Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 242

Chapter 242: ESSENCE FORMATIONS
After less than half an incense stick of time, her brother sent a message through their spiritual connection.

Ready.

Li Hua smiled, activating the Void Cloak technique. She glided through the male disciples’ residence, her presence completely masked from the spiritual arrays that monitored unauthorized visitors. Outside her brother’s quarters, she spotted Li Wei standing sentinel, his posture betraying slight nervousness.

She moved past him in a whisper of displaced air, entering his quarters without slowing. “Brother,” she murmured at a volume only they could hear.

Li Wei quickly stepped inside, securing the door with both physical locks and a basic privacy barriers. “That should prevent casual interruption,” he whispered.

Releasing the Void Cloak, Li Hua materialized in the center of her brother’s quarters. She glanced around with mild curiosity—his room was similar to hers in layout though slightly larger.. The view through his windows overlooked the mountain’s cultivation caves rather than her preferred mountain view, but offered excellent feng shui for cultivation.

“Sister, what did you need?” Li Wei asked, formal politeness barely concealing his curiosity. It was highly unusual for her to seek him out in his private quarters, especially using stealth techniques.

Li Hua turned to face him, her expression unusually serious as she placed one finger against her lips in the universal gesture for silence. “It’s a secret,” she whispered, her eyes glinting with anticipation that reminded him of their childhood misadventures.

Without waiting for his response, she produced several pristine talisman papers from her pocket space. Moving to his desk with practiced grace, she set out the papers in a precise array and retrieved a small ceramic cup from her inner space, filling it with spirit water.

With fluid motions that spoke of expertise, Li Hua drew one of her cultivation daggers from her waist sash. She pricked her forefinger without hesitation, allowing a single droplet of blood—bright with concentrated spiritual essence—to fall into the water. The liquid immediately changed color, shifting through several spiritual spectrums before settling into an iridescent crimson that glowed with subtle power.

Li Wei watched in fascinated silence as she produced a fine-tipped brush, crafting a mixture of her blood and the spirit water as ink. Her brushwork displayed precision, each stroke creating characters of ancient design, some of which Li Wei didn’t recognize despite his extensive study. She completed four distinct talismans, each bearing similar but subtly different formations.

After returning her materials to her storage space, Li Hua placed the completed talismans on the desk and raised her hands above them. Spiritual essence flowed from her fingertips into the papers, causing the blood-infused characters to pulse with increasing brilliance.

Her brother stepped closer, concern evident in his expression. “Sister…” he whispered, clearly worried about the unorthodox technique she was performing.

Li Hua remained focused, continuing to channel essence into the talismans until the ink completely dried, the characters now permanently infused with her spiritual signature. With a precise flick of her wrist and a formation gesture he didn’t recognize, she sent the four talismans flying to the cardinal points of his room—north, south, east, and west—where they adhered to the walls as if they had always been part of the structure.

The moment the formation completed, a powerful vibration resonated throughout the room, causing scrolls on his shelves to tremble and a plant to sway as if in a strong breeze. Li Hua quickly traced several additional characters in the air with her finger—stabilization formations that transformed the chaotic vibration into a harmonious hum.

The effect was immediate and extraordinary. The ambient spiritual essence in the room became dramatically purified and concentrated—far denser than even the sect’s specialized cultivation caves, yet perfectly balanced. The quality was so exceptional that Li Wei instinctively gasped, his cultivation base automatically absorbing the refined energy.

“What is this?” he whispered, stunned by the transformation of his ordinary quarters into what felt like a sacred cultivation ground.

“Just something I picked up during my time in the Forbidden Zone,” Li Hua smiled enigmatically, casually attributing her celestial knowledge to a more plausible source. She gestured toward each talisman in turn, her finger tracing connecting lines of spiritual energy that only cultivation-enhanced vision could perceive.

“North wall—Quintessence Gathering Formation. It draws spiritual essence from a radius of fifty yards, but selectively filters for only the purest energy currents,” she explained. “East wall—Essence Amplification Array. It multiplies ambient energy by approximately fivefold without distorting balance.” Her gesture shifted to the third talisman. “South wall—Elemental Refinement Script. It purifies gathered essence of impurities that typically cause breakthrough instability and meridian damage.”

She pointed to the final talisman on the western wall, her expression softening with sisterly affection. “And west—Spirit Sanctuary Seal. It masks the unusual energy concentration from the sect’s monitoring arrays, ensuring your privacy during cultivation and preventing unwanted attention from those who might covet such resources.”

When she turned to her eldest brother, Li Hua couldn’t help but laugh aloud at his expression. His scholarly composure had completely shattered—face drained of color, eyes widened to perfect circles, mouth frozen in a silent ‘O’ of astonishment. The normally articulate disciple rendered momentarily speechless by cultivation advancements that defied his considerable understanding of spiritual theory.

She could practically visualize the explosion happening within his mind—a brilliant scholar’s frameworks of understanding being simultaneously confirmed and utterly dismantled as he processed what she had just casually accomplished. It was the face of someone witnessing what should have been impossible, yet unable to deny the evidence of his own senses as the room’s spiritual density continued to increase beyond what should have been sustainable within normal spatial constraints.

“I want to visit Second Brother as well,” Li Hua said, her tone casual despite the extraordinary formation she’d just created. “I could set up a similar array in his quarters to help with his breakthrough challenges.”

Her words finally snapped her brother out of his stupor. He stepped forward, grasping her shoulders with an intensity he rarely displayed outside of training. “Sister, h-how is this possible?” His scholarly composure had completely dissolved, replaced by raw wonderment. “These formations… they’re beyond any techniques I’ve read about. The synchronization between the cardinal talismans alone should require decades of study!”