Chapter 66: Snare Formation |
I crossed back to the curriculum room, lit the lamp at the eastern wall, and opened a fresh scroll on the table.
Write it out first.
I dipped the brush and began.
My Water Jet is built for one-on-one fighting. I need a technique that can hold more than one enemy at once.
Next came the principle.
Qi sits in patterns. The stars are proof of that, sitting in the same shapes for as long as anyone has looked up at them. If I can draw a shape on the ground, and push Qi into it, the Qi should stay.
I read that back, then wrote the next line.
If the Qi inside the shape can be controlled, and the shape is closed a closed loop, then the pressure from the Qi should be powerful enough to hold a man still.
On the next line I wrote a single word.
Then I wrote the parts.
One. Anchors. Something physical at each point of the shape to hold the Qi in place.
Two. Shape. A closed loop, or the Qi will not stay.
Three. Trace. There needs to be lines between the anchors. They have to carry Qi from one point to the next or the Qi may scatter apart.
Four. Activation. Push Qi into the anchors and traces, and the formation should come alive.
I read the page through.
I have the theory on paper. Now I need to test it.
I went down to the river.
The bend below my house was where I had been sitting a watch ago. The cold had not lifted. The moon was low at the western edge of the willow. I waded ankle-deep into the bank water and picked out five river stones, each about the size of my fist.
I carried them back to the bank in the wet hem of my cloak and dried them with the inside of my sleeve.
I set them in a line at the foot of the stone I had been sitting on.
I had chosen five because the first shape I had decided to try had five points. It was a five-star pattern I had picked out of the eastern sky an hour earlier, looping in a flattened arc: a bright star at the south, two rising in a curve to the east, a fourth at the high point of the arc, and a fifth that bent back to the west.
I scratched a circle in the dirt with the heel of my boot, three paces across, to mark the working ground. I placed the five river stones in the positions the stars sat in the sky, scaled down. I checked the angles by closing one eye and matching each stone to the star above it.
I took a charcoal stick from the pouch at my belt and drew the lines between the stones on the dirt.
I sat at the edge of the working ground and opened my cultivation.
The first attempt did nothing.
I pushed Qi into the southern stone, and the Qi went in and stayed there. None of it moved along the charcoal line to the next stone. The charcoal sat on the dirt looking like the black mark on dirt that it was.
I went back to the river and wet the charcoal stick. I drew the lines again, over the dry ones, and this time the lines were wet and dark. I pushed Qi into the southern stone.
The Qi moved one stone along the trace before it stopped.
Better.
I picked out a handful of pebbles from the river, smaller than my thumbnail each, and laid them along the wet charcoal trace, spaced a hand's width apart, like beads on a string. I pushed Qi into the southern stone again.
The Qi moved two stones along the trace before it stopped.
Something is wrong with the geometry. The Qi reaches the fourth stone and refuses to keep going.
I closed my eyes and read the formation with my cultivation. The fourth stone was the highest point of the shape. The Qi reaching it had to bend through the sharpest angle of the whole loop to reach the fifth, and the angle was too tight, making it difficult to concentrate my Qi to the final point before it sputtered out.
The shape in the sky has more room, and my scaled down version is not even enough.
I expanded the working ground from three paces across to four. I moved the five stones outward. I redrew the trace, wet, and reset the pebbles. I pushed Qi into the southern stone.
The Qi moved through three stones and stopped at the fifth.
Closer. The fifth stone is taking the Qi, but it will not pass it back to the south to close the loop. The last edge is the longest line in the whole shape.
I sat back on my heels.
The line is too long because the shape itself is open and uneven.
I rubbed my chin as I assessed the Formation.
I picked the wrong shape.
I cleared the working ground.
I picked up the five stones and the pebbles and set them aside. I redrew the circle in the dirt with the heel of my boot, four paces across.
Then I drew a five-sided shape on the inside of the circle, with equal sides and equal angles. Each side the same length as every other side. The simplest closed figure I could make with five anchors. The same length on every edge meant the same conduction distance on every edge, which meant no weak segment in the loop and it would be easier for me to concentrate my Qi through it.
Pentagon. The word came up out of the old life, from the geometry I had been taught somewhere between the ages of eight and twelve.
I placed the five river stones at the five points, then I sat back and pushed Qi into the southern stone.
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The Qi moved through the trace. It reached the second stone, then the third, then the fourth, then the fifth. It crossed the last edge and returned to the south.
The loop closed. The five stones glowed pale grey-blue against the dark of the bank, the trace between them lit a soft line of the same colour.
The Formation is alive. Now I need to see whether it will do anything.
I picked up a stick from the willow's deadwood and walked it slowly toward the eastern edge of the formation.
It was as if the Formation knew the stick was there, as if it was waiting for me to tell it what to do.
I pushed an intention into the southern stone much like I would do with my murderous intent onto another person.
Hold.
When I threw the stick inside the middle of the Formation, the stick froze in mid-air.
I pushed my hand through the Formation to try and push the stick while it was suspended in the air but it still would not budge.
I held the loop open for a long breath, then drew my Qi out of the southern stone.
The glow dimmed and the pebbles went dark. The five stones faded to the grey they had been.
That works.
There was a feeling of accomplishment and pride welling up in my chest at what I had done.
But I was never satisfied, and I started thinking about the anchors.
I had used river stones because they had been at hand and because the water had polished them. That did not mean stones were the only thing that would work. The principle did not care what the anchor was, only that the anchor could take Qi and pass it along the trace. Anything that conducted should serve.
Test other anchors.
I tried wood first.
I pulled five short sticks from the willow's deadwood, each about the thickness of my finger, and stuck them into the dirt at the five points of the shape. I left the trace as it was. I pushed Qi into the southern stick.
The Qi moved into the wood. It crossed the first edge of the trace, reached the second stick, and faded. The wood was too dry. The conduction was poor.
I went down to the river and soaked the five sticks in the bank water for a count. I returned and set them back into the dirt. The wet wood took the Qi better. The loop moved through three sticks and dimmed at the fourth.
Wet wood works but stone works better.
But having to rely on anchors was difficult to do in a battle, and it wasn't practical either unless one set up a trap in advance.
I scraped a stripe of wet charcoal at each of the five points, the size of a coin, no stone on top. I pushed Qi into the southern mark.
Nothing. The charcoal alone was not enough to hold the Qi long enough to pass it along. The marks were good for the trace between anchors, but they could not anchor on their own.
The anchor has to be denser than the trace. The anchor stores the Qi for the moment it takes to pass it to the next anchor.
I sat back.
I had been working from the outside in. Pieces of the world placed at each point, with Qi pushed through them. The thought came at me from the other direction.
What if I do not need a physical anchor at all? What if the anchor is Qi itself?
I considered it.
The formation had been alive a few minutes ago with the river stones at the points. The river stones had been holding Qi at each anchor while the trace carried the rest. The river stones were storage. If I could put the same amount of storage at each point using my own Qi, condensed and held there by intention alone, I would not need the stones.
The cost will be higher.
A river stone was free. A spot of compressed Qi at each anchor would cost me, every breath the formation was running, the energy I would otherwise be putting into the trace and the perimeter. It honestly sounded exhausting just thinking about it.
Try it once to see if it can be done at all.
I sat at the southern edge of the Formation and I opened my cultivation and drew upon my dantian.
I put a node of compressed Qi at the southern point first, the size of one of the river stones I had just lifted, held there by my own intention. It took me three breaths to hold it stable.
I then put a second at the eastern point. The first node wavered while I built the second.
I put a third at the high northern point and it made the first two flicker.
I put a fourth at the western point. The first three were not flickering anymore, but they began to dim.
I put a fifth at the southern-eastern point.
All five nodes were now in place, all of them held there by my Qi and my intention. My dantian was emptying fast, faster than I had expected.
Pull on what is around me.
I had never tried to draw on ambient Qi while simultaneously drawing upon the Qi from my dantian.
I reached out with my channels the way I had reached for the river stones in the bank water and pulled.
The ambient Qi came in.
The Qi outside a cultivator's body was diffuse, and the channels were not built to drink from it the way the dantian drank from focused training. But it was enough to slow the drain and stabilize the nodes.
The trace between them lit.
I pushed the activation into the southern node.
The loop closed.
The five points of compressed Qi held themselves in the shape of the Formation, the trace ran the lines between them, and the formation was alive without needing a physical conduit.
I drew in a deep breath.
The drain was steady but heavy. My dantian was at less than half what it had been when I sat down. The ambient pull was the only thing keeping the formation alive past my own reserves. I was not going to be able to hold it long.
I needed a test.
A small one, fast.
A small breath of wind moved off the river behind me, and a willow leaf, half-yellow and half-brown, dry from the autumn, drifted across the working ground from the west.
It crossed into the eastern edge of the pentagon.
It stopped.
The leaf reached the center of the Formation and was then suddenly held in place. The leaves that had not crossed the threshold continued to glide across the sky before drifting onto the ground.
I held the formation for two more breaths and then I let it go.
The Qi nodes collapsed, the trace dimmed, and the leaf was released the Formation and it fell onto the ground once more.
I closed my channels and the ambient Qi dissipated back into the world. My dantian sat at a quarter of its usual level, and the cold of the night was suddenly twice what it had been a moment ago.
That worked.
I sat at the edge of the working ground for a long beat, not moving, while my dantian came back to itself and my breath slowed.
I drew the brush from my pouch, opened a fresh scroll, and began to write.
I wrote the river-stone version first.
The Mark One.
Five anchors, water-polished stone, wet charcoal trace with pebbles, four-pace working ground, push Qi in at one anchor, the loop closes, the perimeter pushes back at intrusion.
Approximate duration at one cultivator's input: a quarter of a notch.
Approximate strength: enough to stop a slow push, untested against a hard one.
The failures: dry charcoal does not conduct, wood is poor, charcoal alone cannot anchor, sharp angles at small scale break the trace, open shapes will not close the loop.
I wrote the Qi-only version next.
The Mark Two.
Five nodes of compressed Qi at the points, held by intention.
Activation by Qi push into the southern node. Drain is heavy.
The cultivator has to pull on ambient Qi as well as his own to hold the formation past the first few breaths.
The strength is higher: a leaf in motion stopped dead inside the center.
The duration shorter: two or three breaths past activation at my current reserve.
I drew the shape on the scroll. Five points, equal sides, equal angles, with the trace lines and the pebble dots marked for the Mark One version. For the Mark Two version, no anchors drawn at all, just the five points marked as small circles.
I looked at the drawing.
Pentagon.
The word had been useful to me at the riverbank when I was building the Formation. However, the word was not going to be useful to anyone else.
No one in this village had ever heard the word pentagon. The shape itself was not in the geometry that was taught in this world. The closest thing the average villager would recognize was a five-point star drawn with crossed lines.
I considered that.
Liken it to something they know.
The shape I had been working with was, from a certain point of view, the five-star constellation I had traced out of the sky an hour before I started.
Once I had drawn it as a closed shape, the closing lines were no longer matching the sky pattern, but the five points themselves were still in the positions of the five stars. The pentagon was the constellation with a more even orientation.
I needed a name for the constellation.
The Snare. The name came to be because it looked as if it was meant to hold something within it, much like a tent would. It some ways it could be seen as a sanctuary, of sorts, it was all about how one opted to use it.
I wrote it on the scroll, above the drawing of the closed shape.
The Snare Formation, after the constellation of the same name. Five stars, visible in the eastern sky in winter.
I wrote until the brush ran dry, wet it again, and continued writing.
When I finished, I rolled the scroll closed and began to carry it back to the River Fork Academy.
As I began to walk towards it, I heard the sounds of hooves.
It was coming hard down the western road. I had been at the bank for hours, and a horse moving at speed in the dark before dawn was not a village courier or a clinic call.
It must have been a rider from Lanyu.