The Sect Leader System

Chapter 361: Formation Masterwork

Lei Bohai had been stuck in a dreadful city on a disadvantaged continent for way too long, but upholding the title of Formations Master was important. He’d worked his way up the ranks over the course of centuries before achieving that rank, and there was no way he would let an unrecognized upstart run around calling himself that.

When a functionary from the Jade Chameleon Sect, a minor sect though apparently a ruler in their region, had contacted the Twelfth Majestic Order of Formations Masters to request assistant in putting down a Nascent Soul realm charlatan, Lei Bohai had been the first to volunteer. No one in the organization was as good as he was at hiding arrays, perfect for the planned ambush.

Usually, his services weren’t for sale. Only his sect or certain extremely influential cultivators were the beneficiaries of his immense talents. If he were to be so gauche as to charge actual spirit coins for his creations, the cost would be high enough to break a Nihility Realm practitioner.

It wasn’t often, however, that anyone dared to defy the Order, and Lei Bohai took it as a personal affront. Which led him to charging only a pittance to hide a multi-purpose formation in a small plaza. Which he’d done. All that was left was for the trap to be sprung.

He just hadn’t realized how long that would take. Months. Stuck in a sub-standard inn in a sub-standard city on a sub-standard continent, all while having his cultivation restrained to Golden Core level by a device he’d created to hide his presence.

Worse, the functionary had come to him and pleaded to have the formations moved, worried that the target might learn of the arrays and disable them. As if a charlatan, even one who had somehow managed to reach Nascent Soul, could even detect a masterwork created by Lei Bohai, much less determine how to sabotage it!

No one, not even the grandmaster of the Twelfth Majestic Order of Formations Masters could spot one of Lei Bohai’s hidden arrays. It was impossible.

Not one to be completely unreasonable, he had quoted the functionary a price. That tender surely outstripped the entire reserves of the minor sect by several orders of magnitude, but it had at least been offered. Never let it be said that a member of the Order was unaccommodating, even if the person requesting cooperation had implied that one’s arrays could so easily be found and disabled.

Still, protecting the integrity of the Order was of the utmost importance, not something to be left solely to the ineptitude of minor sects. He was not willing to further devalue his work, but there was another way he could assist in the mission’s goals by weaponizing the Order’s prestige and influence.

The functionary was quite happy with the compromise.

Unfortunately, arranging for assistance only further delayed the date of the punishment, leaving Lei Bohai languishing at the dreadful inn even longer.

The only thing that would soothe the ignominy of having spent so much of his valuable time in such a poor, depressed place while being disrespected by such a minor sect was watching the charlatan die for daring to call himself a Formations Master. And, finally, the day arrived.

Lei Bohai waited, apparently alone, atop a building overlooking the plaza containing his masterwork formation. Upon receiving the agreed upon signal from the functionary, he pulled a ring from his storage device.

The simple band could hardly be called jewelry, and its singular array was simplistic in the extreme. When pressure was applied at a designed weak point, the ring would break, releasing a Teleportation beacon.

He had to admit that portion of the device was somewhat unusual but only because the ability to Teleport was not common, owing to the rarity of the Spatial element. And the beacon, if he were being charitable, was not incompetently done. Lei Bohai was still unsure how the charlatan had made it small enough to fit within the confines of the small piece of metal-encased wood.

The field of formations design was so complex that even novices and complete imbeciles occasionally discovered something innovative, usually by accident. Sure, the beacon miniaturization was impressive but nothing to get excited about. Too bad he wouldn’t have a chance to ask the charlatan about the method used before he was killed.

Lei Bohai pressed on the ring’s weak point, activating the beacon.

Several seconds later, Chao Su Teleported to the sky about a hundred feet above the plaza, exactly as planned. What an idiot.

The series of arrays Lei Bohai created truly was a masterwork, and it was both absolutely undetectable and highly resistant to disruption, not something that a charlatan could figure out before he was completely obliterated.

A lot of work had gone into it. First, the entire plaza had been deconstructed down to bare dirt. With a blank canvas, Lei Bohai had laid down an incredibly tough and highly qi conductive metal in thin strips crisscrossing the area.

In those metallic strips, he’d inscribed a multitude of arrays, including qi concealment to keep it undetectable even while in operation, strengthening and shielding to prevent damage to the channels from the Nascent Soul realm attacks it would be subjected to, anti-communication to keep the target from calling from help, anti-Teleportation to keep the target from escaping, weapons to blast the target with six different qi elements, stasis to hamper movement of anyone caught in its field, and Aura suppression attuned to Chao Su’s specific qi signature to greatly hinder him both offensively and defensively.

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Once Lei Bohai had finished, Earth and Nature aspected cultivators had reconstructed the plaza over the metal, making it look just like it had previously.

All in all, the charlatan Chao Su would find himself unable to flee, call for help, or even move as soon as the formation activated. With his Aura suppressed and six different elemental blasts targeting him, his qi shield would be drained dry in seconds. The masterwork alone secured his destruction.

It was nice to have martial specialist Nascent Souls available for mop up duty, but they wouldn’t be needed unless Chao Su’s had allies ready to join him immediately.

With a minute pulse of qi, Lei Bohai activated the formation, springing the trap and sealing Chao Su’s fate.

Upon detecting the beacon, Benton sent two pre-arranged messages—one to Kang Ya-Ting and one to Sun Hua. The first would prepare Nascent Souls should Benton signal that he needed backup. The second instructed his assistant sect leader to have the contingent retreat to the compound and Teleport back to the sect grounds at the first sign of trouble.

As soon as the paper dragons were away, he Teleported to the beacon and emerged in the air above the plaza.

Honestly, he was surprised. Surely, they had to know that the ambush site was compromised. Either they did and didn’t care, or they were clueless.

Oh well.

One man, a Nascent Soul with a device that inadequately disguised his qi signature, stood on a building watching. Behind him, there was a strong concealment array. It wasn’t good enough to hide the cultivators behind it completely, but it did obscure them well enough that Benton couldn’t quite figure out how many or what realms. There were definitely some Nascent Souls, though. At least a half dozen. Probably more.

Before he could even say hi, the man pulsed his qi and activated the hidden formations. The power in the arrays wasn’t bad, and the intent made sense. If Benton weren’t as strong as he was, he’d probably have been affected.

As it was, there were just too many slight errors in the qi flow, and even tiny errors added up. If he were to take the man in as an apprentice, the guy might make Expert in a decade or two of hard work.

Benton almost gave into the arrogant streak he seemed to be developing the longer he lived in a cultivation world. Instead, he sternly reminded himself not to take chances and immediately tossed out four metal spheres, each aimed at a specific point in the formation.

When they hit, Void erupted from each one, and the formation collapsed.

Benton grinned at the man.

Lei Bohai was nothing if not confident in his work. After all, he’d spent centuries focused on only two pursuits—cultivation and formations. He was not a man to indulge in pleasures of the flesh, be it wine or women or food or any other failing. He didn’t have friends or hobbies. He cultivated and studied the crafting of arrays.

That was all.

Combined, he must have spent over a million hours of his life studying, repairing, and creating formations. He wasn’t just an Expert; he was a Master.

As he faced a charlatan who claimed that title, Lei Bohai knew two things as absolute certainties. One, his arrays were absolutely unbreakable. And two, his arrays would hold the charlatan in place and tear him apart.

It came as something of a surprise to Lei Bohai when, after the formation was activated, the charlatan could still move. It was of no import, however. He only had seconds to live. Once he experienced the full power of Lei Bohai’s ultimate attack arrays, there wouldn’t be enough left of his body to reconstitute.

The puzzling part was what the charlatan did with his last few moments of life. He pulled four metal balls from his storage device and tossed them at the ground. Sure, there was potent qi ready to explode from those spheres, but what good would scattering them randomly upon the ground do?

Lei Bohai, after all, had hardened his formation to withstand devastating Nascent Soul attacks. He wasn’t an idiot, though. As a Nascent Soul Formations Master, he understood that no material could stand up indefinitely to a sustained attack from a powerful cultivator. That was why he included many redundancies in his formations, allowing qi to flow through multiple paths to serve the same purpose.

Four attacks, no matter how big, weren’t strong enough to disrupt a single array.

The spheres hit. Void erupted.

Lei Bohai’s formation flickered. In one struck area, qi flow reversed. In another, Earth qi jumped into a channel designed for Water. The third hit took out a power node, destroying the greater spirit coins stored there.

Those were not random effects, meaning those strikes weren’t random. Each exposed flaws in the formation that he, the great Formations Master Lei Bohai, hadn’t noticed.

Still, it was possible that qi flow might have stabilized if not for the fourth hit.

The Void sphere landed in the middle of two sets of inscriptions, somehow aimed perfectly to destroy each. Even with all the redundancies, the damage was too much when combined with the other specific targeting.

A cascading failure began, and within seconds, the entire formation, one that had taken him a week to construct, lay in ruins.

How?

The precision and understanding needed to cause such destruction were incalculable. No member of the Order could have done the same. Not even Lei Bohai, who had spent untold hours designing the formation, had noticed the flaws.

He was so stunned that he didn’t notice exploding qi arcing from the end of one of his formation’s now crumbling nodes. The chaotic mix of Fire and Wood qi jumped to a junction feeding the separate concealment array behind him, a junction carrying Wind qi.

He noticed the explosion, though, and the subsequent failure of the array that caused the hidden cultivators to appear in full view.

That effect couldn’t have been planned. No one was that good. No one.

Benton was quite pleased with himself as he watched the cascading failure take out the formation. He became even more self-satisfied when his late addition of adjusting his aim from his fourth sphere did, in fact, take out the separate array.

Split Focus for the win!

Really, he could have more easily simply threw a fifth sphere, but the way he’d done it was so much more elegant.

Or impressive.

His smugness took an immediate hit, however, when he saw what the concealment array hid—fifteen Nascent Souls.

Counting the so-called Formations Master, it was sixteen against one. Even with Benton’s power, that was a bit much.

Oops.