Stepping out of the bamboo grove, the mountain breeze brushed his face, and Su Ming realized his back was slightly damp with sweat.

“Brother Su, impressive!”

Luo Feng patted Su Ming’s shoulder, his face first showing admiration, then revealing a trace of a bitter smile.

He hesitated for a moment, lowered his voice, and said, “To be honest with you, Brother Su, I also spent over half a year studying this ‘Eight Gates Lost Trace Incomplete Formation’.”

Hearing this, Su Ming’s footsteps paused slightly, and he turned his ear to listen attentively.

“The difficulty of this formation lies in its self-binding causality,” Luo Feng said with a serious expression. “It’s not like ordinary formations where the flow of spiritual energy has a clear beginning and end. Within this incomplete formation, there are at least three key nodes that are mutually causal yet contradictory. I tried seventeen different deduction paths. Each time I felt I was about to sort it out, I would always discover, in some unexpected place, that a premise from my earlier deduction had already been overturned by myself… It was like spinning in circles in a maze with no exit.”

He glanced at the jade slip in Su Ming’s hand, a flicker of lingering fear in his eyes. “The solution I ultimately submitted was to forcibly construct a larger energy field externally using the ‘Seven Stars Suppressing the Mountain’ pattern, to ‘wrap’ and ‘suppress’ this entire tangled mess, thereby forcing a relatively stable spiritual energy channel to emerge from the chaos. Elder Qingquan looked at it and said my solution was ‘using brute force to break finesse, losing the ever-changing, unpredictable essence of a lost trace formation, but it is still a path.'”

Luo Feng patted Su Ming’s shoulder again, his tone sincere yet carrying a hint of helplessness. “So, Brother Su, I can’t help you this time. Since Elder Qingquan has taken out this formation again as a test and explicitly stated there’s no time limit, he wants to see your unique method of breaking it. My path has already been walked. If I tell you about it now, it would only limit your thinking. This hurdle, you must cross it yourself.”

Su Ming understood in his heart and was quite grateful for Luo Feng’s frankness and goodwill.

“Senior Brother Luo’s willingness to be so candid is already a great favor. The path of formations, while all methods return to the same origin, varies from person to person. Since it’s a test question, there must be a solution,” Su Ming said with a smile. Although he had no real confidence in his heart, his expression remained calm and unruffled. “No matter how difficult, it just means spending a bit more time.”

“Your mindset, I truly admire it,” Luo Feng shook his head. “I still need to go into seclusion to finalize the Nine Palaces Formation Plate, so I won’t see you off. When you solve it, we’ll have a proper drink. Also, take this token. It’s Elder Qingquan’s token. In case you solve it ahead of time, you can come directly to the Listening to Waves Pavilion to pay your respects to Elder Qingquan.”

After bidding farewell to Luo Feng, Su Ming walked alone down the mountain path.

He reached out and touched the jade slip and token in his robe, his steps becoming a little lighter.

……

Su Ming sat cross-legged before the stone table, which was covered with densely packed draft papers. Discarded paper balls filled the bamboo basket at his feet.

The bluish-grey jade slip lay quietly under the lamplight. The mottled patterns on its surface seemed like the breathing of some ancient creature, exuding an indescribable sense of eeriness.

Since returning from the Listening to Waves Pavilion, Su Ming had been sitting rigidly before the table for a full three hours.

“Wrong, still wrong.”

The rune brush in Su Ming’s hand hovered in mid-air. A drop of ink finally gathered at its tip, unable to bear the weight any longer, and fell with a soft *plop* onto the paper, spreading into a dark blotch of ink.

This was already the one hundred and seventh failed deduction.

According to the logic of the “True Meaning of Basic Rune Deconstruction,” any formation, no matter how complex, is ultimately a logical closed loop constructed from basic runes.

Just like building a house, as long as you find the load-bearing walls and beams, you can deduce the entire structure.

But this “Eight Gates Lost Trace Incomplete Formation” was a complete exception.

Su Ming put down the brush, rubbed his throbbing temples, and pointed at the tangled mess of a structural diagram on the draft paper, saying in a low voice, “Master, look here. According to the rules of spiritual energy flow, the ‘Qian position’ governs life. Spiritual energy should flow smoothly to the ‘Kan position’ and transform into water-element power. But every time I try to deduce this step, the spiritual pressure at the ‘Kan position’ inexplicably reverses flow, counter-charging the ‘Qian position,’ turning the original life gate into a death gate.”

What was even more absurd was that this reverse flow wasn’t fixed.

In one deduction it was a reverse flow, in the next it might become a split flow, and in yet another it might even vanish into thin air, as if that node was a black hole devouring spiritual energy.

“It’s like a snake biting its own tail,” Su Ming murmured to himself. “Head and tail entangled, mutually causal. If I untangle the head, the tail gets knotted; if I straighten the tail, the head gets messed up.”

Within the Consciousness Sea, Lin Yu didn’t respond immediately.

The semi-transparent figure floated above the jade slip, arms crossed, brows furrowed tightly, as if examining an extremely thorny and difficult problem.

“Disciple, don’t you think this formation is a bit… ‘disgusting’?” Lin Yu suddenly spoke, his tone carrying a hint of distaste.

“Disgusting?” Su Ming was taken aback. Formations emphasized precision and rigor. Even if they had a murderous aura, they shouldn’t be described as “disgusting.”

“Not visually disgusting, but logically.”

Lin Yu floated down, his finger pointing virtually at those key incomplete nodes on the jade slip. “You’ve been using a ‘disassembly’ approach to deal with it, but the problem is…”

Lin Yu paused, his voice becoming somewhat profound. “What if this formation… is still moving?”

A chill shot up Su Ming’s back. He instinctively looked at the seemingly dead, silent jade slip. “Master, are you saying this formation is alive?”

“To be precise, it’s a living formation.”

Lin Yu snapped his fingers. A faint pulse of soul power stirred at his fingertip, sketching a distorted formation model within Su Ming’s Consciousness Sea. “The original framework of this formation is indeed the ‘Eight Gates Lost Trace Formation,’ that’s correct. But it suffered extremely violent destruction. This destruction wasn’t a simple break. It was some external force that forcibly twisted its core logic, causing a mutation in its internal spiritual energy cycle.”

“Look at these nodes.” Lin Yu pointed at those places Su Ming couldn’t make sense of no matter how he calculated. “When spiritual energy flows through here, there’s a very unnatural ‘sense of stagnation.’ It’s like… a tumor growing in a blood vessel. Blood flowing past is forced to change course, forming a new, deformed collateral circulation.”

Staring at that model, a spark of inspiration flashed in Su Ming’s mind. He blurted out, “Formation Corpse!”

In some obscure miscellaneous records on the path of formations, this kind of formation was mentioned.

When some high-level formations are damaged, if they happen to be located on a spiritual vein node, after being washed over by spiritual energy for long ages, the surviving formation lines will instinctively undergo “self-repair” to maintain operation.

This repair has no intelligence, only a survival instinct. It often results in all sorts of bizarre, dangerous, and utterly illogical structures.

“This isn’t a ‘Lost Trace Formation’ anymore.” Su Ming took a deep breath. The confusion in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by a solemn understanding after seeing through the essence. “This is a formation corpse, protecting its core from collapse.”

The conventional approach to solving a formation is to find the “life gate.”

But this thing has no gates at all.

Its entire body is covered in wounds. Every wound is bleeding and healing at the same time, forming a dynamic, chaotic balance.

“No wonder Elder Qingquan said there’s no time limit.” Su Ming let out a bitter laugh and threw the rune brush in his hand back into the brush holder. “To solve this, relying on deduction from the ‘True Meaning of Basic Rune Deconstruction’ is useless. It’s like trying to cure a sick patient. You first need to figure out the cause of its illness, and even… learn to think like a madman.”

Lin Yu nodded approvingly, his figure swaying slightly in the air. “That’s right. This requires a large number of samples and a very deep understanding of the microscopic changes of spiritual energy.”

Lin Yu glanced out the window at the sky already showing the first light of dawn and yawned. “Can’t be rushed. That old man has given you a long-term research topic. He probably doesn’t expect you to solve it now either. This is more like… a form of tempering.”

Su Ming silently put away the jade slip, placed it into a specially made spirit-sealing box, and pasted two restriction talismans on it.

Su Ming stood up, stretching his stiff joints, which emitted a series of crisp cracking sounds. “I’m only at the seventh layer of Qi Refining now, and my Dao foundation is still damaged. Although this ‘formation corpse’ is tough to deal with, it’s not going anywhere. There’s no need for me to disrupt my own cultivation rhythm for the sake of a nominal disciple’s test.”

Only by staying alive do you have the qualification to solve problems.

“Master, it’s dawn.” Su Ming pushed open the stone door. The crisp morning wind, carrying the dampness of soil, rushed to meet him. “Time to go water the ‘money tree’.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep