SWNOVELXO Chapter 48: Chapter 599: A Grand Formation?
Chapter 599: A Grand Formation?
Back in his disciple quarters, with the door shut tight, Mo Hua couldn't wait to use his divine sense to examine his Great Void Token—now unlocked with cultivation permissions.
Inside the token, a vast blank space stretched out, but now densely packed rows of characters floated into view.
Some were familiar: cultivation courses, sect regulations, and such.
These had always been there.
But now, as if painted in ink and watercolor, two brand new sections appeared in the previously empty space:
One was titled "Bounty Registry",
The other, "Merit Registry."
The Bounty Registry recorded all kinds of sect missions.
Tasks were listed with their corresponding merit rewards.
It was filled with lines of text—detailing the mission objective, a description, location, risk level, and the number of merit points rewarded.
It also listed the requirements for accepting each task.
For example: minimum cultivation level, proficiency in specific techniques, or whether one was skilled in alchemy, formation drawing, and so on.
The Merit Registry, meanwhile, displayed a dazzling list of rewards exchangeable via merit.
There were cultivation techniques, Dao methods, formation scrolls, pill recipes, forging manuals—all deeply guarded inheritances of the Great Void Sect.
There were also spirit artifacts, rare pills, natural treasures—heavenly herbs, spirit grasses, lotus blooms, celestial ginseng...
To help disciples navigate more easily, many items—like swords, pills, spirit herbs—were accompanied by beautiful little watercolor illustrations. Clear and visually appealing.
Mo Hua guessed… this whole setup was probably designed by a female elder in the sect.
At the same time, he was thoroughly puzzled:
"How… was something like this even created inside the token?"
It defied his usual understanding of cultivation.
He had never seen anything like this before.
This seemed to be something only Foundation Establishment disciples—and not just any disciple, but those within a powerful legacy like the Great Void Sect—could access.
But what was the principle behind this kind of sect token?
"All things in Heaven and Earth are Dao.
Ten thousand phenomena, ten thousand Daos—
unified through formations…"
"So could this also be… some kind of formation?"
Mo Hua pondered for a long time, but still shook his head.
He couldn't figure it out. What kind of formation logic could construct such a strange, yet wondrous merit system… inside a small token?
Ink characters to transmit information,
Painted images that responded and shifted with divine sense…
Yet, by Mo Hua's intuition, this was all just surface-level illusion.
Most likely, this was a type of formation he had never seen or studied before.
It had to rely on a very specialized system of formation patterns, formation cores, and formation nodes to construct its base architecture.
Mo Hua frowned—then suddenly had an idea:
"Why not… try deducing it?"
Let's see if he could calculate anything from the Great Void Token…
Back when he first joined the sect, Mo Hua had tried to inspect the token too.
But at the time, his permissions were minimal. The token blocked his divine sense completely. Combined with his shallow understanding of formations, he'd seen nothing.
But now, after nearly half a year of learning under Old Mister Xun…
His divine sense had grown stronger, his foundation in formation arts much deeper, and his experience broader.
And now—he had permission.
Mo Hua's eyes lit up. He straightened his back and sank his divine sense into the token, carefully observing the shifting characters and ink patterns.
Simultaneously, his mind activated Heavenly Deduction, peering beyond the text and images to uncover their essence...
Gradually, the characters blurred. The vibrant pictures overlapped and shimmered.
The illusion peeled back—bit by bit—revealing glimpses of what lay underneath...
Faintly, Mo Hua caught a thread of truth:
The text and watercolor images… were not real.
They were formations—visual projections of formation patterns.
Every word and picture was composed of simple, uniform, orderly but rigid array runes, meticulously arranged and transformed.
All of these patterns were controlled by formation cores.
And those cores—all aligned and refined—converged into one vast and magnificent central formation hub.
That hub… was impossibly vast and incomprehensibly complex.
Its outer layers were wrapped in deep, tightly woven array scripts—forming an impenetrable formation barrier.
Mo Hua's divine sense, in front of such an array, was like a candle in the wind—fragile and insignificant.
As his mental energy dwindled, he had to stop the deduction there. He simply didn't have enough divine sense to peer deeper…
Still, he was utterly shaken.
"Don't tell me… this whole thing is a massive formation?!"
A formation constructed via the Great Void Token!
Every disciple's token was an array terminal, all linked back to a massive central formation embedded with the "core sequence" of the sect itself.
Through this, all disciples could share information, send divine-sense messages, and interact with the merit system.
This wasn't some battlefield grand array.
It wasn't like the Five Elements Demon-Slaying Formation or the Five Elements Sect-Guarding Formation—external, awe-inspiring, world-shaking formations.
No—this was a different kind.
A vast sea of data and information built within the confines of a palm-sized token—a formation of divine sense and communication.
"Could this too… be a form of the Dao?"
Mo Hua's worldview expanded again. He was stunned.
Then—very quietly, a wicked little idea crept in:
"If I… managed to learn this formation system…"
"If I cracked the barrier, and took control of the core formation hub…"
"Wouldn't that mean—"
"I could eavesdrop on every disciple and elder in the sect?"
(Click next page for more… it gets even crazier!)
"I could spy on all the sect's deepest secrets?"
"And if I controlled the formation, wouldn't I also…"
"Be able to alter the permissions system?"
"Grant myself full access?"
"Even manually change my merit points?"
"Exchange for any treasure, heavenly item, divine technique—whatever I wanted?"
"Unlimited merit for life?!"
…
Mo Hua's jaw dropped.
The evil little thoughts popped up like mushrooms after the rain—one after another, endless.
Then he shook his head quickly and declared righteously:
"No!"
"I'm a proper Great Void Sect disciple now. I have principles.
I can't steal from the sect or seize its authority!"
"Greed is the death of cultivation!"
…Still, his little heart… was kind of tempted.
No stealing from the Great Void Sect—but…
Mo Hua's thoughts spun rapidly.
"If the Great Void Sect has this system, then…
other sects in Qianxue Prefecture probably do too."
"In fact, any big sect with history, legacy, and resources…
probably has this kind of system—a formation that handles communication, merit, promotions."
"Even if not a massive formation, it'd still be a complex array.
And the basic logic, the architecture, the foundation—must be the same."
"I don't know this formation system yet…"
"But with the token right here in front of me, once I improve my formation skills, enhance my divine sense, and refine my deduction techniques…"
"Someday—I'll crack the entire structure!"
Mo Hua's heart was racing with excitement.
Then he muttered with a thoughtful smirk:
"I'm a disciple of the Great Void Sect. I can't harm my own sect…"
"But the other sects… I'm not one of them…"
"Some of those 'righteous' sects don't act very righteous anyway…"
"Not to mention the demonic sects, corpse cults, and heretical paths…"
"If one day I fully understand this formation…"
Mo Hua's face lit up like a mischievous fox, quietly humming in his heart:
"You sects better not mess with me…"
"Or if I happen to pick up your sect token one day…"
"You're in for a real treat…"
…
Of course, it was still a bit early.
Mo Hua put away his wild ambitions and returned to solid, practical thinking.
Food had to be eaten one bite at a time.
The road had to be walked one step at a time.
He'd slowly study the Great Void Token.
Right now, he needed to start by accepting sect bounties, earning merit, exchanging it for formation scrolls, and strengthening his divine sense.
Once he'd saved up enough merit and unlocked higher permissions, then he could check whether the more advanced merit registers contained:
—The true method of the Great Void Divine Sword Condensation,
and…
—A formation capable of reversing life and death...
Mo Hua's eyes grew firm.
From that day on, Mo Hua began taking on missions.
He remembered Old Mister Xun's warning not to aim too high too quickly, so he only applied for "entry-level" tasks at first.
But "applying" for a mission wasn't a one-sided thing.
He had to apply, and someone else had to accept.
Inside the Great Void Token, you could manifest text through divine sense.
On the bounty board, tasks were crammed densely.
To apply, you just focused your divine sense below a task and left your name there.
That "name" would include some basic details about the disciple:
—Current cultivation level,
—Practiced techniques,
—Specialized Dao path,
—What grade they were in formations, pills, talismans, artifacts, etc.
Disciples could choose how much info to disclose.
The cultivator who posted the task would read this info, then decide whether to approve you for the job.
Only if both sides agreed was a task officially accepted.
But poor Mo Hua—who had only gained his permissions early thanks to Old Mister Xun pulling some strings—was still seen as a total newbie. Even for entry-level tasks, he was repeatedly rejected.
Gatekeeping?
Others turned him down, saying he looked too young, too small, like a schoolchild. It would reflect poorly on the sect to have someone like that guarding the gates.
Sweeping duty?
Mo Hua managed to sweep once. But the steward complained he was too slow… and couldn't bear to make a skinny kid work, so they stopped assigning him altogether.
As for refining tools, pills, or talismans—Mo Hua didn't know how.
So in the end, he could only turn to drawing formations.
"Fine… drawing formations it is."
He originally wanted to try a few different jobs, but now he had to focus.
Yet even that… was not so simple.
Sect missions were essentially bounties—requests based on real needs.
If no one needed formations, then he couldn't just randomly draw stuff and hand it out.
Which was fair.
Mo Hua was a master of general-purpose formations like the Five Elements Array and fairly skilled in Eight Trigram Arrays.
According to the Great Void Token, most second-grade, low-tier formation bounties—even some above that level—were well within Mo Hua's ability. He could even handle them with ease.
The problem was: he couldn't even get the jobs.
Task posters simply wouldn't pick him.
Because formation-related bounties were ranked by Dao Court standards—and his competition?
All had fancy "Second Grade: Beginner" or "Second Grade: Intermediate" formation master titles…
These formation masters were all several years above him—senior brothers and sisters.
Meanwhile, Mo Hua had only passed the First Grade Formation Master certification. With that low rank hanging over him, no one even glanced his way.
Even if he marked himself as "skilled in formations," no one believed it.
So many skills—no place to use them.
Mo Hua sighed helplessly.
In the end, he had to settle for accepting low-tier, first-grade formation jobs.
These little jobs were often ignored. They offered very little merit, and second-grade formation masters looked down on them.
Most first-grade formation masters were freshly accepted disciples who hadn't unlocked their Great Void Tokens yet.
So only a handful of senior disciples—just beginning to learn second-grade formations—took on these low-tier tasks for practice.
But for Mo Hua, who had official Dao Court certification as a first-grade formation master, these jobs seemed "weighty" enough.
He didn't hold back—sweeping the bounty list with divine sense.
Any task marked "First Grade Formation", he tapped and signed his name:
"Mo Hua."
A while later, his token gave a subtle tremble—a notification.
Mo Hua scanned it with divine sense. Sure enough, some of his applications were accepted. Some were still rejected by "short-sighted fools."
Mo Hua snorted:
"Today you ignore me—tomorrow you won't be able to reach me!"
"If I weren't a tiger stranded in the flatlands, would I ever be picking up these measly first-grade jobs?!"
He swept the board again and applied to a few more first-grade formation tasks.
After another short wait—some accepted, some refused.
Mo Hua counted.
He had exactly six accepted formation bounties.
He wanted to take more, but when he tried to inscribe his name again—nothing happened.
The text wouldn't manifest.
He thought for a bit, then understood:
"Must've hit the bounty limit."
Each disciple could accept up to six missions at a time.
Mo Hua sighed.
"Well… six is decent. I'll finish these first."
He stuffed the Great Void Token into his storage pouch and left his quarters, using the sect map in his mind to find the location of the Merit Hall.
The Merit Hall of the Great Void Sect was where the entire merit system was managed. It handled the official registration, application, and claiming of all bounties.
All bounties had to be accepted through the token.
But for things like supplies and claiming rewards, you had to visit the Merit Hall in person.
Same for drawing formations—you had to come here to collect paper, ink, and basic array diagrams.
Of course, for simple jobs or those with specific requirements, requesters would provide an array blueprint.
But for harder or more uncommon jobs—you had to come up with the blueprint yourself.
Inside the Merit Hall, disciples bustled to and fro—busy and orderly.
Mo Hua waited in line.
When it was finally his turn, he ran up to the counter, showed his token, and said:
"Elder, I've accepted formation bounties!"
The merit elder was an old man with snowy white hair and a chubby, jolly-looking face.
He checked Mo Hua's token. Though his expression showed some surprise, he still pulled out six storage pouches and handed them over.
Each pouch contained the ink, brushes, and array diagrams for one of the bounties.
Mo Hua accepted them and turned to leave—when—
"Wait a moment…"
The merit elder peered at him, squinting.
Then he couldn't help but ask:
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen!"
"Fifteen…" The merit elder frowned. "Then you must've just entered the sect? Not even a year in. How are you already using the token to accept jobs?"
Mo Hua immediately threw the blame to Old Mister Xun:
"Old Mister Xun told me to do missions, earn merit, and learn formations!"
The Merit Elder paused, then muttered, "Old Mister Xun?"
That's odd… Wasn't that old man notoriously stubborn?
Since when did he start breaking the rules?
The elder's gaze shifted to Mo Hua again.
Seeing the small figure carrying six storage pouches, he couldn't help but ask:
"Six formations? Can you really finish them all?"
"I can!" Mo Hua said confidently. "I draw formations very fast!"
Fast at drawing formations?
That tiny thing—how fast could he possibly be?
The Merit Elder shook his head, no longer asking anything. He waved his hand and said:
"Alright, go draw them. Don't bite off more than you can chew—if you fail to complete the missions, it'll hurt your reputation."
"Yes, Elder."
Mo Hua nodded obediently.
The elder watched him leave, not taking it too seriously.
But just one hour later, Mo Hua returned and placed all six storage pouches neatly on the table.
"Elder, I'm done."
The Merit Elder blinked.
Done?
He opened the pouches. Sure enough—inside were six first-grade formations.
Some were drawn on paper, others on formation plates or spiritual artifacts as mediums.
Every single formation was neatly crafted, precise, and perfectly aligned.
"He really drew them that fast...?"
The elder was genuinely surprised—but after a moment's thought, decided it wasn't such a big deal.
After all, they were only first-grade formations.
He swept over them with his divine sense and nodded:
"Yes, all complete. Six first-grade formations.
That's nineteen merit points—already added to your Great Void Token."
Mo Hua's eyes lit up. He sank his divine sense into the token—and sure enough, beneath his name was a little number:
Nineteen.
He had just earned 19 points of merit!
"Alright, you—"
The elder was about to say "you can go now," but Mo Hua quickly interrupted:
"Elder, wait!"
(Little master, this chapter continues—click next page for more excitement!)
Mo Hua sent his divine sense into the token again, then looked up and handed it back.
"I just accepted a few more missions…"
The Merit Elder's eyelid twitched.
This kid really doesn't follow the usual rules...
Who accepts tasks like this?
And at such a young age, drawing so many formations—wasn't he worried about overexerting his divine sense?
The elder hesitated. But seeing Mo Hua still spirited and energetic, he didn't say anything. He silently handed over several new storage pouches.
Mo Hua left, cheerful and satisfied.
The elder watched him walk away and quietly memorized the name on his Great Void Token.
In the days that followed, Mo Hua continued to draw formations.
But first-grade formations offered very little merit—usually just three or four points. Saving up was painfully slow.
Meanwhile, the formation scrolls he wanted—those with 15 or 16 pattern layers—each required several hundred merit points.
Thankfully, Mo Hua was quick. At first, his progress wasn't bad.
But gradually, his merit-grinding plan hit a wall.
Partly because he still had to attend cultivation classes—he couldn't draw all day.
Even when he could draw, it was only for an hour or so.
He also had to practice the 15-pattern Rain Marsh Formation to enhance his divine sense, which took up more time.
Another issue: inside the Great Void Token, the number of first-grade formation bounties kept shrinking.
All Great Void disciples were at least Foundation Establishment level. First-grade formations just weren't in high demand.
Since Mo Hua worked fast—finishing five or six at once, and accepting a ton of tasks—he quickly emptied out nearly all the first-grade formation bounties.
Only a few scattered ones remained—sometimes just one or two a day.
And even then, he couldn't always claim them.
All in all, he was earning maybe two or three merit points per day.
At that rate, it was turtle-speed.
Even grinding for a year might not get him a single 15-pattern scroll.
Mo Hua sighed and frowned, thinking hard:
"This won't do. It's way too slow. I have to find something else—some other kind of mission to earn merit faster…"
"But what can I do…"
He had no idea at first.
So he buried his divine sense into the Great Void Token, spending several days flipping through the Bounty Registry.
Finally—he found a promising method.
His cultivation was low, and his qualifications were shallow—so he couldn't lead high-level missions.
But…
He could tag along.
Some missions weren't solo acts. Once accepted by a lead disciple, that disciple could recruit three or four teammates to complete it together.
Once done, the merit points were divided based on contribution.
There would be some differences in distribution, but not huge gaps.
Mo Hua checked. Some harder tasks had rewards of several hundred merit points.
Even if he just tagged along, he could easily earn dozens of points.
That was worth a month's worth of formation work!
His eyes sparkled.
"Let's go!"
The Bounty Registry included a section for recruitment notices—posted by disciples who had accepted missions and needed teammates.
Mo Hua scrolled and scrolled, scrolled until his divine sense felt numb…
And finally—he found one that seemed just right for him:
"May 9th – Second-grade Mission – Cangzhou Domain – Capture of Criminal Cultivator."
"Target is proficient in formations and adept at setting traps. Not easily dealt with."
"Requesting assistance from a fellow formation cultivator—preferably second-grade beginner. If formation skills are refined and you can protect yourself, first-grade is acceptable."
"Merit will be divided based on contribution. Base reward: 100 points."
Mo Hua read it carefully.
"Capable of self-protection," "first-grade acceptable"…
Isn't that talking about me?
And the starting reward is 100 merit points?!
Mo Hua's heart raced with joy.
Without hesitation, he neatly signed his name on the recruitment notice:
Mo Hua
Then, thinking it over, he added a note after it:
"Skilled in stealth, capable of self-preservation…"
"Very proficient in formations!"
(End of Chapter)