The first thing Zou Shi did was ask Zhang Wuji's reason to pursue alchemy. Zhang Wuji answered truthfully. Then he asked if he liked it. Not expecting such a question Zhang Wuji paused for a while, unable to decide whether to lie or say the truth. And in that gap Zou Shi came up with a teaching method.
Since all Zhang Wuji wanted was to learn how to make a single pill, he concentrated on only one pill, qi recovery pill. It was the second most used pill in the sect, right after qi condensation pill. Making it was much easier than the later and it's ingredients were also cheap. Twice every week he made these pills and explained the whole process to Zhang Wuji. All the procedures that could be done by Zhang Wuji at his level were handed over to him. He wasted a lot of ingredients, but they were relatively cheap and Zou Shi was not stingy.
Zhang Wuji's attitude towards alchemy didn't influence his teaching. He taught with the utmost dedication and care. This was the reason why he was well respected in the sect. He rarely gave tasks to Zhang Wuji. Even when tasks were given, they were all related to the techniques he had to learn in order to make the pill. Sometimes he felt like seriously taking up alchemy and becoming an alchemy emperor to spread his mentor's glory. But unfortunately he didn't know whether he could ever become a proper alchemist, forget something like an emperor.
With a lot of extra time on hands, Zhang Wuji intended to read some alchemy books. He was already here, might as well try to become a proper grade one alchemist recognized by the Alchemist Guild. That was the least he could do to repay his mentor.
When Zou Shi saw him reading, he stopped him.
"Alchemy is not learnt like that. It would take you forever to become an alchemist if you try to memorize everything before putting what you memorized into practice. It is useless to fill your head with knowledge. You learn while you do.
"You start with studying a single pill. You study all it's ingredients, their interactions, the procedure to be followed, various techniques necessary to make the pill refining happen, the state of mind one has to have at the time of refining and the methods to put your mind in such a state and lot more. Then you will learn pills that are closest to the first one and so on. In alchemy, or any arts for that matter, parts and whole must progress together. You learn about the ingredients and techniques together with the refining. After you are able to refine one pill, you could think of refining another.
"Studying doesn't mean just reading about it in books. When you read, you remember. Memory is the base on which everything is build, be it alchemy or martial arts. But only when you practice you understand. Knowledge without practice is lame, practice without knowledge is blind. Both must be done simultaneously.
"The reason I made you concentrate on one pill is not only because of your situation, but also because that's the way anything is learnt, one at a time. It is true that without a good knowledge base your understanding and hence refining efficiency and quality will drop, but you don't have the time to worry about that. With the time and propensities you have, they will only distract you."
Since then Zhang Wuji concentrated only on the single pill. He read, tried the procedures he could do at his level and watched Zou Shi make qi recovery pills. He still had free time left. Especially since Zou Shi made qi recovery pills only twice a week, he had much time on his hands the other five days. Since reading is not an option, and he was afraid he would get frustrated if he were to do the same thing again and again in a single day, he put these extra arts in martial art practice.
Unfortunately for him, his martial arts seemed to have reached an unbreakable bottleneck. The stagnation made it such that every move he made pushed him further into desperation. So he cut down his training time to only one hour and decided to put the remaining two hours elsewhere. The question was where? The answer came to him on one of his routine trips to Battle Tower, formations. He was fascinated by them. Since he had extra time he might as well study them, From then on he started spending one to two hours everyday on studying formations.
He went to the library and read the books available to all. The more he read the more excited he got. He didn't have access to higher levels of knowledge and all he could read about was basic theory and introduction. The formation making knowledge had to be bought with sect points or by becoming an apprentice. He didn't have the ability to earn sect points and didn't have the time to become an apprentice. He wasn't bothered by that at all as the theory itself was enough to keep him occupied for long.
Formation theory was basically the study of spiritual energy of heaven and earth and it's properties. A formation is a mechanism with the sole purpose of converting spiritual energy from one form to another. It may have elements used to control, direct, store, mask among others. There are many kinds of formation that have been loosely classified into four, Symbol, Node, Array and Pattern.
Symbol is considered to be the most esoteric of all. These formations have the lowest material requirements and can be made the fastest. A symbol formation would require the formation master to understand the essence of the meaning behind the symbol and draw it while constantly meditating on that essence. For example, the five element symbol with a five pointed star inside a pentagon. It is one of the simplest symbols, the meaning behind which is quite apparent. It is about the generating and overcoming interactions between the five elements wood, fire, earth, metal, water.
The meaning within is simple to understand. Just a few minutes of explaining is enough for even a child to grasp them. It is understanding the essence that is problematic. The essence of all symbols is indescribable, unimaginable. It can only be experienced. When you are able enough to experience the interdependency as stated in the meaning of the symbol will you have satisfied the necessary condition to draw it. To actually be able to draw a symbol one must be able to turn that experience into a reality whenever one wants.
One can read about the majesty of the ocean however much one wants, see and hear it in recordings, but only when one personally sees the ocean will they experience it's true majesty. Even if one personally sees it, mere remembrance wouldn't give the same experience. When you reach a stage where mere remembrance gives the same experience, you will be able to draw it's symbol.
There are no methods of turning understanding into experience. It is only after great amounts of study and effort that one may experience it once. Once it is experienced, constant contemplation of that experience will allow one to gradually turn the experience into a reality they experience whenever they wish. Symbol formations are therefore rarely seen.
Node formations have very limited use. They can only be used to create restrictions. They can not be used to convert spiritual energy from one form to another which is the reason why some do not classify them into formations and consider them to be a separate art called restrictions. They can only direct spiritual energy and introduce inconsistency and discontinuity in the flow leading to violent vortices which can be used to restrict the area in multiple ways.
Elemental restrictions where certain elemental energies are weakened and some strengthened, and mine type barriers where touching a restriction would trigger violent explosion are the most commonly used node formations. The only selling point of node formations is that they need no materials at all.
Array and pattern formations are the most wildly used formations. In array formations, objects containing specific properties are placed in a certain arrangement to get the desired affects. Array formations on their own have very strict material and geomancy requirements. As long as these requirements are met, they are very easy to make. Area is not a big problem for array formations.
Pattern formations require one to draw pathways for the spiritual energy to flow in. The drawing material can be anything as long as it satisfies the elemental constrains. They are very cheap and are the go to method for small applications. They allow for a wide variety of tasks and greater control and energy efficiency than array formations.
Pattern formations on their own are very time consuming and complex to draw. If a pattern formation that needs to cover a large area like the sect protecting formation has to be deployed, it would take a single formation master many decades of dedicated work. Hence pure pattern formation are used only for local effects. They never cross the diameter of ten meters.
Most of the times the two formations are used together with patterned flags arranged in an array. This combination is what makes most of the formations in the sect. The patterned flags reduce the material and geomancy restrictions to some extent and the array nature solves the area problem and adopts some of the control and multifarious properties of pattern formations.
What attracted Zhang Wuji the most was the pattern formations. He very much wanted to be able to make symbol formations but he could do nothing about it. Pattern formations did not have any strict requirements and the best part was their utility. The fine control it provided was second only to symbol formations. The Battle Tower was made completely with pattern formation. The materials required to make the black robed men fight independently for an array formation would be too cost inefficient.
The most important thing was that pattern formations resembled electronic circuits which he was quite familiar with. Although their were many dissimilarities, the general functioning was similar. Both were pathways for energy to flow in. The basic circuit theories applied. Both have switch like components. Both have storage components. What is stored and the way it is stored may be different but the outcome is more or less the same. Both have energy losses, whether it is caused by resistance or the capacity of a material to contain spiritual energy wouldn't change the way they are handled. The isolation, interconnects, interference, compatibility, noise both internal and external, there were so many terms with familiar meanings that he felt he was back to studying electronics.
Although he got too lazy to the extent of missing exams to sleep, he was very much interested in the subject. He may not have studied the subject deeply enough to get grades, but he was quite familiar with many elementary concepts. The rest he could learn here. And the depths were not needed at all. Also logic was not really the central concept of pattern formations. Although it played a part that allowed for it's characteristic control element, the core of all formations is conversation. Elementary combination and sequential logic was more than enough. Interference and compatibility were very important for both and he was quite confident in dealing with them.
The familiarity and ease added a bit of a color to his otherwise dull life. All his friends had crossed the barrier separating sixth and seventh level. Wan Lin had only recently broken through. He would've broken through two months later but the process was hastened with the help of the resources Zhang Wuji provided which allowed him to broke through in a month.
Wan Lin was initially adamant about not taking charity from others even though Zhang Wuji gave a big speech about gratitude, guilt and clear conscience. It was only when Pan Mu reminded him of the opening of the secret realm four months later that he gave in. According to his cultivation speed, he expected to break through the seventh level a month before the opening of the secret realm but he didn't want to take any unnecessary risks and agreed.
Thinking of how all his friends would be going to the secret realm leaving him behind Zhang Wuji sighed.
He was at a cave entrance located at a height of thirty meters on a fifty meter tall cliff face. The cave entrance was well hidden by the foliage around. The cave was as big as a small room, the entrance wide enough to fit three people. He was leaning on the left wall of the entrance staring into the night sky. The cliff was like a wall marking the end of the normal sect grounds and the beginning of the Silver Bark forest area within the sect.
The cliff faced a huge empty ground. In the distance were various training grounds, parks and one could see buildings if they squint their eyes. The view wasn't anything great. It was just that the height and isolation gave it a sense of aloofness and serenity.
Since he found it, he had been coming here once in a while to savor the calm. He found this spot by chance. It was far from any place frequented by sect members and who would needlessly scale thirty meters on a steep cliff? One day for no reason he wanted to scale a mountain like he saw people do in videos in his past life and had randomly chosen this little hill. The first thought in his mind after seeing the cave was treasure! Unfortunately it was a normal, empty cave.
Right as he was lost in thoughts, staring into the sky, he heard a voice from his right.
"Oh, someone's found my cave."