Inside the Six Restriction Cloud Carriage, Luo Chen sat under the jade-green curtains with a jade scroll resting in his hand. The more he read, the more engrossed he became. Thoughtfulness gradually gave way to surprise, and when he finally lowered the scroll, he clicked his tongue in admiration.

"What an ingenious formation!"

At first glance, the island-linking formation seemed to do little more than bind the spirit vein network of several islands into a single defensive network. Its true brilliance, however, lay in the way it harnessed the natural connection between the islands' earth veins. It could turn one island into the formation's core and use it to gather the surrounding spirit veins. Once another island was incorporated, that island could become a new center and extend the network even farther. As more islands were connected, their scattered earth and water veins would begin nourishing one another. Even the weak and isolated spirit veins would gradually strengthen over the years until the entire region flourished as a single cultivation ground. 

The defensive power gained by linking the islands was certainly valuable, but it was only a consequence of the formation's greater purpose. Its real effect was gathering what had once been scattered and using that connection to nurture the land itself.

No wonder the island-linking formation had become the most celebrated formation to appear in the Northern Sea over the past two centuries. Only an Ascendant who was a formation grandmaster could have devised something with such far-reaching potential.

The jade scroll had come from the Xu family's Third Elder. After he joined a faction under the Blue Sea Alliance, he received the complete formation from one of its experts. When he later left the Flying Swallow Archipelago, he naturally took the formation discs, flags, and other essential components with him;...