A Chaotic World

"You must be Tianzi, Nanlu Tianzi! Am I right?" a young female who looked much younger than Lu Tianzi greeted him at the front lobby of the Heaven Constellations Inscription Tower.

"Do you know me?" Lu Tianzi was a little taken aback by the warm reception.

He had only just barely stepped into the Heaven Constellations Inscription Tower when this unfamiliar young girl immediately ran right up to him.

"You can call me Yueya!" the girl beamed brightly, her tail swaying left and right behind her in an excited manner.

Yueya looked like a typical fourteen year old girl who had yet to completely shed her childish appearance. Her body was not yet fully developed either, and her smooth black hair was just long enough to reach her shoulders.

She had a cultivation level at the Primary Essence Building realm. At that level, she could be considered to have just taken the first steps towards being a full-fledged martial artist.

"Inscription Master Nanbai told me that you will be coming today. Well, since I became an assistant of Inscription Master Nanbai first, that means I am your senior!" Yueya exclaimed proudly.

"Senior?" Lu Tianzi could not help but let out a mocking snicker as he swept his gaze over the young girl in front of him. "You?"

"What was that? You bad person!" Yueya snapped in a sulking manner. "Are you looking down on me? I really am qualified to be your senior! Believe me!"

"Is that really the case?" Lu Tianzi eyed Yueya doubrfully.

"It's true!" Yueya pouted her mouth unhappily as she continued. "Whatever! I will grant you special exemption for the first day of your work. After today, you have to call me senior, okay?"

Lu Tianzi merely smiled in response, not taking the words of the girl too seriously.

This Primary Essence Building realm brat wanted him to regard her as a senior?

He was already quite unwilling to carry out this inscription assistant work in the first place, so how could he be willing to be stepped upon by a young girl on top of that?

Just this morning, Nancheng Wei had similarly intended to show Lu Tianzi his place, but Lu Tianzi had ended up completely flipping the tables on him!

Since he had already done it once, he definitely did not mind doing it again!

What was there to stop him from doing the same to this snobbish brat?

If he even had to endure the snubs of these people at the lower levels of society, then that would truly be too pathetic.

Lu Tianzi's indifferent attitude made the girl feel even unhappier, but there was nothing she could do about it for now.

"Follow me!" Yueya turned to head up the stairs, her tail no longer waving around in excitement but drooping down behind her.

"Mm," Lu Tianzi nodded before following her up the tower.

There were nine levels to the Heaven Constellations Inscription Tower.

The first level was for the main bulk of customers while the second level was for VIP transactions. The third level was where the open library was situated.

As for levels four to nine, they were solely reserved for members of the Heaven Constellations Inscription Tower, and two Essence Condensation realm guards even stood guard at the stairways to keep out intruders.

Being the assistant to Inscription Master Nanbai, Yueya and Lu Tianzi each had a badge from Inscription Master Nanbai that proved their status. This allowed them to easily pass the two guards and access the deeper portion of the tower.

"We are not going to meet Inscription Master Nanbai, are we?" Lu Tianzi asked as he followed the young girl.

"Noooo! How did you know that? I was supposed to tell you that later when you start asking where Inscription Master Nanbai is!" Yueya sighed in genuine disappointment.

"Why are we not meeting him though? If we don't meet him then how would we know what we are supposed to do?" Lu Tianzi asked.

"Shhh! Don't ask me so many questions at once! Let me tell you everything one by one later!" Yueya looked as though she was about to throw a tantrum.

"All right, all right," Lu Tianzi helplessly appeased the young girl as they continued on their way.

As they interacted more, Lu Tianzi's impression of Yueya was quickly starting to change.

He had initially thought that Yueya was a self-entitled brat who wanted to quickly exert her dominance over him. However, he slowly grew to understand that Yueya simply had a very innocent mentality and meant no harm whatsoever.

In actual fact, Lu Tianzi was not much older than Yueya. With the arrival of spring heralding the new year, Lu Tianzi had only just turned sixteen while Yueya was fourteen.

However, completely unlike Lu Tianzi, this Yueya exuded a pure air of innocence, as though she had been left untouched by all the darkness in the world.

This was like a breath of fresh air to Lu Tianzi, who gradually grew fonder of her like she was a cute younger sister figure.

From Yueya's explanations, Inscription Master Nanbai had already written his instructions on a piece of paper. This piece of instruction was then left in a small drawer of a wide wooden shelf.

This drawer had the name Inscription Master Nanbai written on it, and was actually one of the biggest ones on the shelf.

Other smaller drawers similarly had the names of other inscription masters tagged on it, and were where they left their instructions for their own assistants as well.

Each drawer was kept locked all the time, but they could always be unlocked with the badges given to the inscription assistants by the inscription master.

Every day, it was the inscription assistant's job to check the wooden shelf, conveniently named as the Wooden Deposit, for the day's instructions and then proceed to carry them out.

These instructions were usually about the preparation of materials for the drawing of inscriptions, something that the inscription assistants were able to do independently.

This way, most inscription assistants actually seldom met with their respective inscription masters on a daily basis.

After collecting the instructions from the Wooden Deposit, Lu Tianzi and Yueya officially started on their work.

They first collected the list of materials from the store under Inscription Master Nanbai's name, and then proceeded to a large private room to begin processing the materials.

The processing of inscription materials was by no means a simple task.

These materials could be parts of a beast, herbs, spiritual soil, treasure water, or basically anything that contained some form of energy. Depending on the type of inscription, the same material might need to be processed in a completely different manner.

Due to the sheer complexity of the matter, an inscription assistant needed to be well-versed with the process in order to be able to even carry out their tasks at all.

Despite her younger age and cultivation level, Yueya had some experience in being an inscription assistant and thus was far more knowledgeable that Lu Tianzi on the processing of the inscription materials.

The moment they laid down the materials, Yueya sprung into action and busied herself with work.

On the contrary, Lu Tianzi was completely clueless about what to do next.

He could only obediently follow the instructions of Yueya as he tried to learn on the job. Such an outcome caused this little senior of his to brim with pride.

The entire process took three full hours. By the end of it all, Yueya had already managed to coerce Lu Tianzi into calling her senior.

Of course, Lu Tianzi only did so in a casual manner.

No matter how he looked at Yueya, he was simply unable to think of her as a senior figure.

Even though she was more knowledgeable than him at the moment, Lu Tianzi had no doubt that he would be able to reach the same level within a matter of days.

After they were done with the processing of materials, Yueya brought the materials away while Lu Tianzi went to the open library to once again submerge himself in the sea of knowledge.

By personally processing the different materials, Lu Tianzi was able to experience first-hand the complexity of the art of inscriptions. But at the same time, this allowed him to greater appreciate the rules governing the art of inscriptions, gaining a deeper understanding into the subject.

At this point, he was finally starting to feel that being an inscription assistant was not too bad an idea.

"Hey Tianzi!" Yueya playfully tapped him on the head. "Come with senior!"

"Be serious, I am trying to learn more about inscriptions right now," Lu Tianzi gave a cursory reply as he tried to digest the information within the jade slips.

"I have always been serious!" Yueya sulked and started stomping away angrily. "I am here to bring you to go see Inscription Master Nanbai together! So be it if you don't want to! I will just go myself!"

"Hmm?" Lu Tianzi immediately opened his eyes. "Does Inscription Master Nanbai want to see us?"

"Hmph! You bad person! You will only listen when you hear Inscription Master Nanbai's name!" Yueya complained indignantly. "Inscription Master Nanbai will be drawing up an inscription with the materials we processed today. Unlike the other inscription masters, he usually allows me to watch him place one of them at least, so I just thought I would ask you along. Who knew that your attitude would be this bad?"

"Eh…" Lu Tianzi was speechless for a moment before sighing. "Sorry senior, please bring me along."

"That is more like it!" a smile grew across Yueya's face, quickly wiping the sulk away. "Follow me!"

When the duo entered the chamber, Inscription Master Nanbai greeted them with a slight smile before turning back to inspect the materials before him.

He was standing behind a table which held the many ingredients as well as an exquisite dagger.

It was apparent that it was a weapon inscription this time, and this inscription was to be placed on the dagger to increase its combat prowess.

Surrounding the table were dozens of small flags stuck onto the floor.

Lu Tianzi's eyes lit up when he saw this setup.

These were formation flags!

Lu Tianzi used to possess his own formation flags as well, but he had left them back in Uncle Ye's house when he followed the assault party out to attack the demons of Shadowfront Fortress.

When Lu Tianzi finally returned to Ivory Rock City, he had immediately gone to find Yan Caijie and confront Hu Yuanbo, after which he was rescued by his master Xihuang Yuanfeng. Thus, he never had the chance to go retrieve those formation flags.

But even so, with a single glance he could tell that these formation flags in front of him were of a higher quality than those that he used to own.

The higher the quality of the formation flags, the more efficient they were at strengthening the formation.

Of course, the skill of the one setting up the formation mattered as well.

But there were some high level formations that had a minimum requirement in terms of the quality of the formation flags used. No matter how skilled a martial artist was, it would be impossible to set up such high level formations using formation flags of inferior quality.

Seeing that Lu Tianzi seemed to have fallen into a daze, Yueya nudged Lu Tianzi and at the same time signalled for him to remain silent. The two of them stood by the side of the room as they watched, not wanting to disturb the process.

When Inscription Master Nanbai was finally done checking through the materials, he stomped on the ground and the entire formation started to glow as it came to life.

All the World Origin Energy in the surroundings was stirred as it gathered towards the centre of the formation, towards Inscription Master Nanbai.

With each wave of his hands, processed materials would float into the air and mix together, their individual energy traits reacting and causing profound reactions.

Inscription Master Nanbai skilfully used his materialised essence energy to wrap around these materials, handling them with absolute precision.

By drawing upon the unique energy formed from the mixing of these materials, Inscription Master Nanbai pointed out with two fingers as he started to physically draw the inscription runes in the air.

A bright white light would linger in the air where his fingers passed, ultimately creating a glowing rune that floated in the air before him.

As the first rune stayed suspended in the air, Inscription Master Nanbai went on to the next one. Using a different mix of materials, he drew a completely different inscription rune, this time with a dark orange glow.

Slowly but steadily, one by one the inscription runes appeared before him.

Before long, there were already more than a hundred inscription runes floating in the air.

Each of these inscription runes glowed with a different intensity, but the combined emission of light was more than sufficient to completely light up the entire room, as though there was an actual star shining brightly before them.

Of course, it was not enough to significantly hinder the enhanced eyesights of martial artists.

At this moment, Inscription Master Nanbai slammed both of his palms together.

Pah-!

The clapping sound heralded the beginning of the formation of the complete inscription form.

More than a hundred inscription runes moved in an orderly manner, slowly forming up into the shape of a circle under Inscription Master Nanbai's careful energy guidance. The moment when they finally formed properly also signalled the actual completion of the inscription circle.

Next came the placement part.

Inscription Master Nanbai fell into deep focus as the glowing inscription circle grew smaller and smaller, finally shrinking to the size of a coin as it hovered over the exquisite dagger.

"Form!" Inscription Master Nanbai pointed out towards the dagger and the inscription circle finally moved in, burning itself into the surface of the dagger.

As it did, the inscription circle emitted an intense light far exceeding the magnitude of the glow from before. However, that only lasted for a short moment before everything died down.

Silence fell upon the room.

If not for the new inscription circle that was now clearly branded onto the dagger, it would be just as though the inscription process never happened.

"Despite having seen this multiple times, I am still amazed everytime I see it," Yueya whispered to Lu Tianzi, awe and respect apparent in her bright eyes.

Lu Tianzi could only give a wry smile in response.

He had to admit that this inscription placement by Inscription Master Nanbai seemed impressive and all… but why did it seem to him that the process was full of flaws?