Seeing Tu Yue enter, Bai Yujun set down her paintbrush.
The painting needed only a little more to be finished. She had been idly painting for amusement, depicting a lone peak amid a sea of clouds and a Cloud-Piercing Pine rooted in mountain rock. Though it was merely a painting on paper, a certain dragon had inadvertently added a trace of Dao essence, causing a world within the painting to be born.
Seated in a chair padded and raised with soft cushions, she gazed at the stone Tu Yue held in her arms.
"Hmm~ Very good. You did very well. Since you've handled things so earnestly, I'll grant you a stroke of fortune—a chance to make a trade. Pick something suitable for yourself. Remember, act within your means."
Having said that, she beckoned the stone over and placed it on the table beside another fragment.
Tu Yue curiously stared at the two stones, studying them, but quickly realized she could make neither head nor tail of them. The Mysterious Girl could not even be bothered to conceal anything.
Bai Yujun gazed at the two fragments of stone tablet and began calculating.
First, she constructed an image of the towering stone tablet in her mind, filling in the gaps around the two fragments. She found the ancient script within her Inheritance Memory and used the writing on the fragments as a foundation, supplementing what came before and after. Again and again, she arranged countless characters, then eliminated them again and again. In effect, she was attempting to calculate the complete stone tablet from two fragments. Within a brief moment, she tried millions of possibilities.
In the end, she rubbed her forehead and gave up helplessly. It was not enough. She needed more writing from additional tablet fragments.
By rough estimate, she