After ten years, which seemed both like a short and long time to Zhou Fan, he succeeded in creating a lesser dao creation level formation, successfully becoming an 8th rank formation master.
However, he didn't immediately move on from the lesser dao creation level formations. The formation he had created was only an attack formation. There were still plenty of formations at the lesser dao creation level that he had yet to make.
Therefore, the term formation master was barely applicable to him. Even saying he was an 8th rank formation amatuer wouldn't really be wrong.
He hadn't cared much about making the other types of formations for the previous levels, but the lesser dao creation level reached the level that he thought he needed to become a true master at it.
It would help lay a foundation for the inner world and god realm formations. Otherwise, he may have to spend a much longer time trying to reach the 9th and 10th rank.
Although he had done one type of attack formation, there were many many more. The one he had created shot out a ball of fire in a straight line. Even just a formation that shot a ball of fire could have many different iterations.
For example, one formation could have the ball of fire explode before it even reached a target, and another could have a ball of fire do a loopty loop before it exploded and its explosion made a sword shaped explosion.
There were many different ways to do a formation and a true master should be able to do all of them. Therefore, Zhou Fan started working on every single variety and type of formation he could think of.
After a thousand years, he finally finished. While lesser dao creation level formations became much easier after the first one, the sheer number of variations made the process take an extremely long amount of time. At least, it felt like an extremely long amount of time since it was only on a lesser dao creation realm scale.
As he made new formations for different levels, their base power shot up, but it really didn't change too dramatically. The power of a formation was completely based on its makers power, and a higher rank formation could only slightly increase its power. Still, it was something worth learning to someone like Zhou Fan with nearly infinite time and almost nothing to do with it.
The exact amount of power increase so far was about two times. It was definitely a great difference in power, but it seemed lackluster when you realized that the rank of the formations shot up by so many realms.
Regardless, Zhou Fan didn't really care. Since he was done with the lesser dao creation formations and could finally be called an 8th rank formation master, he was ready to move on to the 9th rank.
He grabbed some materials from his spatial pocket and began.
10,000 years later, he ran out of materials once again. He teleported through multiple galaxies, taking a rest from time to time, and ended up stealing materials from more than ten thousand planets. That alone took nearly a thousand years, but Zhou Fan got back into the pace once again.
After another thousand years, he finally made his first inner world realm formation. He felt it was ridiculous that he spent so much time making a single formation, but he got over it pretty quickly.
In the 10,000 years that followed, Zhou Fan learned every single inner world realm formation that there was. The time it took to invent a single inner world level formation was actually ten times what it took to invent a lesser dao creation level formation.
At first, he felt that it didn't really matter, but he realized that not only had his inventing speed slowed, but the actual creation of the formations had slowed.
It wasn't as exaggerated as a ten times increase, but it reached a two times increase. Zhou Fan felt that if he was going to consider himself a master, he should also be able to create formations quickly.
Currently, it took him 3 seconds to create an inner world level formation and 1.5 seconds to create a lesser dao creation realm formation.
If his training worked, he hoped to be able to make both ranks of formations in less than a second. As for how fast he could end up doing it at his current realm, only time would tell.
He ended up training his speed by constantly making formations for an entire ten thousand years. The speed increase was so slow it was nearly imperceptible, but Zhou Fan eventually realized the speed increased and continued.
By the time the ten thousand years had passed, Zhou Fan could create both rank eight and rank nine formations in half a second.
Only now did Zhou Fan consider himself a true 9th rank formation master.
Finally, the final challenge was in front of him. He wasn't sure if he even had the ability to become a rank 10 formation master at his current realm, but he sure would try until all hope was lost, and then he would continue for another million years if he must. Perhaps it was the increase in his formation mastery, but he had been feeling particularly noble and heroic recently.
Hopefully, the feeling would disappear before too long.
After cracking his fingers, and getting ready to study the tenth rank formations, Zhou Fan realized that his supply of materials was getting low once again. Out of the more than ten thousand planets worth of materials, he only had around five thousand planets worth of materials left.
Unless he suddenly and magically understood tenth rank formations, the amount of materials would not be nearly enough for him. Luckily, the materials had likely regenerated after so long.
Zhou Fan teleported around for a bit, grabbing every bit of materials that he could grab without harming the planet. He only stopped after grabbing a hundred thousand planets worth.