Ancient Strengthening Technique

AST 896 – Five Elements Minor Formation, Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation

It was already dark outside. It was now the start of winter and was quite cold at night. He wasn’t able to enter the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal for a short while until the later half of the night.

There was still some time and Qing Shui walked out of the place with the Five-Headed Demonic Spider. When one had strong powers, one would feel braver. He felt as if he wasn’t scared of anything in the world now. If he were to give it his all, he felt that even a person with a strength of about 700 stars would not be able to do anything to him. Of course, if his Nine Palace Steps and formations reach the small success stage, his battle prowess would probably increase many times.

He had attained a breakthrough. Qing Shui felt that the path before him was wide and straight, extremely smooth sailing. That indescribable sense of joy caused a huge change of emotions within him.

He should be considered an elementary Martial Emperor now and when he was not holding any weapons, he could unleash a strength of close to 200 stars. At this stage, one’s physical strength was secondary. What was most important was how much power one could release and what cultivation level of opponents one could defeat.

For example, those people from “Sky Prison Sect”. Although they were a group of elementary Martial Saints, no one dared to offend them. This was how unfair things were at times. Between people of the same level, if one were to be wearing a Divine Armor, the entire situation would be overturned and the fight would become one-sided. Or if one side were to hold a Divine Artifact, he would be able to get rid of his opponent quickly.

The same could be said for martial techniques, therefore, sometimes, even amongst those of the same cultivation realm, depending on the martial technique, the powers that could be unleashed could have vast differences. Therefore, sometimes, cultivation realm was not everything.

Formation Masters and Poison Masters were such existences.

He competed with the Five-Headed Demonic Spider in speed once again, successfully casting it far behind him. In the past. he could only look at the Five-Headed Demonic Spider’s speed enviously but now, to think that he could throw him far behind. This was a tremendous improvement.

When it was about time, Qing Shui once again entered the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal together with the Five-Headed Demonic Spider. It was already after 1 a.m. and the second day had started. He didn’t wish to waste even a little bit of time and thus what he needed to do now was to stabilize his abilities and work hard to reach a breakthrough in both his Nine Palace Steps and formations.

Of course, he couldn’t ignore the Roc Form either and would need to work hard cultivating it too.

Nine Palace Steps!

Qing Shui now spent the majority of his time on the Nine Palace Steps because when he was cultivating this, he could carefully increase his understanding of the positionings of the Eight Trigrams Orientation in the process of doing so. This would be a great help for his application of the formations in the future and it would hasten his rate of cultivating formations.

The cultivation of the Nine Palace Steps was very difficult and was not something that he could succeeded in just by putting in hard work. This required extremely high talent and wouldn’t work no matter how many miraculous medicines one took. It was because the slight changes in this technique were not ones which could be easily taught and required one to be able to adapt to the situation. There was another world within the Nine Palace Steps and one required a high ability in calculations and deduction skills.

It was like divinatory trigrams in the Eight Trigrams, where the combinations of the eight trigrams covers all the phenomenons in the universe. All these require deductions and thus it was very hard to cultivate the Nine Palace Steps.

In the previous life, Qing Shui was not very clever but neither was he stupid. He was just slightly better than ordinary people. After coming to the world of the nine continents, because he received the legacy of the Ancient Strengthening Technique and had awakened the Yin-Yang Image, causing his spirit energy to be very powerful and he was able to remember the things he saw at first glance. His brain was also very developed as well.

Therefore, right now, his deductions of the Nine Palace Steps were still considered successful but he would also find it quite tiring. Whenever he felt tired, he would sit down to take a break. This was fatigue of both the mind and the body.

After sitting down, Qing Shui would still take a look at those formations. He was now looking at the tools which could be used to set up formations. Although everything could be used, including rocks, trees, flowers, flags or even sabers and swords, there were things to pay attention to.

In all, the higher the spiritual Qi the items contained, the better it was. Rocks could be used and were the most convenient but usually would only have an effect for an hour. As for trees, ordinary trees, spiritual tress or some precious flowers and plants would have a powerful impact on the formation.

There were also some demonic beast’s bones or using demonic beasts directly. Of course, humans work as well. Powerful cultivators were filled with spiritual Qi to begin with and could thus have some simple control over formations, including guarding the life gate or to increase the difficulty of breaking the formation.

Another possibility was to use weapons. Weapons tended to hold some spiritual Qi and even a certain amount of killing intent. Some killing formations would need to employ the use of weapons stained with fresh blood or even killing weapons.

The most standard item to use was still flags. Flags were refined from demonic beasts’ bones and beast hide. Their effects were great and could be made from many different types of materials. They were more convenient than things like rocks and trees since the latter were restricted by terrain conditions.

Five Elements Minor Formation!

The Five Elements Minor Formation was a formation based on the reinforcing and counteracting theory of the five elements, metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Usually, five people would work together to create the Five Elements Minor Formation and it would be best if the five users each practiced five elements martial techniques of different element nature. It would be fine if it wasn’t so since the positions in which each of them would take would be the positions of the five elements, representing each of the five elements.

The Five Elements Minor Formation made use of the reinforcing nature of the five elements to be able to instantaneously focus all the powers of the five onto a single person. This required strong teamwork between the five.

This formation also tapped into the theory of the counteracting force of the five elements. As long as they were able to find out the element nature of the opponents, they would be able to send the person who represented the counteracting element and then transfer all their powers to this single representative.

If the prowess of the Five Elements Minor Formation was unleashed well, their abilities could be increased multiple times. However, it required good coordination in their footwork and in the formation. When any of them were being attacked, the other people must be able to coordinate well and “transfer” their powers over.

The Five Elements Minor Formation used the Five Elements Steps. While it could be used with other footwork techniques, the Five Elements Steps could help bring the Five Elements Minor Formation’s prowess to its limit. Qing Shui was still unable to use the Five Elements Minor Formation for now.

This formation was not to be underestimated. Qing Shui was only able to unleash the prowess of this Five Elements Minor Formation through the Five Elements Step to its highest limits and knew that it was extremely powerful. Each person standing at each of the five positions would also receive a boost in their abilities as well.

The Five Elements Minor Formation was also known as the Five Elements Minor Killing Formation. With good coordination, if they moved quickly, they would be able to kill their opponents very rapidly.

Spirit Gathering Formation!

Qing Shui was very happy upon seeing this formation. Through the use of some gemstones or precious items which were rich in spiritual Qi to set up this formation, amassing the Spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth, the people in the formation would have their cultivating speed increased greatly. The amount of spiritual Qi gathered was related to how powerful the Spirit Gathering Formation was. It was suited for people who were training in seclusion, increasing the chances for them to achieve their breakthroughs.

Spirit Sealing Minor Formation!

This Spirit Sealing Minor Formation could seal up a small area, causing the spiritual Qi outside to be unable to enter. For now, Qing Shui had no idea what it could be used for. He planned to think about this in the future.

The last one which could be used was the most powerful, even amongst all the formations that Qing Shui knew of.

The Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation!

The Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation was split into eight gates, namely healing, life, pain, limit, view, death, wonder and opening. There were multiple combinations it could form and was a much more powerful binding formation than the Duality Minutest Formation. It was also a killing technique because as long as Qing Shui could successfully master the Nine Palace Steps, he would be able to freely kill enemies who were multiple times stronger than himself…

The Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation added the positions of the Nine Palace on top of the basis of the Eight Trigrams Formation, increasing its prowess multiple times. This formation was very profound and its effect would already be very strong if one could just figure out the gist of it. One could use rocks or any other material objects to set up the formation.

However, the items used would affect the prowess of the Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation. This formation could be created single handedly but could also be done by multiple people. When humans were used to create the Nine Palace Eight Trigrams Formation, it would increase the agility and adaptability but if it was items, they would have to bind the opponent within.

These were currently the five formations which Qing Shui could cultivate. He was very satisfied. And Qing Shui sensed that the prowess of all the formations were related to the Nine Palace and only after he had picked up the Nine Palace Steps successfully would he be able to increase the prowess of the formations by a lot.

In the blink of an eye, one week passed by!

Qing Shui basically spent his days in the area near the deity statue.

Seven days were considered short to other people but to Qing Shui, it was practically two years. Two years were not considered short and two years of hard work had let him made quite a large improvement. However, he had not learned to create formations. He only cultivated the Nine Palace Steps to the Seven Star Steps.

When Qing Shui took a break, he could cultivate his hammer techniques, especially the [Raging Blow]. With his abilities raised by several tens of times now, when he performed the [Raging Blow], the prowess was considerably terrifying.

Raging Blow could allow Qing Shui’s overall powers to be increased by 50%. When he was holding the Violet Gold Divine Shield and the Thunder God, he could unleash an explosive attack of 700 stars.

If he was holding the Big Dipper Sword, he would be able to unleash an explosive attack of over 600 stars. However, under the effect of the Seven Star Armored Vest, his defence could increase by a lot.

However, the limitations to Raging Blow were too much. When performing it, his movements would be relatively slow and it was hard to be effective. Despite this, it was still an undeniably powerful attack. Although the time for him to unleash attacks was much better, it was still hard to take effect unless the opponent didn’t move.

If not for this reason, the Raging Blow would definitely be considered a legendary battle technique. Right now, just being able to attain some success in cultivating it, Qing Shui was already able to increase his overall abilities by 50%. It might become more powerful in the future but Qing Shui was still worried that the more powerful it was, the slower the speed would be.

Several days passed by again before Qing Shui headed back toward the city. However, he travelled very slowly. At the rate he was going, he would probably still need about a month before arriving at the city.

Since he had no things to do, Qing Shui took his time to travel across the towering mountains, open up his mind and relax. On the contrary, when in the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal, he would spend his time working hard in his training. He was already finding the world more and more interesting and his abilities would also be steadily improving.

The Sky Penetrating Mountains was very vast and there were many powerful demonic beasts. There was the Golden Dragon King, Five-Headed Demonic Spider, Five-eyed Lion Wolf King and the Long-armed Vicious Monkey King. These were the ones that Qing Shui had chanced upon but they were definitely not the only few powerful demonic beasts. Qing Shui had only chanced upon them in the area they were located in and there were still many other powerful demonic beasts in the other areas. However, there would only be one of them across a million demonic beasts and the chances of encountering one was extremely low.