While Lin Wu was near Wang Xiong's residence, he was actually not intending to meet him. He didn't want the man to become careless and make some mistake by thinking that he had Lin Wu to back him up.

Rather, he was gonna wait there and observe him, making sure no one came to do something 'nefarious' before the duel. Lin Wu had read a lot of cultivation novels and thus knew of the various scenarios that could happen.

'No way I'm gonna let some random cannon fodder mess up my plans…' Lin Wu thought to himself.

"Though… aren't these guys living a bit too unfashionably? What's up with these plain residences?" Lin Wu wondered.

The residences of the inner court disciple looked like the houses of villagers. They were plain wooden residences with clay tiles on the roof. Their doors were bare with nary a bit of cinnabar paint on them.

Though when Lin Wu saw the formations, he knew all of this was just prioritizing the function instead of the aesthetic. There were many formations on the residence, such as defensive formations, isolating formation, and spirit Qi gathering formation.

These formations were already plenty to bankrupt any common core condensation realm cultivator, not to mention any Qi refining realm cultivator. Back at the Deer Wood city, Lin Wu had seen the residences of the nobles and they were quite similar to this.

But the difference could be seen from that, as only the rich nobles could afford such things, while here there were already thousands of residences like those. Even the special residence that was given to Shirong did not have a spirit Qi gathering formation attached to it though.

From what Lin Wu had learned, Spirit Qi gathering formations were one of the formations that were needed by nearly any sect. Without spirit Qi gathering formations, it would be harder for the disciples to cultivate.

The sects all had spirit Qi mines and spirit Qi springs under them, which allowed them to gain spirit stones and supply the spirit Qi needed for their cultivation. Without them, the spirit Qi emanated from them would be confined to a very small area and would not be effectively utilized. Some Qi gathering formation could also gather the spirit Qi from the air itself, but their inefficiency depended on their grades.

But transmitting this spirit Qi to multiple places without it dissipating was not possible without the formations. Thus they would become one of the primary formations that a sect needed. These spirit Qi formations were also of many types and grades.

Qi gathering formations were actually an entire subfield in the great field of formation masters.

There were many formation masters who dedicated their lives to making and studying Qi gathering formations. There were simply so many complexities and nuances to a Qi gathering formation that many formation masters that entered it would only be able to learn two or three such formations in their lifetime.

Lin Wu knew there were five categories of the Qi gathering formation.

They were divided into:

1. Tool powering formation

2. City powering formation

3. Sect powering formation

4. Empire Powering formation

5. World powering formation

The one that the Frozen Cloud Sect was using was one of the sect powering formations. The core of the formation array would be located deep within the sect and would gather the spirit Qi from the various spirit Qi mines and spirit Qi springs before collecting it into a large reservoir.

Then from this reservoir, the spirit Qi would be supplied to various smaller spirit Qi gathering formations that were each attached to a place that required it. For example, the residence of a disciple.

This also allowed the sect to control how much spirit Qi was supplied to each location, depending on the importance.

For example, the residence of an outer court disciple would get less spirit Qi than an inner court disciple and an elder would receive more than both of them.

"System the formation that the Taiji Celestial's tomb has… what grade is it?" Lin Wu questioned.

~Ding~

——

ANSWER: The Qi gathering formation that powers the Taiji Celestial's tomb is an Empire Powering formation. But it has been damaged and can only gather a fraction of its capacity which is roughly equal to half of a Sect powering formations' capacity.

——

~Sigh~

"How good it would be if I got that level… though now that I'm here I should be able to remedy that. At least a little bit." Lin Wu said as his gaze went to the map.

There were a few special markers that were used to designate very high level energy sources in the sect. Of these, there were seven that were particularly bright. Three of them were spirit stone mines and were spread across the three main mountains of the sect, while the remaining four were spirit Qi springs that were distributed between the smaller peaks.

Lin Wu was of course interested in them and wanted to get to the spirit stone mines, but couldn't help but stop him.

"Those two secret elders or whatever are there as well… can't risk it." Lin Wu muttered to himself.

The two unknown level cultivators were located near those three spirit stone mines and thus Lin Wu did not want to disturb them by going there and getting found out.

"Though these spirit Qi springs…" Lin Wu said as he looked at the closest one, which was just half a kilometer away from his location.

'Let's take a look.' Lin Wu thought as he made up his mind.

Reaching the spirit Qi springs periphery didn't take him that long, but he had to stop because of the barrier that was surrounding it. Though the thing was, this barrier was not created from a formation. If it were made from a formation, Lin Wu would have been easily been able to cross it with the help of the system.

Lin Wu carefully checked the barrier with his spirit sense and came to a conclusion.

"This is most definitely made from a Qi skill…"