Eventually we manage to find some low-ranking people with formations, as we couldn’t deal with shield breaking formations, and ping pong balls teleporting everywhere. While we had been waiting, I had asked him what formations he knew, since it seemed like that was an assumed condition, and I hadn't heard anything about him being on the Path of Formations. He confesses to me he only really dabbles in it, and has otherwise refused to follow the Path, which interests me. Zhonglei explains that it is possible to refuse to follow most Paths, but only if you deny taking the Path when you first game a rank in it, afterwards, you can’t just wish the Path gone. As far as the Path’s you can’t prevent from gaining, such as [Prisoner] they require conditions to be met to gain them, and if you fail to meet any of the conditions at any point after gaining the Path, it will be removed on it’s own.

Zhonglei mentions that he is a water Qi cultivator, a fairly common way for Zhou Clan members to go, as Time related Paths, if rare overall, are more common in our Clan, along with water related Paths. He goes on to talk about his Path, the [Path of Ocean] gives an affinity for manipulating bodies of water, so combined with low level water formations, he can be somewhat useful. He mainly tells me has a variation of my water whip formation that focuses on multiple smaller “tentacles” that he can use to guard multiple cups at once, but isn’t good on offense, as well as a water-based shield, that acts similarly to my shield. I tell him that my only useful formations for this game would be my shield, water whip, and maybe instant freeze formations.

“Mingzie, how would water whip be useful, even if you could cast it fast enough to hit a ball out of mid-air, it would only work if they bounced it” Zhonglei asks me. I tell him its for offense and not defense, since neither of us really has a formation meant to be channeled onto an object that wouldn’t be destructive. I tell him my plan is to serve the ping pong ball either tennis style, or as if I was actually playing ping pong using the water whip. I figured that would work, and the speed at which it would be hit could potentially be too fast for shields.

“I figure that between your shield, and me double casting my shield, we could probably get away with covering most of the cups, if not overprotecting a couple of them. In the instance they have some way of breaking a shield, I also have instant freeze, which should stop it long enough for your water tentacles to take it out” I finish saying.

At this point our strategy discussion had ended, in time for two people to come up and sk to play against us. Since we had the ball, we started first, where Zhonglei just threw the ball like normal, trying to determine what defenses they had. As the ball neared the cup, wood grew up from the table, forming into an elegant buckler style shield over the cup the ball was headed for. The ball softly bounced off the shield and off to the side, where the other two caught the ball. The guy aiming the ball only casting one formation on the ball before throwing it. I nudge Zhonglei not to defend this round, so that it will only appear like I can use formations, giving us a surprise edge later. As the ball heads for the back corner of our cups, I double cast shields, allowing them to cover most of that entire half of cups. As the ball nears, the formation activates, causing it to suddenly change direction, but still hitting the edge of my shield, still bouncing off and landing away from the cups.

Grabbing the ball this time, I do a quick tennis grunt as I toss the ball up in the air. While the ball is at its peak, I cast water whip. The water manifests, already swinging it’s giant tendril towards the ball, where it smashes the ball forward fast. The other side just barely sees what happens, both attempting to cast shields to cover what cups they can, before the ball shoots into a cup before the shields even begin to manifest. When we saw how easy that shot, we both decided I would be the go-to scorer, while his throws wouldn’t be expected to win. With that strategy, every time it was my turn, my water whip easily shot the ball into a cup.

Not to say this game was a ten to zero game, since they did manage a similar strategy against us that worked most of the time. Since I would be focusing more on offense, I couldn’t double cast shields, just doing the one. Once they managed to get a couple points on us using a sort of speed formation that beamed the ball into a cup just barely too fast for a shield to manifest to completely stop it, I knew I had to try instant freeze. I had started pre-casting the formation just a second early to try and snipe the ball out of midair. After three attempts that either missed or didn’t work well enough, we were about to give up and leave it a tie, but when it was seven to six I managed to get it to work. My formation landed on it just a foot before it would go into a cup, slowing it down long enough for Zhonglei to get a water shield up to completely block it. We managed to get it to work once more before we won the game, ending it a ten to 8 game in our favor.

After the game we decided it was time to get back to drinking, where we spent the rest of the night, tossing back Qi infused alcohol and having casual conversations with various people at the party.