Li Xia and Lan Yanzhi returned about an hour after Wu Guang had seen off Du Yang. Most of the things he had asked to buy were bought and would be sent by the suppliers during the rest of the day. The things were mainly necessities, as the residence was severely stripped down after Li Xia's father gone missing.

Before, it was equipped and had servants enough to fully take care of the up to six people living on the master's, second, floor. But as Li Xia's father disappeared, she was forced to dismiss most servants and even sell some possessions.

Thankfully, with Wu Guang's current money, he had no trouble restoring everything. Speaking of which, an extra task he had asked Lan Yanzhi was to contract a pair of maids and a pair of workers. The latter would arrive on the next day, so Wu Guang asked Li Xia to take care of everything. He did not plan to buy exactly this property, but as he had, then he would need to make everything right.

Except for the separate warehouse that Wu Guang planned to convert into his experiment room, the rest would continue to be managed by Li Xia. To this, he gave her 30 extra gold coins apart from the 300 for the property so she could buy her permit and reestablish the shop.

Granted, she had none of the opportunities and contacts her father had, but Wu Guang promised her that he would take care of supplying it with merchandise. Albeit he wasn't the one who would do it, Lan Yanzhi and his own contacts would be enough to supply it with different things. For example, he intended to ask Lang Juan for support as to make the store sell things from the Wildlands.

One could think that the timing was wrong as an invasion would happen in less than three months, but Wu Guang would not agree. If hostilities started, everyone would rush to buy things useful during a conflict. And going by that logic, he planned to make it a store selling those things. He had passed a message to Elder Di, asking him to ask the High Elder in charge of the Halls to meet him in a few days. He wanted to negotiate the selling of all unused things from the sect in the store. Also, if needed to create a big interest, he would sell a few items from his part of the 'Earth's Cry Ridge" cave.

He did not tell them much about his meeting with Du Yang but mentioned that if Li Xia was approached by anyone and asked about her current status, she had to send them to him.

After finishing the mundane matters, Wu Guang moved towards the big and empty warehouse that was part of the property and closed the doors. There were two warehouses, but one of them was fused with the store. It was the one that Wu Guang had visited previously when checking on Li Xia's bows.

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In Coastal Hill City, Wu Guang had bought ten pieces of diagram scrolls. These scrolls were used to chart basic formations before their activation, and so would serve him to test his theory on formations. Formations were different from runes per se, as the latter could be carved by anyone with enough knowledge. They had no cultivation requirement. But formations were different, each tier required a definite level of cultivation to be formed and activated. There were also many other significant differences, but the main point laid in both their functions and capability. Runes had to be joined into sets to achieve one or two different effects, but even basic formations had a wide spectrum of effects.

For example, the most advanced rune set Wu Guang had encountered until now would be the door to his father's stash. It required a key to be opened and could move the stone door. It also had defensive properties enough to resist someone below the Warrior Realm and remain active for a very long time. Still, if someone with enough strength and knowledge destroyed a single rune in the set, the entire set would turn off. Luckily for Wu Guang, there were no Warrior realm cultivators between the people that tried to open it, so he was the only one able to use the key, which had a bloodline check rune engraved, to open the door.

But a formation with a similar effect would be far better. Not only it could resist several dozens of attacks from a Warrior realm cultivator before breaking down, but it would also be able to be mostly hidden inside the stone itself. Leaving only a slight part of it to recognize the key or person meant to open it. And even if that part was destroyed, the formation would be still active! Which meant that only the full destruction of the entire formation and stone door would lead to its opening.

Strictly speaking, even a basic formation would require the user to be a Sage realm cultivator, as it both required mind power and an exorbitant amount of qi. But for Wu Guang, the situation was different. He had mind power that surpassed a Sage realm cultivator by far, and while his qi amount was lower than a Sage, he already could contend in capacity and usage with some of the weaker peak Soul realm cultivators.

With the combination of the latter and a superior mind power, Wu Guang was sure that he could create a basic formation.

Still, his real objective was to test if they work, so he decided to work with full effort. He spent all the remaining daytime and part of the night, as well most of his mind power to draw five formations. All of them were of the same type, the most basic 'Astral Clock' one. Such a formation was the most basic one, and one that any cultivator reaching the Sage realm would naturally learn. Its function was very basic, it connected to the Astral Road by using qi as its conduit and revealed what was the actual Astral Date. The latter being the universal time, something that Wu Guang wanted to know. And how could he not? After all, he still did not know how many years had passed since he escaped his assassination.

After drawing five copies of the formation and using up five of his diagram scrolls, Wu Guang rested for some minutes and activated one of them. His qi was practically sucked dry right away, but regretfully it failed. It wasn't that Wu Guang had made an error or his qi was insufficient, no. The formation itself activated perfectly, but after a moment it was dispersed by some force. Not only destroying the formation but even the diagram scroll it was drawn upon.

"It seems that formations indeed can't be used. Still, I need to make sure" Muttering this, Wu Guang took out his remaining low-quality qi restoration pills and consumed them. After they were absorbed, his qi was restored, allowing him to try again. But, the result remained the same, a failure.

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Wu Guang only slept for a couple of hours before morning had arrived, but his experiment was still engraved in his mind. "Formations don't work, so I will have to investigate the cataclysm and find out why. If my theory about a wild gate is right, then I have to visit the Demonic Plateau and find it. The only reason for it to not be assimilated is that something is impeding the process. I hope that there will be a clear indication or at least clues to what it is".

After having breakfast and briefly noting that the four new servants had arrived, Wu Guang let Li Xia and Li Chun deal with them before asking Lan Yanzhi to watch over the residence and leaving.

His destination was the main building of the Merchant Guild. Objectively speaking he could buy a few qi storing treasures from the Sect, but he did not want to answer later when asked about why he did so. Especially as he was sure that Elder Mo monitored every one of his actions. Speaking of monitoring, Wu Guang immediately detected that he was being followed right from the moment he left the residence. Obviously, people from the Sect would not be so stupid and inexperienced, so most probably they were Du Yang's henchmen. In any case, he reached the Merchant Hall with no trouble.

The Merchant Hall was an enormous complex of buildings comparable only to the City's Manor itself. The store itself occupied a several hundred square feet building. Thankfully, Wu Guang knew what he needed and so he grabbed one of the clerks and asked him to lead the way. He spent about a hundred gold coins in total to buy a few small accessories that could store qi. Granted, they were very basic and of low quality, but for his objectives, they would be enough. Such accessories were very popular merchandise, so they were always in stock and their price was high. As for the reason, it was because most of the population was comprised of mortals, so to use any runed object, they would require an external source of qi.

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When Wu Guang returned to the residence, he grabbed some food and secluded himself in the warehouse. His current objective was to try and create a working array. Arrays could be said to be a different thing when compared with formations and runes. Especially as arrays did not use any rune or rune-form at all. They were formed by thought and following the laws of the Dao. A few hundreds of years before his death, arrays were just discovered.

But Bai Qi was earnest to learn anything new, so in fact, he was one of the first people to test some of them. The most unique thing about arrays was that it was a personal art. So if no one shared their findings with a person, the latter could only resort to trial and error until finding a working one. And even to do so, the creator would need to understand the laws of the Dao's he intended to use, as well know that arrays existed.

Arrays were separated into four categories. They were attack, defend, support, and fusion respectively. The first two names were self-descriptive, as for the last one, it was the mix of any other categories. Support arrays on the other hand were a bit special. Their effects were hard to even guess before creating and they normally touched Dao's that cultivators rarely understood. For example, the most well known array of the support category was the 'Gravity Array'. The space inside this array would not follow the normal gravity rules and allow the user to bent them on his will. It could be either an increase or a decrease in gravity, or even an absolute lack of it. It was meant to be used for training, but like with any array, the applications only depended on the mind of the creator.

Wu Guang had a lot of different arrays in his mind, but considering his lack of qi storing or qi gathering resources, he decided to go with the most basic defensive array. Not only were defensive arrays harder to sense, but they also did not cause any signs on the area around them, so it was the perfect one to experiment with.

After laying the accessories and creating the image of the array in his mind, Wu Guang used his qi as paint and his finger as a brush to draw the overall layout. After that, using his mind power he reinforced the drawing that occupied about 10 square feet of the warehouse floor.

The last step was to lay the qi storing treasures inside and activate it. Regretfully the accessories were empty, so Wu Guang spent some time filling them up before proceeding.

The array he was creating was the most simple form of the 'Four Directions Shield'. Which was a defensive array that protected the space inside it from attacks coming from any of the directions. Albeit the sky and ground were undefended, the array had a big plus of being able to be powered without limit, depending only on the amount and quality of qi stored into the treasures fueling it.

Wu Guang had only the worst of the latter, so he went with the less powerful version, which should be able to protect the space inside against attacks from a peak Spirit realm cultivator for a few minutes.

*Bzzzzz*

With a light buzzing the array activated. It was party visible and consisted of a simple square formed by four almost transparent, gold-colored shields. They extended from the ground to the roof and looked like a sacred wall.

"Time to test it!" Wu Guang thought and after dropping into a horse stance concentrated most of his remaining qi into his hand, intending to punch with all his force...