Su Ming sat at his isolated workstation in the corner, his brow deeply furrowed.

The wolf hair brush in his hand hovered over a scrap of discarded parchment, its tip trembling slightly, unable to descend for a long time.

Drawn on the paper was a strange semi-circular structure, its lines twisted, resembling an unclosed vortex.

This was an ancient, incomplete formation—a variant of a “breath-concealing array”—that Su Ming had excavated from some damaged formation diagrams over the past few days.

Lin Yu had modified it somewhat by incorporating some node pathways from within the Xuantian ring.

To avoid drawing attention, Su Ming had deconstructed it into countless seemingly unrelated geometric shapes, conducting his deductions under the pretense of “researching anti-interference coatings for formation plates.”

But he was stuck.

No matter how Lin Yu used topology from his previous life to explain it, the spiritual energy would always inexplicably dissipate along the circuit of this structure, like water flowing into a bucket with a leaky bottom.

“Wrong, completely wrong,” Lin Yu’s soul thought paced restlessly within Su Ming’s mind. “In theory, the energy here should form a closed loop, but this damn spiritual energy fluid dynamics doesn’t follow basic laws! There’s a missing key ‘valve’ here, a structure that allows spiritual energy to ‘want to leave but be unable to.'”

Su Ming expressionlessly set down the brush, his peripheral glance shifting to the other end of the courtyard.

Luo Feng stood with his back to him before the “Data Wall,” holding a newly repaired “Spirit Gathering Plate,” seemingly studying its spiritual energy diversion channels.

This Formation Peak genius had now essentially become an unofficial quality inspector for the Repair Hall.

A flicker passed through Su Ming’s eyes as his fingers lightly rubbed the parchment.

“Master, mind if I borrow a bit of fire?”

“Borrow! You must borrow it! This walking encyclopedia delivered to our doorstep, not using it would be a waste!”

Su Ming stood up, picked up the spiritual tea beside him, and walked unhurriedly to stand behind Luo Feng.

“Senior Brother Luo,” Su Ming’s voice was gentle, carrying just the right amount of inquisitiveness, “Regarding the diversion channels of this ‘Spirit Gathering Plate,’ if deepened by three-tenths as you mentioned yesterday, the rate of spiritual energy gathering indeed increases, but the stability seems to have decreased slightly.”

Luo Feng didn’t even turn his head, snorting coldly. “That’s because the engraving knives you use are of inferior material, unable to withstand the spiritual pressure. Switch to Red Copper knives, and this won’t be an issue.”

“I am enlightened,” Su Ming nodded respectfully, then, as if suddenly remembering something, casually handed over the parchment with the incomplete vortex drawn on it. “By the way, while researching how to reduce the erosion of formation plates by external impurities, I happened to see this runic structure in a tattered ancient text. I am dull-witted and truly cannot discern its spiritual energy flow. I wonder if Senior Brother has seen it before?”

Luo Feng initially just gave it a careless glance, preparing to dismiss it with “such wild, unorthodox methods aren’t even worth a look.”

However, when his gaze fell upon that twisted semi-circle, his pupils abruptly constricted.

His body, originally lazily leaning against the wall, instantly straightened. He snatched the parchment, his fingertips even turning slightly white from excitement, his eyes erupting with a hunter’s gleam upon spotting a rare, peerless bird.

“This… this is the ‘Formless Pattern’?”

Luo Feng’s voice was somewhat hoarse. He jerked his head up to stare at Su Ming, his tone urgent. “In which ancient text did you see this?”

“A ‘Miscellaneous Records’ used to prop up a wobbly table leg, long since moldy and illegible,” Su Ming lied without changing his expression, his gaze clear and sincere. “Only this page with the incomplete diagram remains.”

“A waste of a treasure! What an absolute waste!” Luo Feng cursed with heartfelt pain a couple of times, then his gaze glued itself to the parchment again. His fingers traced imaginary lines in the air as he muttered to himself, “No wonder… no wonder it looked familiar. This structure is clearly a variant of the ancient ‘Concealment’ character rune!”

He looked at Su Ming, the arrogance in his eyes replaced by a sense of superiority from sharing a secret.

As he spoke, a point of faint blue spiritual light suddenly ignited at Luo Feng’s fingertip.

“Watch closely! The essence of this structure lies not in ‘blocking,’ but in ‘devouring’!”

He swiftly sketched in the air. The spiritual light flowed like silk, not following the semi-circle Su Ming had drawn to close it, but instead folding inward abruptly at the gap, forming an extremely complex, three-dimensional loop akin to a Möbius strip.

As the final stroke was completed, that cluster of spiritual light did not erupt;
instead, it collapsed inward bizarrely, instantly vanishing into the air—not dissipating, but remaining there, yet even divine sense could not perceive its existence!

Inside the Xuantian ring, Lin Yu instantly exploded.

“Holy shit! Holy shit! Quick! Disciple! Memorize it all! This is 3D modeling! The curvature of this loop, the folding angle of these spiritual energy nodes… This is the real stuff, beyond basic textbooks! It’s a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of Formation Peak’s core heritage!”

Su Ming held his breath, his eyes fixed dead on that spot in the air, his Consciousness Sea frantically recording every movement Luo Feng had just made, every fluctuation frequency of the spiritual energy.

“Did you understand?” Luo Feng waved his hand, dispersing the spiritual energy, his chin slightly raised, reverting to that lofty demeanor. “This is ‘Formlessness.’ Your so-called ‘data’ and ‘standards’ are utterly incapable of describing even a ten-thousandth of such a structure that points directly to the origin of the Great Dao.”

He paused, seeming to feel he had said too much, and added a corrective remark, “Of course, this is still just superficial knowledge, not touching upon the fundamentals of Formation Peak. Even if I teach it to you, you wouldn’t be able to use it. Consider it just broadening your horizons.”

Suppressing the wild joy in his heart, Su Ming’s face revealed an expression of half-understanding, half-awe. He bowed deeply. “Senior Brother’s learning probes the heavens and man. That single stroke of ‘inward folding’ was truly a stroke of divine inspiration! Although this disciple cannot grasp its profound meaning, I am greatly shaken.”

Luo Feng accepted this bit of flattery, the corner of his mouth hooking up imperceptibly, his mood greatly improved.

“Alright, enough pondering these overly ambitious things. First, get the yield rate of that batch of ‘Spirit Gathering Plates’ up for me!”

Although he said this, over the next half hour, when Su Ming “unintentionally” raised a few more questions about the stability of spiritual energy nodes, Luo Feng’s answers were noticeably more in-depth than usual, even beginning to proactively cite theories from high-level formations to support his points.

A subtle, unspoken understanding quietly grew between the two.

For Luo Feng, Su Ming’s place was an excellent “Experimental Plot.”

Those unorthodox ideas he dared not easily try at Formation Peak could be tested without reservation here through Su Ming’s “data stream.” Su Ming’s strange yet precise logic was more like a series of “battering rams,” capable of shattering the rigid walls in his thinking from time to time.

And for Su Ming, Luo Feng was a walking, talking, self-correcting “Comprehensive Guide to High-Level Formations.”

“Hehe, Senior Brother, look, Senior Brother Luo Feng is giving Su Ming ‘private tutoring’ again!”

At the courtyard gate, Mingyue, holding two food boxes, peeked in at the scene, her eyes curved into happy crescents.

Qingfeng stood beside her holding a sword case, curling his lip, but the usual hostility in his eyes had diminished somewhat. “Hmph, Senior Brother Luo Feng just appreciates talent. But this Su Ming kid is indeed strange. Clearly a menial post, yet his brain works better than many inner sect senior brothers.”

Su Ming took the food boxes, thanking the two, and casually crumpled that parchment into a ball, tossing it into the wastepaper basket as if it were nothing.

Late at night, Bing Character Seven Courtyard was utterly silent, all sounds hushed.

Inside the eastern side room, Su Ming sat cross-legged, his breathing nearly imperceptible.

“Master, have you reconstructed it?”

“Absolutely! With Luo Feng’s ‘Möbius strip’ as a reference, plus my topological corrections, this ‘breath-concealing array’ is complete!”

Lin Yu’s voice carried unprecedented excitement.

Su Ming took out the Xuantian ring he always kept close to his body. Under Lin Yu’s guidance, he concentrated an extremely fine thread of spiritual energy at his fingertip and, following the trajectory from his memory of Luo Feng’s demonstration—yet adjusted through thousands of micro-modifications—slowly infused it into a broken formation line deep within the ring.

“Hum—”

There was no light, no sound.

The Xuantian ring merely trembled slightly. Then, that ancient, weathered aura that constantly lingered on the ring’s surface began to “disappear” bit by bit, like melting snow and ice.

It became utterly ordinary, like an iron ring commonly seen in any mundane market.

Even when Su Ming swept it with his divine sense, he would subconsciously overlook its existence.

“It’s done! This is the true divine artifact of the Way of Survival!” Lin Yu laughed wildly. “Now, unless a Spirit Transformation stage old monster presses their face against it and scans it with divine sense, no one will be able to detect anything unusual about this ring!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep