After fidgeting for a moment, Liu Daoran waved the two women away first, then turned to Liu Xiaolou and said, “Brother… honestly, I feel ashamed… it’s just that I…”
Seeing him stumble over his words, Liu Xiaolou spoke gently: “Brother, since you’ve already come all this way, how could you just leave without enjoying yourself? If you don’t care for these two, we can always change them out. I know they may not quite suit your taste, but they’re experienced, you know…”
Liu Daoran gave a wry smile. “That’s not it, what I mean is… oh, damn…”
Liu Xiaolou blinked. “Not it? Then what exactly do you mean?”
Liu Daoran gritted his teeth. “It’s nothing, really… just that… for some reason, I get nervous. And when I’m nervous, I just… can’t…”
Liu Xiaolou suddenly understood. “Ah…” He pointed at Liu Daoran and kept nodding. “Can’t get it up?”
Liu Daoran’s face flushed red as he protested: “I’m not impotent! Back home, I never had any trouble getting it up. It’s only this time… I keep feeling like my wife is somehow watching me. I already drank, touched them, held their waists, kissed their mouths, but still… I just feel weak!”
Liu Xiaolou’s eyes lit up with delight. What better chance to sell his dual cultivation arts? He gave a mysterious smile. “Brother Daoran, don’t worry. My Sanxuan Sect has a secret technique that guarantees you’ll…”
Before Liu Xiaolou could finish, Liu Daoran shook his head so hard it looked like a rattle drum. “No, no, not happening! You’re about to bring up that so-called dual cultivation trick again. Brother, with the situation in my household, I absolutely can’t learn that. If I ever tried it at home, my wife would demand to know where I picked it up, why I learned it, and that would just stir up a whole mess. The trouble alone would drive me crazy!”
Although he’d been turned down once more, Liu Xiaolou stayed patient. He chose to take a roundabout approach and didn’t mention dual cultivation again. "Alright, let's set that aside," he said smoothly. "But I do have another method that could address your... pressing concern, Brother Daoran."
“I’m telling you, I’m not in a hurry…” Liu Daoran protested.
Liu Xiaolou just patted him on the shoulder and called out loudly to the madam: “Get a room ready!”
There weren’t many customers at Phoenix Perch today, and since the two of them were new faces, the madam had been keeping an eye on them, eager to please. At his order, her face lit up with a broad smile. She hurried to prepare a room and personally led Liu Xiaolou and Liu Daoran inside.
She lingered at the door, hoping to strike up a bit of conversation and maybe brush against Liu Xiaolou once or twice. The young immortal master was strikingly handsome, the kind of guest you didn’t see every day. But Liu Xiaolou promptly shut the door in her face. Just as she was about to put her hands on her hips and start cursing, the door opened again. Liu Xiaolou poked his head out and told her, “Call in those two girls from earlier. Have them wait outside the door, and when I say so, send them straight in.”
The madam’s annoyance melted into delight. “Got it!”
When the door shut again, Liu Daoran was still puzzled. “Brother, what are you up to?”
Liu Xiaolou gave a mysterious smile. “Let’s study a formation. I refined a formation disk some time ago; Brother Daoran, I’d like your guidance. Heh heh…”
Without further words, he activated the Abyssal Stone Formation!
In an instant, Liu Daoran’s surroundings shifted. He now stood inside a lakeside pavilion. Beside the pavilion stretched a fishpond, with a clump of banana trees on the left and a stand of green bamboo on the right. Being a formation master, he could tell at a glance that all of these sights were nothing more than illusions.
He tilted his head back toward the sky, made a few quick calculations on his fingers, and gave a slight nod. This formation featured the cycle of the four seasons and the alternation of day and night, with the scenery changing along with the passage of time. Not bad at all. Still, it only reached the second tier of formation craft: it hadn’t divided the seasons into the twenty-four solar terms, nor had it broken day and night into the twelve traditional hours. That made it feel a bit stiff and incomplete.
But then again, Brother Liu had just said this was something he’d refined in the past. Clearly more of a playful exercise than a serious work.
He also thought of his brother’s current cultivation. Though Liu Xiaolou hadn’t said outright, he judged it was no more than the fifth or sixth layer. For something crafted back then as a casual piece to already reach this level. His talent for formations was truly extraordinary. No wonder Master Tang had chosen to keep him close. With that, Liu Daoran no longer felt troubled over having been stumped by Liu Xiaolou’s earlier test.
Turning his focus back to the formation, Liu Daoran slipped out of the pavilion and stepped directly into the koi pond. Each step landed squarely on the back of a red carp. Moving through the pond, he used the Dipper Pivot Step, stepping on seven red carp in a row. At once, the white wall encircling him dissolved, revealing a corner of bed curtains. The very same pink drapes from the large bed in the room earlier.
Liu Daoran leapt into the air, soaring straight toward the small pavilion across the fishpond. With the tip of his foot, he tapped the carved double doors and kicked them open, but instead of entering, he flipped upward onto the second floor. There, he used the Northern and Southern Dipper Step, bounding back and forth across the rooftop. Each landing sent shards of tile flying, until the main roof beam was laid bare.
Resting on the beam sat a censer with a single tall stick of incense, its smoke curling lazily skyward.
For his final move, Liu Daoran bent toward it and blew, snuffing out the incense in one breath. Then he burst out laughing and, in an instant, was back inside the “boudoir” at Phoenix Perch.
Seeing Liu Xiaolou staring at him in a daze, Liu Daoran gave a proud smile, clasped his hands, and said, “Many thanks for letting me win!”
Liu Xiaolou was utterly speechless. He drew the formation disk back into his palm and examined it briefly, confirming it hadn’t been damaged. He sighed. “Brother Daoran, I asked you to step inside the formation and give me some pointers, not to break out of it altogether.”
Liu Daoran frowned in puzzlement. “Then… what did you mean?”
"Couldn't you have just walked into the building instead of pulling off those fancy steps? Speaking of which... what kind of steps were those exactly?"
“The Dipper Pivot Step and the Northern and Southern Dipper Steps. What? That was wrong?”
“No, it’s just that I’ve only been studying formations a few years. Brother Daoran, those steps you used, I haven’t learned them yet…”
“Ah, that’s nothing difficult. You’ll find them in plenty of formation manuals. Things like the Three Treasures Step, the Nine Phoenix Step, the Five Constants Step, the Four Directions Step, the Innate Dipper, the Acquired Dipper… there are too many to list all at once. These are all ways of breaking formations. Other cultivators might rely on brute force to smash their way through, but that’s only because they don’t understand. For us formation practitioners, these Gang Steps are essential. You should keep an eye out for them in the future.”
“I see… But Brother Daoran, next time you enter the formation, could you try not to focus on breaking it? You opened the doors, yet you never actually went inside. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”
“Well, I just couldn’t help myself. Whenever I see a formation, I feel the urge to break it…”
“Then please restrain yourself a little. Try your best not to break it, alright? I’ll make some adjustments on my end and set the formation up a bit more intricately. But remember, this time, you need to go inside and actually take a look around.”
Adjusting the formation wasn’t difficult. Liu Xiaolou reactivated the formation disk, slightly altering the activation order of the sun, moon, and stars within the sky disk, then waited for Liu Daoran to open the doors inside the formation.
Liu Daoran had already crossed the koi pond, but he couldn’t resist glancing back. After a quick calculation on his fingers, he returned to the pond and repeated his earlier trick. This time walking the Nine Phoenix Step. With a flourish like rolling up a curtain, he unraveled the formation once more.
As he stepped out of the illusion, he saw Liu Xiaolou looking utterly exasperated. Only then did he remember what they were supposed to be doing, and he quickly began apologizing. “Brother, my fault, I’m too used to it.”
This time Liu Xiaolou was truly angry. Thinking back to all the variation problems discussed in the Essentials of the Golden Scroll Formations, he ground his teeth and snapped, “Again! Brother Daoran, don’t bother entering the building anymore, just keep breaking the formation!”
Now he made the setup even more complicated, spinning the sky disk at dizzying speed, giving Liu Daoran a real challenge. Far from discouraged, Daoran grew even more excited, calculating, testing, counting on his fingers, and breaking the formation again and again.
In no time, the back chamber of Phoenix Perch was filled with shifting lights and shadows, the atmosphere brimming with mystery and wonder.