Su Jiu looked at Xia Jue, her brows drawing together slightly. "Seven or nine?"
Her tone was decidedly uncertain.
Yet when Xia Jue heard her answer, a faint flicker crossed his eyes. "Junior Sister, are you certain it's one of those two numbers?"
Su Jiu nodded. "What I'm not certain of is which one."
Xia Jue smiled faintly, a trace of warmth in his expression. "Your talent truly is exceptional, Junior Sister. Calculating this much is already no easy feat."
"So what's the answer?"
"Nine."
The bewilderment on Su Jiu's face amused Xia Jue. The word "why" might as well have been stamped across her face.
He reined in his smile. "Many problems in this world have different solutions, and calculating nodes is no exception. You're accustomed to using spiritual qi to calculate nodes. There's nothing wrong with that. But did you know that spiritual qi possesses a certain fluidity? Any result calculated through it will therefore either contain deviations or be unclear. That's why the answer it gives you isn't precise."
"You mean there's another method, Senior Brother?"
"Of course," Xia Jue said with a smile. Then he looked toward a patch of miasma nearby and asked softly, "Do you know why the person who constructed this physical realm chose the Miasma Forest rather than somewhere else?"
"Because its various chaotic auras are disorienting, and more importantly, because it can cut off cultivators' divine sense, making it easy for people to lose their way here."
Xia Jue nodded, his gaze distant. "Correct. That is indeed the main objective of the person behind this. But there's another reason we cannot overlook. Can you think of it?"
Su Jiu glanced at the dead tree beside them. "Does it have something to do with the nodes?"
Xia Jue nodded. "Nodes are visible