Something Was Missing

By the window of Sea God Pavilion, Ya Li stood holding a teacup.

From this angle, she could see all of Sea God Lake and the training grounds beside it.

The two small figures were sitting close together by the lake, though she had no idea what they were talking about.

"Watching again?" Yun Ming's voice came from behind her.

Ya Li did not turn around. She merely shifted aside, making room for him.

Yun Ming walked over and followed her gaze downward.

Ye Xinglan was pacing back and forth with her hands behind her back, muttering to herself.

Yun Jingheng sat by the lake, looking up at her with a somewhat helpless expression.

"That girl came again?" Yun Ming asked.

"Every day."

Ya Li smiled. "It looks like she's naming something now."

"Naming what?"

"I don't know, but Jing Heng suggested a very long name earlier and got scolded for it."

Yun Ming's mouth twitched.

The two stood by the window, watching the children below.

After pacing several times, Ye Xinglan suddenly stopped and said something.

Yun Jingheng opened his mouth to speak, but apparently received a glare and closed it again.

Ya Li laughed.

"Look, she's got him under control."

Yun Ming said nothing, but the curve of his lips grew slightly wider.

Ye Xinglan left.

Yun Jingheng sat alone by the lake, staring blankly at the water.

Yun Ming turned around and returned to sit at the table.

Ya Li remained standing by the window.

"That girl skips class to come here every day. Does Lan Muzi know?"

"He does."

Ya Li said, "He came to see Jing Heng before and asked, 'What did you say to her? Why does she come running to you every day now?'"

Yun Ming looked up. "What did Jing Heng say?"

"He said he hadn't said anything."

Yun Ming fell silent for a moment.

Ya Li walked back and sat beside him.

"That child has changed from before."

Yun Ming looked at her.

Ya Li thought for a moment.

"Before, he practiced swordsmanship alone, read alone, and took apart those components alone. He looked very serious, but it always felt like..."

She paused. "He was too quiet. Too lonely."

Yun Ming said nothing.

Ya Li continued.

"Now, there's someone beside him who argues with him, comes up with names with him, and gives him a glare that makes him shut up."

She smiled.

"He doesn't seem quite so lonely anymore."

Yun Ming looked at her and suddenly asked, "Do you think that's good?"

Ya Li nodded.

"Isn't it good?"

"It is."

Early the next morning, Ye Xinglan arrived earlier than usual.

Yun Jingheng had just finished breakfast and was sitting by the lake digesting his meal when he saw her run out of the woods.

But her expression was different today. She looked gloomy and unhappy.

Yun Jingheng looked at her.

"What's wrong?"

Ye Xinglan sat down beside him and remained silent for a while.

"I was selected."

Yun Jingheng froze for a moment.

"Selected for what? A beauty pageant?"

Ye Xinglan rolled her eyes at him, though her tone softened slightly.

"The Sky Sea Grand Competition."

Yun Jingheng waited for her to continue.

Ye Xinglan fell silent again for a moment.

"There's going to be intensive training. Teacher Lan said that for a while, I have to train every day and won't be able to come."

Yun Jingheng said nothing.

Ye Xinglan turned to look at him.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"That's good. Being selected is a good thing."

Ye Xinglan stared at him for several seconds.

"All you can say is 'that's good'?"

Yun Jingheng thought for a moment.

"...Then what should I say?"

Ye Xinglan drew a deep breath and stood up.

"Forget it. I'm leaving."

She turned and walked away, but after two steps, she looked back.

"Yun Jingheng."

"Yeah?"

"Don't slack off while I'm gone."

Yun Jingheng nodded.

"I won't."

Ye Xinglan glanced at him once more before striding away.

Yun Jingheng sat by the lake, watching her back disappear into the woods.

He stared into space for a while, then stood and stretched.

"Time to practice swordsmanship."

In the days that followed, things returned to how they had been before.

Practicing swordsmanship alone, reading alone, sitting by the lake alone and staring blankly into space.

Yet somehow, it was different.

Before, being alone had been a habit.

Now, being alone made him feel as though something was missing.

Yun Jingheng did not think too much about it.

Every morning, he practiced swordsmanship. In the afternoons, he read. At dusk, he took apart several components and made a few little gadgets.

There were still quite a few discarded cores he had found in the storeroom that day. He took them apart one by one, examined the circuit structures inside, then tried reassembling them in his own way.

The first thing he made was a small lamp.

More precisely, it was a Soul Power-sensing lamp.

The principle was simple—connect a miniature soul tool core to a light-emitting circuit, and the lamp would light up whenever there was a fluctuation of Soul Power.

He carved a very shallow trigger circuit into the core and set its sensitivity extremely low.

That way, the lamp would only light when he actively injected Soul Power into it and would not be affected by outside fluctuations of Soul Power.

After finishing it, he injected Soul Power.

The lamp lit up.

It gave off a faint silver-white glow, like a small cluster of moonlight held in his hand.

Looking at that light, Yun Jingheng suddenly remembered the instruments in his laboratory from his previous life.

Those precise, icy-cold instruments, each one painstakingly debugged by his own hands.

The little thing in his hand now was crude. Its circuits were crookedly carved, and its core had been taken from discarded parts.

But it lit up.

He smiled and placed the lamp on the table.

The second thing he made was a small fan.

Not an ordinary fan, but one powered by Soul Power.

He carved a rotational circuit into the core, allowing Soul Power to circulate through it and drive a metal blade to spin.

The principle was not complicated, but debugging it took him quite some time.

The curvature of the circuit, the flow speed of the Soul Power, and the weight of the blade—every parameter affected its rotational speed and stability.

After seven or eight attempts, it finally began to turn.

The blade did not spin very quickly, but it was stable.

The breeze was weak, but sufficient.

Yun Jingheng placed the fan at the corner of the table and let it spin on its own.

Then he began making the third item.

The third was the most complicated.

It was a small Soul Power storage device, capable of storing excess Soul Power and releasing it when needed.

He had long since thoroughly studied its principle—it was based on that model of Soul Power flowing and being stored within circuits.

But actually making it was somewhat harder than he had imagined.

The circuits in the core had to be carved with extreme precision. Even the slightest deviation would cause Soul Power leakage.

He spent an entire afternoon and ruined three cores before finally carving one that was barely usable.

During testing, its storage efficiency was only forty percent of the theoretical value.

After thinking it over, he adjusted the circuit curvature again and switched to a different arrangement.

The second test reached sixty percent.

He adjusted it once more. Seventy percent. It would go no higher.

Yun Jingheng looked at the small storage device and fell silent for a while.

"Seventy percent," he muttered. "That's enough."

He set the storage device on the table beside the lamp and fan.

The three little gadgets were crooked and not particularly attractive.

But he had made every one of them himself.

In the Sea of Spirit, Xiao Jiu tilted her head.

"What are you making these for?"

Yun Jingheng thought for a moment.

"I don't know. I just think it's interesting to make them."

Xiao Jiu was silent for a moment.

"Were you like this before too?"

Yun Jingheng froze for a moment.

"What?"

"Before you met me, did you also like making things like this?"

Yun Jingheng fell silent.

He remembered the precise instruments from his previous life, the complex formulas, and the nights he had stayed awake through.

Those things were already very far away from him.

"More or less," he said.

Xiao Jiu did not ask any further questions.

The days passed one by one.

Ye Xinglan did not come again.

Every day, Yun Jingheng practiced swordsmanship by himself, read by himself, and made those little gadgets that had no real use.

A lamp, a fan, a storage device, a small alarm clock, and a timer that could automatically record time.

The more he made, the more skillful he became. His circuits grew neater, and he used cores more efficiently.

One day, he connected that storage device to the fan.

The storage device held the Soul Power he had injected the day before. Once activated, the fan spun for a full shichen before stopping.

As he watched the fan spin for an entire shichen without stopping, something suddenly came to mind.

The things he had studied in his previous life—physics, mathematics, engineering—did not seem to be entirely useless here.

That evening, the family ate dinner together.

Yun Jingheng kept his head down as he shoveled food into his mouth. Ya Li placed more dishes in his bowl, while Yun Ming sat across from him and ate very little.

Halfway through the meal, Yun Ming set down his chopsticks.

"The Sky Sea Grand Competition will begin before long."

Yun Jingheng looked up at him.

Yun Ming spoke.

"Your mother is going."

Ya Li nodded. "The academy assigned me to attend as a guest."

Yun Ming looked at Yun Jingheng. "Do you want to go and take a look?"

Yun Jingheng froze for a moment.

The Sky Sea Grand Competition—he ran through the original plot in his mind.

Nothing major seemed to happen at the Sky Sea Grand Competition? No, that wasn't right.

The Sky Sea Grand Competition was held in Skysea City, and Eastsea City was among the participants.

Eastsea City had Eastsea Academy, and Eastsea Academy had—

Gu Yue.

The girl who had stood in front of him and been sent flying by the Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear.

He owed her a word of thanks.

Yun Jingheng thought for a moment.

"I want to go."

Ya Li smiled.

"Alright, then the two of us will go together."

Yun Ming said nothing and nodded.

He glanced at Yun Jingheng, then looked away again.

Ever since Ye Xinglan had stopped coming to see him, the little fellow had been visibly unhappy.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...