The Rat Cultivator

Chapter 110: Nine Heavens Mystic Spirit Formation Explanation

Wu Yuan immediately entered a state of deep seclusion.

He threw himself into the study of new knowledge with a ravenous hunger, forgetting to eat or sleep. The daily operations of Little Green Mountain were completely delegated to Big Black and the others. After all, the entire point of accumulating subordinates was to have them do the heavy lifting.

News trickled in that One Ear had begun a ruthless reorganization of the rat demons. Complaints were rising like steam from the colony, though fortunately, no lives had been lost yet. Wu Yuan, anticipating his future plans to conquer the surrounding territories for cultivation resources, tacitly approved of One Ear’s iron-fisted methods. An undisciplined army was no army at all.

Alone in his chamber, Wu Yuan tightly grasped the Jade Slip One Ear had brought back: the Nine Heavens Mystic Spirit Formation Explanation.

Faint, fluid light swirled across the surface of the slip, reflecting the excitement in Wu Yuan’s eyes. He had longed to study the Dao of Formations for ages.

The slip was crafted from Spirit Reflection Jade, a second-grade material. In the cultivation world, knowledge carried weight—literally and metaphysically. High-level information possessed a spiritual density that ordinary materials couldn’t bear; only specialized mediums like this could hold such complex truths without shattering.

Wu Yuan sighed with a tinge of regret. “It’s a pity my Spirit Awakening talent isn’t strong enough to interface directly with the Jade Slip yet. If it were, I could just let the knowledge drill straight into my brain instead of reading it the hard way.”

He took a deep breath, centered his mind, and dove in.

Formations were widely considered the most complex and profound of the Hundred Arts of Cultivation. They demanded rigorous logic, spatial awareness, and a terrifying degree of comprehension.

Wu Yuan had dabbled in Spirit Pattern research before, but back then, it had been like looking at flowers through a thick fog. His understanding hadn’t even scratched the surface.

Fortunately, he now possessed a unique advantage: the Blood-Binding Spirit Mulberry.

Through the tree’s perspective, he had personally laid out the Blood-Binding Mystic Silkworm Formation. He had spent months observing the natural evolution of its structure. Without realizing it, he had already glimpsed the tip of the iceberg.

Now, with the Nine Heavens Mystic Spirit Formation Explanation in hand, he could cross-reference the theory with his practical experience, turning abstract concepts into concrete understanding.

He read the opening passage:

[The Dao of Formations takes Formation Patterns as its cornerstone. These patterns are woven from the infinite Spirit Patterns of Heaven and Earth.]

[These Spirit Patterns are like the stars in the night sky—endless and distant. Even if a cultivator exhausts their entire lifespan, they may not comprehend one ten-thousandth of them. Thus, our predecessors systematized the most common combinations into standard Formation Patterns for future generations to learn.]

[However, to truly achieve greatness in this Dao, one must possess extraordinary perception. One must look past the man-made Formation Patterns and glimpse the primal Spirit Patterns hidden behind them.]

Wu Yuan pondered this. If one lacks talent, they are stuck memorizing Formation Patterns like a rote student. They can copy a gourd to draw a ladle, perhaps becoming a competent first-grade Formation Master, but never a true Master.

But Wu Yuan was greedy. He wanted the essence.

“The explanation is detailed,” he muttered, rubbing his temples, “but learning this without a teacher is brutal.”

The manual began with dense theoretical frameworks, followed by a dizzying array of Formation Pattern diagrams. Each pattern came with notes on its function, range, and stability. Following that were detailed blueprints for arrays ranging from first-grade Low Grade to the second-grade level, including instructions for refining the necessary flags and plates.

The final section was the advanced theory—a deep dive into the specific Spirit Patterns that constituted the larger arrays.

“Hah…”

Wu Yuan set the Jade Slip down and pressed a claw against his throbbing forehead, closing his eyes to relieve the pressure on his straining demonic consciousness.

“Worthy of being a treasure,” he groaned. “The difficulty of this makes Artifact Refining look like child’s play.”

Yet, a moment later, a weary chuckle escaped him.

“But… I might actually be built for this.”

He recalled his early days. He had no inheritance, no manual. He had simply been inspired by the Spirit Source Master’s “Heavenly Dao Spirit Pattern Theory” and had spent his days blindly tinkering. He hadn’t known if it would be useful; he had just been hungry for knowledge. He had obsessively transcribed every Spirit Pattern he found on spells and artifacts.

Coupled with his Spirit Awakening talent, he had inadvertently developed a keen, intuitive sense for these cosmic geometries.

Now, faced with this obscure and complex manual, he wasn’t bored or frustrated. He was enthralled.

Time dissolved. Three months vanished in the blink of an eye.

Deep in the cave, Wu Yuan looked like a corpse that refused to die.

A thick root from the Spirit Mulberry was stabbed directly into his back, pulsing rhythmically as it pumped Qi and vital blood into his system to keep him alive. His fur was matted, his face haggard and withered, but his eyes burned with a terrifying, feverish intensity.

He stared fixedly at a Purple Jade disc in front of him.

His claw moved with mechanical precision, carving winding, tortuous lines into the hard stone. Deep cuts, shallow scratches, connecting nodes—he worked in a single breath, a trance of absolute focus.

Stroke. Turn. Connect. Seal.

As the final stroke completed the circuit, Wu Yuan’s claw trembled. He retracted it sharply.

With a wet squelch, he ripped the Spirit Mulberry root from his back.

He collapsed onto his haunches, gasping for air as if he had just surfaced from deep water. Black spots danced in his vision.

Thinking quickly, he grabbed a handful of Red Fire Peppers and shoved them into his mouth. He chewed vigorously, swallowing them whole.

Crunch. Burn.

The explosion of spicy heat seared his tongue and shocked his nervous system awake. The stimulating agony cleared the fog in his brain, bringing him back from the brink of collapse.

For three months, he had been sleepless. He had racked his brains until they felt dry.

Although the Spirit Mulberry root sustained his body’s needs, his spirit had been pushed beyond its limits. He hadn’t rested because he had discovered something strange: the more exhausted his spirit became, the sharper his intuition for the Formations grew. It was a dangerous, masochistic state of flow, and he dared not break it.

Whenever his demonic consciousness ran dry, he would meditate just long enough to recover, then dive back in.

And now…

Wu Yuan looked at the Purple Jade disc. A raspy, broken laugh clawed its way out of his throat.

“Haha… finally. Success!”

He injected a stream of Demon Power into the disc.

Hum.

The lines on the purple stone flared to life. The air in the cave shifted. Invisible currents of energy began to swirl, pulling the ambient Spiritual Qi toward the center of the disc, forming a small, stable vortex.

It was a first-grade Low Grade Spirit Gathering Formation.

This was the bread and butter of Formation Masters. Every cultivator needed Spiritual Qi, making this the most widely circulated array in the world. Generations of experts had optimized it down to its simplest, most efficient form. It was the standard “Hello World” project for any novice.

Laying it out successfully was the certification of a first-grade Low Grade Formation Master.

In truth, Bibo had created a crude version of this at the Bamboo Pool using the natural terrain, and Wu Yuan had studied that. So why had this taken three agonizing months?

The difficulty lay in the materials.

The Nine Heavens Mystic Spirit Formation Explanation listed over a dozen specific recipes for Spirit Gathering plates, each requiring specific materials. Wu Yuan didn’t have any of them.

He had scavenged through his hoard and found that a piece of Purple Jade was the closest compatible medium. But the standard diagrams wouldn’t work on Purple Jade; the conductivity was different.

To make it work, Wu Yuan couldn’t just copy the book. He had to deconstruct the Spirit Gathering Formation, understand its fundamental Spirit Patterns, and then re-engineer it from scratch to function on Purple Jade.

He hadn’t just learned a recipe. He had learned how to cook.

He could now lay down a Spirit Gathering Formation anytime, anywhere, regardless of the materials at hand.

This was undoubtedly a huge step forward for him.