Ning Sect Master's Black Wind Mountain on Paper

Ning Fengzhi had filled half a table with writing. Playing games and writing on paper. The person writing was even the Sect Master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. Who would have dared imagine such a scene before? More absurdly, people were actually watching beside him. At first, they watched for the spectacle. Later, they craned their necks to read the words. Elephant Armor Academy students crowded behind him, relying on their height to peek at the table. Low-ranking Spirit Hall deacons stood on the other side; though they said nothing, their feet did not move. Even Yan stood there with his arms folded, pretending he was merely passing by.

After watching for a long time, Ma Hongjun quietly asked Tang San.

"Did you understand it?"

Tang San said, "Half of it."

"What about the other half?"

"You'll understand after dying a few times."

Ma Hongjun immediately stopped asking. At first, some people nearby had wanted to laugh. Later, they could not laugh anymore. Because Ning Fengzhi was not writing randomly. Monster appearance locations. Signs before pounces. Sounds in the grass. Changes in ground elevation. The width of escape routes. Changes in the brightness of the Incense Lamp. Wherever he had not confirmed something, he would rather leave it blank. Seeing one such blank space, a young soul master could not help asking:

"Sect Master Ning, did you miss something here?"

Ning Fengzhi looked up at him. The man panicked.

"I-I was just asking."

Ning Fengzhi was not angry.

"It isn't missing. I don't know."

"You write it down even if you don't know?"

"That is precisely why it needs to be left blank."

Ning Fengzhi lightly tapped that blank spot with his charcoal pencil.

"Writing something wrong is more troublesome than not writing anything."

At those words, the Grandmaster's gaze shifted slightly. He had spent half his life conducting research, and he understood the weight of those words too well. Not knowing meant not knowing. Forcing an answer onto the page would only lead those who came later astray. These sheets of paper suddenly no longer looked like a guide. They looked more like a map that could keep growing. Lin Chuan leaned behind the counter as the system panel flickered before his eyes.

[Number of valid buyouts: Stage requirement achieved.]

[Multiplayer Joint Trial: Unlocked.]

[Cooperative Advance: Protect the Lamp progress: Complete evaluation not yet obtained.]

[Review Annotation rack: Unlock conditions previewing.]

[Condition One: Accumulate three valid Review Annotations.]

[Condition Two: The Cooperative Advance team reaches the Land Shrine.]

[Condition Three: Public release of the guide requires the consent of the save-file holder.]

Lin Chuan felt satisfied when he saw the last line. Player consent. Good. That would keep anyone from using their power to simply pry into someone else's strategy later. He casually took out a blank wooden sign from beside the counter. After thinking about it, he put it back. It was not time to post the rules yet. He would wait until someone genuinely fought over a guide before putting it up. With rules, no one listened if they were announced too early. They only became valuable once everyone wanted to snatch them. Ning Fengzhi entered the game for the fourth time.

He still could not defeat the Little Demons. But this time, he stayed alive much longer. At the first patch of grass, he did not walk through the middle. Instead, he slowly edged along the tree trunk on the right. A Little Demon pounced from the left. He stepped back half a beat ahead of it. He did not counterattack. If he could not kill it, he would not fight it. He ran. It was not an elegant way of running at all. Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect disciples were accustomed to seeing their sect master calm and unhurried outside. When had they ever seen him cling to tree trunks to avoid Little Demons like this?

Once, Ning Fengzhi retreated too slowly, and a chunk of his health bar was scratched off his shoulder. Rather than panicking and striking back, he used the knockback from the hit to retreat, circling to the other side of a narrow path. The female disciple's fingers tightened. If it had been her, she probably would have panicked after the first hit. And once she panicked, the second Little Demon would arrive. But Ning Fengzhi had not panicked. He could not defeat them. So he did only one thing. Stall. When he reached the gravel slope, he stopped. He waited for the second Little Demon to come down the slope on the right, then lured both Little Demons onto the same narrow path.

Tang San watched intently.

"He's stalling."

The Grandmaster nodded.

"The first task of a support-type soul master is not to kill enemies. It is to slow them down."

Ning Fengzhi still died in the end. He died at the hands of the third Little Demon. But the first thing he said after exiting was:

"The third one is slower than the first two, but its pounce reaches farther."

He added a line to the paper. Third Little Demon: half a breath slower, pounce range one foot longer. A record appeared on the spectator screen.

[Survival time this attempt: Twenty-seven breaths.]

[Improvement from previous attempt: Fourteen breaths.]

There was no reward.

There was no light screen.

Yet the eyes of two Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect disciples lit up. Their sect master had not killed a Little Demon. He had merely survived fourteen breaths longer. But for support-type soul masters, those fourteen breaths were often exactly what they needed. Fourteen breaths were enough for a teammate to turn back. Enough to send out one final layer of enhancement. Enough to give a battle doomed to defeat a little more uncertainty. Staring at those two lines of records, the female disciple suddenly said:

"Sect Master, this disciple wants to try once."

Ning Fengzhi looked at her.

"Have you thought it through?"

"I have."

Her voice still trembled slightly.

"This disciple also wants to know whether I can survive fourteen breaths longer."

Ning Fengzhi smiled.

He did not immediately let her take the machine.

"Watch this round to the end first."

"Why?"

"Because right now, all you see are fourteen breaths."

Ning Fengzhi pointed at the papers on the table.

"You haven't yet seen how those fourteen breaths came to be."

The female disciple lowered her head.

This time, she no longer watched only the screen. She began looking at the papers too. Looking at that record, Tang San thought of his Rewind Incense Ash. Things that flashed by in battle could be broken down and examined once they landed on paper. Ning Fengzhi suddenly looked up.

"Little San, when your group reached the fork during Cooperative Advance yesterday, did the Incense Lamp dim once?"

Tang San nodded.

"There was wind on the left path and an ambush on the right. We thought the lamp dimmed because of the wind."

Ning Fengzhi pushed the paper toward him.

"Not necessarily. Look here. The direction of the flame did not always match the wind. Perhaps the lamp was not responding to the wind when it dimmed, but the team's positioning."

The Grandmaster took the paper.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he added several marks he had recorded while spectating yesterday. Ning Fengzhi noted routes and distances. The Grandmaster noted monster movements and training applications. Tang San added death points. No one instructed them. Yet the three quickly settled into their own roles. Oscar clicked his tongue in amazement as he watched from the side.

"With these three together, they feel more terrifying than the monsters."

Ma Hongjun nodded.

"One calculates routes, one calculates monsters, and one calculates ways to die."

Xiao Wu added:

"And Rongrong calculates the lamp."

Ning Rongrong froze for a moment. She had only been standing there listening. When Xiao Wu said that, several people looked at her. Ning Rongrong instinctively pointed at herself.

"Me?"

Tang San nodded.

"You carried the lamp the longest yesterday. You know best when it dimmed."

Ning Rongrong's heart suddenly skipped a beat. In training before, she was often the one assigned a position. Where to stand, when to enhance others, following the captain's orders. But in front of this sheet of paper, it seemed she also possessed information no one else had. She leaned closer and hesitantly drew a tiny flame beside one fork in the road.

"Here, the lamp flickered then."

The Grandmaster immediately looked at Tang San. Tang San frowned as he recalled it.

"The grass on the right had not moved yet."

Ning Fengzhi marked that spot.

"Write it down."

The hand holding Ning Rongrong's charcoal pencil gradually steadied. The laughter in the shop completely vanished. Sheet after sheet of paper was surrounded by hands. Someone quietly asked:

"Can we copy these?"

Lin Chuan glanced at the Reservation Token on the wall. He knew that from now on, customers entering the shop would probably not merely ask, "Who has beaten the White-Clothed Scholar?" They would also ask: Which guide is the most accurate? And accuracy had never come for free. Behind it lay routes carved out through game after game of death. Tang San's discarded Rewind Incense Ash. The Grandmaster's reddened eyes.

And the blank spaces scattered across Ning Fengzhi's table. Lin Chuan tapped the counter.

"Don't take the papers randomly. If you want to copy them, wait for the people organizing them to agree."

The person who had asked awkwardly withdrew his hand. At that moment, no one had yet realized that in the Grand Dao Internet Cafe, besides gaming stations, a second thing worth fighting over had appeared. Guides. Ning Fengzhi was in no hurry to put the papers away. Instead, he pushed the top sheet farther outward.

"You may look."

Everyone's eyes lit up. Ning Fengzhi added, "But don't copy them carelessly." The Grandmaster nodded.

"Unverified information will harm people if it spreads."

Tang San gathered the ashes of the Rewind Incense Ash to one side. He suddenly felt that these sheets of paper were heavier than he had imagined. They were not shortcuts written down in a moment of inspiration. They were the paths left behind after death upon death. Zhou Ping listened from the side and suddenly clenched his three sheets of paper tightly. He had always feared letting others know how many times he had died.

But for the first time, he felt that perhaps dying many times was not entirely useless. As long as he could write it down clearly, as long as those who came later could truly die one fewer time, then those embarrassing deaths would no longer be merely embarrassing.