Not being able to use three-dimensional runes was less of an obstacle than she’d suspected it would be. It limited her to two-dimensional runes, yes, but despite how ineffective they were compared to the three-dimensional runes she usually used, they were still runes. It was interesting, feeling out the way they could connect to their more powerful brethren, in a manner that Mingtian had never talked about… all the little secrets of their construction that she’d never bothered with before, not seeing any reason why.

There were some benefits to them, even disregarding the ability to trace the lines and fractions of their being, to understand the complex interrelations that composed the whole of them. They were small, for one, compared to the two-dimensional maps of the larger, three-dimensional runes, which allowed her to fit more in per unit area. That didn’t make the formation any stronger— it made it weaker, actually— but it did allow her a leeway in the actual construction of it that was surprisingly useful. Combined with her experiments in picking and choosing small parts of those runes for subordinate functions… things were shaping up to be rather interesting.

This time, as she finished carving runes onto another small pylon and leaned back, taking a breath of the brisk mountain air, the formation would be very much different. The qi gathering formation had been, for all the complexity of its function, an ultimately simple formation, enhanced by the shape of its nodes and the perfection of its arrangement into something of surprising power. The defensive formation? Not so.

Sighing, and wiping a bit of sweat off her brow, she stood and grabbed the huge hunk of rock she’d carved into a temporary inhibitor and dragged it over to the next spot. It was going to be a sixteen node formation which— while not weak by any sense of the imagination— was also not particularly strong when it came to formation designs. Dropping the rock down at the next site, she went to haul over the next pylon she’d cut out, and…

The work continued.

It was not going to be the most robust thing ever, but it would work. Ultimately, it consisted of three layers— one detection layer a foot or so out beyond the first real defensive layer, the defensive layer which would immediately harden for a few seconds upon if something tipped the detection layer, and then a final, far more powerful defensive layer that would flare to life if the second layer was hit— which would mean a projectile of some significant speed— or manually, by breaking a wooden stick she’d carved for the purpose. It’d only work if one was standing inside the formation… but perhaps that was for the best. It wouldn’t be good to get locked out…

She continued to work. Avyr continued to cultivate. The days and nights continued to blend together, wheeling overhead, the vast expanse of sunlight transforming to darkness, and once more pivoting to the dawnlight, winter’s harsh domain outstretched but unable to gain purchase on their little enclave of striving, struggling existence. The Dragonspine Mountains were a harsh region, that much was undeniable. She could feel it in the way her bones ached when she woke, the way the harsh winds whistled through tree-canopies and the way the high peaks clawed at the higher skies above them. She could feel it in the atmosphere of everything around her, an unsullied crystal serenity, some faint… sense, or aura, or— she could not put words to it.

It was an awesome and terrible thing, this world of theirs. Sometimes, they spoke about that in their brief moments together, when Avyr stepped out of secluded cultivation to eat his meals and chat with her, his fur ruffled and ratty from so long in the sauna she’d made. It was cute, watching him resist the urge to lick himself clean. It was even funnier to see how uncomfortable he was whenever he forced himself to leap into one of the cooler pools and take a bath. A cat, indeed…

Stolen from NovelBin, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She continued her work on the formation. Now that the bones of it were in place, there was no reason to make it anything but better. It relied on the excess qi generated from the qi gathering formation— the excess qi that wasn’t yin aligned, as that had already been pushed into the cooling formation to prevent the lake from boiling off— but that reliance also limited it. It would never run out of energy, yes, but it would also never be particularly powerful. With a Foundation Establishment spirit beast on the loose somewhere in the forests around them, she dared not rest on not particularly powerful. She wanted a barrier that could survive anything.

Unfortunately, unlike qi gathering formations, she didn't’ really have all the skills necessary to be particularly good at barrier construction. That was fine— she knew a bit of trivia about them, courtesy of that one hunter with the comically large gun— and that was enough for her to kludge up some ideas. First, energy storage.

Qi storage was… not easy. Everyone knew that the best material to store qi in was jade, except they didn’t have any jade, and if there’d been any easy to find jade on the mountain they’d never have been sent there by the Association. Jade was one of if not the most valuable natural resources, the critical component in every bit of technology that even tangentially used qi. Which was a lot— dataslates, all sorts of wards that were critical to life in the city, the arrays that were responsible for waste treatment and drinking water purification, and the city’s plumbing system, and… the list went on and on.

Luckily, she was pretty sure that wasn’t the only way to store qi. Maybe the only way to store qi with any sort of efficiency or long-term stability, but— just look at the qi gathering formation! That stored qi well enough…

So, instead of agonizing over finding the perfect spiritual material, she just grabbed another boulder and set to work. The stylus was just as valuable as it’d always been, carving through the block of stone with contemptuous ease. Not for the first time, Lily wondered if Mingtian had been fully cognizant of the value of what he’d given her— not that she really doubted he hadn’t, just… it was so incredibly useful that she almost couldn’t imagine willingly surrendering it.

She pushed the thought out of her mind, focusing instead on the new formation. From the larger block of stone, first, she carved out a series of cubes. Then she carved out cubes from within those cubes, carefully leaving a bunch of empty boxes. These would be her little qi batteries. Onto both the outside and inside of them, she carved with painstaking precision a series of runes to… slow down, for lack of a better word, the flow of the qi through the formation. The qi flow would leak into the boxes, slowly filling them up, and then when they were full, it would leak out and continue to circulate. If there was ever a time that the barrier needed more qi than the natural circulation could provide, though, the pressure of the draw would knock the lids off the boxes and release the trapped qi.

Not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was pretty good— and perhaps more importantly, it would work. Probably.

She made a bunch of those, then for good measure made a few bi to support the barrier against the sort of harmonious vibrations that the hunter had said were particularly good at breaking through barriers, and…

A whole week and a bit had slipped away while she’d worked at the defensive formation. It wouldn’t be long until they had to leave… but for the moment, she could relax in the knowledge that they were safe as she could make them. It wasn’t like they were going to get attacked or anything, though so… but still, it was nice.

So it went.