Observing the status of his (pseudo) soul, Zhen Shi was delighted to see that his soul was now capable of manifesting four formation talismans and could easily set up the most basic strengthening formation.

It appeared that his use of provided the same ability to his (pseudo)soul, which explained the fast rate of improvement within just a few hours.

But, his eyes widened in agitation as he felt a sudden surge of inspiration. The strange familiarity he had felt with formations before was solved as he made a huge breakthrough in understanding!

With the practice and training gained through his (pseudo)soul, the knowledge from the Scholarly Library, and Myne's books, Zhen Shi realized that there was a direct connection between the art of formations and programming!

In this epiphany, he concluded that a formation was a series of commands, imposed upon qi or aether to be carried out just like a basic code.

In fact, the main difference between formations and simply exerting one's will upon qi would be the sheer complexity of the command.

By using a single formation talisman one could set several commands upon qi and aether. Then by combing those formation talismans in a specific sequence the power of an individual's attack, speed, defense, etc. could be multiplied by many folds!

And that was only the most basic of applications!

Zhen Shi grew excited as he contemplated all the infinite possibilities that could be achieved with formations and enchantments.

But for the moment, he only had four formation talismans. Calming himself down, and leaving the (pseudo)soul to continue its practice, he returned back to the pavilion.

Zhen Shi instantly manifested four formation talismans and easily set up the basic strengthening formation using three of those talismans.

He eyed the formation, a glowing yellow triangle with the three formation talismans as it's vertices, and was useful for nothing more than a few seconds of defense against another Soul Formation Cultivator.

So Zhen Shi whisked his hand and attempted to combine the remaining talisman to it as well, in a small experiment for the sake of science.

Ka-cha!

But the formation shattered apart like broken pieces of glass. Zhen Shi frowned as he realized that creating new formations besides the general basic ones in Myne's book would be difficult...

But reminded of his motto, 'to work smart and not hard', Zhen Shi promptly activated .

With his right eye glowing a shiny gold and revealing the flaws and aberrations of his actions, Zhen Shi whisked his hand once more manifesting the four formation talismans and easily set up the basic strengthening formation.

With the fourth formation talisman in hand, Zhen Shi skilfully avoided many of the flawed and unstable locations of the formation, and carefully placed it at the very center.

Miraculously, it glowed with a bright light as the defensive capability of the formation was improved by quite a bit.

This was miraculous in and of itself since this was an unusual formation not in accordance with the general ones. It wasn't that more skilled formation masters of higher tiers couldn't create this formation. It was just that ordinary formation masters of the same grade as Zhen Shi would have difficulty using or creating it.

Despite his success, Zhen Shi shook his head in dissatisfaction. With another whisk of his hands, he began to rearrange the formation talismans. He kept trying for several minutes while making minute changes to each formation talisman. After all, only revealed the flawed locations and not direct solutions to the problem.

Luckily, he only had to use four talismans and so was able to obtain the desired effect within a short time. Instantly, the formation glowed with fiery light as the flat triangular formation morphed into a 3-Dimensional Box.

Zhen Shi let out a smile as he held the new and improved formation before him.

In accordance with his thoughts, it expanded out in front of him forming a powerful square shield, while the box glowed from within and shot out a blast of pure fire qi with power bordering at the middle stages of Soul Formation. In addition, the defense was at least twice as better than the basic strengthening formation!

Zhen Shi was very satisfied as this would be a useful attack to surprise an enemy, even though the power wasn't as great as his maximum battle capability.

Besides this was a very unique formation, since the most basic formation for attacking, out of those listed in Myne's book, required at least 5 formation talismans. While that formation was much stronger, Zhen Shi's new formation had dual purposes!

In fact, it was rather futuristic in appearance, almost out of place in a world of cultivation and magic.

But, suddenly, a notification rang out...

Ding!

Congratulations to the user for unlocking a hidden profession in place of the ordinary: {Unorthodox Formation Master- Mortal Tier}!

Observing this new notification, Zhen Shi was momentarily confused. Why would formations with power within the Soul Primary Tier fall into the category of 'Mortal Tier'?

But, after a bit of research in the Scholarly Libray, he discovered that this was a frightening aspect of Combat oriented Side-Professions.

Any cultivator within the Mortal Primary Stage could become a 'Mortal Tier Formation master' and wield power extending up to the Soul Primary Stage!

Formation Master was only one of the many combat-oriented professions that granted cultivation transcending power... much like the Proclaimer, Diving Prophet classes, or even Weapon Intent and Original Mana Spells.

Of course, while it was 'theoretically' possible to become a Mortal Tier Formation master with your cultivation sill in the Mortal Primary Tier, very few could master them early on.

Especially when increasing cultivation was comparatively easier and provided a faster path to power.

Nevertheless, Zhen Shi was rather unhappy about his rate of progress and made a mental note to improve as fast as possible.

At the same time, another notification rang out.

Ding!

You have a new quest, will you accept it?

Zhen Shi replied with a mental shrug, "Sure. Why ever not?"

Ding!

Mortal Tier Quest:-Create 10 original formations (2/10)

-Manifest 9 formation talismans (4/9)

Reward: -One OP lottery ticket.

-Gift of Experience.

Zhen Shi grimaced as he eyed the rewards and thought, "I don't believe in the lottery..."

However, he was also aware that he would be unable to complete this quest in a hurry. Not even by the next morning...

He could already sense that the (pseudo)soul had slowed down its rate of improvement and realized that it would take at least a few days to master 9 formation talismans.

Since this was beyond his control, Zhen Shi decided to put this matter aside for the moment, and instead artifice his first weapon as a blacksmith.

Placing the rusted pitch-black furnace in front of him, Zhen Shi manifested the Undying Flame.

He had no worries about using this flame since he had sufficient practice from pill refining. More importantly, the lively nature of the flame had little to no effect on the inanimate materials used for blacksmithing.

He calmly threw the undying flame on to the furnace causing a pitch-black smoke to slowly waft out.

With continuous burning and Zhen Shi's use of , the furnacing technique that depended on furnace spirits, the black smoke slowly formed into four furnace spirits... in the form of demonic imps.

However, they were rather unresponsive and seemed to disregard Zhen Shi as if his very presence was beneath them.

Zhen Shi who was still sore after being hoodwinked by the System quite recently, was enraged, 'Where did these fucking imps get so much attitude?'

Still, he grinned mischievously as he began to imagine how these imps would be completely obedient under the spirit taming skill.

Impatient to teach these imps a lesson, he immediately executed it, "Taming the Spirits!"

Suddenly, the imps who had acted with disrespect and disregard turned towards him, causing Zhen Shi to grin from ear to ear in satisfaction.

But his grin died down as the demonic imps began to chitter and dance about, while eyeing him with great 'evil' interest. Zhen Shi couldn't help but shiver as he felt their dead eyes boring into him with accompanying eerie smiles...

Nevertheless, he cleared his head and disregarded the 'evil' imps as a figment of his imagination.

And so with a calm mind, he materialized and threw a piece of black silver into the burning furnace.

With the practice from extended hours of pill refining, Zhen Shi skilfully melted the metal under the powerful undying flame and brought out a fairly large hammer.

Clang! Clang!

Sparks flew as Zhen Shi slammed the hammer on to the heated dark silver with the support of the chittering demonic imps. He instantly manifested the power of on his arms covering them with Azure Scales and gripped on to the hammer with his draconic claws.

The air roared as every slam slowly molded the black silver into a flat shape while being nudged by the obedient demonic imps into a blade-like shape.

Surprisingly, while they seemed evil, the imps were rather obedient and focused when it came to the task at hand.

Having completed the forging, Zhen Shi brushed off some sweat and returned the hammer into his spatial pouch.

Next, with the help of the demonic furnace spirits, he separated the hammered back silver into three main parts; the blade, the bolster, and the hilt.

Click!

Zhen Shi carefully guided the three parts through the hands of the demonic imps and joined the three parts together with an audible click. The rudimentary knife base was formed, but the demonic imps continued to snicker with evil intent.

Ignoring them, Zhen Shi began to whisk his hand and formed the undying flame qi into four formation talismans which he placed into the malleable dark-silver, in the original sequence of his unorthodox dual-purpose formation.

As the heated metal glowed with the fresh formation symbols, Zhen Shi manifested an Enchanter's engraver from his pouch.

He had already decided to use both a formation and an enchantment. As such, in a single fluid motion, he engraved the letters 'SCF' which formed a basic fire attack enchantment. He had chosen this enchantment hoping that it would match well with the fire attack of his unorthodox formation.

As the Letters of the Enchantment settled in, Zhen Shi readied himself to enter into another Ohtur and perform .

But suddenly, his body was wracked with unbearable fatigue and exhaustion which sent his mind and (pseudo)soul reeling. As a result, he lost his concentration and was forced to break off from the Ohtur forcibly.

Zhen Shi gasped for breath as he realized that he was unable to use the skill, and could only conclude that there was a specific limit to its usage.

He paused for a moment's rest allowing his soul and mind to settled down from the after-effects of the failure. In fact, he even considered pausing this attempt and taking a rest...

But, as he was reminded of the Divine Church... the potential problem with Divine Blessings, Xixi and Isolde... he found himself unable to give up...

With blazing willpower, he pushed himself to use the same vision that he had seen before. Closing his eyes he imagined the scene he had witnessed before.

To his relief, his mind calmed down and the fatigue was washed away as he was reminded of the vision of the fearless boy fighting the giant.

Brimming with renewed inspiration, he gripped the engraver and let his thoughts loose on the heated metal of the knife. His hand was a blur as it danced upon the heated black silver knife, as the image slowly grew clear rewarding him for his grit.

It was slightly different from before, as this image showed the young boy shooting a stone from his slingshot at the ever-confident giant, with the stone in mid-flight.

The boy was on the blade, the giant was beyond the hilt, and the stone lay in between. But the image was just as life-like as before.

Zhen Shi grinned in satisfaction as he admired the craftsmanship of the weapon.

With a flick of his hand, he materialized a stream of water qi cooled heavily by his aqua spiritual roots. He immediately poured this water on to the steaming dark silver knife.

HISS!

A cloud of steam wafted out into the pavilion as the heated dark silver cooled down.

Zhen Shi relaxed slightly as he noticed that the demonic imps were still chittering about and had done nothing strange as they had with Myne's knife.

So he calmly brushed off the steam while admiring his first artifact with a sense of self-satisfaction. While he wasn't as successful as Myne, he had still been able to create a Soul Tier Grade 1 weapon owing to the double use of formation and enchantment.

But his relief was short-lived. Because in a single leap, the four demonic imps jumped into the air. They supported each other as they kicked the freshly smithed dark silver knife with their full power.

A powerful wind blew throughout the pavilion as the Soul Tier knife shot towards Zhen Shi's head from point-blank range, with the combined power of four Soul formation furnace spirits! Even the basic fire enchantment was activated causing the knife to be engulfed in a fiery blaze.

Zhen Shi was almost caught off guard, and the attack was extremely fast... To make matters worse, the Aether did not manifest to warn him either...

But Zhen Shi wasn't going to be killed at the hands of a bunch of furnace imps!

With both his own mind and the (pseudo)soul working on solving the problem, his first decision was to activate the unorthodox formation on the knife.

The formation activated and blasted off a fire qi attack to the side immediately causing the knife to slow down and miss his head.

Now with ample time to retaliate, he activated to the extreme maximum on his two arms.

Small horns poked out on his scaled hands and he instantly moved into a defensive posture positioning his bestial arms against the oncoming knife.

Clang!

Sparks flew as the flaming dark silver knife collided with his azure scaled arm.

But the divine beast protection was indeed powerful, as the knife dropped on to the ground harmlessly without causing Zhen Shi to take even a single step back.

As the wind calmed down, Zhen Shi let out a deep breath in relief.

Nevertheless, as he realized that he had escaped from that sudden attack with only a moment to spare he turned to stare angrily at the demonic imps. But they proceeded to giggle eerily, almost innocently and disappeared in a poof of smoke, their job now completed.

But Zhen Shi who was still pissed could only blame that idiotic Grand Mage and a certain System. And he was just about to spew some colorful obscenities, when...

Ding!

Congratulations to the user for unlocking a new profession: Blacksmith-Grade 1!

Ding!

The User has a new quest. Will you accept it?

Zhen Shi: "..."