Zhou Xuan pushed him aside.
"Then don't crowd so close."
He studied the data streams himself for a while, occasionally tapping a finger to mark several anomalies on the panel.
The first cursory scan took roughly the time it took to drink a cup of tea.
Once the data had settled, Zhou Xuan switched to another, deeper scanning mode. The beam changed from blue to pale violet.
"What's this step for?"
Zhou Xuan did not even look up.
"Looking at her blood."
"More precisely, at the book inside her blood."
Ye Changqing recalled the long line and the circle Zhou Xuan had drawn in the Secret Chamber.
"You mean the one you mentioned before? The book everyone brings with them from their mother's womb, the one that automatically copies itself to the next generation?"
"Yes."
The pale violet beam scanned for about half an hour before the control panel beeped. Data collection was complete.
Zhou Xuan drew a deep breath.
"It's ready. Look."
The image in the projection area changed completely.
The streaming data vanished, replaced by a slowly rotating three-dimensional structure.
Two long strands wound around each other, spiraling upward.
Densely packed blocks of color lined the strands in pairs, their arrangement extraordinarily regular and precise.
Ye Changqing did not recognize it.
But he could tell that the structure was immensely complicated—so complicated that even everything he had learned over his entire life could not help him understand how a single part of it worked.
He stared at the rotating Double Helix.
"This is that book?"
"Yes. Everyone has it inside them, whether they're mortals or cultivators. It's all the same."
Zhou Xuan raised his hand and enlarged the projection.
The Double Helix structure was magnified.
Closer still.
And closer again.
When the view reached a particular section, Ye