Pillar of Yita

It has been nearly two weeks since the Tower Guard last left.

To be precise, Fang Hong has spent 140 hours, 53 minutes, and 17 seconds alone on this white plain—he gently closed the lid of his pocket watch, looked up at the endless world, and sighed softly.

Or rather, it is two people: he and Miss Tata.

On the first day of each month, the Tower Guard returns to this place to inspect his learning progress. However, it usually does not take that long, as Fang Hong always completes his tasks ahead of schedule.

In the first month, he began by learning the Engraved Array Technique of the Numelin Elves, and it only took him ten days to complete the task—of course, this was related to his outstanding skills in Multiple Parallel.

The Elf Alchemists of the Numelin Era did not require specialized tools but instead infused magic power into the Magic Guided Conductor to directly form magic patterns, which was their engraving method.

Originally, this was a task that mortals without spell-casting abilities could never achieve. But in ancient times, the early mortal alchemists attempted to learn this craft by imitation. Their idea was to engrave with an array—first simulate the elves’ spells with an Alchemy Array, and then use spells to engrave on the Magic Guided Conductor.

However, this was undoubtedly a task of diminishing returns, as there were a total of 1,600 engraving techniques for different arrays used by the elves, with over 400 being the most common. Even if these spells were first decomposed into individual characters and then temporarily combined, the mortal alchemists had to prepare at least 144 individual characters—not including duplicates.

The earliest mortal alchemists used pre-prepared crystals to store these characters, inserting the crystals into a Magic Guided Reactor when needed, then activating the individual characters and runes within different crystals to form an array and simulate spells.

Then they would use spells to engrave on the Magic Guided Conductor.

The only benefit of this method was that arrays could be formed out of nowhere, with almost no requirements for tools or location. However, the complexity lay in the fact that each alchemist had to carry a large number of array crystals—not only to prepare several spares for repeated characters in spell simulations but also to prevent situations where the crystals’ magic power was depleted.

What was more troubling was that during the array assembly process, if an alchemist was not calm enough, they could easily take or place the wrong crystal, leading to a chain of failures. In contrast, the Numelin Elves who used direct spell-casting had none of these problems.

The Numelin Elves’ alchemy was inherently complex, and adding such a system made it even more cumbersome. Therefore, within less than a century, this method completely withdrew from history.

Later, people used a new method by pre-engraving arrays on control gloves, allowing alchemists to replace pen strokes with gestures—naturally, this was a significant improvement over previous methods. However, mortal alchemists still needed to overlay multiple arrays in an instant (simulating spells required multiple Alchemy Arrays in parallel, then engraving magic patterns through spells).

Even during the era when alchemy was flourishing, few could achieve this skill.

Moreover, in the era when this technology was born, the popularization of alchemy was being promoted. Against the backdrop of separating combat artisans from production alchemists, the latter appeared equally out of place in the large scale effect brought by reforms.

Thus, after that, modern alchemy took on a completely different path.

Over time, mortals gradually became less enthusiastic about the engraving techniques of the Numelin Era. Humans, dwarfs, and other elf descendants began developing their own unique alchemy, and such ancient studies gradually became shelved, slowly forgotten by the people.

Yet, the predecessor of this technology later became the precursor to the mortal magician profession, which was an unintended consequence.

However, the earlier technology did not completely vanish. In fact, the relevant records and documents still remain within the Silver Tower, and even some craftsmen and scholars of the Silver Tower continue to explore and research in this field—this was also Anluose’s original words.

As for the Engraving Technique Anluose gave to Fang Hong, it was, of course, an improved version of the Engraving Technique.

The difficulty of this technique lies not only in remembering many single arrays and formulas that Fang Hong had never heard of before, but the greatest demand is the extreme requirement for steadiness, accuracy, and speed.

After all, one has to draw multiple arrays instantaneously, and there cannot be the slightest mistake. As is well known, the larger the system, the lower the reliability. Any error in these arrays would lead to the failure of the entire engraving process—or even result in the scrap of the Magic Guided Conductor.

Its extreme demand for precision is also a matter of course.

However, these requirements are similarly reflected in Multiple Parallel, especially on the points of stability and accuracy. Multi-line connections at Structural Points are one of the fundamental demands, and as for speed, it is a matter of opinion.

In fact, it was only at this moment that Fang Hong understood why Anluose would say that Multiple Parallel is the introductory skill to Elf Alchemy because the two are inherently related.

And because of this, Fang Hong, who had profound research and insights in Multiple Parallel, naturally had an inherent advantage, in addition to the fact that his memory wasn’t too poor either—after all, he had learned so many things in a haphazard manner within the community and rarely forgot them later.