Something is Missing

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

From this vantage point, the Sea God Lake and the training grounds beside it were in full view.

Those two small figures were sitting by the lakeside, huddled close together, whispering about something.

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

Ya Li didn't turn around, simply stepping aside to make 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 something under her breath.

Yun Jingheng sat by the lake, tilting his head to look up at her with a somewhat helpless expression.

"Is that girl here again?" Yun Ming asked.

"She comes every day."

Ya Li smiled. "It seems they're trying to come up with a name right now."

"A name for what?"

"I don't know, but Jingheng just suggested a very long one and got scolded for it."

The corners of Yun Ming's mouth twitched.

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

Ye Xinglan paced a few more times, then suddenly stopped and said something.

Yun Jingheng opened his mouth to speak, but after being glared at, he promptly shut it again.

Ya Li let out a soft laugh.

"Look, he's being kept in line."

Yun Ming didn't speak, but the curve of his lips deepened slightly.

Ye Xinglan walked away.

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

Yun Ming turned around and walked back to the table to sit down.

Ya Li remained standing by the window.

"That girl skips class to run over here every day; does Lan Muzi know?"

"He knows."

Ya Li said, "He came to find Jingheng and asked, 'What did you say to her? She runs over to your side every single day now.'"

Yun Ming looked up. "What did Jingheng say?"

"He said he didn't say anything."

Yun Ming fell silent for a moment.

Ya Li walked back and sat down beside him.

"That child is different from before."

Yun Ming looked at her.

Ya Li thought for a moment.

"Before, he would practice his sword alone, read alone, and take apart those components alone. He looked very focused, but I always felt..."

She paused. "Too quiet, too lonely."

Yun Ming didn't speak.

Ya Li continued.

"Now there's someone by his side who will argue with him, come up with names with him, and glare at him to make 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 a good thing?"

Ya Li nodded.

"It's quite good, isn't it?"

"It is quite good."

The next morning, Ye Xinglan arrived earlier than usual.

Yun Jingheng had just finished breakfast and was sitting by the lake to digest when he saw her running out from the woods.

But her expression was off today; she looked sullen and rather unhappy.

Yun Jingheng looked at her.

"What's wrong?"

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

"I've been selected."

Yun Jingheng was stunned for a second.

"Selected for what? A beauty pageant?"

Ye Xinglan rolled her eyes at him, her tone softening slightly.

"The Sky Sea Grand Competition."

Yun Jingheng waited for her to continue.

Ye Xinglan fell silent again.

"I have to go to intensive training. Teacher Lan said that for the next period of time, I have to train every day and won't be able to come here."

Yun Jingheng didn't say anything.

Ye Xinglan turned her head to look at him.

"Aren't you going to say something?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

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

Ye Xinglan stared at him for a few seconds.

"Is 'that's great' all you can say?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"...Then what should I say?"

Ye Xinglan took a deep breath and stood up.

"Forget it, I'm leaving."

She turned to walk away, but after two steps, she looked back.

"Yun Jingheng."

"Hm?"

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

Yun Jingheng nodded.

"I won't."

Ye Xinglan glanced at him once more, then strode away.

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

He dazed off for a while, then stood up and stretched his limbs.

"Time to practice the sword."

The days that followed returned to the way they used to be.

Practicing the sword alone, reading books alone, sitting by the lake in a daze alone.

But it felt different somehow.

Before, being alone was a habit.

Now, being alone felt like something was missing.

Yun Jingheng didn't think too much about it.

Every morning he practiced the sword, in the afternoon he read books, and in the evening he would dismantle a few parts to make little trinkets.

There were still quite a few discarded cores he had dug out from the storage room that day; he dismantled them one by one, studied the circuit structures inside, and then tried to reassemble them in his own way.

The first thing he made was a small lamp.

To be precise, it was a soul power sensor lamp.

The principle was simple—a miniature soul guidance core connected to a light-emitting circuit; as long as there was a fluctuation of soul power, the lamp would light up.

He carved a very shallow trigger circuit onto the core and set the sensitivity very low.

This way, the lamp would only light up when he actively injected soul power, and it wouldn't be disturbed by external soul power fluctuations.

After finishing it, he injected his soul power.

The lamp lit up.

It was a faint, silvery-white light, like a small cluster of moonlight held in his hand.

Yun Jingheng looked at that cluster of light and suddenly remembered the instruments in the laboratory from his past life.

Those precise, cold instruments—every single one of them had been debugged by his own hands.

The little thing in his hand right now was incredibly crude, its circuits carved crookedly, and the core itself salvaged 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.

It wasn't an ordinary fan; it was powered by soul power.

He had carved a rotation circuit into the core, allowing soul power to circulate within the loop to drive a metal blade.

The principle wasn't complex, but debugging it had taken him quite some time.

The curvature of the circuit, the flow rate of the soul power, the weight of the blades—every single parameter affected the speed and stability of the rotation.

After seven or eight attempts, it finally started spinning.

The blades didn't spin particularly fast, but they were steady.

The breeze wasn't strong, but it was enough.

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

Then, he began to make the third item.

The third was the most complex.

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

He had long since mastered the theory—it was the standard model of soul power flow and storage within a circuit.

But actually building it was harder than he had imagined.

The circuits on the core had to be carved with extreme precision; a difference of even a hair's breadth would lead to soul power leakage.

He spent an entire afternoon and scrapped three cores before he managed to carve one that was barely functional.

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

He thought for a moment, readjusted the curvature of the circuits, and tried a different arrangement.

The second test yielded sixty percent.

He adjusted it once more, reaching seventy percent, but it wouldn't go any higher.

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

"Seventy percent," he muttered to himself, "that's enough."

He placed the storage device on the table, lining it up with the lamp and the fan.

The three little things were crooked and not particularly good-looking.

But they were all made by his own hands.

Inside his sea of consciousness, Xiao Jiu tilted its head.

"Why are you making these?"

Yun Jingheng thought about it.

"I don't know. I just feel that making them is quite interesting."

Xiao Jiu was silent for a moment.

"Were you like this before?"

Yun Jingheng was taken aback.

"What?"

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

Yun Jingheng fell silent.

He remembered his past life—the precision instruments, the complex formulas, the nights spent burning the midnight oil.

Those things felt very far away from him now.

"Something like that," he said.

Xiao Jiu didn't ask again.

Days passed one by one.

Ye Xinglan did not come again.

Every day, Yun Jingheng practiced his swordplay, read his books, and made those useless little gadgets by himself.

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

He became more proficient with each one, his circuits grew neater, and he became more efficient with his cores.

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

The storage device held the soul power he had injected the day before; after he activated it, the fan spun for a full two hours before stopping.

Watching the fan that had spun for a full two hours without stopping, he suddenly remembered something.

The things he had learned in his past life—physics, mathematics, engineering—did not seem entirely useless here.

That evening, the family sat down for dinner.

Yun Jingheng kept his head down, shoveling rice into his mouth, while Ya Li placed food into his bowl. Yun Ming sat opposite them, eating very little.

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

"The Sky Sea Grand Competition will begin in a while."

Yun Jingheng looked up at him.

Yun Ming continued.

"Your mother is going."

Ya Li nodded. "The Academy is sending me to observe the ceremony."

Yun Ming looked at Yun Jingheng. "Do you want to go along and see it?"

Yun Jingheng was stunned for a moment.

The Sky Sea Grand Competition—he ran through the plot of the original work 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 the participants included Eastsea City. Eastsea City had Eastsea Academy, and Eastsea Academy had—

Gu Yue.

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

He owed her a thank you.

Yun Jingheng thought it over.

"I want to go."

Ya Li smiled.

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

Yun Ming didn't speak, merely nodding.

He glanced at Yun Jingheng before withdrawing his gaze.

Ever since Ye Xinglan stopped coming to look for him, this little guy had been visibly unhappy.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...