to his own room and sat down. In his hand was the jade vial with her soul shadow, and he closed his eyes as he reached deep inside of himself. It was time to try and strengthen her soul, try and repair it so that she would not be weak when she was resurrected.

Seeking deep within himself, Hui Yue found the flame which was always burning. The Nirvana Phoenix Flame was not useful for fighting, but it had incredible restorative abilities; however, it would not act on its own. It would only act if Hui Yue reached out for it, and even more troublesome was that when he used a wisp of energy, that energy would be gone forever. It would never return to the flame. While the flame could restore anything else, it was incapable of restoring itself.