Advanced Array Theory

A few passages from Lin Shiren's work on **Advanced Array Theory**. This essay was his theoretical work for his advancement to the rank of Senior Disciple in the Clan Brethren of Thousand Words.

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The theory of arrays, as stipulated by Elder Wu the Farseeing, can be divided into three sections: storage, the act of pulling an object, spiritual creature, or energy itself into something separate and different from it to facilitate better transport; summoning, in which ones chosen medium and spiritual symbols act as a conduit into or through a separate space where the object or creature resides; and physical adjustment, whereby the medium and symbols are used to change the nature of the space they inhabited, such as the creation of barriers or the distortion of light. All of them make use of the eight elements arising from the Eight Trigrams – heaven, wind, water, mountain, earth, thunder, fire, and lake - organized in either the precepts of Earlier Heaven or Later Heaven.

Physical-adjustment arrays are the simplest out of the three: as they concern themselves only with physical space, the theories of Elder Wu that govern barrier-making use only the precepts of Earlier Heaven. Easier, too, because the precepts of Earlier Heaven follow those of tradition and ‘common sense.’

One of the first physical-adjustment arrays that are taught to cultivators in this field is that of binding: sky and earth linked together to invoke the essence of Queqiao, the Magpie Bridge, that span from the Heaven to the Mortal Realm binding in a bridge for Heavenly Zhi Nu to meet Niu Lang once a year. Upon that foundation the array overlays sky and earth to urge all disturbances to be akin to foundations of the Heavenly Principles. Then, the final layer: the array stitching the unmoving mountain and still lake together so that they could join forces and create a protective layer against dangerous weather like raging lightning and wailing wind of thunderstorms.

Between the theories of storage and those of summoning, the former are far more difficult. Summoning calls upon the precepts of Later Heaven – representing the more foreign rules of spiritual realms – to send out a message, or reach out a hand, to the other side. One use of the common summoning seals, in the 17ths Movement of The Hymns of Sun and Moon, is the Zhāohún, links water-fire, wind-sky, thunder-lake, and mountain-earth to a center point: the summoner’s blood. Typically in the 17th Movement, the array is woven using musical notes and spiritual energy and providing the blood of the summoner through a cut on the finger on the instrument but other methods of array use are valid for the Zhāohún. With the blood as an anchor to the mortal realm, the array reaches through the barrier between dimensions – mortal water to summons’ fire, human wind as a guide for the summons’ earth in case of calls from the Diyu, or for the summons’ sky in the case of calls from Tian – to call upon the spiritual creature that the summoner had formed a contract or tries to forge a connection with.

Storage arrays are the most common, and yet most complex. Most of them contain aspects of both Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven mixed together. The most basic of storage is made of the links between wind-thunder and wind-heaven. The Iron Armour Array, embedded the links of both mountain-lake and mountain-earth within the array.

Both Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven are used: when a single element is linked to two others, it formed a separate pocket of space that is immediately connected to the object that was imbued with the array. Within that space created, objects are stored. Breaking the array means snapping one or both of those links, resulting in the pocket of space no longer existing and all items being dropped upon the array breakers head.

The strongest storage array that was spoken by Elder Wu, was a design by the second Grandmaster of the Clan Brethren of Thousand Words, who created it to translocate the entire Clangrounds, including the lake if the Clan would ever come under siege by a superior enemy. Grandmaster Long Haochen's array design was based on the Eight Trigrams array. It consisted of two Four Symbol-arrays being folded together, double links for every single element are created, immediately resulting in a massive pocket of space that could fit a small city. Grandmaster Long Haochen original design was sealed in the Clans treasury and thus can not be analyzed in more detail by this humble student. The Clan history says that the array was only used once in the great clan wars following the fall of The Tyrant. The amount of spiritual energy one would need to theoretically power an array with this complexity and volume are at the moment also unknown.

Physical-adjustment arrays enclose things within the array and excluded everything else. Storage arrays pull objects through that array and cut them off from the rest of the world. In other words, those two arrays in their basic form would always seal: to cut off, to catch, to trap. But summoning arrays pull from one space to another and ensured that the summoned spirit is guided to the summoner location. The workings of the Zhāohún could be summarised as using the summoner’s spiritual energy to carve out a pathway in between two realms, one steady enough to allow the summoned spiritual creature – or, on very rare occasions – the summoner themself – to pass through.

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