Letting Youhao escort me to the party, I notice some servants in side corridors carry what looks suspiciously like kegs. You’ve got to be kidding me, I said this was going to be a college part more for my attitude towards how this party was going to go, not because people are going to be doing keg stands, or because some kids are going to be hogging the beer pong table. Curious to see what drinking games are going to be made when you have Qi involved, I get a little it of a pep in my step.

When we arrive at some big double doors, they open up into a massive room, the closest think I could think being a ballroom on a scale I couldn’t imagine. All along the edge of the room I see a dozen different ping pong tables, a table with a few beer funnels set up, and most importantly, a massive bar with over a dozen bartenders. Next to the bar I spot the most beautiful sight I have ever set my eyes on. Next to the bar I spot this beautiful and shapely woman, the type of woman men would crowd around, but she was blocking my view of a dozen beer kegs. Doing a bit of a sigh, with a slight bit of drool coming out of the corner of my mouth, I accidentally mutter “Oh those beautiful curves”. Youhao hears this then looks at where my eyes were.

“Oh, I see you have fine taste in woman, if she wasn’t betrothed to someone, I may have taken you to meet her” Youhao says jokingly.

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about the woman, I was talking about all those beer kegs” I reply, which sets Youhao off, hands to his knees laughing his lungs out.

“In that case my boy, I will have to hurry you through these introductions” Youhao explains, right before he hurriedly brings me from one group of socialites to the next. Being a teenager, I definitely remembered their names and my excitement about meeting them was completely genuine. Admittedly, my [Perfect Recall] made it so that I couldn’t forget their names, but I definitely knew how to fake caring about meeting someone. What Chinese American mother doesn’t love showing off her son to others, how else would they live vicariously through their children?

Finally getting through all the random people that wanted to meet me, I make it over to the bar and get a beer to drink. Bringing over my beer to one of the ping pong tables that had a bit of a crowd around it, I soon find out why. I see what at first looks like a classic game of beer pong, the nine red solo cups, two pairs of people drinking, all normal looking until I see formations being activated. Turns out there is normal beer pong, and the advanced version, Formations Pong. The guy throwing the ball readies himself to throw the ping pong ball, several formations being cast on the ball as he raises his hand. Once his hand is all the way back, the ball is absolutely glowing. Once the ball leaves his hand, it nearly teleports a couple inches on top of one of the cups. Immediately a shield formation appears under the ball, only for a secondary formation to activate on the ball, causing it to melt through the shield formation. Right when it seems the ball will go into the cup, another formation activates, shrinking the cup to the size of a thimble, causing the ball to bounce off the lip of the cup and hit the table.

The other side taking the ball this time, starts casting formations rapidly on the ball as they raise it into the air. Once the ball is thrown, it immediately manifests eight additional copies, with each of them shooting off rapidly in curved paths, each aiming for a different cup. Three miniature tornadoes erupt from different cups, seeming to cover the angle where most of the balls were coming from. As soon as five of the balls touch the tornadoes, they disappear with a poof of smoke. The four remaining balls continue on their path, and when the defenders suddenly figure out which is the real ball a familiar looking shield formation pops up in its path. The defenders have a look of victory plastered all over their face, apparently the shield breaker formation would’ve given away which was the original, so they were confident they didn’t need to content with that. To their dismay, the remaining illusionary copies, except for one, disappear, and at the last second the two remaining balls switch place. The last ping pong ball copy dissipates against the shield as the real ball flies true, landing in one of the solo cups.

The crowd erupts in cheer, chanting “Drunk Duo, Drunk Duo”, as apparently the pair who scored are semi-famous, as they are on the Path of Drunken Formations, a rare path of formation users who get better when drunk. Zhonglei decides this is a good time to walk up next to me, his own beer in hand.

“Ah, I see you have gotten your first taste of Formations Pong” he says, before giving a brief explanation of the rules. The game allows pretty much any non-destruction formation, so I couldn’t shoot out bunch of fireball formations as they would be considered destructive. Zhonglei takes this as his opportunity to drag me away to a less crowded table, muttering something about no one wanting to be his duo partner since he is the Young Master. When we arrive at an empty table that was set aside for Formations Pong, we get a servant’s attention, asking for refills on our drinks. Once our drinks come back, we spend the next couple minutes drinking and chatting while we wait for some people to challenge us.