Yin Wujou squatted by the round pit, watching her. Her face looked softer than usual in the light of the luminous pearl, and when her eyes were closed, her eyelashes cast a small, light shadow on her cheekbones. The amber halo rippled from the edge of the array, and as it passed by her, it seemed to be drawn by something, slightly changing direction and converging towards her palm.
He stared for a long time, until Daoist Yun whispered behind him, "Let's go, let's rearrange the positions of the eleven copper balls in front of us again," before he stood up.
The two walked back along the passageway. Yin Wujou didn't say much along the way, but squatted down to check the position of each bronze ball and the tightness of the silver thread. When he reached the seventh bronze ball, he suddenly stopped, squatted there and looked at the green mist that kept seeping from the hole in the ball and spreading to the ground. He asked in a low voice, " Daoist Yun, do you think I was too reckless?"
Daoist Yun stopped behind him and answered after a while, "In what way?"
"So many things. Taking her into the Soul-Severing Gorge, letting her sit at the core of the formation." Yin Wujou's fingers unconsciously twirled the silver thread; the thread was taut, and his fingertips made a very slight buzzing sound as they rubbed against it. "Before, when I did these things alone, I didn't think much of it; at worst, I'd just die inside. Now..."
He stopped mid-sentence, looking down at the taut silver thread between his fingers as if he were looking at something troubling.
Daoist Yun walked over and squatted down beside him, patting his shoulder with considerable force, causing Yin Wujou's shoulder to tilt slightly. "Now you know why your master didn't finish all these things back then?" Daoist Yun said, his tone unusually serious. "It wasn't that he lacked the ability to do them; it's that after he finished, he came back to find no one waiting for him at home. He had spent half his life wandering in the mountains, only to return to a cold house with no one to talk to. All these things he gave you—that bamboo slip, that piece of parchment, that fire-lighting device—were all things he painstakingly crafted night after night in the mountain cave. Do you think he didn't want someone to help him sift the tea powder and pass him the copper ball?"
Yin Wujou remained silent. The passageway was quiet for a moment, with only the faint hissing sound of the emerald mist seeping from the holes of the copper ball flowing across the ground. The clear tea fragrance grew stronger in the narrow space, mixed with the scent of moss and rocks, smelling like some ancient and calming aroma.
He stood up, repositioned the seventh bronze ball, and dusted off his hands. "Let's go, four more. It's almost dawn; we need to finish all the preparations before noon."
The two walked back along the Dao Yi, positioning and calibrating the remaining four copper balls one by one to ensure the tension of the silver threads was even and consistent, and that the watery energy emanating from each copper ball formed a continuous path. By the time they reached the copper ball at the entrance of the passageway, it was already bright daylight. The morning light filtered through the narrow crevice at the top of the rock crevice, illuminating the dewdrops clinging to the thorny bushes within. Yin Wujou stood at the crevice and glanced out. The distant mountain ridges floated and sank in the morning mist, their outlines as soft as lines spreading in a traditional Chinese ink painting.
He took a deep breath of the fresh air, which carried the scent of grass and trees, and turned to walk back into the passageway.
When they returned to the cave, Snow Empress was still sitting in the circular pit, her posture almost unchanged. However, the amber aura in the pit was much denser than before, overflowing from the pit walls like a ring of liquid light spreading across the ground around her. Above her palm floated a fist-sized ball of turquoise light, which slowly rotated, absorbing all the watery spiritual energy seeping from the copper ball and then condensing it into an extremely thin turquoise thread that flowed down along the patterns of the array.
Yin Wujou walked to the edge of the circular pit and squatted down, looking at her face. Her face appeared slightly luminous under the amber halo, and her breathing was even and long, almost in sync with the pulsation of the array. "How are you feeling?"
Snow Empress didn't open her eyes, only her lips moved slightly. "It's moving."
What's moving?
"The thing below... it's been moving this way since just now." She paused for a moment after saying this, her brow furrowing slightly. "Slowly, but in a clear direction. It's coming from that side path—it's following the path of the water elemental energy upwards."
Yin Wujou looked down at the ground beneath his feet. Through layers of rock of unknown thickness, he could feel the pulsation was stronger than before, with shorter intervals and greater force. Each pulsation sent a slight ache through the acupoints on the soles of his feet. He pressed his hand to the ground and sensed it for a while, his expression gradually changing—the direction of the pulsation was indeed shifting, from vertically upward to tilted, veering towards the direction of the tunnel.
"It's climbed up along the side path." Yin Wujou stood up and took two steps back, his gaze sweeping across the entire array pattern on the ground. "The path of water elemental energy has been laid out in front of it, and it's following the path."
Daoist Yun, holding the deduction chart, quickly walked around to the other side of the array and bent down to check several important intersections of the patterns. "Is the array's output stable? Xue'er, has your Water Spirit Condensation been interrupted?"
"No." Snow Empress's voice came from the round pit, devoid of much emotion. "It walked very steadily, as if it were being led by the nose."
Yin Wujou stood at the edge of the array, staring at the direction of the amber light flowing within the patterns on the ground. He mentally reviewed the entire process again—the copper ball embedded in the broken edge released water elemental energy, which was gathered and condensed by the Snow Empress and poured into the array. The array's suppressive power was transmitted underground through the water elemental energy, and the Demonic Flood Dragon, attracted by the pure aura of the water elemental energy, ascended along the fork in the path. Eventually, it would reach this cave, where the suppressive power of this ancient array would be reactivated, suppressing it again before it completely broke free of the earth's veins.
Every step is interconnected, and no mistake can be made.
The ground suddenly trembled. The tremor wasn't large, but it came suddenly, Yin Wujou stumbled and grabbed a stalactite next to him. The moss covering the stone made his hand slippery. After regaining his balance, he immediately looked at the Snow Empress in the round pit—she was sitting there steadily, without even swaying her shoulders. Only the emerald light ball floating in her palm trembled violently for a moment before resuming its rotation.
"It bumped into the rock strata," Snow Empress said. "It was about fifteen zhang away. It was testing the waters."
Yin Wujou turned to look at the entrance of the passageway. The silver thread extended from his wrist, passing through the darkness of the passageway and reaching the first bronze ball, taut like a harp string. He gently plucked the thread with his other hand, and the vibration traveled far, passing through each of the twelve bronze balls, finally reaching the last bronze ball embedded in the broken end—he could feel that ball trembling slightly in response deep within the array's core.