"Mayor Steven, how about letting me have a look at the damaged formations on the walls?" Ken suggested. He knew they were damaged by the tide, and he was wondering if the plan was to just let it be.
"Are you perhaps a formation master as well? It's being repaired now by our formation masters, but as those formations are sixth-rank, they are barely able to mend some of the damage."
"I am indeed a formation master, I'm quite good at it. Let me have a look, maybe I can help," Ken answered the man.
"Of course. Myra!"
A woman approached them, and Ken recognized her as one of the division captains, one of the only five fifth-stage cultivators of the city.
"Yes, Sir."
"Take this young man to one of the damaged formations that nobody is working on. He can look at it to see if he has any insights to share with the other formation masters," Steven did not trust the teen. No matter how strong he was, and Ken did impress him with his prowess, studying required time and repetition, which the young Ken did not have much time to do.
Thus, Steven sent him to one of the unoccupied formations, preventing him from getting in the way of the working formation masters.
Since he believed Ken only dabbled in Formation Mastery, he didn't mind letting him look at one of the formations. Ken did contribute a lot to the city in the second wave and earned the right to enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
The young formation master followed Myra to the designed formation and looked at the other people working. There were four formation masters only.
The wall was constructed as one long wall, but the formations divided it into parts since creating a single formation to cover everything was too big of a project. This structure allowed them to work separately or together, depending on the situation.
'They are probably fourth-rank formation masters, and maybe one of them is a fifth-rank,' Ken estimated as he watched them work in the distance.
Ken remembered the meager number of high-ranked alchemists in the Phoenix Feather Sect. He knew that if the situation was the same at the Formation Mastery division, deploying a sixth-rank formation master to support the city during the tide would be a complicated matter.
Elder Michael told him there were only 32 senior elders in the Alchemy Division, meaning it had only 32 sixth-rank alchemists. There were more seventh-stage cultivators than sixth-rank alchemists in the sect, which testified to how rare they were.
'The Phoenix Feather Sect is a backwater place when it comes to this world's science,' he deducted. The top five sect, Infinite Wisdom Sect, had ninth-rank alchemists like Elder Galen from the Bloodthirst Sect. Ken did not believe Galen was the only one of his rank in the sect, even if they only had a few of them.
Compared to the top sect specialized in science, his sect felt like a village that still used wells to draw water when comparing the Infinite Wisdom Sect to the advanced cities of his previous world.
Without further ado, he began working on the damaged formation. He was taken to a fairly intact formation while the others worked on the one in the worst condition, trying to mend as much damage as possible before the next wave started.
He could recognize the formation; he saw plenty of sixth-rank formations in his time in the Library of Eternal Wisdom. While the formations had some variations, the core principles were the same, and it did not take long for him to understand everything he needed to do.
"Give me the materials I'm naming," Ken turned to Myra and spoke. She looked at him in hesitation, as she was worried that he will do more harm than good.
"Hurry up, even a clever housewife can't cook a meal without rice (1), and formations require even more materials than a meal. Don't worry, sixth-rank formations are not that fragile, or else people would not fear them that much."
Ken understood her worries, so he calmed her down. A fourth-rank formation master would need a very long time to undo a sixth-rank formation, and those beneath that rank would have to spend years before succeeding, unless they used brute force, assuming they had the necessary force.
"All right, I will follow your instructions," Myra nodded and complied. She also somewhat revered him for his deeds in the previous battle, and she was surprised to see how much he boosted the guards' morale.
"Bring me the blood of a sixth-rank beast for ink, Sunlight grass, talons of a red-beak sparrow…" Ken listed the ingredients he needed to inscribe the runes and Myra hurried to bring them. Within 20 minutes, she finished collecting all the materials he asked for.
"Thank you," Ken said and began to work. He wanted to leave a good impression, so he did not hesitate to be polite. The young teen smeared the blood on one of the talons and started working. He removed some parts that were too damaged and replaced them with new runes while refraining from adding anything new to the formation.
Whereas he wanted to impress, he did not want to reveal his full capabilities. He only helped to get into Supreme Elder Zion's good books, and it didn't require being the city's savior.
Hence, Ken only fixed what could be explained by being a fourth-rank formation master with a great comprehension talent, and skipped the options to strengthen the formations further.
"I'm done with this formation, I believe it's now 99% fixed, while only the original inscriber or another sixth-rank formation master will be able to fix it perfectly," Ken gave the female captain a captivating smile and gestured toward the repaired formation with his hand.
"You actually fixed it?" She looked at him in surprise.
"Yes, show me the next one."
"Sure," she led him to another unoccupied formation while planning to send one of the formation masters to make sure everything was all right with the one Ken had tampered with.
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A/N: (1) – Even a clever housewife can't cook a meal without rice – an idiom meaning even a talented person can't achieve something without the required materials.
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