Chapter 632: The Older Generation

As the first day of the Formation Master's debate came to a close, everyone was shocked and filled with surprise. There had been so many shocking events, and the display of formations far exceeded the formations shown at previous debates.

Even the elders who were present felt that they had gained enlightenment from watching the younger generation. They had seen the first part of a primordial formation, and they had seen a true killing formation! Even when the Formation Masters fought against each other, they did not usually display their true power as they wished to keep some of their strength hidden.

As an elder, these debates were all about face, but none of them would truly give them their all because these sects were after all not the same sect.

This was also why Hui Yue and Gao Li normally would not have displayed such outstanding abilities. While the Flight of the Valkyrie truly was Gao Li’s ace of aces for Hui Yue formations were only a part of his strength. He had plenty of tricks he could use and displaying the Ten Suns formation did not make him less dangerous in a fight.

Everyone retreated to their own courtyards where they were sat together with disciples of the different sects and their elders.

Together they all spent time discussing what they had seen. Even the elders would participate in these discussions. They would talk about what they had learned from watching the Formation Master's debate, and everyone would discuss the insights they had gained.

Gao Li had been silent at first. He was dispirited because of his loss, but after considering it for some time, he came to terms with the result. Who could have imagined that his opponent could use a primordial formation? Such a thing was almost impossible to defend against!

After slowly coming to terms with his loss and accepting the reality, Gao Li sat down and started to go through everything he had experienced on that stage earlier the day. He relived every one of his moves and every move Hui Yue made, and the more he thought about it, the more he understood that he had been disadvantaged from the start.

Hui Yue was clearly from the Celestial Sword Sect, but every formation that he used focused on the dao of fire, and this element was the bane of his snow dao. Snow would always melt when in contact with fire.

His Snow Owls were powerful, and he had more of them, but considering the dao of fire had strengthened the tigers to such an unbelievable state, the amount of Snow Owls he had did not really matter in the end.

On top of this, Hui Yue also had access to the dao of space which had made his Spacelock formation a true nightmare to deal with.

Hui Yue had shown him that to be a true genius in the formations arts one needed to be not only skilled at formations, but they also had to have comprehended many daos as well. Formations were powerful, but they could be boosted to immeasurable heights by complementary daos.

At the same time, Hui Yue had shown Gao Li that he had been too arrogant from the start. He had been relying too much on the fact that he had more seals and could control more formations than Hui Yue, therefore, he thought he would easily win.

Now he understood that there were many other aspects that played a part when it came to formations. He realized that if he wished to become a true Formation Master then he needed to not just blindly try and learn more seals, he needed to spend time comprehending the dao as well.

Up until now, he had been satisfied with just the two snow daos that he had comprehended, but now he felt that this was far from sufficient.

At the start, Gao Li had been depressed and unhappy, but as time went on, he became excited and filled with enthusiasm for cultivating.

He felt that he had finally found the right path to walk down. He now knew that to be a true master of formations he needed to also comprehend daos.

Although his pride would not allow for him to say that he was grateful for the defeat, he was certain that because of this defeat, he would become many times more outstanding than he had been. He knew that his combat ability would be many times more frightening later on because of his sudden enlightenment.

Gao Li was not the only one who came to this conclusion. Others present also suddenly understood how important it was to become a master of the various daos if they wanted to truly overwhelm their opponents.

Previously, every contestant in the Formation Master's debate had been fully focused on just formations, and thus they had not focused on the dao. Because they had not focused on the dao, they had never realized exactly how useful the dao was to their formation arts.

It was common knowledge that one could enhance the strength of one's formations with the dao, but it was not before now they truly understood just how much of a difference it could make. Even the elders had been shocked speechless.

While everyone was busy discussing and thinking about these new ideas, the night slowly passed.

Be it night or day, the same strange light from the snow continued to glow and illuminate the entire world. The sky was constantly overcast and gray making the only light that illuminated the world the snow.

Soon it was time for the older generation to debate and all the younger generation was filled with excitement. Everyone had complete faith in their elders and their abilities, and they all looked forward to seeing real Formation Master's fight against one another.

These were true Formation Masters who controlled a countless amount of seals. Their battles could topple mountains and part the oceans. Their battles were simply so eye catching and grand that the students rarely saw anything like it but now it was possible to finally see the ones they looked up to fight for real.

Or so they thought.

It turned out that while the younger generation truly used the debate as a way to duel one another, the older generation did things differently. They would each display a formation, and the opponent would then have to outshine that formation. The starting master would then outdo the previous formation, and they would continue like this until one of them admitted defeat.

Not only this, but they would also display how many formations they were capable of controlling at the same time and sometimes they would show their rarest formation.

The only thing they would not display were their killing formations.

Most of the elders had compressed between eight hundred and nine hundred seals, and they could control around seventy to eighty formations at once.

There were few a elders that could command around nine hundred seals, but only two elders could use more than nine hundred and fifty seals. These two were the Old Weasel from the Heavenly Dragon Gate and Pei Bai from the Celestial Sword Sect.

Both of them were capable of controlling ninety-four formations at the same time, and they only had a three seal difference between each other. Pei Bai controlled three seals more than the Old Weasel.

Just as with the younger generation, it was clearly decided that the winner had to be chosen between these two experts. As for who would win, no one knew as these two experts were truly too close to one another .

This was not the first time that they faced one another in the Formation Master's debate and neither would it be the last. They had both been born in the same generation and had fought one another year after year.

They had always been compared to one another and had from the beginning had a rivalry so strong that they had given up everything in their lives to defeat the other in the formation arts.

One year one of them would win and the next year another would. Up until now, Pei Bai had won one time less than the Old Weasel, and he hoped to use the Formation Master's debate of this year to even out their score.

Unlike the last debate, this one took place outside. The elder’s debate was held right next to the pagoda where there was a massive training ground. In the training ground was a stage raised a meter above the ground. Their stage was ten times as big as the one that the younger generation had used, and the formations and inscriptions around it had also been increased tenfold.

"Before we begin I would like to invite everyone to impart their own formation to the stage to reinforce it as much as possible," the Old Weasel said with a smile. Afterwards every elder stepped forward to view and reinforce the stage’s formation.

Countless seals flashed through the air, and different seals started forming different formations one after another. All of these formations were defensive, stationary formations but not one of them was the same as the other formations being formed or already present.

Hui Yue recognized the one that Pei Bai had used. It was clearly the same as the formation that was protecting the Celestial Sword Sect, yet when he looked closer at it, he saw that there were slight differences between the two formations.

Soon every one of them had fortified the stage and the actual display begun. Every elder gave it their all, and the students all stood underneath the stage. Some were barely breathing because they were filled with so much excitement as they watched everything that happened on stage.

Everyone understood just how important this opportunity was for them and even Gao Li was not arrogant, but instead, he was rather quiet as he observed the fights on stage with a serious expression on his face.

These elders were indeed amazing. Their display was in no way disappointing, and the formations they displayed varied from ten seals to nine hundred seals each. All the formations were followed by spectacular summons of creatures and natural phenomena.

Some called forth natural disasters; others summoned primordial beasts. Some copied ancient legends and others imitated epic Overlords. There was no shortage of what these formations could do, but although they were all spectacular, Hui Yue soon understood that they were spectacular because of the number of seals needed to control them. Even if he went up against them with his three suns, his suns would be instantly shattered apart.

One after another these elders displayed their prowess, and soon the top ten were found. There were fewer Elders than youngsters and thus it did not take as long for them to decide on a top ten, but the final two had still not been decided.

Watching the stage, Hui Yue could not help but clench his hands as he looked at Pei Bai with expectation. Pei Bai had been a truly talented genius when it came to formations, but not many such geniuses were born in the Celestial Sword Sect, so he had had to live with this shame time and time again during the Formation Master's debate from their sect doing poorly. When he was young the older generation did poorly, now that he became older it was always the younger generation that had had issues at performing well at the debate.

Now Hui Yue had won face for Pei Bai, and he saw a carefree expression on the Elder's face. This was an expression he had not seen during the time they had trained together. It was clear that he was so satisfied that he truly did not care about his own performance. He was so proud that to him being second was okay.

"Old man, do your best!" Hui Yue suddenly yelled out, but at the same time Gao Li also yelled, "Don't lose face for our Heavenly Dragon Gate!"

The two geniuses looked at one another, but instead of jumping at each other's throat, a knowing smile spread on their lips. They no longer had any enmity against the other. They had dealt with it on stage, and now it could be said that they understood the other much better.

Their battle had ended for now, but who was to say that in the future these two would not become like the Old Weasel and Pei Bai?

Thinking like this, both of them wished for their own elder to do good and prove that their sect was indeed the best when it came to formations!

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