The garage was grungy, the sort of grey unfinished mess with a few machines moved away to the side that gave the impression that it was a simple discarded feature of the house, a concession to the practical realities of the maintenance of cars and sound isolation rather then some 'man cave' or place of pride. 

The lights are LEDs, though, leaving the room with an oddly clean cast despite the dust and dirt caked on the floor. 

"Is this a suitable spot?" 

She scoffed. 

"Yeah course this spot ends up being a natural geomantic eddy spot just about perfect in size for the proper formation..." 

She laughed. 

"Yeah it's better then fine - the quality of the natural energies here is crap, but this is as much of a natural centre as one gets, here." 

"So ok." 

Her sword floated up and away from her side, spinning in the air, the slower movements making a thin channel filled with deep black ink as it glided through the bare concrete, carving and inscribing a circle a few meters wide. 

She dissapeared in a rush of air for a moment Moonsilver wasn't entirely sure was real, then crouched down with her satchel in her offhand and a wet brush in the other, a slightly navy-er black paint coating the tip, as she drew out 6 circles and a few more complicated details with her hand with swift and graceful motions. 

"Ideally, this'd all be done from scratch with a proper permanent array with an actual bloody dragon line, but that's a waste, to me. The whole point of a proper cultivation formation is to gather the energies of heaven and earth, and the balances of the energy inside determine your affinities, so just need a few filters - can see an instinctive adaptation technique when I meet a user, and Senior fox was kind enough to give the theoretical alignment numbers for it -won't capture the most accurate pic, but actually the main bit that'd through it off isn't that big a deal - the equality of the whole thing means that it shouldn't make that much of a difference from sub-technique affinity, but 'm sure she can manage." 

Each circle save one has a little sample in it - the flames of rebirth, a splash of water that refuses to diffuse out of the circle, a teabag, a shard of iron, a clod a tajjiof mud, with the remaining circle simply being a drawing of a Taijitu in chalk and the lighter ink. 

"Not that those details nesscarily matter to you? Though the basics can help, of course - lotta people learn the basics of reading a flow to the apex in the world to a minimal level without a technique - 'nd every lil bit of advantage helps on a path this treacherous. " 

Her sword flew around the garage, inking fine script, bizzare geometric patterns and lineart art that she couldn't quite follow, each line leading into a collection of dozens of others that led her eyes to more and more intersections 'til she was lost entirely in the design. 

*hmmm..." 

"Should equalize to test conditions in... 2 min, more or less? Need a few hours to touch up the whole thing to the best product I can get out something this rushed and low-on-resources, but should be plenty for you now..." 

She poked out her tongue, and rested back on her butt, falling undignifiedly to the floor.

"Any questions while it configs?"

"How much of this sort of thing is... 'normal', and when would I be able to do this sort of thing if I studied formations with a good technique?"

"Eh..." 

She wiggles her hand. 

"Almost every cultivator w/ an at least decent level of talent or backing has some trick to help with cultivation speed - but formations is just a way to do it - probably the most common basic buff set-up is alchemy - buying pills is a lot easier then setting up a good permanent spot - though generally the cost-to-performance ratio isn't as great and so on." 

She traced her hands across her knees and stimmed a bit. 

"If you got a technique just now, then sure, you'd be able to rig up something like this - but it'd just be a small edge - maybe a tenth extra in speed as long as you are in the foundation establishment realm, with the sorta thing that you could throw together with cheap materials in a rush. If you wanted to do something as good as this, you'd probably need to get most of the way through third stage, or something like that - this'll really speed up the whole process for you 'til you get to that point anyways then mostly drop off - 's not supposed to be something that replaces a dedicated effort to improve yourself at a higher skill level - just a help for when that sorta thing isn't really feasible. That's the whole point of seniors helping out juniors, I think." 

She smiled back a little. 

"'s good to get to give back, a lil." 

"And oh, the diagnostic bit is cheap enough - qi reactive substances are something easy to make for basically any alchemist, and even the way I did it was cheap enough - just a few dozen mL of first grade formation ink. And..." 

She sighed. 

"'ll make sure you have the option to get something for your first realm, ok? You're a good kid and don't want to leave you hanging dry." 

She tapped a spot on the linework, and the air shuddered a little before stilling back. 

"You're good to go in, now. Just breathe with the technique, though it's ok to talk and just settle in." 

"Alright." 

Pressing into the circle was... odd, especially for how natural it was to frame it that way. There was a small ethereal shimmer like shifting currents of air against her skin, and a gentle buzz inside it, that lets her feel odd just from the tiny motions against the... 'membrane' of it, with an interesting lingering touch of futzed senses in her arm that... 

She purses her lips curiously, and tries circulating her energy and seeing the difference in the timing - 

"Pfft. Oh c'mon." 

She gently pushes her forward, letting her stagger into the circle. 

"Get the instinct, but 't's the time for testin' you, not this, yeah?" 

"...Yeah." 

Breathe out settle in don't get upset sit down...

Breathe in. 

"...Does it get easier?" 

Her eyes are looked to hers, staring unabashedly despite the imbalance. She's cast off the fears of her old life, more or less, and there's no reason to start generating silly ones now. 

"No." 

Stare unflinchingly, focus unwavering, judgement hovering.

She watches the lines of her face, the light red of her altered eyes, the part of her rosy lips, chest softly rising and falling as they gaze upon each other. 

She's relaxed in that slightly predatory pose above her, her eyes glint with glee, her lips slide just far enough apart to give the faintest view of her vividly crimson tongue as the edges of them quirk up wider and wider.

She lets the tears start flowing, just a little, the faint glaze upon her eyes forming as they start to sting as she works to focus past the strain. 

She laughed, bright and clear, and reached out to ruffle your hair. 

"Oh yeah you're totally going to do well, you cutie." 

blush soft laugh reflexive blink slight chuckle concilliatory deferential nod lean in shiver recenter relax back.

"It does get more natural though. 's just another thing that gets appended to the long list of stuff that you exist under, another way to live and work and think and feel, and it helps other things, too, so it can even out in the end but...." 

"That doesn't mean it gets easier." 

"Yep."

Quiet rest back on her legs, let them sink to the floor, wait, refocus on the technique, glance up at her hand, eyes, 

Balance it, invoke balance itself into the mix, light and dark, fire and water, and the rest of the elements besides - sink in, respire more, as always, meditate. 

"So... What do these affinities even look like? I'm not sure what to expect of the process beyond some cultivation progress." 

"It's harder for you to see - you don't have a relevant technique, but basically the mix will tend towards a balance of stuff that you promote, and that'll start feeling like the barrier, just... more aspected. You'll start ot feel a bit more... 'you', I suppose, and more a bunch of specific things that are related to that but mostly..." 

"It just happens, you just keep on cultivating, and you can feel the ebb and flow of it 'til it reaches the limit." 

She smiled, warmly and softly this time. 

"So ride on up. I can cultivate here too, so don't worry about wasting my time or anything like that. You'll get the best results when you aren't in a rush and let yourself fall into the rhythm." 

And so she did, hands upon her knees gently pressing down, roots slowly seeping in, breathing deeply and slowly even as it felt more and more like she had been living on some high-up mountain for all her life but had suddenly gotten a chance to feel that rush of oxygen, blood and qi flowing through her body as she focused 'til the void and her eyes were her only thought, slowly refining - it wasn't quite designed to actually do the start-to-end process, but it was in principle possible and it would help start it up if she wanted to do more but still...

Be Still. Meditate. Rest. Generate. 

Hand-on-her-chin in a moment, words-in-her-mind. 

"Up. Practice."

Slight jerk-in, fold legs a little, push up by hands, up and flow.

It wasn't the most natural thing, not quite, the formatting still something that bugged her, but she knew how to breathe and walk in a way that few cared to already, and she knew how to follow her instincts, so she danced across the circle, going through the parries from her left hip to past her right shoulder, then contracting back into slide out of a crossguard, qi and blood rising and almost spiking as the abundant mental energy catalyzed the process more and more agressively. 

Center, focus, form, see, grasp, slide, click, thread. 

Long exhale out as the energy of her body drained away and she stood there, feeling half-naked without that cloak of energy around her. 

That's 4. 

"And there we go." 

She ran her tongue down her pointer finger and stuck it precisely at the threshold, then placed it on a little circle in the drawing. 

"That's that." 

She sighed. 

"And to think that I thought that going into formations meant that I could avoid the annoying medical stuff, but no." 

Her foot scuffed at the chalk taijitu, partially breaking it and...

Things felt a little brighter, somehow, after a bit of greying out. 

"You ran down your Yang, there - pant out a bit, let yourself get a touch ragged, 't's ok. Rebalanced the air a lil to help w/ recovery, just take your time to breathe and..." 

Disappear, reappear, water. 

"Drink." 

D-rink shake p-pant shudder gasp faint groaning sigh. 

Rest back in the circle, because it's for that. 

Pause, because you have the time and you have no idea how long any analysis takes.

That was a bit much.

She waits for to recover, silently and essentially undetectably cultivating.

"I have the results for when you'd like them, by the way." 

Her voice feels half-distant, easy to ignore willfully but hard to simply forget or brush off.