Sage was expecting some sort of blowback or scorn for his proposal, and his main hope was that he would find a way to overcome those doubts. Instead Song Lu Tian merely nodded his head.

“What material?”

Sage was caught off guard, but covered it quite quickly. Immediately he started to describe the appearance and location of the Double Flowered Ice Camellia as they were told to him by the Zhu clan. He made sure to leave out any mention of the Zhu clan or how important the flowers were. It was of course obvious that his efforts so far meant the ice camellia was a valuable resource.

“All that is left is for you to name your price, Sir Song. I am also prepared to offer extra assistance to you for both the tournament and the voyage into the Thunder Mountain Bridge. A month is not long enough for me to retrieve anything from my sect, but it is enough time for me to forge any speciality equipment you might desire.”

Song Lu Tian leaned over towards the middle aged man, Song Heng, whispering something to him. Of course it wasn’t really whispering, as cultivators had powerful hearing, instead it was a special technique using Qi as a medium to carry their words instead of the air. The Qi traveled directly from mouth to ear and made it impossible for anyone to eavesdrop without physically intercepting the ‘sound transmission’, as it was known. Song Heng nodded to Song Lu Tian and took over the conversation while Song Lu Tian and Song Hong turned around and left after a curt farewell.

“First, you shall facilitate a trade agreement with our Mount Song Sect. Second, you will make a set of swords for Song Lu Tian. Third, hand over all that extra assistance. If you can do all these things, then you will get your special flowers.”

The conversation seemed to have ended on a high note with Sage being surprised at how simple it was to get Song Lu Tian to cooperate. That was until he received a scroll that expressed Song Lu Tian’s demands for his swords. It turns out that Song Lu Tian was an expert at using Sword Formations. Since they saw Sage was a Blacksmith and also Formation Master they decided to see if he could create a set of swords for him to use in his formation. If he could create a set of swords up to their standards they would comply with his request.

Sword Formations were a very specialized area of expertise that was very demanding, both on the cultivator who used them, and the swords they used to form them. In essence it replaced the usual special materials to form a formation with a set of flying swords. The controller of the formation not only had to be an expert with swords, but also capable of controlling formations. Employing a simple formation was actually quite simple, and usually just consisted of supplying energy and designating targets or choosing when to activate a shield or illusion formation. Truly powerful formations on the other hand were very complicated. They could have endless amounts of variation, each change or transformation making it harder to pinpoint their weaknesses or avoid its attacks. Their complexity of use was one of the reasons that Sage was developing his layered formation plates. He could simulate a more complex and powerful formation using much simpler formations.

In a Sword Formation each sword was embedded not just with formations to enchant and empower the weapon, but also the anchoring points that would allow them to be used as the core of an array formation. The cultivator in charge would control the swords to fly around and attack or defend against their foes while simultaneously forming their energy into a formation. While very difficult to do, it had the effect of multiplying their power by many times over. If Song Lu Tian was truly an expert with Sword Formations, then it was no wonder that he could be so powerful that people called him undefeatable among his rank.

It also made sense for them to make such a request to him. A flying sword was nothing more than a magic sword that had been enchanted with a set of flying symbols. It had gained its own name due to how common the category of items had become. A cultivator riding on a flying sword or using it to fight with others was such an iconic and inspiring sight that it was no wonder that it was so popular. That said, flying swords were usually weaker than their normal counterparts. In order to make them faster, most of them were very light and consequently created with less durable materials. High level cultivators used them to carry their sword Qi, which meant that only their energy would face their enemies weapons or energies. As such, the physical strength of the flying sword was not as important as its speed or energy channeling abilities.

The swords used in a Sword Formation were the core of a formation, and just like Formation Plates, they had to channel a huge amount of energy and face a lot of stress. Normal flying swords that were light and fragile would be easily shattered after just a short amount of use in a Sword Formation. In addition, a Sword Formation could be made many times stronger if the swords it used were matching parts of a set and linked with anchoring points for a formation. Sage’s guess was that Song Lu Tian had to make due with mass produced magical swords. These models of swords were ones that a Sect usually had their lower level smiths create, each of them from the same materials and following the same standard design. Most sects created a few types of such weapons, somewhat like car manufacturers having their recognized brands of vehicles with known performance or lasting reputations.

Most sects only had a handful of people that practiced supporting professions. The majority would focus only on the special techniques of their group and making themselves more powerful. They would only branch out into professions when they reached a wall in their cultivation and couldn’t progress any further.

Makes sense. Now that I think about it. All the flying sword sets for Sword Formations that I saw in the Sect were all created for core formation cultivators. Its probably very rare for a lower ranked cultivator to practice them.

When Sage broke into the Formation Building rank, he also ended up consuming nearly all of his precious resources and materials. He’d purchased some of the essentials for formations back, but that was only a tiny portion of the variety he used to have. Sadly, before he could even begin any forging there were a lot of materials he would have to rustle up. Plum Lantern City was probably large enough to have most of the things he was looking for, but with so many people in town it had become somewhat of a headache to move around in the city.

Wanting to prove himself valuable to Song Lu Tian, and secure his assistance, Sage had to spend extra to hire a few purchasing agents. Essentially recruiting some wandering cultivators to go around and purchase certain materials. Then they would bring them to him and Sage would pay them a premium price for their time. It was a waste of money, but Sage had learned that after his time as a beast, his funds had actually increased rather than decreased. He was already quite rich before that and his monster self must have looted all those cultivators it killed. When he first checked he was astounded to have around seven hundred and fifty thousand spirit stones, though he’d since then spent nearly fifty thousand of them.

Now that I’ve got the miscellaneous materials covered, its time to get the good stuff.