Awakening

When Yun Jingheng woke up, it was raining outside the window.

The rain pattered softly against the glass.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for three seconds.

Then he realized he was lying somewhere familiar.

His own room—the one on Sea God Island. Fresh flowers that Ya Li changed every day sat on the bedside table.

"Awake?"

A voice came from beside him.

Yun Jingheng turned his head.

Ya Li was sitting by the bed, still holding a partially peeled Ju Zi.

She looked at him, her eyes slightly red, but she was smiling.

"Mom."

Yun Jingheng spoke, his voice a little hoarse.

Ya Li reached out and touched his face.

"You've been asleep for two days. Are you hungry?"

Yun Jingheng thought for a moment.

"A little."

Ya Li smiled, set down the Ju Zi in her hand, and stood up.

"Wait here. Mom will make you some noodles."

She walked out.

Yun Jingheng lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Two days.

He had slept for two days.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu turned over.

"You're awake?"

"Yeah."

"How do you feel?"

Yun Jingheng carefully sensed his condition.

His Soul Power had recovered, and there was nothing wrong with his body.

The only difference was that Moon.

It still looked the same, hanging in the center of the Sea of Spirit and giving off a faint silver glow.

Yet within that silver light, there was a barely perceptible trace of red.

It was faint—so faint that it was almost impossible to notice.

But it was definitely there.

"Blood Moon," Xiao Jiu said.

Yun Jingheng fell silent for a moment.

"Really impossible to control?"

"...I estimated it. Before you reach six rings, there's no way you'll be able to control it."

He did not dwell on it any longer. He threw back the covers and got out of bed.

His legs felt a little weak when his feet touched the floor, but he was fine after taking two steps.

He walked to the window and looked at the rain outside.

Ya Li came in carrying a bowl of noodles.

"Why are you standing there? Come eat."

Yun Jingheng sat back down at the table and took the bowl.

They were chicken broth noodles, topped with a poached egg and sprinkled with chopped scallions.

He lowered his head and began eating.

Ya Li sat beside him and watched him eat.

When he was halfway through the bowl, Yun Ming came in.

He sat down by the bed and looked at Yun Jingheng.

"How do you feel?"

Yun Jingheng swallowed a mouthful of noodles.

"I'm fine."

Yun Ming nodded.

"That's good."

He paused.

"For a while, don't cultivate, and don't practice swordsmanship either."

Yun Jingheng froze for a moment.

"Why?"

Yun Ming looked at him.

"If you cultivate rashly now, something will go wrong."

Yun Jingheng was silent for a moment.

"How long?"

"At least a month."

After saying that, Yun Ming stood up. When he reached the door, he turned back.

"Be good."

He left.

Yun Jingheng lowered his head and continued eating his noodles.

A month without cultivating or practicing swordsmanship.

Then what was he supposed to do?

Stare into space?

After he finished eating, Ya Li took the bowl and left.

Yun Jingheng was the only one left in the room.

He sat at the table and watched the rain outside.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu asked,

"What are you planning to do?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"Read, I guess."

He stood and walked over to the bookshelf.

There were many books on it. Most were related to martial souls and cultivation, while a small portion were introductory Soul Tool books Cai Yue'er had brought over last time.

He casually pulled one out and opened it.

Introduction to Soul Tool Basics.

Chapter One: The Nature of Soul Power.

He read two lines, then closed it again.

He had read this book before. It was fairly elementary, suitable for beginners.

But he was not a beginner.

He had studied physics in his past life. Looking at these books now, he always felt as though there was a layer separating him from them.

It was not that he could not understand them. He simply felt that... they did not go deep enough.

What was Soul Power?

It was a kind of energy.

How did energy flow?

Along Soul Tool circuits.

What were Soul Tool circuits?

They were structures that caused energy to flow along specific paths.

Then what if he drew out those paths and described them with mathematics?

A thought suddenly came to him.

He walked over to the desk, sat down, and picked up a pen.

Then he started drawing.

He was not drawing Soul Tool circuits. He was drawing coordinates.

An x-axis, a y-axis, and a curve.

The curve represented the path of Soul Power flowing through a circuit.

Then he began writing formulas.

Soul Power velocity, path curvature, energy loss.

One formula after another.

He filled an entire page.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu poked his head out.

"What are you doing?"

Yun Jingheng did not even look up.

"Modeling."

"What?"

"Nothing."

He kept writing.

After filling two pages, he stopped and looked at the formulas.

This was something born from combining the knowledge from his past life with this world's theories on Soul Tools.

In theory, it was correct.

But whether it worked in practice still needed to be verified.

He set down his pen and stood up.

Cai Yue'er was drinking tea in her own courtyard when she saw Yun Jingheng walk in. She was startled for a moment.

"Why are you here? Didn't I tell you to rest?"

Yun Jingheng walked over and sat down across from her.

"Aunt Cai, I want to borrow something."

Cai Yue'er looked at him.

"What do you need?"

"Soul Tool parts. Scrapped ones are fine too, but usable ones would be best."

Cai Yue'er paused.

"What do you need those for?"

Yun Jingheng thought for a moment.

"Experiments."

Cai Yue'er was silent for two seconds.

"What kind of experiment?"

Yun Jingheng pulled out several sheets of paper from his clothes and handed them to her.

Cai Yue'er took them and looked them over.

The first page was filled with symbols and curves she could not understand.

The second page was still full of things she could not understand.

On the third page, she finally saw something familiar—it was a simplified diagram of a Soul Tool circuit.

She raised her head and looked at Yun Jingheng.

"What is this?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"A model for Soul Power loss in a straight-line circuit."

Cai Yue'er was silent for a moment.

"What?"

Yun Jingheng also fell silent.

That was not an easy question to explain.

"It's... using mathematics to describe something."

Cai Yue'er looked at him, her expression somewhat complicated.

"Where did you learn all this?"

Yun Jingheng had prepared for this long ago.

"I read it in books. Ancient Soul Tool Fragments mentioned a little of it, and I figured out the rest myself."

Cai Yue'er stared at him for several seconds, then smiled.

"Fine. You figured it out yourself."

She rose to her feet.

"Come on. I'll take you to the storeroom."

The storeroom was huge, piled high with all kinds of Soul Tool components.

There were scrapped ones, half-finished ones, and ones whose purpose was impossible to guess.

It was hard to understand why this storeroom even existed.

Cai Yue'er pointed inside.

"Pick whatever you want. Tell me when you're done."

She left.

Yun Jingheng stood in the storeroom, his eyes lighting up as he looked over the components filling the room.

He walked over and picked up a scrapped Soul Tool core.

The circuits on the core had already been burned out, but its structure remained intact.

He examined it carefully, then set it down.

He picked up another one.

He looked it over, then put it down as well.

After choosing for quite a while, he selected more than a dozen items.

Several scrapped cores, a pile of metal sheets, a few conductive wires, and some tiny components whose names he did not know.

He carried them back to his room and arranged them on the table.

Then he got to work.

First, he dismantled them.

He took apart the scrapped cores one by one to study the circuit structures inside.

As he dismantled them, he drew diagrams, recording the circuit layout of every core.

After taking apart five cores, he had already drawn five diagrams.

Then he began comparing them.

Which circuits were more efficient, which had greater losses, which were well designed, and which had flaws.

He used the formulas he had written to calculate them.

After calculating all afternoon, he had gathered a pile of data.

Then he started working with his hands.

He was not making a new core. He was using the metal sheets and conductive wires to construct the simplest possible circuits.

Straight-line circuits.

They simply allowed Soul Power to flow from one end to the other without doing anything else.

Once he had assembled one, he used a Milk Bottle to inject Soul Power into it.

The Soul Power flowed through smoothly.

He used his formulas to calculate the theoretical loss, then measured the actual loss.

The two figures were not far apart.

He nodded.

Then he began constructing curved circuits.

The sharper the curve, the greater the loss.

He calculated and measured, recording another pile of data.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu watched him busy himself and could not help asking,

"What are you doing?"

Without even looking up, Yun Jingheng replied,

"Verifying a theory."

"What theory?"

"The laws governing how Soul Power flows through circuits."

Xiao Jiu fell silent for a moment.

"Is it useful?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"It is. Only by understanding the rules can you design better circuits."

Xiao Jiu did not ask any more questions.

It lay back down and went back to sleep.

Over the following days, Yun Jingheng busied himself in his room every day.

Building circuits, measuring data, calculating formulas, and drawing blueprints.

Ya Li brought him food every day. She saw the mess of strange things covering his table, but she never asked about them. She only smiled.

Yun Ming occasionally came by for a look, then left without saying anything.

Cai Yue'er came by several times. At first, she could understand a little of his blueprints, but later, she could not understand them at all.

"Are you planning to become a Soul Engineer?"

One time, she finally could not resist asking.

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"No. I just find it interesting."

Cai Yue'er looked at him and suddenly smiled.

"Your father told you not to cultivate or practice swordsmanship, yet here you are, researching this instead."

Yun Jingheng nodded.

"I have to do something. I don't want to be bored enough to grow weeds."

Cai Yue'er said nothing more and left.

A month later.

Yun Ming entered the room and found Yun Jingheng sitting at the table, staring blankly at a pile of blueprints.

"Time is about up."

Yun Jingheng raised his head.

"I can cultivate now?"

Yun Ming nodded.

"You can."

Yun Jingheng got to his feet and rolled his neck.

After a month without moving, his bones had gone stiff.

He walked to the window and looked at the sunlight outside.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu asked,

"Are you done researching that pile of stuff?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"More or less."

He turned back to glance at the pile of blueprints on the table.

They were the results of his research over the past month.

Structural diagrams for dozens of basic circuits, efficiency data and loss formulas for every circuit, along with several optimized designs of his own.

There was nothing earth-shattering about them, only the most basic knowledge.

They might come in handy someday.

"Cultivate, cultivate..."