Chen didn’t stick with Theron for long, but his presence made getting the latter’s Three Stripe all too easy, while it also made several other things far smoother as well.
The Shonagh Clan was the first non-Elemental Clan Theron had managed to meet since ing to this world. From what he could tell, they were Soul Mancers. Though, it was extremely difficult to tell what sort of Path they were following.
Theron was used to the Soul Mancers he came across being loaded up with treasures, buried in so many items they looked more like walking mechs than they did human beings.
But all things considered, despite his wealth and how eccentric he was, Chen dressed like any other cultivator.
Of course, Theron had yet to check the latter’s spatial ring and didn’t plan on doing so any time soon. The spatial ring of someone of Chen’s caliber would not only be well protected, it would likewise have certain underlying and hidden mechanisms that Theron wasn’t yet familiar with.
It was honestly a huge risk just to keep it on his person like he was. So, it would be far smarter for him to wait until he was outside of the city, or maybe until he had a deeper grasp of formations before he made any sudden movements.
So, it was very possible that all of the treasures that a Soul Mancer might usually have were hidden in Chen’s spatial ring, and he just happened to have a better method of deploying them.
Theron could see the value of hiding what treasures you relied upon instead of walking around with them clearly visible to everyone you came across. Though, you would lose the aspect of speed of deployment as a result.
It wasn’t long after they met and Chen transferred rights to his line of credit to Theron that the latter zipped away. He likely wanted to speak to his father about what was going on, but Theron had no idea that the person the Merchant King was meeting was none other than the current Patriarch of the Shonagh Clan.
If he had known, maybe he would have found a way to follow up on such a curious meeting, as he too would feel like there was something fishy about all of this.
But Theron’s mind had bigger fish to fry.
The mystery of the Angel Doctrine of Formations was still weighing heavily on his mind. He had only taken a brief look at the first few books, and he was quite intrigued.
He had never been interested in formation mastery before, but there was something about this in particular that truly tickled at a part of his brain that loved to be satisfied.
Theron loved teasers and putting his mind under stress—it was part of why he had always loved the idea of being an Imperial Scholar. To him, fighting had been something quite boring.
It wasn’t until he became a cultivator that he realized battle was its own game of chess. It was as pleasing to drive your enemy into a corner, cutting off all their options and paths to victory, as it was to solve a problem with your mind alone. In fact, the conjunction of synergy between one’s mind and body in battle was arguably even more satisfying.
Before he had this experience, Theron just believed battle was a matter of brute force, whoever had the larger fist. If what happened to his family had never happened, he probably would have never cared enough to learn to cultivate at all.
Formations hadn’t necessarily been in the same box for him, but it was rather that he never gave them much thought in the first place. He was quite poor growing up—things like alchemy, formation mastery, or blacksmithing of great treasures weren’t things that he could e across.
By the time he could e across them, he was so focused on growing his personal strength that they no longer interested him. They seemed like side paths and deviations in his route that would only slow him down.
But now, he was beginning to e across them more and more.
There was the Forest of Ice’s protection, the vaults of the Nightingale Sect, Matriarch’s Palace in the Hall of Ice and Heart, and now these assassins carrying around all these pendants.
And this didn’t even mention the formation he was trapped in when he was caught by the Mandate Guild back then, or the formations the old assassin used to trap him, or the plumbing formations Theron took advantage of to blow up that Empire of Light Mancers.
Clearly, in this world, formations were even more prominent, but they had already begun to be more of a staple in Theron’s life the more he came into contact with higher levels of cultivation...
And Theron couldn’t accept there being such a large oppression on his personal safety without him finding a solution for it.
The best solution?
Understand formations better than anyone else.
’They really are connected. It’s not fake. But why would someone do this...’
He really couldn’t understand.
After taking advantage of both his Three Stripe status and his new budding relationship with Chen of the Shonagh Clan, Theron wasn’t just able to take a little peek at what was being sold, but he was probably breaking a few rules with just how long he was spending flipping through the pages.
These booklets were even more plex than the ones he originally got his hands on, but Theron could feel the general pull of them.
It was impossible for him to tell with 100% certainty whether they were fake or not until he fully understood the first few books, but right now he was more than 70% sure they were real.
So the question was... why would someone give this up?
It clearly wasn’t a mistake, or else they wouldn’t go through so much trouble to hide their identities the way they did. Could this be related to why someone as prominent as Chen was targeted for assassination?
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