The Art of Battle Formation

The array symbols in the Celestial Sea Domain originally differed from those in the Lingnan Region. Moreover, what the Divine Essence Old Demon had set up on Divine Essence Mountain was a seal, and seals were different from arrays. Thus, the seal before them was something entirely new compared to the arrays of the Lingnan Region.

Qin Ran activated his Eye Technique Illusory Realm, gazing at the complex, strange, and unfamiliar symbol patterns on the mountain wall before him, and felt a sense of despair.

In his previous life, his mathematical knowledge had allowed him to progress easily and far in the field of arrays.

If learning arrays for ordinary people was like a baby learning to walk, for him it was like Usain Bolt sprinting 100 meters.

This was because his method of learning arrays was fundamentally different from that of ordinary people.

For the people of this world, arrays were similar to traditional Chinese medicine in Qin Ran's previous world - an empirical discipline.

The ancients would try one medicine after another, discovering the effects of each; they would try one method after another, finding out which method was effective for which illness.

Then they would record their findings and pass them on to future generations. Their descendants would rely on these records, experiences, and prescriptions to treat illnesses and save lives, eventually forming their own experiences.

Very few people would study in detail the specific mechanisms of each medicine. What happened when it entered the human body? What effects did it produce? This was a black box.

Arrays were similar to this.

Initially, there were no arrays in the cultivation world. Until cultivators accidentally discovered that certain natural environments with the ability to concentrate spiritual energy from heaven and earth had some common factors, they noted these commonalities. They would go elsewhere and find that wherever these characteristics were present, spiritual energy could be concentrated; later, they artificially arranged such environments and found they could also concentrate spiritual energy.

This was the primitive form of the Spirit Gathering Formation.

Similarly, more and more terrains with other effects were discovered, and these terrains were named arrays.

Then, people abstracted the characteristics of these terrains, obtained array diagrams, simplified the diagrams, and turned them into array symbols... basic array patterns.

Cultivators created more and more array patterns, and more array patterns appeared in the cultivation world. Arrays developed.

During this process, similar to traditional Chinese medicine, most cultivators only knew what effects certain arrays or basic array patterns had, but not why the combination of certain array patterns produced a particular array.

They learned arrays one by one, rather than learning array patterns one by one.

If a master knew an array, like the Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation, they would teach this array to their disciple, and the disciple would only know this array.

If the master held back something, or if their own understanding or memory of the array was problematic, then the array learned by the disciple would have issues, and they wouldn't know how to fix it.

Using mathematics as an analogy, it's like a teacher only teaching how to solve the current problem, without teaching problem-solving strategies or analyzing what type of problem it is and how to solve this type of problem.

Students would remember how to solve this particular problem, but when faced with a slightly different problem in an exam, they wouldn't know how to solve it. In extreme cases, even if only the numbers changed while the formula remained the same, students would be at a loss.

This could be attributed to the students' dullness or lack of flexibility in learning, but it could also be said that the teacher was lazy in their teaching. Arrays should be learned starting from basic array patterns, then using array patterns to derive arrays. But this was too difficult; disciples couldn't learn it, and teachers couldn't explain it, so they just memorized complete arrays as they were.

Qin Ran was just a student who learned more flexibly. He had the innate advantage brought by mathematics, starting to learn from basic symbols, and could use mathematics to derive arrays from symbols and derive formed arrays from basic arrays.

In the field of arrays, Qin Ran was like a student who could derive formulas on his own.

But the situation he faced now was that the basic array patterns in the Celestial Sea Domain had developed more wildly than in the Lingnan Region and were not systematic. He didn't recognize the basic array patterns in this seal.

A huge array composed of basic array patterns he didn't recognize, one he had never seen before - the difficulty of breaking this array was simply too great.

He would first have to learn all the array patterns involved in this seal, then deduce the array based on these patterns. Only then could he break the array.

Not to mention that his computing power was far from enough to calculate the level of this seal, just finding out all the basic array patterns of this seal... this entire Divine Essence Mountain was not something he could do in a short time.

So at this moment, Qin Ran looked at the array patterns hidden in this mountain wall and felt momentarily desperate.

"Using my method to break the seal, it's not that it can't be done, but it would take too long," he suppressed the despair in his heart and looked towards the giant pit beside him. "It seems I'll have to rely on the Island Master's arrangements over these many years.

"But how exactly are the Island Master's arrangements supposed to break the seal? And how am I supposed to get this thing? This still needs to be planned from scratch..."

He withdrew his gaze and turned to look at the other night walkers, finding that they had already dispersed in the cave, each tending to their own injuries.

"No matter how to break the seal, these people are all obstacles."

He looked at the night walkers scattered throughout the cave, considering in his mind how he could kill them all.

"If it comes to a direct confrontation, I might not have a chance even in a one-on-one fight. In the end, I'll still have to resort to poison."

To poison, one needs poison.

"Fortunately, I secretly kept some medicinal herbs when I was refining pills earlier," he felt grateful for this traditional virtue of alchemists. "Although I can't refine other potent poisons, based on the pharmacological structure of the Death Notice Pill, I can still use these herbs to refine a simplified version of it. It doesn't have to be lethal, just enough to weaken their combat ability."

While planning in his mind, he surveyed the night walkers in the cave, looking at them like prey.

Four night walkers had died in tonight's operation. Now there were twenty-seven night walkers left in the cave, plus nine cultivators of unknown purpose sitting cross-legged at the edge of the giant pit, and then Tie Ruonan and the Man in Red Robe. In total, there were thirty-eight people in this cave.

"The herbs are a bit scarce, the pills I can refine probably won't be enough to take out so many people..."

As he was looking, he suddenly noticed that the night walkers in this cave didn't seem very familiar with each other. There was even wariness between them.

This reminded him that last night and tonight, when the night walkers went out to do their killing missions, they were all acting alone. He hadn't seen any cooperation in killing... even though cooperative hunting would be more efficient.

Even now, as they were treating their wounds, they were doing it alone.

He thought for a moment, looked at the slowly disappearing corpses in the giant pit beside him, and understood: this giant pit only needed the corpses of body refiners, whose corpses they were, it didn't discriminate.

"If that's the case, it's not bad. It'll be more convenient for me to deal with later."

It was a rare piece of good news.

After scanning the cave a few times, Qin Ran also found a spot where no one was.

However, just as he walked over and sat down, he heard someone calling out to him: "Hey! That guy..."

He looked towards the voice and saw it was Tie Ruonan speaking in his direction. He wasn't sure if she was talking to him, so he double-checked before getting up and walking towards Tie Ruonan.

"Captain!" he asked, "What's the matter?"

He didn't pretend to be servile, because his persona was that of a death soldier, or assassin, who came to Divine Essence Mountain specifically to kill. Such a person was a desperate character and wouldn't be subservient.

Tie Ruonan glanced at him and asked, "What's your name?"

Hearing this question, Qin Ran cautiously called out, "Captain!" and then quietly gestured with his eyes towards the other night walkers.

Tie Ruonan was taken aback for a moment, then realized that although everyone here was a death soldier, it was still best to conceal their identities. She nodded to show she understood, and smiled, "Quite cautious, aren't you."

"I have a wife and children at home, I have no choice," Qin Ran made up a story on the spot.

This wasn't because he was worried about exposing the identity of his substitute, but because he simply didn't know what name his substitute went by, so he spoke this way.

...The situation was urgent when he killed the person, he didn't have time to search their soul.

"Your strength is very impressive," Tie Ruonan said. "Although the young island master of Evil Shark Island is a good-for-nothing playboy, he's still quite strong at the level of a second-grade body refiner. The fact that you could kill him and come back alive is truly remarkable."

"I'm still far behind you, Captain," Qin Ran replied.

"Hah!" Tie Ruonan smiled coldly, her face not matching her laughter. "You're actually trying to flatter me... I didn't expect to find someone like you who knows how to brown-nose here."

Qin Ran's heart skipped a beat, but he just smiled and didn't respond further.

Tie Ruonan casually pulled out a porcelain bottle and handed it to Qin Ran, saying, "Here's a bottle of Blood Replenishing Pills for you. I hope you survive until the end of this mission."

"?"

Qin Ran was puzzled. He had just been worrying about not having enough medicinal ingredients, and now Tie Ruonan was giving him pills... Did she not know that pills could also be used as ingredients to refine more pills?

Could Tie Ruonan be a traitor to Dragon Whale Island?

He quickly thanked her, his gratitude genuine: "Thank you, Captain."

"Don't mention it..." Tie Ruonan responded offhandedly.

The two weren't close, and this wasn't an appropriate place for chatting.

Qin Ran, having received the pills, returned to his previous position.

As soon as he sat down cross-legged against the wall, he noticed that the other night walkers were eyeing the pills in his hand, either intentionally or unintentionally. They were probably considering how to snatch this bottle of healing pills from him.

Seeing this, he laughed coldly in his heart.

"You want the pills?" He took out one pill, tossing it into his mouth. "I'll give them to you."

But the bottle vanished from his hand.

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